The Excitment

Is happening somewhere else, which is fine with me. Finished up the old science experiments in the fridge yesterday, got it all cleaned up nice, and put the turkey in to thaw.

Got enough snow to track on Sunday, so the guys tracked, and got a doe. 

You do not want to be anywhere in the proximity of any man who has carried a deer for any distance. I work in a cow barn and am accustomed to a wide assortment of noxious odors but......

Deer is worse. Much worse. I was GLAD to go to the barn to get away from it. Glad I tell you.

I am dreading having to dig through all those layers of huntin' clothes to wash them. And checking the pockets. Ugh. Smells kind of like a rank billy goat in a closed barn on a hot day in July...

But I do like venison.

Been feeling sorry for those fool Carolina wrens. They come and hang around the bird feeder, all hunched up and cold, and feeling sorry for themselves, but they don't really eat sunflower seeds, which is what we feed. I dug through the cupboard for an old jar of peanut butter and put some of that out for them....I dunno....not looking like a nice winter for them.

Anyhoo, tis the season for Yak Trax, and rock salt, and every single layer of down, wool, and whatever else that can be found. Happy winter to ya.

March Came in Like a Cotton Ball

 This is cattle panel fence!

Got Snow?

Yup, and it's the packy stuff we used to love when we were kids. Haven't seen snow like this in years. If the kids were smaller and I didn't have to milk and feed and pay bills we would be out building snow animals and coloring them with food coloring paint.


We used to do that back when we lived in the village when they were little. We had snow lions and dogs and horses, huge ones that took up the whole yard. 


What fun, what fun....


Oldest fossil forest found....again...right near here. Check it out....

Blustery as a Politician

(But without the hot air.) 


Migrants are coming though quickly now, on their way to northern nesting spots.  Nothing exciting yet, but we saw the first turkey vulture up west yesterday.


This morning Cananda geese stretched across the sky from horizon to horizon.


Our horizons are a lot closer than they are out west, but that is still several miles of flock. I paused in the pulling on of socks to marvel at the sheer numbers of them. 


 Imagine all those hundreds of birds, each the size of a cat, each with wings strong enough to knock you on your butt if you tangle with one, tumbling through the wind like acrobats, right above your head, practically hovering in front of the big living room windows.


The wind was strong indeed, because they were struggling to get moving and to stretch out in their Vs to go wherever they forage each day. 


Some of the flocks are breaking down into pairs already, but most are still in groups from six to six or seven hundred. They drove the boss nuts the other night when I was getting up and down with the sick heifer...they sound a lot like coyotes!


I won't lie and say I like cold weather but you can feel the seasons getting ready to change despite the winter storm warnings on the weather stations. And the daffodils by the kitchen corner are never wrong for long.

Cold Again

Not the big time cold that you see on the Northern Plains or up in the Land of the Midnight Sun, but a darn sight colder than is comfortable. We have had a remarkably easy winter, with plenty of warmer than normal, sunny days, but I am still ready for it to end. 


The nice days are such a teaser, reminding us of planting and growing things and playing in the garden pond...

Lots of interesting birds and wildlife around now, including a deer that popped right over the fence out of the barnyard when Alan came over the other day.


We saw a bald eagle right over the corner of the barnyard when we were feeding the other night. Looked up and there he was, low, and right over our heads. 


A sharp shinned hawk almost hit me in the head this morning. I was watching where I was walking and didn't even see him, but Liz said that he skimmed right over me. He landed in a nearby tree and she ran for her camera, but he flew just as she got close.


Saw about fifty robins flying west earlier today, along with a bunch of small, very musical birds, whose call I have never heard before and couldn't identify. Very pretty though.


Also saw what looked like an owl flying between the barns this morning at daybreak. I hope so! Having discovered what the mystery animal is that is coming on the kitchen porch and eating the cat food...a skunk...I am hoping that it is a great horned owl and stays for dinner....

Photos

I kind of liked the way the river bank grapes, 

burr cucumbers and rose bushes twined together to form a safe corner for these birds. 

Don't like House Sparrows much but they were handy. do click....

Been out taking photos for Sunday Stills, which is natural frames this week. It is so grey and gloomy that it is hard to get anything but dull, dull, dull, but I think I got a couple that will do. Such a faded and colorless time of year. Still there are wee bits of color and small things of interest if you look long and closely. 

January Rain

Seems with our changing weather patterns we get at least one damaging rain storm in January. Every single year.

Yaktrax Tracks

Seems that this is it. Everything is awash in water running over the ice and frozen ground. Not very nice for walking. Can't say enough about those Yaktrax (and no they don't pay me.) Gotta get the boss a set.


There is little of interest going on...the boss keeps working on the furnace, making it a little warmer at least. We keep milking cows and feeding cows and cleaning out the stables...picking things up and putting them down. Dad is having kind of a hard time, but I guess he is progressing....and that is about all the news that is fit to print.

Canada Geese

In phenomenal numbers down on the Mohawk. We have been seeing them from the house, flocks that stretch from horizon to horizon, sailing by all day. It is quite a sight!

Yesterday I had to go out with Alan to take care of some bidness in town and got to see them resting on the river.

I took some videos, but they are pretty shaky, so it is going to take some editing before they don't make you seasick. However, for those of you familiar with the area, flocks like these stretched from well west of the river bridge to the former Poplars dock and more were cupping in all the time.

I don't think I have ever seen quite this many. Note the one lone stranger out there in the middle. There were a few mergs too, dipping and diving, but the geese certainly were the stars of the show.

Warm

We are. Despite the stove guy NOT CALLING US that the stove was back at his shop...he didn't want to come up our driveway because it is muddy and there are some bushes that might scratch his truck....local folks got our stove back home for us.


The boss called stove guy day before yesterday and got the news. We were not exactly happy, but at least we knew that it was in New York State.


The boss then called a really, really, really nice businessman in town who offered to let the stove guy drop it off in his yard on the flat....which was done.


Then that man dropped his own work in his busiest season of the year, in the busiest time of that season now that it has frozen up, to bring the stove up with his logging equipment and very carefully set it in place. He also gave us some wood. He would not take any money.


Alan and the boss plumbed and wired and messed with stuff all day. The water hoses Becky and I carefully sequestered in the milk house against the day froze the minute they took them outdoors. And blew up. Alan had to go buy more hose.


The underground stove hoses I have been keeping thawed by burning a fire in the little stove thingy Alan built froze as soon as the men dismantled it.


 "Hot Hands" hand warmers, hot coffee, hot mac and cheese and all Alan's grout clothes from his job in the city were needed to keep them going. The boss banged his hands up working so stiff from the cold. I don't think either of them needed any rocking last night, but I put hot water bottles in the beds so they were extra warm.


It took them from eight in the morning to evening milking time to get it functional...of course cows had to be milked...the girls and I did that. And fed, which the boss and Liz and I did. And of course the cows broke things and created havoc and got out of the feed yard fence just for fun.


But then, but the start of evening milking, Alan was building a fire. There were still some frozen hoses and some assorted bugs with the plenum to work out, but by the time we went to bed last night we had honest to God and thanks to God HEAT.


We left it on all night, something which we never do, and I got up to a warm house. I am sitting here, comfortable. Genuinely comfy, cozy, and contented. It is like being reborn to joy. I don't think I will ever take being warm enough for granted again.


Thank you to everyone who helped, everyone who thought of us, cared, prayed, worried etc. and especially thank you Hiram for bringing that puppy home for us. We will see you repaid somehow and soon.

Sunday, no Stills...until maybe later

This is my morning....noon, night, in between.... starting fires and filling this thing, which Alan built, which is hooked up to the piping for the outdoor wood stove...which is in Wisconsin. I have to keep the piping from freezing so when it gets back from its tour of duty we can hook it back up and it wil work.


This morning it was really cold, so I started the day at 4:15 to turn on the little electric heaters and get this thing going. There were still a few coals left from last night and the water was running as it should be, but there was also snow on top of the barrel.


It took a long time to start the fire. Certain individuals are very stingy about cutting me kindling....and although I am a sort of harbor chick, I don't run the chain saw.


It is going now, hissing and banging, as the hickory is wet and takes a while to get warm enough to just burn...hopefully in an hour or so I can turn the furnace fan on for a little while and warm the place up a bit.


Sure was pretty out this morning though. It snowed between dog out time and me out time, so I made the very first tracks of the morning. No traffic so I could hear the businesslike chatter of the creek..not frozen yet.


Woke up a bird which chirped irritably at me before going back to sleep. I have an old pine pallet I am chipping up..not much left of it...for kindling. The scent of it was as strong as turpentine, but sweet too, as the newspapers singed its stubborn edges and teased it into ignition. It was kind of nice in an Amish pioneer sort of way.


I will try to get something for Sunday Stills when the sun comes up but no guarantees. Tried to get a pic of a random Santa waving by the road side yesterday, but traffic was just too busy.

Winter Storm Watch

Classic example of red neck engine repair

Noon today, yep the global is definitely warming and fall is lasting longer and ending later......not.....I should have known when everybody got crazy wanting to bake that bad weather was sure to follow. We aren't much different than wild animals when it comes to that, gather in the nuts, fluff up the nest and get ready for the bad news.

And so the scurry to get the barn ready begins. Big job and it is about two weeks earlier than we like it to be. I watched a weather demon yesterday all wink, wink, nudge, nudge about the weather and wanted to take out the TV...(He couldn't say whether it would be mildly cloudy or we would get a foot of snow. Dang, talk about a job where you can be wrong every day and still get paid. They should all run for Congress.)

I didn't though because the guys enjoy it, although how they can is beyond me. I just asked the boss to bring me up a skid steer bucket of driveway sand to bed the stalls with. It is really comfy for the cows, stays where I put it and gives them good traction to get up and down.

At least yesterday was gorgeous. The cows dried out and were fluffy....or fluffy-ish at least. Brought in the last of the water cannas. I was going to let them freeze, and indeed the tops did freeze down to the roots, but when push came to frosting, I didn't have the heart. Thus my kitchen is awash in huge pots of cannas, water cannas and grown-from-seed amaryllis.

It is like a jungle in here....a particularly favorite old friend stopped by for a short chat the other day (is there anything on earth more enjoyable than one of those friends you can not see for months or even years and pick right up where you left off) and remarked at the amount of greenery.

I can't help it. I love plants...and animals....and rocks.....herptiles....birds...I think I would curl up and blow away if I had to live in a city separated from living and growing things. Spent fifteen years in a small town once and it about drove me crazy. And even there I had gardens and flowers and dogs and cats. I think maybe I was born to be a farmer....even though I was born in the city.

Sounds of Spring

You will want to turn your sound up, as this was made just so you could hear the din of this mixed flock of red winged black birds, starlings, grackles, and whatever that little yellow thing in about the middle is....gold finch maybe....

I was out with Nick and these guys were tuning up in the tree right by the house. Loud enough to hurt your ears almost.

Meanwhile we are wishing that winter would go into remission. The normal daily temp for this time of year is 46. Instead we are getting up to low single digits and not warming up much all day.

Spring is Sprung

A soggy snow robin

The grass is friz

And I know just where the boidies is.

Right on the feeder

It's sprung all right! in the wrong direction!

Strange Cotton

Some of Dad's woodcarvings

And Easter egg pastels. That is how it looked here yesterday. The sky was sometimes pink and glowing like an opalescent pearl. Then it would turn soft, shining blue and silvery grey. Kinda like an old-fashioned post card only more treacherous. Yeah, I know its still winter...yeah, yeah, and the weather still knows it too. Our snow was about all gone. It is about all back.

Normally when snow coats the branches it blows right off in the first puff of wind. However, the Sunday/Monday storm left a coating of ice first, then painted on the the fluffy, sticky snow. It hung and clung. Last night after chores it was still clinging to every twig and branch and piled in every connection between or among them. It was pretty. I admired it. Now it can melt.

The boss couldn't even get to the ag bag to get out feed. So much snow. So deep, so soggy, so sucking of the skid steer right into piles of it. They fed dry hay instead, which is fine with the cows, but hard on the supply.

Computer is still toasted. I think it is something fairly simple and probably has to do with Zone Alarm fire wall, which sometimes goes rogue just because it can. I tinkered with it yesterday off and on all day, to no particular avail, although I did manage to run a virus scan. Which didn't find anything. If you know any handy, dandy hackers or geeks......

Meanwhile, I can't take photos off the camera, so these are what was hanging around on this computer.

Toasted

Some of the shag bark hickories on 7-County Hill

The big computer seems to be. I can get it as far as loading the browser and then it freezes. Power went out in the middle of the night in the middle of the storm and it hasn't been right since.

So, the slow little bookkeeping computer has been called back into service as an Internet computer. Paying bills online is great stuff except when your computer doesn't want to play.


Did I mention the storm? Lots of bad stuff going on around the region, of far more import than my computer. Roofs, branches and power lines all over are taking an awful beating. I think this is the worst storm all winter. The boss didn't even try to get up to the ag bag, just gave the cows a pile of dry hay and gave up.

My old friend Mike

Had to go out in it at four this morning to check the springers. Egrec had delivered a really, really big bull calf. I was about done in by the time I had managed to get it up in front of her so she could lick it off. Then after checking everybody else in the barn and kicking in some hay I went back to bed. All I could do to get back and forth to the barn....it was snowing so hard! And so deep.


At five thirty the boss stirred, so I sent him out to give Big E a bottle of calcium and some oxytocin. Would have done it myself but she is a giant and crazy as a loon. I didn't think I could.

Anyhow, it is pretty but nasty, the wind is kicking up now. I hope you are all safe and warm and dry. Take care! I will leave you with a few pics of a nicer season that were stored on this old computer.

Good Morning from the Ice Cave

Or hockey rink if you prefer. We are having crystal days with temps in the twenties or thirties and shining nights near zero. Nice sugar weather and the days are really pretty.

However, the result is that in the day time no matter how much sand is spread, all the drives and walkways are like shining sheets of glass. And all the sand is sucked under by the melting, presenting a fresh ice world each morning.....

I can remember being a kid and skating on such stuff. Loving it. Flying. Crashing down on it and not caring, and getting up and doing it again. We skated EVERYWHERE when we were kids. If there was a six-inch patch of ice we were all over it.

I mean we had wild hockey matches on the thin little threads of ice between the hummocks of grass and corn stubble in the field next to our parents' house. If you came to a grass tuft you just jumped it. I don't remember it hurting except the time I froze my toes ...just a little, but enough to hurt for days and days.....skating up at Caroga Lake. Having too much fun to notice until it was too late.

Where did that marvelous sense of balance go? Now I can't WALK to the barn on the ice...let alone skate (and the toes I froze back in the day are not happy little campers in this weather either.)

Yesterday I got as far as the back of the stock trailer and just waited. I couldn't even hold one foot still on the stuff....I was afraid I would slide right off the hill.

The wait was fruitful as it happens, as the boss grabbed the skid steer as soon as he got to the barn and scooped up some sand and did the drive between house and barn.

Still made for a slow walk, but at least I could walk. Beck was not so lucky. She was feeding her dog and took a terrible header. Being a farm kid she went to her off-farm job anyhow, but she is black and blue. Nasty stuff ice.

However, when I took feed to the peacocks yesterday, a mix of cat and dog food, corn and sunflower seeds with a nice chopped apple for topping, I waited for a few minutes over by the outside door. The hen began to give those guttural little clucks they have, then very, very cautiously hopped off the roost and began to eat the corn.

I was delighted.

Oh, Joy

Guess Who's Not Going to the Farm Show

Again this year? Yeah, the boss and I are staying home; kids are going. I love to go but there is just too much to do here. All that snow yesterday on top of the usual run of daily disaster. The situation is normal.......snarled beyond untangling.

I hope the kids bring me home some samples and good reading material.

Stormin'

Again. And having heard from snowed in, powerless friends in other states, I guess it is going to pack a whammy. The boss says when he got up at five-thirty there wasn't a flake. I am here to tell you it is making up for lost time.

Had a hawk hunting the mockingbird yesterday in the big rose bush where the turkeys were feeding last week. He flew when I got to the window with the camera, but I got a quick shot. Not sure what he was...never got a good look. I will thank him for staying the heck away from my mockers. They have chased him out several times this winter, but I think he had them pinned down yesterday. I was glad to come to their rescue.

So far today we have had a loose Jersey heifer who broke a water bowl, causing flooding in the barn....again.....not an auspicious start to another stinking, lousy snow storm.

Which, as a Facebook friend pointed, out was supposed to be a few flurries and then some rain, but, gulp, amazingly, incredibly, they got it wrong again.

It is supposed to stack up a foot of the lovely, fluffy white stuff. Yay! Hope you are warm and dry and a big thank you to all my Florida blog friends who warm my world with pictures and videos of dolphins, gardens, birds, beaches and sunshine. Yeah, that is the stuff.

Thursday

Lakota's new baby boy with Tux, the opportunist

Is sometimes my second favorite day of the week (after Sunday) because I am caught up by then....usually.

But sometimes I am not so caught up. And Thursday is just another day......Another storm in the offing for tomorrow, geraniums to plant, dreaded house work to dig away at. (Why is it I get a lot of satisfaction out of sweeping a barn aisle or sluicing out the milk house but hate every swipe of the broom or mop indoors? Ugh!)

We experienced a significant and quite notable sign of early spring last night though. Just about last dog turning out time of the evening a powerful, pungent and real CLOSE odor wafted into the kitchen. I think the perp may have actually been on the back porch at one point.

Thus Nick and I will be doing leash walks again until the air clears and he or she takes his stinky little act down the road.