Coincidence?

I think I will put the same post here today that I wrote for my garden blog (not much to post about there this time of year). Over on Garden Records, however, every now and then I copy an excerpt from the 1874 diary of Charles Thruwood, a farmer from Fort Plain NY (just a handful of miles up the road) . Charlie was 21 that year and had a grand time voting for the first time, breaking horses and doing a lot of hunting, besides working real hard on the farm with his family. It is interesting and informative to compare what happened on a family farm in his day to what happens on one in our time.


Perhaps not surprisingly, although the machines may be bigger and the animal numbers larger, there is no question that the cycles of life, the seasons, and the land have not changed. (No matter what hype you may hear on the topic.) For example, last night our maple syrup guy, who taps our sugar bush woods, (and gives us wonderful maple syrup), stopped by to negotiate for this season's tapping arrangements. I am sure in a few short weeks I will be reading of Charlie Thurwood's families doing their sugaring off as well. We will see when the time comes if the beginning of the maple sap run in 2008 coincides with that in 1874. (We have owned this diary for a good many years and it often has before.) I generally spot the beginning of the run by icicles hanging from maple branches that get broken off along the road. These are formed by sap and are tantalizingly sweet. Alan and I often break off a couple and melt them for coffee water...just for the fun of it.


Here is the copied post.

"From the Charles Thurwood diary

A very foggy day and in the morning it rained a little and I done nothing but the chores and went hunting and Henry Meyers was here and at night Til and Charley Bouman and Dunckel and Ezra Dillenbeck was all to our house. 4 eggs

Here at Northview we are also experiencing a January thaw, which is much appreciated. Had a little rainy sleet Friday into Saturday, which finally made the paths fit for walking again. Interesting that 134 years have passed between these two farmer diary postings and yet the weather is nearly identical."

Crazy day

It started out as ordinary enough though. We milked the cows and fed the calves and the boss cleaned the stables. Then while we were working we began hearing gunfire all around us. The boss went outside to look, but thought it was across the river.

We decided to move some calves outside before we went in to eat. Big rodeo. They had not been led for the most part and jumped all over Liz and tried to run over the rest of us and leap through the gates and generally gave us a rough time. Heard more shooting, this time up behind the house. Went in for breakfast. Heard still more shooting. Boom, boom, boom..clearly a shot gun,...glad I am not buying their shells as there had so far been at least 20 shots.

Suddenly I heard a LOT of shooting and it sounded like it was right over in the cow pasture. The boss, Liz and I took off right away as we had put the springing heifers out there while we moved calves. By the time my slow, old self got up there (visions of all kind of bad possibilities dancing in my head) the young stock were coming back up from where they had bolted down to the barn gate. We never did find out who was out there or even just where they were, but after we went out the shooting at least stopped. I found one of the heifers hiding by the big tree in the upper photo and thought it looked kind of interesting.

Spooked but interested in what I was up to.

Soooo.....we went back in to try to finish our breakfast. While we were inside the corn meal that was delayed by yesterday's storm was finally delivered. Then a fellow that is interested in buying some semen from the shorthorn bull when we draw him arrived unexpectedly to look at him and check out his daughters. Guess he liked him because he wants to buy some when we get it back.

I had to kind of hustle him along as we had a big day of cleaning mangers planned. I felt bad about it, but my help was needed. It was a major task as we have been behind since the boss got hurt. We mostly got it done anyhow and the guys built a real nice feeder for the calf pen where we put the ones we moved. Cows got fed pretty late, which made milking a bit late too, but we were still back in the house by just after eight. I had cooked a roast and some potatoes and carrots and everything was ready when we came in, for which I was grateful as I was just plain ready to be done. It was about as busy a day as we have had in a while and I sure would like to know what was going on with all the shooting, but we got a lot done so I won't complain....doesn't pay anyhow. Now I am going to go take a shower so I don't smell like bad feed and cow manure and get all rested up for tomorrow's dose of fun on the farm.

Rainy days and Mondays

Today is both. There is a fine scrim of ice on every bit of ground, which makes walking a challenge. The milk tanker didn't show up this morning and we are hoping he isn't off the road somewhere.

Yesterday was certainly something. First Nick and Wally got into a discussion through the kennel fence and woke me up way too early for a morning off. Then Alan set out to skin and cut up that nice little buck he got. To his dismay something was terribly wrong with it. Every bit of meat was full of holes and blood clots, essentially ruining it. What a shame! We figure that any one of four scenarios is possible.
1) It got policed in a fight with a much larger buck, which did an amazing amount of damage.
2) Hit by a car.
3) EHD
4) (Most likely in my opinion) Some idiot loaded it full of turkey shot thinking they could kill it with a bird load.

Whatever happened, we won't be eating it.

Then the kid brought down the Christmas tree (I use the term loosely). Last year he got us this tree. We teased him about it but we liked it. I expected something similar this year when he suggested getting another, so I said, "Yeah, go ahead."

About an hour later he dragged this thing in the house.

It is over ten feet high and set up it reaches half way across the living room (you can see how wide that is in the shotgun pellet pictures below.) I am not sure quite what to think of it, but looking on the bright side, there will be room for every single one of my many and various Christmas ornaments on it.... For all of Grandma Peggy's too.... And for all the ones that have been languishing in boxes in the attic for a decade or six.

Half decorated

Wow.....

We will be

Processing venison today

8 Point Buck

Here is a link to a picture of Alan with his deer. I put it on my low traffic blog so as not to hurt too many tender sensibilities, but his big brother and assorted other relatives want to see a picture.

Big buck

In between doing almost all his daddy's chores the boy got his first deer today. He came in all quiet and asked me to put his 20-gauge away for him and get the camera as he got a little bitty spike buck. Completely deadpan. I did as he suggested and went outside and there in the tractor bucket was this huge thing with the biggest antlers I have ever seen outside pictures from out west. It was only an 8-point, but a big, big deer. Nicest one we ever got here on the farm for sure.

So he is happy tonight.....and tomorrow we are cutting up venison I guess. I would post pictures, but they are pretty gory for polite company.

60-Acre Lot Woods

**Photo by Alan

Talking turkey

Hunting that is. (Note the fashionable duct tape fastening the orange vest together. This boy has style.) I know there are those who don't believe in hunting, but we have at least two hundred turkeys on our three hundred acres. (They gather together in the winter and we count them so we know.) The two or three a year that we roast will not be missed...and they are fat from eating our corn and alfalfa.

Partly because he is an avid hunter, this boy knows every inch of our land like other kids know the ins and outs of video games. In this picture he was showing me where he shot three turkeys with one shot one time (quite by accident). He loves to take me out to share his special places...an old pallet leaning on the rocks in the Sixty-Acre Lot hedgerow where he can hide and watch the wild things go by, a puddle where a dozen green frogs lurk, waiting to plop into the water with a startling splash. The old dam, the owl tree, he leads me to them proudly when we have time. I have visited all these places before when I was young and eager, but it is good to see them again through his fresh, fervent eyes. He is a capable tracker and so keen of nose that he can SMELL where the birds have been. My nose isn't sharp enough to notice until he points it out to me, but he is generally right.


It is comforting in a way to realize that the nature walks we took the kids on when they were little, turning over rocks to look for salamanders and spying on birds, have come full circle. Now we are the ones being taken.

Finding my folks

When I first saw the picture below and a number of others that were given to my mom along with it, all was explained. I have always felt like a changeling child, dumped into my more conventional family from some weird place where girls like to wear boots and jeans and run around in the woods doing guy things. Heck, I have spent most of my five decades trying to outdo guys at what they do. I only got smart and let them take up the heavy lifting…and tractor driving, cow wrangling, ladder climbing, huntin’, fishin’ (wait a minute, I still fish and milk cows) and all that stuff a couple years ago. I haven’t owned a dress in over thirty years. (They damn well better bury me in blue jeans.)

Both my grandmas were lady-like. My mom went along with my dad whether he was digging rare minerals in the wilds of Canada or wearing the kilt and representing the clan at the games or carving or painting, lugging books into shows, or doing hands on archeology, but she was always a girly girl.
Not the kind of kid like I was, that brought in a dinner plate sized toad and dumped it in her lap when I was supposed to be on a date with that cute blond guy. Or had my big milk snake get loose at my graduation party and scare all the Lachmayer great aunts half to death. Or was the best, most un-tackle-able football player in our gang. Or played guitar in our garage band that graduated into a bar band that rocked any number of wild places, even one biker bar....where we played Born to be Wild for about three hours straight because we felt safer doing so. (After all some of our audience was out in the parking lot throwing some of their buddies off the roof onto parked cars...all in good fun, of course.)

I felt like a freak.

Until I saw the pictures. There were my great grandma, Carrie Montgomery, whom I never met, and a whole passel of great aunts, wearing rubber boots and men’s knickerbockers or baggy old men’s pants, camping along the beautiful Canesteo River. They held up massive bass they had hooked; they cooked rough in the woods. They rode in wonderful wooden boats and set up this delightfully inviting camp. (Don't be fooled by the dresses in the cooking picture. Others that are not posted show them dressed like female hunting guides and darned proud of it.)

When I saw the camp I wanted to just walk right into the picture. It said home like my own living room does.

Take a look at my mom’s blog, Tryon Books and More, and see my late great aunt Fanny. (That is her with the bass in the bottom picture. She is the one wearing knickers and close-cropped hair.) Fanny had a collie dog too!

How I wish I had known all my Grandpa Montgomery’s sisters-in-law and his mamma.

They were my kind of women. Or maybe I am theirs.