Camp week

Last week was simply amazing. One of the nicest weeks we have ever spent at camp. There were birds and wild animals everywhere, the weather was stunning (except for one incredible downpour). We got to see any number of friends we don't get to spend time with very often. Caught a few fish. Took a lot of pictures...


194 in all plus one video. I only deleted a few when we got home where I could view them on the computer. I don't know what I am going to do with all those photos of ducks, geese kids and sunrises but I will think of something.

We puzzled for days over what these geese were grazing out of the trees until we started to find wild cherries floating on the water. If you click you can see the cherries, but we couldn't from where we were.

This beaver woke me up at 4:13 a couple of days ago, gnawing on a bass wood tree that hung out over the lake right under my bedroom window. It took me a long time to figure out what it was chewing and rolling rocks and splashing around just a few feet from where I was sleeping. I had thoughts of bears and other things more ominous than a beaver, until I heard it's signature somebody-throwing-a-bowling-ball-in-the-lake splash when I shined my flashlight out the window at it.

The Porch

Then yesterday morning as I was sitting on the porch sipping coffee, taking pictures of the sunrise and saying goodbye to the lake, it swam by about a foot from the porch. Then it disappeared in the trees overhanging the lake. For some reason it climbed up the hill to the outhouse, then thundered down, sounding like a whole herd of deer crashing through the bushes. It proceeded to swim aimlessly up and down the lake. Beavers are certainly interesting critters, but this one seemed to be operating on somewhat less than the prescribed number of cylinders so to speak. It certainly wasn't much afraid of me....or maybe it couldn't see me lurking up there on the porch. It just kept cruising past the porch...over and over again.





Until somebody said, BOO!

This is what happens when you say boo to a beaver

Who would ever believe that you would have geese eating cherries out of trees and beavers bowling under your bedroom window? Plumb amazing!

Home Again

We left this behind this morning to come home to the heat and humidity. No lie...I miss the lake.

******Lots of pics on the View at Northview

More Barn Blackboard

Here is the latest from the barn blackboard. See you next week, good Lord willing and the crick don't rise.

Those wild cows at Northview

Hattie, bringin' 'em on down. For some reason our lead cows are all Jerseys. Most of the time the herd is moved in and out with either Heather or one of her three daughters taking first position. It is the one time of year that I like the little brown cows.




Show cows have NO flight distance. Move toward them and, rather than moving away from you like any self respecting cow reacting to pressure, they either stand perfectly still and refuse to budge or come toward you. Here is how Liz gets her top cow, Mandy, out of the barn every day (the normal cows walk out on their own). We speculate that Mandy may have been a milk inspector in another life as she has to check everything out every day on her way to the door. Same feed bags, same breaker box, same gate...but different day. If she shows up with a clip board I am heading the other way...



The newest new milker, Becky's Evidence (wait for it, it's worth it) named after the Emerson Drive song of the same name. Evie had her first calf just a few days ago, but she has the routine pretty much figured out already. We have a whole mess of cows named after their songs (Simple Miracles, Drive, Moments, Hollywood Kiss, Lucky (for Lucky Man, my favorite), November, Countrified, Lemonade-Becky's top show cow-heck there are a whole bunch of 'em. I can't remember 'em all) and the girls are working on photos of them to give to the guys next time we get to a concert....hoping to make it to Vermont State Fair to see them. I think I am more excited than they are.





This is for Gumbo
Sorry FC

How about this story

GIPSA Alleges Swift and Company, d/b/a Swift Beef Company Violated the Packers and Stockyards Act

Playing with Picasa's collage tool

Cow-lage

Anti (cat) matter

Peace and quiet

I am so ready for some.
(Which is fortuitous as next week is our vacation.)
Camp
Ahhh......





In the past week the guys have blown a piston on one tractor (Case 930, 43+ years old and the absolute standby for mowing, baling and running loads), killed one forage wagon dead as a doornail (it was a terrible wagon right from the get go and we will certainly never buy another New Holland), scored the shear bar on the chopper and spent about half their time running around after parts and looking for another wagon and at mid-sized used tractors. Nobody's fault but....
It has not been fun for those of us on the sidelines. (They did manage to find a John Deere forage wagon that was both cheap and functional after some minor work.)





I have sustained my sanity by day-dreaming about loons and hemlocks and the soft rippling of water against the dock. I have gently packed this and that that I can live without until the weekend. I have lamented the loss somewhere in the course of changing computers of my "camp list" with important things like a can opener and a colander detailed on it. For once I have the noodles in the pile for the trip...the floating noodles that is. I am perfectly capable of swimming and snorkeling and do, but there is nothing like pulling your feet up so you don't get them in the bottom goo...and just drifting among the sun sparkled waves. I have forgotten them the last two years in a row.

To get to the weekend, I have to finish out today.
Function through tomorrow.
Get serious about packing on Friday.
Go crazy on Saturday with last minute packing (after milking the cows one last time in the morning) and shopping for perishables, getting through check in and unpacking.




Then on Sunday morning, while the folks in the other cabins sleep off their carousing from the night before (the only real draw back to camping where we do is raucous parties all night every night...I relish every hungover minute the next morning though because it is dead quiet), the loons and I...maybe a rock bass or two....and the sun and the lake will commune in peace. The loons will have minnows and I the first cup of coffee, binoculars, camera and a good book. I can't wait.




***Photos are from other years...

Cats and comfort

It never fails that a cat will find the most comfortable spot available to lie down to rest. In winter you can spot the warm corners by the pile of cats tangled there. In the barn they will even lie in the fluffy bit of straw that collects behind a cow's elbow or on the sunniest windowsill, or even in a cow bed when she is standing up eating. (This can be very unhealthy if she lies down unexpectedly). Some pile onto sleeping calves until they look as if they were covered with a calico and grey carpet. It took Elvis about five minutes to find this lovely rug my brother wove for me........

Back Yard Recipe

First: take one disgruntled, elderly barn cat visiting the house (where she doesn't belong).

Add: two nesting mockingbirds with a strong sense of territory.

Stand back: with the camera and click like crazy

Vanquished

Going, going, gone.

The winners

Happy Birthday, Baby Brother

Birthday barter

Matt, Thanks for the chickens both warm and breathing and frozen solid. Hope all the plants grow and thrive, especially Grandpa Lachmayer's rhubarb....

For reference, they are snow in summer, borage, pink and/or white sedum, bee balm, wall pepper, ultra-sweet tomato, cobweb hens and chicks, water lettuce, hornwort and, of course, the rhubarb. Love you kid



****Update, my mama just sent me this lovely old photo of the bouncing baby boy himself. Can you guess what he is doing?

Welcoming the birds

Robin at the bottom of the wren porch steps (through the screen door)

There was a wren here just a second ago!

This morning on the sitting porch

The boss's folks were farming one of these two farms when he was born just a couple months shy of sixty years ago. I have been helping him for well over a third of that. However, we have only lived here as a couple since his lovely mother passed away on my birthday seven years ago. We moved up from town then.

She always fed the birds and had a nice array, including red-bellied woodpeckers back before they were known to range here and a goshawk that liked to kill pigeons in the heifer barn yard.

However, I have never seen anything like the assortment we have begun to have in the last three or four years. There are probably a lot of factors in play. We have let some areas grow up to brush and wild plants, not so much to attract birds as because of lack of time and energy to keep it down. Alan has mowed out a number of paths that wind among mullberrries and old plantations of flowers. We have also planted some things for birds...lots of sunflowers, bee balm, rudbeckia (Peg had it, but we have encouraged it). We let the black caps flourish (mostly because WE like to eat them). We put in the garden pond, so there is the sound of splashing water....bird baths...feeders....

On the way over to Coby last week...our favorite swamp with pileated woodpecker holes

Anyhow, what a summer this has been for birds... If I was faster and he was slower, my early morning sitting porch photo would have included one of the mockingbirds. He wanted to get onto that porch for some reason this morning and gave an irritate chack!! whenever he tried to land on the railing and found me there first. Meanwhile the wren was singing his heart out on the other porch. A short list of what we have seen over the past week (not all of them right in the yard or very welcome either, but visible from the house or yard) pigeons, sassenachs (English *^&%$$ sparrows) starlings, mallard ducks, grackles, chickadees, gold finches, turkey vultures (sharing something nasty with a coyote out on the hill) red-tailed hawk, red-winged black birds, barn swallows, chimney swifts, kestrels, robins, savanna sparrows, song sparrows, chipping sparrows, several catbirds (the mockingbird is cussing on the wren's porch as I type this) indigo buntings, cedar waxwings, a mother Baltimore oriole and family, ruby-throated hummingbirds, blue jays, crows, killdeers, pileated woodpecker, cowbirds, phoebe, common yellow throat warblers, downy woodpecker family with lots of demanding kids, at least four families of cat birds, house wrens (two families), song sparrows, cardinals, great blue heron and more...these are just what I can think of off the top of my head, and just what we have seen in the past week.

It is unfailingly entertaining just to hang out in the yard. The birds figure that it belongs to them and make their feelings known. When they are not nesting, the chickadees come right to the back door to demand seeds. The mockers fly down at our feet for some reason known only to them and flash their wings at us. They are the most companionable of birds and seem to like us.

Taken a little while ago right next to the house

The wren sings to us every time we go to the front door to drive away the starlings and sassenachs that want to steal their nest.
The hummingbirds pitch a fit if the feeder gets empty.

I like having them around.
(It is part of why I never go anywhere if I don't have to.)

Lykers pond...see that thing swimming in the water? Liz and I think it was a young otter. It certainly swam like one. Some middle-aged idiot, during one of those miserable senior moments, forgot that there is a perfectly serviceable, if slightly battered, pair of Bushnell binoculars in the car. ...so we will never be sure...but it sure looked like an otter

No Pie

The fox didn't leave enough black caps in the whole yard....it did leave a calling card right behind the car though. Dag nab it.

***Sorry about the kinda blurry photo. As soon as I took it we ate them, so there was no possibility of a retake.

Happy Birthday America

And I WILL get even*****....that is all I am saying (today is mine too)
Please excuse the boss commenting very rudely in the background. He didn't know Alan was making me this video and it was about the fifth attempt and he just wouldn't make me another one so.......If you turn the volume up loud enough to hear his reaction...well it is pretty understandable as the movie making was going on about three feet from his chair, and he was inspired by the music and all.....





*****with the senders of this card that is....

Grey fox surprise

I was picking up the living room, not my favorite job, but necessary, when I glanced out those bullet pocked windows. There on the lawn was what I saw as the tom cat we successfully sloughed off on the neighbors. He isn't a favorite either and I started to go out to yell at him to take it on down the road.



I couldn't make him look right though. Then in an instant he resolved himself into this unexpected creature (actually it looked like a she). They have passed through before, but they are normally shy and not something you see every day.




We have been blaming the birds for the dearth of ripe black caps but this critter was hoovering them up at an amazing rate (sorry birds). While I took stills through the window, Liz crept out on the sitting porch to take some video. This bold little fox went right on sucking down berries while Mike blundered blindly by not forty feet away from her. I suspect like the deer, she lives out in the hedgerow and is used to our noise and dogs and commotion. Anyway it was pretty neat to be able to get pictures of her.







Video by Liz

Yesterday was just such a busy day

For birds and wild things. This little sparrow showed up on the sitting porch and obligingly sat for his portrait, while occasionally cheeping very musically for his folks.

When they refused to come in he flew away on his own.

I think he may be a savanna sparrow, .
I am not strong on juvenile sparrows.
Anybody?

When I was hanging out laundry today

I felt someone watching me. I looked around but didn't see anyone............except a red-tailed hawk circling lazily over the heifer barn.
The mockingbird tilting back and forth on the telephone wire.
Two gold finches spiraling ever higher as they fought furiously.
The wren singing from another wire.
And this guy.....lurking in the rhubarb leaf bird bath....

Another show girl

Potential summer yearling class heifer, Maqua-kil Blitz Neon Moon, sister to Blitz, daughter of Mandy. For her first birthday yesterday she got her first bath of the 2008 show season. She isn't looking too pulled together yet, but some practice leading will bring that along.
Summer yearling is an awkward class. Heifers rarely look their best at just that age. Moon herself has looked better than this in the past and probably will again in the future. At least she isn't dragging Liz around. Any time she has gotten loose in the barn she has towed the boss or me around like a barge with a dingy.

Red sky at morning

Farmer, get out of the house and go get your cows.....