Spring Day

At daybreak a perfect half moon looks as if somebody chopped it off like a slice of silver cheese....A blazing sunrise, colors changing like a cinema, now peach, now tangerine, then cotton candy, clean bright white on to the blinding blue of noonday.

At sunset, pink sheep clouds nibbling their way across the heifer hill horizon, shepherded along towards evening by the tugging of the breeze. It snaps the laundry on the line and ruffles the border collie's fur as it passes. It is the kindest wind of the year, refreshing, sweet, and softly scented, with green earth and cow and clean, smooth water on its breath.

In between the day's bright ends, cleaning pens and moving heifers, fixing and filling and planning the planting. Heifers on Saturday, heifers on Monday. Salesmen and electric fences, shovels, wheelbarrows full of baleage (when is somebody going to straighten that bent axle and find some grease I want to know?) skirling skid steer, singing songbirds, snarling river, snaking brown Schoharie...it is spring in the valley, sit up and take notice.

A Joyous Easter Gift

Mullein

I was on the telephone with one of the world's best brothers yesterday, our weekly Sunday catching up session, when I saw them for the first time and heard them killeee, killeee, killeee-ing as they fluttered over the yard. They were still there at just about dusk last night when Alan and I were out lugging in the last feeding of baleage. They made my day.

A pair of sparrow hawks...kestrels...the smallest American falcons. When the boss and I were younger, a lot younger, a pair nested each year between the roof boards in the heifer barn. They have always been among my favorite hawks and their presence nearby all summer long was always a delight.

Then West Nile virus wiped out most of the area hawk population (not to mention crows, jays and chickadees, the heifer barn hawk family included, and we never saw them down here by the house again.

Slowly, at least the population up in the fields returned to some semblance of normalcy. There were once again fluttering crosses of bird, hovering over the farm machinery waiting for large insects to be disturbed as the driver worked the land and gathered crops. (If you are a bird watcher a tractor seat is a wonderful place to be. The wild things are quick to take advantage of stirred up insects, mice and voles, or turned up earthworms and seem to be drawn in as if by a giant net when the engine starts. We have been delighted by ring-billed and herring gulls, foxes and coyote pups, swallows and swifts, juvenile red-tailed hawks, so new to the game that they had to walk around the field clutching at prey, and of course sparrow hawks, which take advantage of our actions by catching and stashing dozens of critters in nearby trees for future snacking.)

Thus yesterday I was overjoyed to see a single kestrel winging around the heifer yard peeking between the roof boards, checking out the old nesting site. When he was joined by a second my heart was thrilled. When I looked up late in the evening to hear that familiar call, my Easter was complete.

I hope they stay.

Sunday Stills....Happy Easter

I wish you all a joyous and wonderful Easter

For more Sunday Stills....

My Favorite Herb

I have this love affair with lovage. My mom gave me a chunk from her plant several years ago and at first my reaction was mostly dismay. You know...the whole six feet tall and growing like kudzu thing. It smelled so strongly of celery that I was afraid to use it.


Last year I overcame my trepidation and slowly began to use leaves in soups, stews, spaghetti sauce etc. Then we all started cooking meat with it. Soon it became a staple, with dinner seeming downright bare without it. Last summer I froze some (wash it and throw it in a freezer bag) dried some in the oven, dried some on paper towels, left some on the counter to wither until I got around to using it, and we cooked with it all winter.


The last two jars are just about empty. Maybe two or three good tablespoons left. I was beginning to worry about running out and have been skimping the past couple of weeks. Then today I went out to shoot my Sunday Stills Easter pic and look what I found! If I was the type I would do a happy dance.


And on a totally different topic...how would you react, say you were pretty darned conservative and wrote a farm column for your local paper, and included in the text of your column, right at the end, not separated in any way from your paragraph (in a story about goats btw) the powers that be placed a public service announcement for the area Democratic Committee? I am sorta kinda dumbfounded.

Fencing...not with Swords

Some of these are worth a click to see more detail...

Although there were a lot of thistles and I don't think I have ever seen it as wet as it is now.
Liz did most of the thistle stomping, while I carried the hammer (in my handy dandy hammer loop, something which I usually cut off of jeans because of the danger from power take offs. However I don't use them any more, PTO's that is, being an old broad, and the hammer loop was sure handy). We got the field behind the barn up in single strand electric in just a couple of hours. Amazing that the snow and odocoileus didn't take it down worse than it did. usually heavy snow and rampaging deer are rough on fences every winter. This year in places the fence was up for several sections in a row and all the insulators were lying around in plain sight.
It was GOOD to get outdoors.

Wish you could smell the maple trees in bloom. You don't smell much of anything outdoors in the winter, as many of us who work out there notice when things warm up and you can again. Yesterday as Liz and I came down after getting the electric fence up, wave after wave of it wafted over us. It was sweet as hot sugar and in fact smells a lot like hot sugar. It was wonderful for me...not so much Liz who is allergic to maple blossoms. (For some reason she won't let me plant any maple trees down by the house.) I have read that it was a poor season for the maple folks, with a short and spotty run.

Joated posted this video arrangement of the weather maps of the last 22 Hell Storms that have nailed the northeast. Wow! I had actually noticed that they looked a lot alike on the weather map but it is something to see them slashing up from Florida or over from the left coast one after another.

To Make up for the Gloom and Doom

The sun came out yesterday...

Sorry about that stuff yesterday. Things looked awful, scary and bad. We dodged that bullet, thanks to a hard working professional in town. A worry that has been hanging over me since last summer like a big, black blanket, hangs no more...or at least much less.
And the grass is almost green.
The sun came out yesterday after all that Godawful rain.

To make it up to you for me being such a party pooper yesterday, here are some fun things to do and cool folks to visit. Please pay them a call to get your grins on.

Check out real chickens in party hats. They are so cute!!

An ongoing archaeological dig in a former pig coop.

Calving, calving and kidding.

Baby horses in all their incredible cuteness.

Thanks to a FaceBook Friend for This

Story explaining much of what is causing farms like ours to wither and die...written by folks from NYC.

***One of the nice folks I have met on FaceBook had the link today...thanks Luv

Sad Today

****Update, my extra level of woe this morning was caused by being turned down for some credit we absolutely needed to stay in business. Our banker found another option this morning so for now....and I guess now is all we get to ask for. Thank you all of you for listening to me and caring. It means a lot.


No good things to report. Nothing good on the horizon. As I have written about other dairy farms giving up and quitting and good lifelong farmers ending up with nothing left.....hardworking farmers kidding and not in a funny way about becoming Walmart greeters... our own farm has been teetering on the brink.

The brink may be here. I am sad. I don't know who we will be after we sell the cows, if we end up having to sell them. I hope we can hang on. Green grass is so close...maybe four weeks...maybe less. Green grass won't pull us out of the hole, but it would cauterize a couple of the bleeding arteries.

If we can't last it out, well, we can't. Misery loves company and thousands of farms have folded in the past couple of years. There is nothing so special about our tiny operation to make us any better than the thousands of other farm families who couldn't survive on pay prices that are less than two thirds the cost of production.

One-thousand Pound Fine

For selling a goldfish to an underage piscesophile. You read it right. A 66-year old great grandmother sold a goldfish to a 14-year old, breaking highly enlightened and commonsensical British animal welfare law, which requires that someone attain the far more astute age of 16 to purchase a fish.

Bomb Found

In locker at Hormel Plant

Dairy Anti-Trust Hearing in Batavia

John Bunting linked to this live blog from the hearing yesterday. I am working my way through it as well as waiting for analysis from NY Farm Bureau to be posted. This is a complicated topic, but if something isn't done soon this country is going to change in a big way but not in a good way. Has the cooperative system been perverted until some coops work to make money from farmers rather than serving them? Will USDA do anything about this? Time will tell, but whatever it happens it is already too late for a lot of farms.

Here is another story about the meeting.

"Maybe I'll Be a Greeter at Walmart"

A quote from a dairy farmer after auctioning off the cows on his family's farm, which has been in business since 1809.

Lancaster Farming ran this article, with the opinions of several farmers and farm service folks on the current economy.

Some Extras From Sunday Stills

Liz, doctoring on one of our very best cows, Mandy

The boss, clean up time

Becky, making buckets for baby's breakfasts

Bama Breeze's new little red one, Rio

Rose Magnolia, nom, nom

I just couldn't stop at four for Sunday Stills...sorry about the poor light. Not much sun this week.

Sunday Stills...a Day in the Life

My work hat, from Allied Federated Cooperatives, the company to which we used to sell milk. Back in those days things were sweet. Plus pocket stuff...Swiss army knife and shepherd's whistle. Books....the best of things. Liz 'n' Jack. Bayberry


For more Sunday Stills....

Hay There

Ta Da (the power of love)

The New Roo

Teri gave this guy to Liz. I like hearing his crow and he seems to like his lodgings in the new hen house with the striking hens. Hope he can talk them into laying us some eggs.

More Important Stuff About the Dairy Crisis

On the Dairy Goddess' blog.

"Processors Report Record Profits-While Watching the Demise of Dairy Farmers! Why Aren’t We Having A “COW”?"

The Thurwood Diary

Every now and then I open Charles Thurwood's 1874 pocket diary and compare his notations of what went on on his family's Fort Plain farm to what is happening on our farm in the here and now. Charles was a young man in 1874, voted for the first time that year. He and his family worked hard at farming, gardening and building around their place, but spent most evenings visiting neighbors and having fun.

"Windy but pleasant and i and til went to Mart Brookmans auction and we stade all day and our father boilt maple sugar 8 pounds got 3 pales of sap and 32 eggs"

Here at Northview, the sap run is about over, but the rest of the crew (excluding Beck and me) are going to Jim McFadden's auction on Saturday. It is windy, but pleasant this morning. The danged hens refuse to start laying...little do they know that if they don't get busy soon they are getting kicked out of the nifty new hen house to be replaced by some pullets, which I will find somewhere. There is no economy in raising your own eggs, but they sure taste good...darn it!

I bought Charles' diary way back when the boss and I were dating as a Christmas gift for him. It came from my dad and mom's bookshop, Tryon County Books. Mom is working hard at making an online catalog...if you are interested in history, hunting, fishing, shooting or any other antiquarian books, take a look. (I had the good fortune to grow up in a bookstore, reading Tarzan, the Hardy Boys and non-fiction animal science books well above my years....it changed my life in many ways)

Wordless Wednesday...what is it?

***Thank you one and all for your excellent guesses. Many of you got very, very close.
This is a photo, taken from a distance and cropped like crazy, of the sun shining through the dry winter branches, of a bunch of small box elder (acer negundo) trees. The shiny, flashy things are leftover seeds, called samaras..they are paired and winged a bit like silver maple seeds. I liked the way the setting sun was shining through them in an otherwise completely gloomy atmosphere one dark day last week. Thanks for taking time to have a go at the puzzle and have a great day.

How (Not) to Generate State Revenue

Close popular camp sites that have traditionally been so heavily used that reservations are required for camp sites. Refund money already in hand. Turn away tourists who want to come to your area to visit and spend money and pay sales tax on everything they buy....



Close popular and important historical sites fondly remembered by generations of school kids who visited on school trips and touched a bit of real history of the region. One of the most important and oldest sites in our region is on the chopping block list, something which appalls many of us in the area.
I have been awed every time I visited Johnson Hall, the home of Sir William Johnson, and ran my hand down the banister where the Iroquois left tomahawk marks during a battle there. Now the down state geniuses who are looking for ways to punish upstate taxpayers save money are closing it, along with a large laundry list of other parks and historical sites beloved by upstate folks.

As a family we do very few recreational things...we don't go anywhere much, we don't play very much. The Johnson Hall Market Fair has been one of the few activities we rarely miss and always love. From the salt potatoes to the cannon fire, from genuinely costumed Revolutionary War reenactors both Indian and English to the opportunity to purchase real, homemade soap and rare herbs for my herb garden, it has been a delight. Not so long ago my folks often attended wearing their full Scottish garb and participated in the fun. Here is a petition to save it.

Now, thanks to fiscal stupidity misfortune neither we nor anyone else will enjoy our parks and monuments any more. (I am sure denying kids yet another place to play outside and exercise will do wonders for obesity.) Area Chambers of commerce are appalled. They know that tourists equal economic activity. Private parks and campgrounds will not be able to take up the slack...

Petitions to save our parks will not be enough either. We need to do more to fix this situation. Lets do it! November is getting closer by the minute. When you go into the voting booth this year think about the kids that missed out on sunny beaches, seeing wildlife, enjoying birds and opportunities to learn the history of our once great state.

Throw the bums who are doing this right out and hire us some new ones...preferably a few who don't come from NYC and who have perhaps actually visited a park (other than Central Park), sometime in their lives. Preferably a few who are interested in serving the taxpaying public rather than lining their pockets and practicing for higher office. It's time.

When Do You Quit?

Here is a pretty interesting article on what is happening in the dairy industry today. I don't necessarily agree with every bit of it, but it does point out some darned hard stuff.

Singing...Somebody to Love....

Listen

I'll Probably Go to Jail

It's Census Time....we all know there was talk of letting ACORN do a good portion of the Census, until they were discredited...I thought things might be better without them in the mixture. Hah! On Monday I got a nasty note from the Census Bureau informing me that I should have received a form by now and that filling it out is mandatory. Better send that puppy back and send it right now or else!
There are penalties under the law if I fail to do so.

Except...except...we haven't got one yet. So I called the handy-dandy "helpful" phone number on the nasty little card. You had to say what you wanted to each voice mail situation...two choices...both of them wrong every time. Neither of them was EVER what I wanted. I never did get a live person....never got an answer as to what to do. I gave up...much aggravated.

Alan called the number back and found out (after expending much more patience than I have) that all the forms haven't been sent out yet.

The nasty letters are in the mail, just not the Census forms. Even if you used the option to request a Census form because you didn't get one, you couldn't request one. Part and parcel of the incredible ineptitude that this government has shown....I worked in the last Census as a Census taker. It was pretty awful so I quit after a few weeks. I just couldn't deal with them wanting one thing one day, then the next day changing it all around...the rules were all engraved in stone except when they changed them..... If you didn't mind putting up with a lot of BS you could be a Census worker....I mind so I soon wasn't.

I have read and heard about all kinds of glitches in this year's version of the nationwide head count. I suppose receiving the threatening card before the form is minor in the grand scheme of things but...

And here is a timely little story in the local paper about how hard they are trying to count certain segments of the populace.....

Reinventing Duck Feet

A sorta, kinda finished ducky, in front of some just barely started duckies

I have a new job, painting yard decoration animals for our milk inspector. I have no guidelines or patterns...this is just coming off the top of my head...which is amazingly empty just now. Outdoor paint is a lot harder to blend than artist's paint too, I can tell you. I hate to admit how long it took me to mix up duck foot orange on Saturday....and I got it right the first time. I am kinda, sorta dreading this....

I have one duck-ette just about finished. When I get her done I will post a photo....maybe......

Happy Birthday Alan

No more teenagers here at Northview. Our boy is twenty today!

Sunday Stills....the Color Orange

I thought this was going to be a real hard one. The only things orange that I like are orange tulips and the Syracuse Orangemen (go 'Cuse!)

However, the yard abounded in orange yesterday and the glory vine was blooming inside. From a dead chain saw :( to our trusty skid steer....

For more Sunday Stills....

Mud-lucious

And puddle-wonderful. The woodcock is back. I had been staying out after chores every night, leaning on the car hood and listening. It is so sweet out there when it finally warms up enough to BE out there...to listen, smell, savor the arrival of spring with all it brings. Ducks shuttle by unseen, but clearly heard, and geese are back on the river. No woodcock though.

No peent.

No wingy whistle turning the empty night into a whirl of wonderful music.

Then yesterday morning, just as I stepped onto the back porch in the still dark, not morning yet except by government time change standards , I heard him.....close too. I wonder if he moved his peenting grounds or if it was just so quiet that he sounded closer than other years.

He usually starts his sky dance up by the horse pasture pond. This year it sounds as if he is right down under the apple trees by the garden. He showed up on the 15th last year and the 27th in 08
March 29th in 07 but not until April in 06

Another waited for event had taken place as well. When I got to the barn in reindeer bathrobe, barn coat. and high rubber boots, Armada had finally had her first calf, another amazing red surprise, but, alas a bull. She was feeling sorry for herself and wouldn't even try to stand up so I came back to the house to get the boss to give her a bottle of calcium, which perked her right up. I CAN give bottles if I have to, but she was lying half under another heifer and I thought that someone bigger, stronger and with longer arms was called for. Both baby and mama are fine btw...

I am so grateful she finally got around to having him. She was due the 13th. We started doing barn checks a couple times a night about a week before she was due to calve....which adds up to a lot of 0-dark-thirty walks to the barn...in the mud...which is actually drying up just a tad.

Although E. E. Cummings found mud to to be a source of inspiration and delight, I personally find it to require me to sweep the kitchen floor about fifteen times a day in a cycle of endless futility, unquenched by ceaseless boot scraping..the outdoors just wants to come indoors during mud season.

**The photos above are an update of things at the pond in Lykers...still pretty frosty and not much around but a few chickadees. Just a few weeks and that will change.

Walking on Water

Hurry on over to Compass Points to see the photos Joated took at Montezuma National Wildlife Refuge yesterday. He actually got a really good shot of a muskrat walking across water on top of a school of carp!

Michigan Meatout Makes Many Mad

The State Senate

A Facebook group

Farm Bureau

And even me. What on earth possessed the governor of Michigan, where agriculture is the number 2 industry (to the tune of 71.3 billion bucks a year) to declare Saturday the 20th of March (not at all incidentally National Agriculture Day) Michigan Meatout day? I can't imagine.

I hope she wakes up and rescinds the proclamation. In the meanwhile, even if she doesn't I suspect that most Michiganders will ignore her ignorance and munch on meaty meals this weekend.

Doing Instead of Writing

Waiting to be potted

All this nice weather, I just can't help myself. Moving wood...spring clean up...and repotting this absurd fox tail fern. I grew it from a seed of the plant we inherited from the boss's mom, who in turn grew it from a seed at least thirty years ago...probably much more.

RIP

It broke the clay pot it was growing in and for a long time I had nothing else to put it in. Then it got warm enough this week to take the plastic off the sitting porch door...and out there were empty flower pots and lots of earth....

The roots

So that job is done. I still need to plant some peppers, somehow find some patterns for painting wooden yard animals. I seem to have accidentally acquired a job painting them.....anybody know a website that has pictures of them....decorative chickens, bunnies, cows, ducks etc.?

Writing the Farm Side

My first contribution to the Farm Side newspaper column in the Amsterdam Recorder was published on March 20th 1998.(Coincidentally this March 20th will be National Ag Day.) That first Farm Side was entitled, "Raising the most important crop," and was about bringing up farm kids to be productive citizens. At the time one of our dear friends was the main author of the column, which he started and his wife named.
He asked me to take over one column per month as their farm was demanding too much of his time to keep up with all the columns. Later he bowed out completely and left me doing it alone.
Twelve years worth of thousand-word-a week rants, tirades, and spring, fall, summer and winter poems to farm life have taken print and flown..... or failed. I have made friends and ticked folks off. I have been lectured and I have been thanked. Incidentally I have also been paid....I will never get rich writing but the Farm Side used to pay for my vacation back before times got bad and nowadays it makes a meaningful contribution to the grocery situation.

It has been fun.
It has been miserable.
Some Wednesday deadlines have been a cinch to meet.
Others have been pure Hell (I am always really tired after I finish the final putting together of the thing. I am generally not worth much on Wednesday afternoons).

One of the best aspects of researching for the column is how much I have learned about American farming and farm folks. There are so many kinds of farms; each is different in some way from others of its kind, each industry within the industry has bazillions of fascinating aspects to be learned about and new ideas pop up every day. I have surely loved the learning. My mind after all those years is like a farming trivia fun house. From popcorn to potatoes to how many miles a bee flies for honey...there is a lot to learn about agriculture.

Here are a couple (or so) websites I used for this week's column on National Agriculture Week, which just happens to be going on right now.

Ag Day Food Fun Facts

Ag Day Fun Facts, flora ad fauna

And a letter to our President from Dirty Jobs' Mike Rowe

It amazes me that, after so many years and so many columns, there is still so much to be learned about agriculture.

Happy Ag Week to all my friends here at Northview Diary.

First Killdeer

Was heard last night, just after dark, when I was dragging bedding over from this side of the creek to bed up for the night. I used to keep the round bales Matt gave me over by the barn, but now we have four cows going outside and they tear the bales all up...so I have to lug it a lot farther.

It was sweet to hear the cry of the killdeer while I was doing the lugging though. Seems as if it is early for them. I will have to check back and see.

It is amazing to me how migration, which had barely begun just three or four days ago, is in full swing now. I went with Alan to get a load of hay yesterday and the roadsides were black with assorted black birds....funny how the red winged black birds and grackles flock up with the local starlings to form massive mobs that set the air ringing with their calls. They were settling over the long-harvested corn fields and then swirling up in black clouds only to settle again a few yards away.

We also saw a neat thing, a pileated woodpecker clinging precariously to a spike of stag horn sumac, tearing it up with its big chisel beak. It looked at first like a plastic toy, stuck in the branches and I did a double take as we whizzed by on our way home with sustenance for the girls....speaking of which, I cannot wait for green grass, which is our only possible savior this year. You don't have to buy it and they can eat as much of it as they want to. Praying for an early spring here with great sincerity.

Weekend

Liz set up and manned the Farm Bureau booth at John Deere days on Saturday. I helped her for a couple of hours, got to talk to a few area folks and Matt and Lisa who stopped by with their son. It is always a very nice program with wonderful food and very welcoming, friendly folks, but this year we heard enough bad news to last the whole year.

An area icon, familiar literally since my childhood, is gravely ill and missed the affair for the first time ever I guess, there has been another self-inflicted death on the edge of the farm community, someone we knew a little, and some dear friends, of whom we are terrifically fond, have had enough of this ridiculous price situation and are selling their cows. All such sad news...none of the stories we heard were mine to tell, so I won't, but they were pretty awful. I wish the anti-trust investigations that are supposed to be going on now, would get it in gear and actually stop the market manipulation that is driving prices down artificially. I don't think the big processors are a bit afraid that anything is really going to happen to them, as manipulation on the CME goes on apace....

And for you dairy farmers who wonder where your money is going, here is a link (caution, pdf) from John Bunting's blog, to a story in the Milkweed, that will probably floor you. (Take time to read it all if you can.) It sure shocked me. Dang, here we dairy folks are losing our farms and wrecking our credit and letting our families go without stuff that would probably surprise you if you knew about it and these "promotion" execs and "cooperative" execs are making money that would look good on Wall Street. There is a skunk in the woodpile, I'm telling you, and I hope they smell it in Washington soon.





Alan is no longer studying fisheries and wildlife over at Coby. He realized that jobs in the field are nearly non-existent and switched into the ag-engineering program, which is mostly a study of diesel engines. He has always had an amazing aptitude for mechanical work and is doing very well so far.

I took a couple pics of this gigantic tractor Saturday, because it is one of the ones he is learning to work on over at the college..(it was just visiting Hudson River Tractor for JD Days and the FB booth was right in front of it.) People actually stopped to ask us (we must have looked as if we would know) what farmers do with such huge tractors.....we told them that they work huge fields.

Sunday Stills...Sun Rises and Sun Sets

This is an oldie from the archives...sunset behind the heifer barn. Alas, since this was sunrises and sunsets week, it has been cloudy and grey all week.


For more Sunday Stills......

John Deere Days

Maybe Liz and I will see you there. We are manning the Farm Bureau booth looking for new members.

Finally Friday

Spring break just began so we have our boy home for a week...I am liking that.
The critters are liking the sunshine...

(Please don't mind Gael's semi-bareness. She is a very old lady and has become quite fur challenged these days.)

This Quote is Completely Insane

"We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it, away from the fog of the controversy," she told local executives."

This was reported to have been said by Nancy Pelosi speaking on the health care bill.

Food companies are required to put nutritional information on packages of food so people don't have to buy them without knowing what is inside. You can't buy a cracker without a calorie count. Most folks won't buy them without a price tag either. Why on earth would anybody be stupid enough to buy into a potentially life-changing bill like this one without knowing what is inside? Or having any clue what it will cost?

I am ashamed of our so-called leaders in Washington and appalled that my fellow citizens aren't standing up and screaming about this outrage.

Rumors

About the demise of the snow here.....are a bit premature....alas


My favorite rose quartz, which now adorns Mike's final resting place


And my former favorite Herkimer diamond specimen, which a certain someone broke with the lawn mower.



But we do have pretty rocks....er.....mineral specimens.

Dean Foods Buyout

Maybe or maybe not. Dean Foods is huge, handles a large percentage of American dairy products and is looking at anti-trust lawsuits. What will it mean if it is in fact bought out by a French company?

Cows that tweet.

An outstanding editorial on Hollywood and food activism

New York's new organic guidelines

Dawn Chorus

Kind of thin, but it is out there. Yesterday I heard the first tentative robin song from up behind the horse barn. (And my heart swelled to twice its normal size.) Around noon the first song sparrow tuned up (although there have been a few silent visitors at the feeder all winter).

This morning I went out at first-pink-dawn to attend to yet another barn check (no babies this time). There were at least four distinct robins caroling all up along the back of the yard. Two cardinals down by the neighbor's house. Song sparrows. First red-winged blackbird of the year singing down by the road. First grackle hiding among the starlings in the dead elm behind the heifer barn.

I know we still have winter left. Only one year since I have been at this farm (and so far there have been almost 28 of them) were we able to get out and build fence and get on the ground in March...and it is still EARLY March. However, the early bird gets the worm...or in this case the best nesting site...and it looks as if these guys are ready for spring....although probably not quite as ready as I am.

Brand New Chicken House

Sunday Matt and Lisa presented us with this nifty free-standing hen house. Liz and I moved the girls in yesterday and they seem to approve quite heartily. Nick showed the border collie's roots and origins by pointing it like any good setter might. He looked pretty funny out there on the lawn, front paw curled to his chest and tail gently waving. He is so fascinated by the hens that I have to remind him what he is out there for.

Update...we have lots of snow, it just doesn't show in this photo

Sugaring Off

t


These days of cold, moon bright mornings, and sunny-windy-blustery days, with hard, sharp frosty nights are perfect for making maple syrup.I am always excited by maple sugar weather! Yesterday, standing out in the yard with Matt and Lisa, buffeted by a wild, west wind, it was easy to tell that it was sugar time. (They brought us down a wonderful little chicken house which will be featured soon.)

Back in the day my dad, brother and I tapped some trees and made a little syrup every year. I used to walk my tap line on snow shoes, dragging a plastic toboggan with buckets on it to hold the sap. Keeping the buckets upright was a cuss-worthy challenge. Later I acquired a fifteen-gallon barrel, which worked better, but was still heavy and hard to handle. And it still managed to roll off the sled about fifty times a day, no matter how I tied it.

Now we let a man who runs a local sugar bush run a tap line in our maple woods and he gives us syrup at the end of the run. He has tubing instead of spiles and catches more sap in a day than we did in a year.

Less romance, but I don't miss the sled.


An old milk bulk tank our maple guy has converted to catch sap at the bottom of our maple woods. We almost never see him, but can tell by the appearance of tracks and hoses that he is out working the woods.