Willow Flycatcher

I think. Though this has been just the worst summer for weather we have seen in decades, it sure has been a great one for birds. Sit for a few minutes on the sitting porch or listen to the fields and hedgerows around the house and you will see or hear something interesting every day.

Right now I am too lazy to get up, but something is singing right in front of the door....okay, I got up, it was a baby house finch singing, and very prettily too, for its breakfast right on the porch railing. The cardinals and house finches still come to eat in the cardboard box every day and the baby finches still beg for food even though they are weeks old.

And I think I finally got a shot...or two actually of the willow flycatcher ....I think....(we know we have one by the call..other than that it is an lbb).

I believe I have identified our other caller...the thing I thought was a crazed turkey. It sang right by the house yesterday and I am pretty sure it is a black-billed cuckoo. A few more listens and I will put it on the yearlong list of birds we see here at the farm that I am keeping.

Hope you are having a good weekend. We had another godawful gully washer last night, with lightning so bad I sat up and waited it out in case it hit one of the barns. It didn't and I am hoping the fencers are okay. Lost one a couple weeks ago. They don't like lightning much.

I Guess

If I didn't have a heart attack yesterday I am probably not going to have one right away.

I got sick of the bull not having any water. The water tub the boss gave him was too small and I was always filling it. And he is a snorty, snotty little bugger and I don't like going around him, but I had to get right up close to fill his tub every day.. I decided to take action, by myself, as no one was home but me. Mistake. Big mistake.

I put a big water tub in with him and filled it. The whole time I was running the hose the little creep was threatening me. As soon as it was full he drank what he wanted and then started working it over with his head...thank God he doesn't have horns.

An hour later I went out to check him and he had broken out the top board of his pen (which had previously been cracked) and was only held in by boards up to his brisket. All he had to do to get out was step over...he wouldn't have even had to lift his feet very high.

I called the boss, who was taking some paper work to his aunt, and stood on the porch with a stick, hoping to not see him rambling down the driveway before help arrived.

He stayed in at least and the guys moved him over to the cow barn on a halter. It was pretty much of a rodeo. He is just a little bull, but he is not nice, no sirree.

We were going to put him in a pen with some heifers, but decided instead to put him in a stanchion and put a ring in his nose....which was done. We were kind of concerned about what he might do if he jumped out or tore up another pen.

He greeted me when I went in to milk last night with threatening bellows and snorting. I was really, really, really glad that he was locked up by his head, the stanchion was tied shut and he was sporting a little chain just in case.

Then just as I was putting the machine on Bayliner, Liz let out a yell and I saw (and heard) a wall of brown, thundering down the manger.

That is when, if I was going to have that heart attack, it would have happened.

I screamed for the boss, who milks in the back of the barn and hollered at the girls to get out of the way. And looked for a pitchfork.

Then Liz called over, "Mom, it's not the bull, it's just Shamrock."

Shamrock is about the same size as the bull and she was having a field day racing up and down the barn, but she is just a Jersey heifer. It took a while, because she was having fun, but Liz caught her and put her out in a pen with her half sister, Shameless, who was put there to make room for the bull.

Time for a sigh of relief, right?

Heck no! In all the excitement, my cow Asaki (read that out loud....Rebecca named her in a name the calf contest a while back) blew out of her stanchion and little Cinnamon jumped through a stall and in with her great big yearling older sister, Rio.

Fun, fun, fun. Asaki ran up the back manger. Cinnamon was terrified, although thankfully Rio was a real lady about the whole affair and just licked her little sister. It took a while before everybody was caught and put back where they belong.

I am too old for this. I was ALWAYS too old for this. Where do I get my (one way) ticket to some place with a beach, something cold with a little umbrella, and maybe some interesting shells and fish and birds? I think I am ready. No, scratch that. I KNOW I am ready.

Better Late than Never

Now that deadline has come and gone a friend posted this story about how farm land generates more revenue for local municipalities than it uses in services.

We have been saying this for years. Farmers generally own more land than the average person, thus facing a hefty property tax bill. Cows and corn don't go to school, or speed down the street in unregistered cars, or many of the other things that use tax money to provide services. People in houses do.

I was writing about the potential for the advent of high speed rail to change rural communities in a negative manner, what with the influx of city folks and McMansions. I knew houses uses more services than they pay for and have to rely on other land uses to subsidize the cost....just couldn't find the figures to prove it. Wish I had had the numbers from this article when I was working on that column...darn it!

A Request

Today is my younger brother, Matthew's, birthday. His job as a driller has taken him to North Carolina for weeks on end....far from his family and the small farm they run here in Upstate NY where we all live. If you were to go here and leave him a birthday greeting, I think it would be a terrific surprise for him. He likes to get updates from home on his wife, Lisa's, blog.

He is the nicest guy you could want to meet. Years in the Midwest instilled in him and his family that western hospitality and kindness that is not so common here on this coast. I don't think he has ever met a stranger....

Anyhow, Happy Birthday Matt, hope you have as good a day as you can so very far from home...love you!

Down Sizing

His name is Chainsaw and he usually lives up to it....however, maybe he is trying to tell us something.

Should we change his name to Brush Nippers?

Happy Birthday America!

Fireworks

Psycho Bunny

Milk Weed in bloom

Lavender

Here is a birthday card for you from Northview Dairy Farm.

Sunday Stills...Patriotism and 4th of July

This is the story of a little blue shirt that has insinuated itself into the tapestry of my love for America and the people who make our country great.

It all started on September 12, 2001. Our family was already in turmoil when 9/11 took place. My beloved mother-in-law had passed away on July 4th, incidentally my birthday. She had lived at the farm, while we lived in town and commuted to run the place with her. I cannot convey to you how close we all were. The kids loved their grandma, the boss loved his ma, and she and I had worked through some rocky years to be truly close. When she needed to communicate with her hospice workers she called on me to be her interpreter. That meant a lot to me. We were all hurting.

Now we were moving, from our home of 15 years to live at the farm ourselves. Not going to lie and say that I liked living in town, but still...there were gardens that we built and planted, years of memories and years of junk, all needing to be sorted and dealt with. I was doing it pretty much alone, because the boss was farming and the kids were in school.

Then the planes hit the Trade Center. Normally I would have been milking cows, but I was home packing with the radio on. When I heard the news I turned on the television and watched the horror, then ran to the farm to tell the boss and to the school to grab the kids...that is just how we are...together in crisis.

The next day the whole world was different and yet life had to go on. Our house in town belonged to someone else and we simply HAD to move. So I went on packing. On my knees on the floor in Alan's bedroom I reached under the bed to the nightmare/tangle/boy's nest underneath and pulled out a little blue shirt.

I spread it open in my lap to see if it was a keeper or a tosser.

And there was the NY skyline complete with the Twin Towers. I remembered...class trip with Becky, buying the souvenir from a street vendor for the little boy left at home.

It rocked me. I kept it.

Then, what with the move and all, it vanished not to be seen again for nearly ten years. Sometimes I vaguely wondered where it had ended up, but this house is staggeringly huge...26 foot long rooms, three stories and a cellar, a footprint that would scare you. I didn't forget it, but I didn't come across it either.

Fast forward through those nearly ten years. I love the Sunday Stills challenge and try to participate every week. As I hung up laundry last Wednesday I thought about the little shirt. And thought that if I actually knew where it was I would use it for this challenge. Didn't say a word about it to anyone though. Figured I would grab pics of the fireworks at one or the other of the two racetracks on either side of us, even though I am terrible at nighttime photography.

Thursday Beck and I undertook to finally clean out the front hall. Two stories high and the size of a normal living room. It is an incredibly beautiful space, but a catchall for any junk anyone is too lazy to cart upstairs.

We were about half-way done when Beck held something up. "Look what I found, Mom."

Yes, of course, it was the little blue shirt. Mind you, she didn't know about that moment ten years earlier when I pulled that shirt from under the bed The kids were busy with their own adjustments to a changed world and a new home then so it didn't show up on her horizon much...and I hadn't mentioned to anyone about wondering where it was.....

I suppose you could call it all coincidence...but to me that is one spooky little shirt. I am going to launder it now and put it in my dresser drawer with other mementos of old friends and baby dresses (yes there was a time when my daughters wore dresses) and things of that ilk. And I am glad the lost is found.

Yesterday

Cleaned the bull's water tub and refilled it. He seemed quite grateful to have clean fresh water. I didn't know what to tell him. He is the one who backs up and uses it for a potty. Who said bulls were smart?

Shoveled all the ashes out of the outdoor wood stove and started a new fire.

Weeded and staked tomatoes.

Spelunked for the second planting of green beans. Not a one to be found. Something is definitely eating them and I am thinking chickens.

Cut brush around the water faucet where you turn the hoses on to water stock. I hate ticks and being brushed by weeds like that makes me think they are crawling all over me.

Photographed yellow warblers (while trying to photograph indigo buntings who were hiding.)

Laundry, you can't beat days when it is dry enough to get several bunches dry on the line.

Meatloaf and gravy. An accidental recipe that everyone likes so I made it two nights in a row. (Got to enjoy Jade's "meatloaf face"...guess he liked it.)

Chores and milking both ends of day.

Wasted time on the computer. Playing Zuma Blitz on Facebook.

And at my worst moment felt way smarter than the guys in the photo above. I saw the two ultralights coming at me when I was on the porch with the camera, night before last. As I watched they came THAT close to one another. Yowsa!

****Update: also watched an incredible fireworks show. From bed. By merely turning my head toward the window. The race track next door held one for the holiday and it was a humdinger. I tried to get enough gumption to go down and get the camera and try for some pics for Sunday Stills. Nope...none there...gumption that is .

We did worry about what the cows' reaction to that fusillade over their heads might be...and of course they were in the pasture nearest the track and the show.

Hope they are still in the fence this morning.

****Update 2: half a herd of cows at the barn door this morning. The other half had gone walkabout. Fortunately they stayed on our land and just feasted on sorghum and grass. Notably all the cows that have been to the Fonda Fair and lived through the fireworks show right over the barn were among the ones at the door.

Nationwide Chicken Massacre

RIP

We lost a hen last night up on the bowling green (yes, this old Victorian homestead sports an actual bowling green...not that, other than mowing it, we have a clue what to do with it.)

It was one of the silver-laced Wyandottes that Teri gave us...the last one. She is also having problems with predators getting her birds.

I have mixed emotions. The hens are wrecking my garden, slurping up bean seedlings before they finish emerging from the ground. Still, she was a pretty old thing....

Then I read Fuzzy's Friday blog and discovered that hens are coming under attack way out west too. What is the world coming to?

Pretty Morning

Here at Northview. The guys are finally getting some feed put up between the stormy days. Still getting plenty of those with wild downpours that are so loud they sound like the trains across the river.

I put a weather button over the sidebar there, (only to have the html image break every day). It is from Weather Underground and still works even if the image doesn't. They say that we may actually have a stretch of good weather coming so they can get some serious chopping done. They have been working out kinks in the chopper, which is way past its best use date, and pretty much a large chunk of scrap metal with a few moving parts left.

As Alan says, there isn't a piece of machinery on the place that doesn't show evidence of farmer ingenuity somewhere in its construction. I know the old chopper is full of sheets of Patz guard and all manner of other innovative (and desperate) repair materials. Oh, well.

Long as it gets the feed chopped up and in the wagons I am happy. Hope they can bale the field that they have mowed for that. Been rained on twice, but should still make reasonable feed. We mostly used the baled hay for fiber for the cows' tummies anyhow, although the boss put up some second cutting last year that really made milk this spring. Hope they can get some more like that this year.

Since we are having all these crazy storms I am trying to learn to photograph lightning. Not too successful yet, but eventually I will probably figure it out. Also trying to get pics of the cardinal in the box. He is such a bright and cheerful...and extremely wary...guy.

Messin' With Their Heads

This feeder is mine! It was put up for me and members of my family and others of our ilk. It is not intended for you, you fat little feather butts, so there.

And nya, nya, nya poopoo

Move over you pointy headed little green gremlin!

There's a new gang in town and we want your sugar water!

It started with the grackles. They chased all the other birds away from the regular tube feeder out by the garden pond. Darth Raiders, storm troopers, miserable robbers of the little birds.

So I moved the small tube feeder to the sitting porch. Figured I might get some nice photos there and no way the grackles would come that close to me.

It took the little birds a week to find it, but what a carnival of colorful finches I had among the geraniums and Norfolk Island pines.

And what a mess of spent and discarded seeds too. The plants were covered with sticky hulls. You couldn't walk without them crunching under your feet.

Not working.

So I stopped filling the feeder. That was when the house finches brought their chicks and began gleaning under the shelf for scattered seeds. They were so cute!

A lot of the seeds had fallen into a little cardboard box under the shelf.

I thought...what if I put seeds in that box just for the house finch family>

I did.

They found it and brought the kids.

Then I woke up one fine morning to the chink! chink! call of a cardinal.

Yep, cardinal in the box. Cool! He comes every day too but is far too wary for photography.

Then this morning I had two house finches sitting together on the perch ring of the hummingbird feeder trying to get their beaks in the little feeding holes.

Am I messing with their minds....or are they messing with mine?

*****Update: and now the hummers and house finches are on the hummer feeder at the same time. And blogger finally let me upload pics.

Sharing the Porch and the Mulberry Tree

House Finches feeding the kids

Kids begging for brunch

Grey Catbird homing in on the black raspberries

Cedar Waxwing kite

Horses of Northview

Or should I say, one big horse and one small pony gelding who thinks he is a destrier.

Meet Becky's pony, Jack, and Liz's grand old man, Tyler.

Jack is a pistol, big horse in a little package. When he trots out he looks like an old fashioned war horse...all he needs is half a dozen hands or so in additional height and a guy dressed in a tin can. Maybe a few flags and pennants and a cheering crowd too. (You can see that in his head he is hearing that crowd even now.)

Tyler is an elderly quarter horse that Liz is providing with a cushy retirement. Alas, for some reason he doesn't like me much and pins his ears and hides in the corner whenever I go in the barn. He has only lived here a few weeks and I am hoping that in time he will warm up to me.

He is in his upper twenties and it is getting hard to keep the weight on him. Despite that he is as sound as a two-year-old. When he trots it is like water flowing over smooth ground, big, scopey and springy. I can't imagine what it must be like to ride his gaits, but I'll bet it would be sweet.

So there you have them...the current crop of horses at Northview.

Sunday Stills....Black and White

On a dairy farm with Holsteins, black and white is fairy easy to come by....and the pony Jack is mostly black, although technically he would be labeled brown.

For more Sunday Stills.......

A Surfeit

The driveway from the front porch

Driveway in back

Center pic is not a creek...that is the driveway too.

So is the bottom one

Water, water everywhere. There is a water trough that was empty out back....it has like a foot in it now....or more than..... I need to measure it. It rains so hard, several times a day, that you can't see the road in front or town or anything more than a few feet away.

Barn was flooded, cows could barely get into their stalls. It rained so hard that it was flowing down the hill behind and coming in the windows of our old bank barn, plus coming UP out of the floor through the sump pump drains...way too fast for the pumps.

Can we build a pipeline to every place that needs this? Thank God at least we live on a hill, although it all passes through on its way to the river in a great big hurry. Men can't chop for the cows, because they can't even get the tractors out of the barnyard. Pastures are getting pretty chewed down too.

I had to go the barn without my cast because I can't get my rubber boots on over it and the water was way over my leather boots. Stomping around all night without it hurt. I am going to see if Alan will drive me over in the truck today. Not to be a wienie but.....

Okay, whine over. I know there are droughts and fires and worse flooding in plenty of places. I hope whomever arranges the weather gets it figured out so they can get some rain and we can get some non-rain. Soon would be good. Now would be better.

Where the Rubber Meets the Road

While the Army Corps of Engineers alternately wrings its collective hands or deliberately targets farm areas for intentional flooding, here is a story of people banding together to save themselves.

Thanks for the tip, Elaine.

The Cure

For what ails you.....

Excuse Me

A hawk blew some bird to bits out over the long lawn and driveway the other day.

I can't figure out what it is. Grey feathers with dark grey markings
and white ovals on the end. Buffy feathers.
Little iridescent feathers like this one that change from pink and purple to tan. Any ideas?

While I beat my head against the wall....just a little, maybe until I can get used to the weather.

Two days of torrential rains. Argghhh......

More to come.

Double argghhh.......

The good news is, all that bulldozing that Alan did held up under the onslaught, despite being just finished and not having time to settle.

Other than that, what can I say? Bookkeeping, day-long marathon sessions, writing chores, milking wet cows, fun and games. At least they aren't too muddy and they are back in the pasture behind the house. I love to see them out on the hill when I look out my window.

Stay dry and have a good one.

Wordless Wednesday

Summer

First day of.

Small animals fed and aired. Check. Rooster crowing. Check. Sun shining bright and hot. Check. Birds singing...indigo bunting, common yellow throat, willow flycatcher, robins, mockingbird, check, check, check and check

Hay in the field waiting to be baled. More Sudex to plant if it stays dry.

Yep, looks like summer. Check.

Legal With Eagles

Last night the sky felt like the inside of a shell.... opalescent quiet pink, bright silver, distant blue, striped with wings of muted gold. I dreamed of the lake, washed with the scent of fish and water and the dusty sweetness of the balsam firs in the sun.

I always smell it miles before we get there and it makes my heart jump up in my chest....every single year.

I dreamed of mergansers slipping by all silent and secret, babies in tow, like beads on a nursery string. Of the resounding crash of a beaver's tail, the exact sound you would expect if someone in a really, really bad mood threw a bowling ball in the lake. It will wake you up at night when it interrupts the gentle susurrus of the wavelets against the dock, I can promise you that.

I dreamed of the Skin-so-Soft, bug dope, and dried plastic pseudo-worm, with just an understated hint of dead bait, smell of my long-closeted tackle box and the sharp bite of the line through my fingers on the rare occasions when I actually hook something.

Of eagles, loons and puddle ducks that babble around the porch, rudely demanding bread and cereal, and sooner rather than late.

I dreamed of the rocking cradle of the dock, a place to be of the water but not in it, gently shifting with the rhythm of the waves, one with ducks and dragonflies....the sun like a friendly hand on your shoulder or the caress of a loved one on your face.

I dreamed of all I love about our week at Peck's Lake each year, all the bright and shining joys it brings.....

And it came to me. I had better get down to the Town Clerk's office and pretty darned sudden too. I don't have a fishing license.

Sunday Stills...the Birds and Bees

This guy was about the size of a grain of rice and right next to my garden chair.

See where he has been nibbling?

Red Bird

Hunter of the hard corners

Hunter of the lily buds

Hunter of nervous old ladies working at the stove.

This eyed click beetle came buzzing loudly and landed right on my shirt.

Did I jump?

You betcha!

I love Sunday Stills but I wasn't really looking for volunteers

Dedicated to my dad on Father's Day. Thanks Dad, for giving me the interest in the birds and the bugs and all things scientific and natural and outdoors. My life has been much better because of all the interests you passed along. Love you!

For more Sunday Stills.....

Fly by Wire

Caterpillar for hire. Ag bag plot, the hay unloading spot, logs in the crick, not a road to get a stick, all wrecked by a season's worth of rain.

Can't farm again, until it all gets fixed, so it's getting fixed quick.

By that college boy with a great big toy, bulldozing in the rain,

Then ending up his welding on a job for other folks, but he's happy just the same

Hell, yeah.

.......Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Liz out with a truck full of hay, and Beck stuck down at McDonald's again.

In the rain

Always rain....

The boss is gone, everybody's on the phone. And, me, yeah, me, I just answer it....

All day

I think by the time that we order in Chinese we have earned it

Each and all of us.

Yepper.

Robin, Robin, Robin, Robin

The triple-decker nest atop the front porch pillar is overflowing with robin chicks, crowded shoulder to feathery shoulder. The non-stop bug-in-beak stuffing marathon goes on all day, whether I walk through the hall way with laundry or not. They are delightful. Even their cries for food are melodious and pleasant to the ear. No mistaking that our favorite spring bird is a thrush in a gaudy vest.

This is the second brood to be reared there this spring. The first bunch fledged and were gone a few weeks ago. These three...or maybe four if someone is keeping his head down...have already cast off their fledgling down and gaping beaks and are sporting streaked chins instead and spotty breasts and bright, sharp, yellow, beaks.

I hope when they come off the nest they can avoid the cats and grackles and sharp shinned hawks that patrol the lawn to join the other patrol...the worm and grub patrol.

Or maybe they will take after their dad, the fly catcher robin that I wrote about in the Farm Side. He catches bees and bugs n the wing like a really big, awkward phoebe and is quite a sight to see.

Anyhow, I sure do like the robins. Whether they are singing at dawn and dusk and rain time or sitting on the handles of the boss's dad's old plow, announcing ownership of the back lawn in loud cheeps, they keep me company all day long. (Someone should tell the male that the catbird and the mockingbird like to sit on the plow too....really he doesn't own it at all.)

26

Years today. Sure hasn't been dull.

With the 4430 back on line the guys mowed hay and chopped some yesterday. Started feeding from the wagon as the pastures are getting shortish.

Zulu had a little one. It was too new to walk at milking so we left her out with it. They seemed pretty happy together and as she is old Zinnia's daughter I suspect she can hold off any coyotes that come snooping around. Pic was taken almost at dark, through the kitchen window.

We had big old thunder storms rolling over almost all day. Finally gave up on hanging out laundry and having the computer on. Oddly they were all flash and bang and almost no rain (which is just fine). Sure were huge, towering things though, and moved with a ponderous lack of speed. A very odd day as far as the weather went.

Pretty much days of same old same old. Milk the cows, do the chores, milk the cows, do the bookkeeping, milk the cows, chase the *&^%^^* chickens out of the garden. Milk the cows again.

Liz is complaining that I haven't mentioned that her Jersey, Snickers, also had a calf. She did. It is about the size of a fox terrier, honey brown with a few speckles. Jersey calves have such an overdose of cute and all.....they are absurdly like little toys, all jerky and fuzzy. So yeah, another Jersey...

Cowboy or Fool

You decide...leaning toward fool myself. Liz took the photo with her camera. The cow is the fool's old show cow, Bayberry, who seems to suffer fools gladly.

Greek Yogurt

Great stuff! The Fage plant is right up near my folks' house. They use a lot of milk from NY dairy farms and we love their product.It really is great stuff.

Look What Showed Up in the Back Yard

Under its own power. Yep the farm guy mechanical team got 'er moving despite a broken spider gear pin and transmission pump with lots of associated damage to all sorts of expensive parts. I am real happy with the guys, especially Alan, who is only 21 and did most of the job.

All Hail

Well, not all, but it sure was banging down the other day. I couldn't believe the weather man today. It is raining again.....rained all weekend with lots of serious gully washers. Then this morning, when announcing the latest go round of unneeded water works, the weather man said, "Oh, this will just green up the grass a little on the lawns. The grass needs water."

How green does he want it anyhow? And what the grass needs is a little sunshine.

Heart and prayers go out to the poor souls in the Midwest who are really experiencing too much water. This awful spring is changing their lives in horrible ways.