Living with Ruby

Throated hummingbirds that is. Our pair had a pair I think, of playful youngsters that tumble through the air like pups. They are as tame as pups too, as long as I don't touch the camera. They like me just fine, but that big black eye is way too scary.

They come to sit on the hooks at the top of the hanging flower baskets when I am on the porch. (there is not room to hang them all, so they provide perfect little perches for perfect little birds.)

They are so very curious. I was awaiting a storm yesterday while shooting unusual clouds and succulent flowers. They came, buzzing like bombers, flipping like a deck of cards. Around and around my head, close, only inches away. Then one sat down in the variegated pink geranium, right next to me. She looked me up and down, tipping her pointy chin, then tucking it into her feathers, then whirring purposefully away, only to return for just one more peek.

I think maybe we bird watchers are a bit arrogant in thinking we are the only ones. I think she goes back to the Mountain Ash tree where she keeps her tiny field guide and turns the little pages, trying to learn more about the creature she has found...hmmmm....what is it...what is it?.

I think yesterday she put me on her life list..... ticking off the field marks....slightly bent steel rimmed glasses (don't drop them and step on them while taking pictures of bugs) Check...

Soft, blue chambray shirt...check....bare feet check.

Yep, sure enough, it is one of those fat old farmer ladies var. bluejeaniensis. Wow, never thought I would see one of those....Check.

This and That

Our "feral" visitor kitty

The cows did reasonably well at the fair, not too surprising since there were very few animals this year. Bling won junior heifer calf, which delighted all. She is such a sweet little girl. Rosie won grand champion milking shorthorn, but she doesn't get any kudos because she is the only shorty at the fair. She is being a very bad girl and dragging everybody all over the place, so she may not get to go to Fonda. She even took Alan for a run around the ring and the show barn and he is a pretty rugged guy.

Chrome came in second in her class. Moments was grand champion Jersey. Wish Liz had entered her at Fonda. She is out of the lesser of her two lines of Jerseys...her mama had some serious flaws, but I always liked her because she was such a powerful, big-framed cow. Moments has enough of that to be strong and correct and she is not wing shouldered and her udder is high and tight instead of almost hitting the floor. Monday did okay too and was reserve senior Holstein....although the boss just got up and told me that she stomped Alan pretty good last night too. They are big animals and there is so much commotion and noise at the show. She has never been shown before...and someone was shooting off explosives while the show was on...lots of fun.

All and all not bad. Now I can't wait until they are all home.......

Rural Grove State Forest

Alan and I made a speedy trip to our veterinarian's office yesterday for some medicine for Rosie



On the way home he took me on a half-hour detour through the Rural Grove State Forest where we stopped at a spot where beavers had dammed the road, rendering it impassable. It was a marvelous place. Dragon flies of half a dozen sorts zig-zagged around us, red ones that darted like flaming arrows, huge olive-green and light blue ones that flew in perfectly straight lines like the Black Hawks that fly up the valley....Black and white ones....dozens of fragile damsel flies mating like crazy.

***Alan had to take this dragonfly photo as he had boots and I didn't. The rest are mine.

There were frogs galore, the shoreline sounded like a shooting gallery as bull frogs plummeted into the water ahead of us. A great blue heron lumbered away in slowly pulsating flight. Cedar waxwings, some kind of fly catcher...probably an Eastern Kingbird, whirling in circles high in the sky..the whistling wings of some rapidly departing mallards. Lots of tadpoles and something big that was swimming just under the water, shaking the heck out of the bushes and plants. Could have been a beaver, maybe a muskrat, or just possibly a really large fish. It was too far out to be sure.

The road, after the beavers worked their construction miracles upon it

So peaceful.....

***Click for collage detail

There were interesting plants and herbs. See the boneset and the swamp milk weed? Rushes are round and sedges have edges, or so Alan's college teacher used to tell him. We saw lots!

It was an interlude of wonder and delight that I won't soon forget....just a few miles from home, yet I didn't even know it was there. It would be fun someday to put the canoe in from the road and cruise out to see what we could see.

Bling and Chrome

Bling, almost all clipped

Monday in the Parlor

Chrome, lunching

In the Good Old

Summertime peaks about now, with warm, humid days and sultry, torpid nights. The hay in the horse barn fills the air with the faint scent of cinnamon and tiny, new toads dot dot dot through wet morning grass on their way to bugs unlimited.

Here in the Northeast, hints of autumn abound. Robins are getting pretty scarce, although you hear one every now and then. Ours raised three broods on the porch and in the nearby cedars this year, but they are waning now, like the strawberries of June.

Just the other day a scattering of killdeers formed up into a fresh flock and vanished to the south, screaming all the way.

Geese will soon straggle down to the river and cruise the corn fields for spilled kernels. The days grow shorter at an appalling pace, with each morning darker than the one before. The sun, which has been rising well to the north of the big spruce in the neighbors’ yard, is inching its way back south again. By the time it reaches the winter nadir it will rise, already tangled in the branches of the hillside trees, cold, and grim and plumb unwelcoming.

And so we cling to what is left of the season and hope for more of the good days. I will have a few more updates from the fair a little later today. Take care.

More Cows at the Fair

Rose Magnolia, milking shorthorn

Moments and Rosie, taking a nap

Photos from 2011 Altamont Fair

Moments, the Jersey cow

Bling, Holstein junior heifer calf, with Chrome

Taken by Liz's cell phone and texted home to mom.

Fair Update

Liz milking her now retired show cow, Mandy, in the Altamont milking parlor in 2007

The cows and calves are all moved and vet checked in (including Monday...the state veterinarian agreed that it was just a scrape) and settled into the fair. Alas, a lot of Lizzie's feed and bedding got rained on. It rained and rained and rained. I need to get a rain gauge so I can tell how much.

This much I can tell you; it was a lot. So much that the left-at-home-cow's switches, which are normally kind of greyish and dingy unless you wash them with laundry detergent, which we do at the fair, were all white and fluffy. Also all stringy and wet, the better to slap you across the face, whap, whap, whack!

Rosie settled right in. She went to the show last year and knows the routine...lots of soft, fluffy rye straw (which she proceeded to eat instead of her hay), all the other good stuff she can eat, lots of brushing and scrubbing and clipping etc. Most cows love the show.

Liz had the challenge of taking Moments and Monday through the milking parlor. We have an old fashioned stanchion and tie stall barn and neither of them was ever shown before. As far as that goes they had only been led a few times. They had to be coaxed to enter the railings and bars of the place and then let themselves be milked. Moments didn't let her milk down, so I'll bet she will be glad to be milked this morning. They get used to it quickly and the fair has a very nice parlor so all will be fine I'm sure.

Sadly, it is pouring again, but hopefully there will be a bit better weather tomorrow. Thursday is show day...wish us luck....with the weather if nothing else.

Truck in Day

Rose, last year

At Altamont Fair. Of course, yesterday, Monday, Liz's three-year-old Silky Cousteau daughter, came down with one tiny, little spot of ringworm....size of a quarter...or maybe it is not ringworm...looks like a scrape today. So she can't go...or maybe she can go. She has had ringworm before and they are generally immune after one go round, but not Monday, no sirree....unless it is just a scrape, which is what it looks like today.

And naturally it is raining and soggy and ugly. Of course. And Jade's truck coughed up a caliper yesterday and he is the hauler of choice. Of course, of course.

It wouldn't be the fair if fifteen different things didn't go wrong at once. I am so glad that I stay home now. When the kids were small and needed a chaperon and crew chief all this fell on my shoulders. Now Liz will sort it all out...or not... as the case may be. I would hate to be in her shoes, managing all these disasters. She works here with us and has a challenging full-time job as a milk inspector and worked right up until Friday, so getting ready is a B*&^%......yeah....one of those

Of course Blitz is lame again so she can't go either. She has missed the last three years because of lameness or sickness. Such a weak cow.....Looks like the string is down to Bling, Chrome, Rose Magnolia and Moments, the Jersey cow. The fair raised entry fees so much this year that word is there are only two milk cows in the whole show. Yowsa! Used to be, just a few short years ago, they crammed 150 head into the tiny old barn. Now they have the big, new barn and it sounds as if it will be half empty.

None of this matters of course, the fair is the fair and will always end up being fun. It just is. Fair food, wonderful friends you only see once a year, but count among your favorite people in the world, time to pamper and play with cows all day....it is almost always worth all that it takes. By Thursday night, show night, the cows will be clean, clipped and polished, the display will be set up and looking fine and all these travails will be forgotten, other than as fodder for comparing notes with everyone else about truck in....maybe we will see you there.....

Sunday Stills...Macro Shots

The peacocks are molting

Bee

Rain

Shroom

Collage of what's in bloom

Tiger lily

The macro challenge is always my favorite.

For more Sunday Stills....

Mom

The (very happy) farmer's wife

Wanted me to post this. (Let me know if the link doesn't work for you.)

The upshot is that the paper that runs the Farm Side did good at the New York State Associated Press awards.

The Venner Vox, a really cool blog that I miss every day, won a second place award, which is no surprise to me at least. It was always interesting and at times pretty highly charged.

The Sideline Guys won first place in their division, the niche website category.

And in the under 25000 circulation column category, the Farm Side came in third. I was pretty tickled.

Hearty congratulations to Charlie Kraebel and to the fellows who write the Sideline guys....

Morning on the Farm

Sun coming up red.

Cottontail rabbit lolloping down across the lawn, up to his ears in dewy green. Cows grazing on the hill side with wild turkeys strolling among them. Foggy around the edges, quiet, clear and calm. Just another day in our personal paradise.

Of course, as good as all that sounds, you have to add in a continuous string of breakdowns, every single day without fail and the dog barfing up the new dog food before he even got done with breakfast etc. etc.

It's a great life if you don't weaken.

Good to the Last Toothpick

My folks bought their first home when I was in sixth grade and my brother in fifth.What a thrill to live somewhere that was all ours. No landlord to appease, no fear of moving on to another house, another school, a new set of friends...or maybe no new friends and lasting loneliness. We moved a lot before they bought that house.

It was a nice little place.

There was a teen-aged Norway maple in the front yard and a medium-sized silver maple in the back. He claimed the front tree and I chose the one behind the house.

We were arboreal kids. (And eagerly aquatic and active land mammals as well. No computers, no TV most of the time. When we played, we played outdoors.)

We climbed those trees. A lot. Hung tire swings from gnarly old ropes. Swung upside down by scabby knees; played Tarzan. Remember that wonderfully satisfying Tarzan yell?. Listened to our first cardinals, learned about bugs and squrrels, and dreamed our dreams. Who needs playground equipment if they have a good tree?

I read books up in my tree...that one branch was the perfect height for a not so tall, scrawny kid to grab hold and swing up to perch out of sight and out of mind among the limbs. There was a good spot to sit and a better one to belly sprawl, arms and legs hanging down like a lounging lion.

The tire swing was a horse....many horses....all kinds of horses. I was born with an admiration for all things equine, and suffered from acute horse envy for many years.....who knew I would end up with cows?

My mind has been full of stories since I first learned words so when I ran out of books the stories played out in the tree or on the swing.

I loved that tree.

However, as kids tend to, we grew up, outgrew trees, tire swings, and childish fantasies and turned to other things. Got jobs and cars and real horses and new lives.

The trees grew huge. The Norway tangled the power lines and finally succumbed to whatever kills heavily pruned roadside maple trees.

The silver maple morphed into a staggeringly huge monster tree. Even if I were still 11 and skinny and agile there were no more inviting limbs, calling me to climb. Instead it began to shed limbs in ice storms and wind storms and even just at random. It overshadowed the folks' yard like a deadly wooden thundercloud.

It had to come down. And a couple of years ago, courtesy of a tree service, it lost its last leaves, shed its final samaras, and died the honorable death of an old tree.

There was so much light, fluffy wood after the brother and family split it up that the folks yard was half buried in it. Finally a couple of weeks ago, it was decided that there would be a wood lift. All day trucks run by family members shuttled piles and piles to our side yard.

Then the boss and Alan and I loaded the skid steer with buckets full and shifted most of it up to the stove.

I built a fire the next morning and since that day I have always had hot water. For someone who heats water with wood and hardly ever actually has any wood, it has been the most amazing luxury imaginable. Hot showers, hot dish water...all I can use....it boggles the mind.

And all I have to do to have it is to pile about two bushels of the soft, light wood into the stove each morning and walk away.

Each morning I am thankful. To mom and dad for letting me have the wood. To brother, family and everyone who spent a whole Sunday dragging me wood. They had better things to do, but did it anyhow.

And I am thankful too, to that old tree, which has given its all to me for nearly fifty years....good to the last toothpick. What a grand old plant it was.

Pickle Pirates

We started digging garlic this week

We love Refrigerator Dill Pickles We made some last year from a great online recipe and then we lost it.

Today, after hours of searching, we found a substitute and made a batch from cukes Jade's grandpa sent down.

The house smells so good. Garlic, vinegar, dill and cucumbers........they sure go good together. It reminds the boss and me of when we were kids and our mamas canned. Do you remember coming home to the scent of bubbling jam, or new-made pickles or hot, sugary peaches? My mom made such wonderful stuff when we were kids and I love it when something we cook brings those memories back.

These pickles look good too.

They are supposed to season in the fridge for 24 hours, but an infestation of sneaky pickle pirates has been creeping around poking grabby fingers in the bowl.

I must confess, I am not immune to that syndrome, and besides, you really do need to check to see if a new recipe is as good as the old one.

I also admit to never actually following recipes, or at least not too closely, so there is no mustard seed in our batch, I used dried dill and cut the sugar a lot. Didn't have any of the first two and didn't want the pickles to be too sweet. Didn't bother with bay leaves either.

So far they fall on the irresistible side of the nomming scale and had to be securely wrapped up and hidden in the bottom of the fridge so that it may be possible to see how they taste tomorrow.

The best part is that I still have half a bag of cucumbers, so if the pirates capture these I can make more tomorrow.

Peacocks

Ours are just beginning to molt a few feathers. I pick them up if I can reach them without going into the coop. The rooster does not like me in the coop and bates and bounces off the walls if I go in.

We may get a couple more from the same source....it has been mentioned.....I said, okay...I really like them!

Gift of the Day

Mountain ash berries are getting ripe

How could I not be grateful for a life that lets me work outdoors? Bringing in laundry yesterday just before a storm..... These humid summer days, seems like nothing wants to dry.....

I had just put out some grungy old oranges to see if the orioles wanted a free lunch when it showed up....A huge butterfly flip-flopping round the yard, fluttering more like a bat or a lame-winged bird than a butterfly.

It was so big, seeming almost too heavy to fly...and so beautiful it gave me cold chills to watch it flapping by.

It would not sit still, and although it flew around me for at least ten minutes while I fed chickens and pea fowl and puttered at my other jobs, the minute I went inside to get the camera it made itself scarce.

However, I vaguely remembered seeing one, once before...just once...up on the top garden. I looked it up when I came in later and, sure enough, it was a giant swallowtail (the name sure fits.)

It flew right around me, so close it almost touched me. I think it came to visit me when I was cutting oranges because the larvae feed on citrus leaves. I was covered with orange juice and probably smelled delightful from the butterfly point of view. Here in the north my stale oranges are probably about as close as it is going to get to anything even remotely citrus.

Lucky me to share the yard with it for a while.

Operation Dumbo Ear

And that bee...or actually wasp...stung look on the hand.

Fog Light

Up way before the light today, disturbing dreams of animals that need care, and dogs gone by, calling out for me to save them. It was so real and then to wake and find that Two Bears does not need to be fed, hasn't in twenty years or more, and never will again. A grand dog of history but gone, long, long gone.....

Two Bears, taken in Colorado, many moons ago

Nick though, Nick is glad of my early morning and his hours-before-normal breakfast time. Glad too that Liz picked up some samples of fancy dog food at TS the other day and he can have a taste...and a spoon of last night's meat loaf gravy....nom, nom, nom.....

Rooster crows at 5:06. Indigo bunting tunes up at 5:32 and does not stop. At all. I want some of what he's drinking. I could use that much energy.

Fog is soggy grey right now, drooping and dingy like it needs to be bleached and hung on the line in the sun. S'okay, when the sun gets around to getting up it will light up like a pearl and glow with silver warm light. The fog muffles the sounds of trains and traffic and makes them seem mysterious and cool....rather than just noisy and annoying....

No cows; couldn't milk if I wanted to. The fog shelters them from prying eyes, sleepy out there somewhere on the hill. They will not come down any more without being pursued, not even for their tasty tithe of morning grain and the water in the big blue tub. They are not liking the mud that ALL THIS DARNED RAIN has made. It hurts their poor feet. Old Mandy cow is being kept in the temporarily vacant heifer pen so she doesn't have to make the trudge to pasture. She does not much appreciate the gesture and leans her long, black, self over the high, red gate, calling sadly and sticks her nose in the window at me....OVER the plywood that keeps heifers from ripping out the window. She is one tall cow I'll tell you!

This much water from ONE rain....there have been many others

We put the two young jerseys out with the cows a couple of weeks ago. What a pair of sixes! They travel together as if yoked like oxen, brown on brown, and always in trouble. Quick to it too; they can dart in the barn door and run around like dervish fools in less time than it takes old folks to hurry to close the door.

We are the walking wounded here, alas. After all summer of being the broken-footed, useless gimp, I am surrounded by folks in worse shape than I am. Becky is laid low by a vicious summer cold, that is dripping and gripping its way through the house. Liz sprained her ankle while feeding her horse and is having a miserable time milk inspecting, working here and trying to get ready for the fairs. Alan went out to change a tire yesterday and put his hand in a wasp nest...just as he was finishing up. His ear was stung eight times and his wrist three. Oh, my the swelling... Yow!

How I hate those nasty mixed vespids. Sting first and ask questions later. And they build their nests in the damnedest places and defend them to the death...no matter whose.

Well, as we listen to the sucking sound of our economy going down the drain, I leave you with good wishes for the day. Enjoy the indigo buntings and good dogs in your world, while the great ones in Rome fiddle to the tune of the flashing flames.

From the Weekend

A Wee Guest who spent some time on the sitting porch...sitting...and chirping VERY loudly

My Aunt's fabulous water garden

Cousin Mark at the book signing, which was lots of fun, with cookies, punch, hugs and the signing of books.

Sunday Stills....Sunrises and Sunsets

Almost every morning and evening this week provided us with warmth and color.....so I put them all together in a collage. Spending mornings on the porch snapping away at the sky provided many close encounters of the hummingbird kind (although no pics of them). The male is so tame he flew past my face close enough to ruffle my bangs. What a bold little guy!

For more Sunday Stills.......