Ephemeral

Working Hands

Our farrier, a lifelong friend and all around nice guy was here to trim Jack yesterday.

What are the Men

Doing today?


***Update Injector and number one piston from the old 930 Case. She is getting yet another do over. Alan says she has 18,000 hours on her, so I guess she has earned it.

What to Do if Your Dog is a Collie

Even a farm collie, and the company that makes the heart worm preventative that is safer for collies suspends production?


We don't know the answer to that question and it is beginning to seem like no one else does either.


We want to use Interceptor for Gil, as collie type dogs have been known to have life-threatening adverse reactions to the more common heart worm medicines, but Novartis suspended production in December.


We searched the net, called and emailed veterinarians, and looked into all kinds of suppliers to no avail. 


Although many online sources claim that production will resume soon, I called the company today and was told repeatedly, "We don't have a date yet for resuming production," with no further details.


This is troubling as English Shepherds are among the breeds prone to Ivermectin toxicity....


which is bad news indeed.


There is a test for the mutant gene, which causes the dog to be susceptible to toxicity. Maybe that is the answer for Gil

Another Cold and Gloomy One

But it is supposed to get nicer over the rest of the week. That short little summer we had was wonderful but what a tease! Still remarkably few interesting birds around....lots of assorted black birds, song sparrows, and winter holdovers, but the coot I saw on a national news show this morning was the most unusual sight all week. Where is our woodcock anyhow?


Opening day of trout season yesterday passed unremarked. I am too much of a wienie to fish in such weather...and really I think the fish are far too girly to bite when it is this cold too. The best trout catch I ever made was when a couple of friends and I rode horses for several days up to Murphy Lake and camped to fish. I was untangling a line someone had snarled up, sitting on a big rock with my toes in the lake with the worm dangling just over the surface while I teased apart the messy coils of monofilament.


Wham! A nice brookie that made a nice breakfast cooked on our campfire. Usually although I LOVE to fish I don't catch much.


I have written of that insane trip before. Only a complete and utter fool would ride a black horse into the mountains on opening day of early black bear season...and guess who rode a little black horse for well over twenty years.... (In my defense it was an unusual September season and we just didn't know, but still...when we came out of the woods to find the road lined with trucks and bristling with armed guys looking for large black animals...well....)


Anyhow, the calendar says spring, the buds on the tulips say spring, the daffodils are already folding their tents...now if the weather would just get on the same page.

Sunday Stills...Birdstalking

Gold Finch...slightly moth eaten from the molt 

Song Sparrow

Tufted titmouse, om nom nom

It is early to see much here, at least by the calendar. We don't even have a woodcock yet.
 I wanted to get up to the landfill where the Canada geese nest right next to the road and challenge cars willy nilly. Much too busy though so this is what was hanging around the yard this week.



For more Sunday Stills......


Song Sparrow

Today vs Yesterday

Two seconds before I shot the lower photo, yesterday when it was sunny and nice, vs snowy and cold, the cat was sniffing the daffodil. What a great opportunity right? Alas, too slow as usual. 

Redneck Landscaping

Yesterday I was complaining about the lousy "yellow lilac bush" I bought at Wally World ten years ago or so. The darned thing took four years to bloom and when it finally did it had tiny, white flowers that were so not lilacs. Little things the size of your pinky and drab as dirt

 A Match for any Lilac Bush

 I have been cutting it down ever since.


As I was lamenting its pointless persistence and wishing for a flat place to set the smaller bird bath, the boy said, "I'll get it out."


Always distrust that smug tone of voice in a young man...or even in an older man. They like to do things in.....well, a big way.....


And get it out he did, with a huge, thick yellow towing strap and the weapon in the top photo.


Can anyone say overkill?

The great, big, evil lilac bush

At any rate it's gone, roots and all and when it stops snowing I can smooth the ground and move the bird bath.

Farm Side Friday

Here

Morning Walkies

 Maples and Pines across the river

 A little rhubarb I started a couple of years ago

 Catkins follow pussy willows

Thistle

Alan came out with me this morning when I was trying to get some bird photos for Sunday Stills. Didn't get much in the way of bird shots, but I did get the fallen tree off the lawn and now the bird bath is level and visible from the house. Yay!

LFTB

Pink slime they call it. What a tempest in a tea pot, (although not for the people who lost their jobs or the estimated million and a half cows that will be needed to replace this safe, wholesome product, which has been in use for twenty years.) 

Way to go media activists and agenda-driven celebrities. 


Here are some links:


USDA fact sheet

No process can make an inedible product edible "The resulting product is very low fat
(95+% lean), which many consumers desire.  This process is very similar to the one used to
separate cream from milk." 

Sure the stuff sounds icky, but trust me, many aspects of producing food seem icky. Hot dogs..... And we've been eating it for TWO DECADES without it hurting anybody.


Our so-called "news" has become instead a mess of sensationalist fear mongering and incitement  to meaningless action with not even a hat tip to facts or science. I infinitely prefer the beef we grow for ourselves, but I am not afraid of the darned stuff at all after actually taking time to research it.


Meanwhile, of course I like our homegrown hamburger better. It is already lean....

Still Fencing, No Swords

Staples though, and insulators. Patching wire. Chopping bush. Freezing cold. And taking pictures. Wrenched my stupid foot the other day stepping out of a cow stall. It was pretty ouchy walking around with Alan making up the fence...well, really he did most of the work and I cut brush and kept him company. Another couple days and that one will be done anyhow. Two more to go.

Spring Birds

Don't seem to care that we are now back to normal March weather after our brief summery interlude.


Myself, I would like to go back to sun and fun.

Sunday Stills...Weather

For more Sunday Stills

Square Dancing with the Broom

The boss is sometimes a pretty good fella about sweeping out the mud he tracks into the kitchen. Yesterday he had a little more help than he really needed....and I was right there handy with the camera.

Farm Side Friday

You can read it here

Clotheslined

I'm sure that in the winter a clothes drier's a fine thing...just a rumbly, numbly, grumbly and your laundry's nice and warm.


And on those gloomy, damp and rainy days too, I'm sure gonna bet.


Not much else that you can do when all your stuff is wet.


But on a sunny, June-in-March day, not unlike this outright fine day


A couple trees and a hank of rope is plain flat out the best way.


A nice, long, waving clothesline beats a homely metal box.


Nineteen ways to sideways, and seven days a week


Bracing breezes set the jeans and sweatshirts dancing, 


Do-see-do. 


A junco twitters sweetly from the spruce (wish I could "follow" him and hear his "tweets" all springtime long.)


Sun-shined purple petals on the crocus by the pond and the maples cross the river have their summer lipstick on.


Yeah, on days like this I'll take a clothesline any time...Laundry isn't work at all in this sunny springtime world.

Something is Blooming

Happy Birthday Baby Boy

I know where I was 22 years ago today....and now my boy is off in the wide world of the big city working on big stuff. He sends me scary pictures and even deletes the worst ones before I see them so I am not too distressed.......


But I am proud of him, taking what he has learned at our humble little farm and what he has taught himself or picked up in college and turning it into such responsibility and change. 


Happy Birthday, son, we miss you!

Twins

Born this morning to Detroit, one of Liz's older cows. Sadly one was a tiny little heifer and the other a mammoth bull. All three are doing okay though.

Weather

Simply amazing, although not unprecedented. Just before my dear brother was sent to Korea we had a spring like this. Had the fences all built by the end of March with his help and oats planted in early April.


Too wet this spring for much of that, but the boss and I have both spent some time cutting brush out of the pasture fence. I needed some alone time Saturday so I hung the camera case around my neck, grabbed my brush nippers, and headed up the hill. Took a while to get into the swing of things...been feeding with the men all winter long, so you would think I would be in shape, but nipping off rose bushes and honeysuckle takes different muscles than hauling hay on a pitch fork.


Still, I cut all the way to the first creek and didn't get sore at all so I guess I am not too bad off for someone who will officially turn old this summer.




The boss went out while I was doing housework yesterday and cut all the way to the first ravine on the south fence, which is pretty darned good. He came in dripping and shedding sweatshirts though.


You can just see a haze of green on the hillsides and I am so grateful. We are buying all our feed and it is painful in the extreme, what with fuel and grain so high and milk prices free falling. Can't wait until there is enough grass to turn out and I surely want to get the fence back up on the old pasture this year. It is real rough going, but there is usually quite a lot of grass out there.

Can't wait to see the girls arrayed on the hill behind the house like spotted beads on an invisible string....one of my favorite sights of all.

The Power of Migration

Amazing video of a part of what was estimated to be a flock of 2 million tree swallows.
This page has a number of other videos of this amazing sight.

Another excellent migration video ...snow geese this time.

Monday

Fence line oak up in the heifer pasture

I am losing track of all the calves I swear...at least one more heifer and a cute little Jersey bull born over the weekend. I think poor Liz has twenty on buckets. 


Last time we had a Jersey bull calf we were offered the opportunity to sell him to a certain individual who...oh, never mind...it was the religion of peace and all, but the way they handle baby calves is distasteful, even if most of our animals eventually end up as beef.


 Instead we gave him to some folks who have a Jersey farm...well in the end they paid us for him, but not because we wanted them to. He was well bred and is used now on their farm to breed registered heifers. Kinda nice, because it means that Liz's herd prefix will be out there a little. This guy will probably go the same way or become a steer and go out to Fort Plain to keep a certain Percheron company. Too bad he was a bull, because he is put together real nice.