1001 birds. To me that is an amazing total, but that is how many my baby (all things being relative) brother, his lovely wife, and I counted today during the National Audubon Society's annual Christmas bird count http://www.audubon.org/bird/cbc/. The weather was foggy, dull and damp and we were sure we wouldn't see a darned thing. However, we had a bit more territory to cover this year, which was really nice. (There is nothing like a little new scenery.) Also the birds seemed to be hanging around near the roads and buildings, so although they were hard to identify, because of the terrible light situation, there were lots of them around.

We had no more than walked out of my mom and dad's house to get in the truck when we saw a mess of birds in a tree across the road. They looked like tiny little crested gold finches, but they were cedar waxwings. The fog made them appear much smaller than they actually were. The same thing happened all day. Crows looked like starlings; starlings looked like sparrows. We spent far more time than normal sitting on various roadsides puzzling over identification of common birds that would normally only require a glance.

We stopped during the early afternoon at the farm home of my favorite aunt and uncle. Matt and my uncle walked the land while Lisa and I drank coffee and tea with my aunt and watched the feeder. They burned more calories, but we saw more birds. Some years, however, those sweetly familiar acres, where we all played as kids, yield everything from blue birds to pileated wood peckers.

It was a great day, as it always is. For me besides enjoying family, the high point was seeing an entire flock of cardinals along one seasonal use road. Another fine sight was several pairs of red breasted nuthatches, the most I have even seen in one place at one time. We used to call them itty-bitty-beeping-robot birds for their jerky movements and distinctive calls.

I asked the lady who runs the count and she said that our family has had the Mayfield south territory since 1989. My dad and mom started with it, and over the years both of my brothers and I have helped. Now Matt and I do most of it, with help from his wife, and sometimes from Alan and Matt and Lisa's daughter, Tawny. This year, however, the kids stayed at Grandma's house to play together.

I hope Clan Montgomery can keep on counting for many years to come. Bird counting is a lot like treasure hunting. You never know what you will find, or when that next "Ooh, Ahh," bird will flick out of the bushes in front of you or call from the swamp beside the road. I love it.

Merry Christmas from Northview. We wish you all a joyous day and gentle things for the year to come. A strange, cold fog blankets the three big windows this morning. Usually they show me the glittering lights of the village and a few frosty stars this early on a winter day. Today they look as if they were covered with a cottony blanket. I could barely see the light on the milkhouse porch when I stood on the stair landing by the window there.

It is supposed to be pretty warm this weekend and that is not unwelcome after all the early cold. Sure saves on the firewood.

A few of our farm related worries were lifted yesterday on Christmas Eve. I for one am grateful. Mango had birthed her calf when I went to the barn for the early morning check yesterday. It is oddly marked, mostly white with a weird little black triangle on its forehead, the reverse of a normal black head with a white triangle. Sadly, it is a bull, but we have had a plethora of heifers this year and have no right at all to complain. At least there will be no Christmas morning emergency delivery as we had feared all week.

Then, when Liz went over to set some beet pulp http://www.ag.ndsu.nodak.edu/coping/forageli.htm to water up for her show calves, she found a surprise awaiting her. The barn had an extra occupant. Egrec, the wild heifer, had come inside of her own accord. http://northviewdiary.blogspot.com/2005/12/well-egrec-is-still-out-on-hill-all-by.html

After a summer of wildness, she had headed for the hills when we brought the other heifers in. Then over the past week she took to jumping over the gate of the heifer pasture and then jumping in and out of the cow barn yard so she could hang out with the sheep and commune over the fence with the show heifers in the sawdust shed. She even jumped in with them one day…and then right back out again.

When the guys got a stall ready we drove the big white yearling into it and locked her up. I swear she heaved a big sigh of relief. As soon as she was in the barn she acted as quiet as any yearling. It was plumb strange.

We think she may be blind in one eye and maybe that has been causing her extreme spookiness. Certainly, when she hears our familiar voices she settles right down. Outside she had even jumped a five-bar gate, uphill, rather than let us lock her in the barnyard.

It is a huge relief to have her properly confined. Had she ever gotten down on the Interstate someone could have been killed. All she had to do is jump one more gate or wander through when it was open for the milk truck and we would have had big problems. We even discussed the possible necessity of shooting her if she headed that way. Now she is safe in the barn, although we will probably have to sell her because of her disrespect for fences.

Anyhow, we can hopefully spend the day in the house, napping, reading or watching the football game like regular folks. (If nothing major breaks down that is).

I hope you all get to do the same or whatever other thing it is that will make your Christmas special.

Make sure you don't miss Sarpy Sam's post yesterday on Thoughts from the Middle of Nowhere. He has a story there that will surely not make the headlines, what with the press having such a violent allergy to all things Christmas. However, I know most of us ordinary folks will love it. You can find it here: http://nowherethoughts.net/sarpysam/archives/1415-Baby-Found-in-Barn.html

You can also read the whole weblog at the link a little lower down on the right.

We had a very vocal, vituperative, vociferous and darned near violent discussion in the milk house tonight while we were finishing up. I was heating a bottle of milk for the new half-shorthorn calf. I was also whining because it seems to take forever to get it warm when you are in a hurry to get to the house.
One of my delightful offspring informed me that it had something to do with the high specific heat of water. Another chimed in that that figure is 4. something or other joules per gram °C. The original kid asserted that it was one. And so the battle began.

How can I describe how little I care? It makes my brain hurt to worry about such stuff. They didn't even teach us about specific heat in school. Maybe it hadn't been invented yet. At any rate, all the hot air in the milkhouse didn't do a darned thing to get that calf bottle any warmer. However, we had to drag out a college text book and do a google search to settle the point...and guess what.
"The specific heat of water is 1 calorie/gram °C = 4.186 joule/gram °C which is higher than any other common substance." (http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/thermo/spht.html) So, they were both right in their way, just using different units of measure. I still don't care.

Mike herding water at Peck's Lake

Courtesy of Merriam-Webster online dictionary you will discover that a cobbler is:
1 : a mender or maker of shoes and often of other leather goods
2 archaic : a clumsy workman
3 : a tall iced drink consisting usually of wine, rum, or whiskey and sugar garnished with mint or a slice of lemon or orange
4 : a deep-dish fruit dessert with a thick top crust

These are the only definitions offered by this trusted online source. I also perused well over half a dozen other online dictionaries and no matter where I looked, cobblers are either folks who work with leather to produce footwear, sweet drinks, desserts or are seriously maladroit.

However, the other day in English class, where Becky and her school mates were reading Poe's The Murders in the Rue Morgue (http://bau2.uibk.ac.at/sg/poe/works/murders.html), a visiting student teacher had other ideas. In this story a cobbler is mentioned only in passing, when the protagonists are discussing the apparent prescience of one of them. However, the student teacher pounced upon what he viewed as an unfamiliar word and asked the class what a cobbler did. When no one rushed to answer, he called on Beck, who tends to know such things because she reads anything and everything from trashy teen romances to The Three Musketeers in its original language (just for the fun of it). Of course, she answered that a cobbler is a shoemaker, as that is the commonly accepted definition.

The pedagogue was incredulous and suggested that she think of peach cobbler, as that would give her a clue as to the correct answer.

She was totally bumfuzzled and admitted it. Shocked at her ignorance he then gave her his chosen definition of a cobbler. According to this college-educated-educator a cobbler is a man who puts down cobblestones in the streets.

Hmm, maybe, could be, possibly so, but ol' Merriam-Webster doesn't seem to agree.

Guess I will have to find a better dictionary. Or perhaps a more widely read teacher. Anyone can make mistakes, but to ridicule a student for giving a correct answer like that is plumb egregious and I don't mind saying so. Maybe he needs to read some romance novels or something.

I also wonder what the heck peach cobbler has to do with paving the streets, unless of course, you are Hansel or Gretel.

Startin' 'em young 

Feeding the fowl 

The great chicken mystery…..or life is never boring no matter how pointless the excitement may be. Last night we got done at a reasonable hour, so I took Nick out for a bit of a run while I checked the woodstove. When we returned to the house he alerted on something on the porch. Since he is not allowed to bother cats, I gave him heck and started to go in the house. However, something caught my eye and I turned to find the white rooster and the hen without a beard perched on the back of a lawn chair.

This would never do; chickens are not allowed to roost on the porch. I grabbed them and chucked them out into the snow. I had just settled into my computer chair when suddenly I heard a sort of tap, tap, tap on the kitchen window. It became so annoying that I went out to see what the heck Alan was up to.
It wasn't Alan though. The tapping was caused by the white rooster banging his wings on the window above the sink as he tried to roost on the windowsill. What a pesky piece of poultry. I shined a flashlight in his eyes and he flew away.

A few minutes later Alan announced that there were feathers all over up by the stove and the other two chickens were gone. He threw the porch pair into the horse trailer and we made angry plans to deal with those darned coyotes in a very summary manner. There was talk of 22 vs. 12-gauge and where the best place to intercept their twilight peregrinations might be. How dare they come down right into the house yard and take my birds!

Then this morning Ralph came over to the barn and informed me that at least the other rooster had survived because he heard two of them crowing. Figures the coyotes would take the hen and leave that noisy bugger instead.

Later, when I went up to check Nick in his run all the chickens were there looking for stray dog kibble. The whole four of them miraculously restored to their usual feathery glory. They looked amazingly lively for having been killed by coyotes just the night before. Certainly, something chased them around while we were milking last night and there sure were a lot of feathers pulled. However, we will have to call it….dum-da-dum-dum...
the night no chickens died.

Cookie was Egrec's mother's sister. However, she was as gentle as a puppy and a great pet of everyone. That sure was a muddy summer when I took that picture.

Well, Egrec is still out on the hill all by herself in the snow. She looks real good at least, since the guys are giving her a whole tractor bucket load of feed all to herself every couple of days. She is fat and her hair lies in thick, shining swathes on her back. She seems to be softening her stance on having company though.

When she was first out there, after having quit the bunch when we brought them in for the winter, we didn’t see her for days on end. There is some snow, so we could always tell by her tracks that she was coming in at night and eating, but no other sign of her did we see.
Then last week the guys were felling dead elm trees in the field behind the barn. That lot adjoins the heifer pasture. When they felt eyes on their backs and looked up, there was Egrec on the lower side of the fence watching them like a high school kid at the homecoming football game. Her eyes were big as saucers as she observed their chainsaw ballet. She stayed the whole afternoon as they felled, blocked up and split the dead, barkless trees. Then she was gone again.

Wednesday, Liz put her paint horse, Disguised Image, or DG, out in his yard for some much-needed exercise. His turn-out also adjoins the heifer lot and is overlooked by my kitchen window. He was delighted to buck and kick and race the sun and I enjoyed the view.
Then as I polished plates and shined the silver I saw that he had company. Egrec was standing right next to him on the other side of his fence. Spotted Medicine Hat in bay on silver and spangled Holstein all white embellished with black, they communed happily all afternoon. They made an unlikely pair out there with the wire between them.

For DG odd companions are nothing new. Last year a four-point buck came to the same spot every day and tussled with him over the fence. It was quite a sight to see the little white colt biting faces with the velvet-antlered deer as they played. Even though it was mighty tempting to turn buddy buck into venison last fall we let him be, and I think he is still hanging around the house. There is certainly some large deer hiding in the sumac by the driveway every so often. However, he got real careful about letting people see him after going through a couple of hunting seasons.

Anyhow, loneliness seems to be overcoming independence in Egrec’s tangled little bossy brain. Yesterday the boss said that she tried to squeeze through the pasture gate when he fed her. If it hadn’t been almost dark and he hadn’t been alone he would have brought her right on down to join the herd. I suspect that sometime this week we will be able to get her back where she belongs.

This just in: Liz got a 99 on her Chemistry 111 final exam in college. booyah.

Big dog fight here last night. Right in the middle of the living room in fact. Younger border collie brother, Nick, (6) lit into older brother, Mike, (11) with genuine, four star, malicious intent. It was plumb ugly and a darned good thing I was standing right there when it happened. Otherwise there would have been some vet bills for sure. As it was my gorgeous little ninety-four-cent African violet was a casualty and lost a number of leaves and flowers when they tipped over the table it was sitting on. At least they stopped when I let out a stupendous bellow of, "That'll do!!" Guess it pays to maintain my position as dog boss and owner of all the food. Nick and I had an intense little discussion under the dining room table where he ran and hid after said bellow. Then I chucked him in his crate to ponder his sins for a while.

Later I brought some nice, fluffy rye straw over from the barn and stuffed it into the Dogloo in his kennel. Thus he had the option of being warm when I made him stay out all day today. He is well haired up and pretty much used to the cold, so it didn't really hurt him any. However, I figured a few hours of cooling his jets would make it a little easier for him to behave when I brought him back in. He did go in the doghouse now and then but for the most part spent the day barking at cats and running back and forth. I kept the two of them apart tonight just in case. Guess it's the price you pay when you maintain an artificial pecking order. Young vigorous dog, Nick, would be top dog over my old boy if I let him be. However, I don't.

***Don't forget to vote for Thoughts From the Middle of Nowhere for the Weblog awards (see previous post.) Go ahead, do it right now, you know you want to.

If you will work really hard to get out of work are you lazy? If so I am. I hate tedious, over and over again jobs with a passion. Thus I will move calves ALL day so I don’t have a bunch to water with buckets EVERY day. In fact I will do almost anything just to make caring for them easier.
Even just a little bit easier. It may be a pain to drag them around, but it is such a delight the first time I don’t have to lug a dozen pails of water, or work around kicking critters housed among the milk cows.

Today I didn’t actually move any calves, but instead cleaned out two non-functioning bowls, one of which was frozen as well. After I got them both working and rehung one, which was lying on the floor, I convinced the boss to nail a piece of particle board up over a hole in the wall. With that covered the freezing situation should be solved. Thus I was late for breakfast today and dirtier than I have been in a long while (calves are awful messy critters). However, tonight, tomorrow morning and twice a day from now on, I will have half as many calves to water as I did today.
I guess you will just have to color me lazy, but I will love it, I’ll tell you.

We visited the big city, or rather the suburbs thereof, today as well. It was not particularly pleasant for a country girl like me. Besides the swirling ranks of racing cars,drivers chewing on their cell phones while white-knuckling their steering wheels trying to save half a second, there were big diggers and graders clearing brush and trees around a shopping mall. They were preparing to put up two big town house-condominium complexes. Right next to the mall sure seemed like a weird place to locate housing.

I looked at the conceptual drawings on the signs near the muddy construction sites and thought, "Oh, my God, people are actually going to pay to live all jumbled together like that."
It seems sick and wrong, existing all crammed in together with nothing green in sight except phony looking grass and sculptured cedar shrubs. Were we meant to live nose to nose and back to back with no room to breath? (Heck there wasn't even any room for air down there in the metropolis.)

Can people really get along without land to work and animals to care for? Can they stand someone watching them every minute of every day? I dunno.

I guess some folks can and do and are happy for it, but I sure hope I never have to join them. I was mighty grateful to get back here to the hill. Sometimes I wish I could roll the driveway up behind me and shut all that craziness right out.

I have a favor to ask of all who visit here over the next couple of days. If you click on the link to Thoughts From the Middle of Nowhere over there on the right and down a bit, you would first of all get a chance to read my very favorite blog (other than this one of course). Then while you are there if you could take a few seconds and click on the link to the Weblog Awards and vote for that blog on the screen that you will see, I would be quite grateful. The author truly deserves to win the competition based on interesting topics, wonderful photography and great farmer political sense, (in my opinion at least).
Thanks in advance.

Here at Northview things have been quiet for a few days, something that is much appreciated. I actually got a chance to take the younger kids Christmas shopping this morning. (If we hit the store early on my oh-so-wonderful morning off, we can escape a little of the crowding that makes me so uncomfortable.) Alan bought me a second Sago palm to go along with last year's Christmas gift and Becky picked me out a lovely little Christmas cactus. I couldn't be more delighted. I would rather be given a plant than almost any other gift, except perhaps a good book. They also got their sister and dad taken care of and I managed to remember everything I needed except dog food.

Wild birds are coming into the feeders in large numbers now, sometimes twenty or thirty gold finches at once. They are like candles hanging on tube feeder candleabra when they feed in hungry flocks. There are not quite as many chickadees and titmice, but they make their presence known just the same. They swing, twittering and calling, from the twigs on the old locust and the clothesline in the yard waiting a turn a the goodies.

I get a chuckle out of the blue jays. It is good to have them back after their terrible decline because of West Nile disease. They swoop in, flashing brilliant blue, and just bursting with greed, about the middle of almost every morning. There was a big one here yesterday while I was doing the dishes and listening to Mannheim Steamroller's Fum. Fum, Fum (I bought the whole CD for that one song and listen to it a lot this time of year). He cleared the feeder area with a frantic alarm cry, then landed on the gound in the center and began to gulp sunflower seeds as if he were in a chug-a-lugging contest. Head thrown back and throat distended, he got outside of quite a pile before the other birds discovered that he had cried wolf about the danger and began to filter back to the yard.
The four chickens come in too and guzzle their share of the bounty. I wish the kids would find some place else for the rabbits so the hens could have their little coop back. They are still hiding their eggs where we can't find them, and the roosters crowing at the back door are rather annoying. They are more than a little annoying when they start crowing at 3:30 AM too. Even farmers don't get up that early.

We spent a couple of hours at the younger kids’ band and chorus concert last night. Alan had a solo on the tympani and I did not even realize that it was him playing. I couldn’t see the back of the stage except to view a mop of curly blond hair somewhere around the percussion section. Whoever was playing really nailed that solo though. I thought it was P.S., who is one of the better drummers in the band and had no idea my very own boy could play so well. Congratulations to him.

Of course no mention of the word Christmas was made on the cover of the concert program. Political correctness must matter just a bit to the school administration. Thus I expected and was delivered Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer and Jingle Bells along with the James Bond Theme. However, I was delighted to find that the program also contained a good, solid number of traditional Christmas carols, from Silent Night to the First Noel. There was a lovely old spiritual hymn, Praise his Holy Name and another Whisper, Whisper. Good solid religious fare with no thought for who might somehow be offended and thus contact the ACLU before they ate their breakfast tofu the next day. In fact by an informal count, nine of the twenty-two selections had some Christian or Jewish religious theme or made mention of some main stream religious event. That seems to be fair to me. Christian music for people there to celebrate a Christian holiday and some secular music for those who prefer it. I guess here in upstate NY we are still not afraid to show our roots. Because, after all, our roots here in this former Dutch and English enclave were certainly Christian. It was a real nice concert and worth going out with wet, frozen hair on a cold December evening.

Yammie, a bum lamb we used to have. He thought he was a border collie and tried to "herd" heifers. They didn't think too highly of that, I'll tell you. 

Right now we have the weirdest bunch of heifers I have ever had to deal with. All our calves are hand raised from birth on bottle and bucket. They are as familiar with people as puppies and generally act about as tame. However, this summer, the fifteen or so we had turned out on the field behind the house have turned as wild as foxes. They have gotten so they bolt for the back of the farm the minute they see a person. We have no idea if they have been bothered by hunters, pestered by the remote control air planes we have lately been plagued with, or if it is that two of the ring leaders are daughters of a bull we used to have that sometimes threw them a little spooky.

Anyhow, anything we did with them all summer was problematic. This is the bunch from yearlings up to springers, so there were many times when we had to bring in new milkers with calves. Every single time it was like chasing deer. The dogs are old and the cattle aren’t dog broke so using them wasn’t really an option either.

We finally got them down into the cow barnyard the other day, more or less by accident. Liz and I went out at four AM to milk and found the yard full of cow tracks. We finished up chores, hoping it would be light by the time we finished. Of course it wasn’t, so we went looking by flashlights. They were sleeping up on the flats by the woodstove and we just hustled them into the barnyard slick as spit. They were a real pain in the neck there as the guys have to feed through with the tractor and they were always in the way. Then of course last night someone left the gate open and they got up on the lot behind the barn. We had to chase them again. Great fun in the dark with the flashlights spooking them and the burdocks flying.

That was the final straw. This afternoon the whole five of us set out to put the darned things in the heifer barnyard with the shorthorn bull. It was highly entertaining. They decided that the bridge between the farms was haunted and they weren’t going to cross it-no way, no how. It was really cold, the wind was shrieking and it was a plumb lousy day to move nervous cattle. However, eventually they got tired of trying to run over the men and slipped in through the gate where we wanted them. They immediately forgot their worries as the scramble began to sort out a new pecking order with the seven that were already there.

Now all we have to do is figure out how to get the last one, Egrec, down from the hill. She ran back up the first time they got out and she is the wildest one of the group. I have never seen a cow that likes to be away from the herd before, but she actually prefers staying up there alone and cold to coming down to the barn with the rest of the bunch. Maybe when the snow gets deep she will slow down so we can catch her.

There is a new link lower on the right hand side of this page to the Young America Foundation, which will take you to a Conservative youth organization. YAF purports to help young people deal constructively with the type of Liberal bullying found in some classrooms today (as mentioned in the November 18th post). It is worth a visit. A big thank you to my mom for sending it to me.

It would also be worth your time to check out some of the blogs I have linked to in the same general area. Moonmeadow Farm is somewhat like this one, but with better pictures. Thoughts From the Middle of Nowhere is a popular Montana blog, by Sarpy Sam, that is truly one of my favorites. The photos are breath taking, the anecdotes offer a window on a different and fascinating lifestyle, and the political farm commentary is highly informative. Wish I could write that well.

Last year a bus Alan that rode to Boston for a school trip was involved in a nasty accident, wherein it rear ended another bus belonging to the same company. It is terrifying to receive a call from the school that begins with, "Don't panic, but there was an accident with the bus."
Don't panic. Right, sure thing, tell that to a mother and expect her to react calmly. My heart darned near jumped out through my ribs, before I was assured that only one student sustained minor injuries. The kids missed half their field trip and arrived home hours late, adding to the fear that we parents endured. Sitting in the school parking lot for hours waiting for the busses to return and then lingering another half hour while the school officials told the kids how to spin the story for their families was agonizing. Word has it that the responsible driver was fired, but has now been rehired. Guess they hope we all forgot about it. Now another pair of busses, from the same local bus company, has been involved in a nearly identical accident, with much more serious injuries, although the driver from last year wasn't involved. The driver of one bus is in critical condition right now and thirty-five other were injured. Coincidence? Maybe, but surely cause for thought. Hope the poor driver comes through all right.

Along with the garden pond that I often mention, which is really merely a pseudo pond, we also have a couple of real ones. The largest is up in the cow pasture and another is tucked away in the corner of the old horse pasture. That field has rather grown up to brush since the old horses died, but it is still nice up there.

Today I trawled my way through the burrs and goldenrod looking for wood to heat water for showers. When I made it to the pond I found myself wishing for a seat from which to enjoy the tranquil quiet there, while resting up from wood pursuit. Although the day was warm and fine, the grass was soggy from last week's snow and not very inviting.

I thought that I might climb up in Alan's tree stand and sit there for a bit, but then I saw my old mounting block. The block began life as half of a steel barrel that was used for watering heifers and then morphed into a handy object with which I gained enough elevation to get up on Magnum's back. That was after I closed the gate that separates us from the neighbor with whom I used to ride regularly when I was younger and still had the old boy. I had many a fine adventure after I made the transition from standing on that barrel to sitting knee locked on those strong black shoulders. I sure miss the old guy.

He is buried under an apple tree not too far from that gate now, so I rolled the barrel under the gate and across the field to the pond side. It was heavy, but worth it, as I now have a nice spot to sit and watch the clouds roll by and listen to the birds. If a cat's paw of wind plays with the water as it passes it is just an added bonus for my secret entertainment