Heavenly skies after a week from Hell

Flood tales, tall or otherwise

There are a number of flood horror stories that I can’t put in the Farm Side because they remain unsubstantiated. However, some ring true and deserve to see the light of day, so here are a couple or three.


The authorities are alleged to have failed to open the river dams in order to save pleasure boats moored below them at the expense of further damage to land facilities. Whole towns were pretty much wiped out. I am thinking maybe there just wasn’t time to do anything about the locks and dams, but who knows?


Our diesel guy was reportedly refused admittance to our road, even though there was no possibility of flooding anywhere between the intersection where he tried to turn and us. (This one is no rumor, but came right from the driver.) We live about an 8th of a mile from that intersection by the way, and were out of fuel for the generator and field work.


One valley fire department is said to have lost all their fuel to water contamination. The same delivery guy told us that they were called because their trucks are on relatively high ground. They could also apparently be accessed without going through any serious high water spots, at least nothing that would stop a large diesel engine. Local authorities refused access to the trucks anyhow.



A local farmer was allegedly arrested for trying to get into town to pump out a stranded family member. He left court and drove right down and helped her anyhow.


FEMA is offering people who lost entire homes and all of their possessions between $2000 and $2500 to help them rebuild. They gave each person a debit card for that much in Katrina, much of the money being used to buy shameless luxuries. Guess upstate NY isn’t quite as glamorous.
(Bear in mind that these stories are just that, tales that are being told as folks gather to assess the damage and commiserate over their losses.)


At least one rumor that was giving us fits is that Peck’s Lake is closed. My much-anticipated week at that facility begins a week from Saturday. When we heard that the lake was closed I came pretty close to bawling. I know a lost vacation isn’t much stacked up against the devastation that has hit our neighbors. Still the peace and quiet and the loons and rainbow trout mean a lot to me.
Thus I was delighted, thrilled, overjoyed, and just plain real happy to talk to an extremely agitated Alby Peck today. Seems the papers were just fishing for something to write about, and pretty much fabricated the closed lake story. Peck’s is open and eager to regain all the business the false story cost them.

More flooding down along the Delaware

Endment has some photos of the flooding in other parts of the state....plus a bear!

Doppleganger?

Close but no gar

Dam(n) Info

I have been checking The Gilboa Dam Information site regularly, since last week's flood. I suspect that you will be as distressed as I was when you read today's entry about the failure of emergency warning systems for the affected area.

To put it simply, nothing worked.

I know that up here on our hill we were almost entirely cut off from outside communication. Although we have a generator, cable TV was out and local radio stations went right on running talk shows and playing lousy music as if nothing had happened. Thankfully we still had a phone, so my parents let me listen to TV bulletins over it. However, many folks had nothing and the systems that should have been operational failed.


There are thousands of helpless peopleliving in the footprint of that antiquated structure. I think some serious attention had better be directed at effective emergency warning before it is too late. This week should serve as a lesson in preparedness....or the lack of it.

Toad Mode

Surprise

During the flooding that struck the valley this week, we were very much in need of something interesting to distract us from the dark side. Alan provided me with a great diversion right in the middle of the worst of it.

All the big tractors were about out of diesel by Thursday morning and we still needed to run the generator so the boss sent our boy way back in the field to get our ancient 930 Case tractor. It is getting close to 40 years old now, but although small, it had a full tank of fuel. (Roads were closed and our fuel supplier is still under water.)

When Alan came back down he hurried into the barn and shoved something wet and grey under my nose saying, “I think you are going to like this.”
He was really excited, but all I saw was a small toad. I don’t have bifocals any more, and with my distance glasses, which I use for work, it WAS a toad.
He insisted that I take a closer look, so I took my glasses off and peered…and oh, my God, it was a grey tree frog!

I love frogs. Well, heck I am pretty fond of most herptiles and have taken an interest since I was tiny. A big old milk snake actually created quite a diversion at my high school graduation party by getting out of its terrarium and terrorizing all my great aunts.
Although little hyla versicolor is fairly common and you can hear the toad-like call on many spring nights, I have only ever seen one single specimen when I was a little kid camping at Peck’s Lake. This is probably because they are able to change color like a chameleon. They also have special pads on their feet that allow them to stick to surfaces and travel up and down trees (or teenaged boys' arms...Alan said it felt "cool" to have it climb on him).

Ours sported an amazing array of patterns. I suspect that the toad camo was a handy-dandy defensive mechanism, as toads are poisonous to eat. Alan said that the critter was the same rusty color as the engine block of the Case when he found it crawling around on it, but it turned into a “toad” when he picked it up. We put it next to the garden pond, where an hour later it had turned the precise dingy white color of the faded paper label on the side of the tank (photo above). I haven’t seen it since but the kids with their younger, sharper eyes have seen it doing dirty brown on an old wooden box and the precise green of one of the pond side plants. I hope it stays around.

I am so glad my boy is a frog lover and thought to save the frog from certain frying as the engine heated up. I am also delighted he brought it home to me. My birthday is next week and I'll bet the little tree frog will turn out to be my favorite present.

Fairgrounds

This is the fair grounds, where the rides are set up, and parking for Fonda Speedway. We could joke about having jet ski races this Saturday in place of the usual stock cars, but the situation is just too serious to laugh about.

Flooded Mohawk Valley

Park Street in Fonda

More flooding

We are finally back in the modern world after 36 hours stranded by closed roads and no power. There is a street under this water, as well as a playground and two parking areas. As bad as it is here, there are many places who had much worse damage.

The river and its clone

This is the Mohawk River at Fonda. The trees you see in the center of the two channels are not an island. They are the northern bank of the river. The second "river" was a corn field yesterday with some of the best corn in the county growing on it. Now, well..... it is not.

Emergency helicopters are flying over and the police prevented our feed rep from getting here. At least the milk tanker finally made it in.

So much rain last night

Fire whistles are wailing an eerie harmony across the river and down in town. I don’t know how many villages are represented, but more than one for sure. Trains are still running at least as I hear one banging down the tracks right now.

I fear for Gilboa. The Mohawk was more than bank full yesterday and laced with whirlpools. Everywhere else there are drought and fires; here we have relentless rain that is washing the whole valley away. It is the worst I have seen it so far this year.


When it is like this I am afraid to leave the farm. If Gilboa goes there will be a darned near Biblical flood and we will not be able to get back home to the cows. At least we are high on the hill. I shudder to think what would happen to friends, neighbors, indeed whole comunities around us.


There goes the whistle again.


Update: We took Liz's four-wheel drive and tried to go to town for some groceries. However, we are pretty much isolated by flooded roads and bridges that are under water or deemed impassable by local authorities. (Water is up to the bottom of the bridge between Fonda and Fultonville) One can escape to the east and south, but there is nowhere to buy anything to the south and east is straight into Gilboa Dam flood plain territory. I just don't want to go there. The interstate is completely closed, trains aren't running and there are chunks of telephone pole in the middle of the road just down the way. Not good.


Also not good is that the sheiff went by with the airboat on a trailer with about five patrol cars flying low behind them about half an hour ago. TV is out and there is little coverage on the radio so we are pretty much cut off except for phone and Internet. We will just have to wait to find out what happened.

More rain tonight and tomorrow.

Wheep!

After the big rain yesterday we were sitting around waiting for it to be dry enough to go out and get something done, when a loud sound like a smoke detector with a low battery pierced the air. It seemed to be emanating from the front porch. It was a sort of whistled, "wheep............. wheep," in that exact tantalizing rythym that makes it so hard to figure out which smoke detector is doing the beeping.

Since there are no smoke detectors on the porch I knew it had to be a bird. A number of them have discovered that if they sing or call from that porch or the cedar trees beside it, the two story front hall amplifies them nicely when the front door is open. They sound like really loud, big, dangerous birds that way, and impress all comers.


This call was one I had heard before, although never as clearly, and had never identified. I stalked the porch with great care, tiptoeing through the entryway and out the door, but the singer was concealed in the trees. Although it continued to yell, “wheep!”, even when I was on the porch I never saw it. However, through the wonders of a Google search for “bird call wheep” I soon discovered that our smoke detector imitator is a great crested flycatcher. You can see one and hear the call here.


Now if only I could see the actual bird out there, instead of just looking up every few minutes because that, "time to change the batteries", sound is such an important and ingrained signal to my brain.

Oxygen please

You have surely heard the phrase, “under the weather’, as in, “He was feeling a bit under the weather yesterday and stayed home from school.”

Well that about describes life in the great Northeast in recent weeks (although we only wish we could stay home and make it all better). We have wavered between constant cold, clammy rain, a few blazing days of 90-degree temps and sticky, humid misery or the stuff we have right now, that is living inside a low-lying cloud of thick, scummy air reminiscent of Los Angeles at its worst, only with no sunshine.

As I sit at this computer gasping for oxygen and dreading the barn, where said already scarce oxygen is going to be shared by 54 cows and few million flies, (which adore sticky airless weather) reaching hard for weighty words that will inspire you to comment freely, all I can come up with is ARRGGGHHHHHH………..

Yeah, we are under the weather all right.

These are some of my dad's woodcarvings, although he has done many, many more.

Frieland Zander Foolish (born on April Fool's Day) and Liz. Foolish is all clipped for the show, except for her head, so she looks a little silly.

The catbird seat where he sings just outside the front door. I missed the catbird though.

More NAIS

The government of our fine nation is frantically attempting to get a national animal identification program into place, allegedly in part because we are at risk for BSE or mad cow disease. They are cramming the whole concept down our throats as if will actually change anything rather than costing farmers a lot of money for the privilege of being further inspected and regulated and getting to do a lot of pointless paper work.

Canada already has such a program up and running.

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency just released the results of their investigation into a case that surfaced there in April of this year.
(From the Cattle Network), “The investigation, conducted in line with international guidelines, identified 148 animals, including the affected animal’s herdmates and recent offspring. From this group, 22 live animals were located and all tested negative for BSE. One additional animal, which is currently pregnant, has been placed under quarantine and will be tested once it has calved. Of the remaining animals investigated, 77 had died or been slaughtered, 15 were exported to the United States and 33 were untraceable.”

They blame the age of the animals for the lack of traceability, but notice that only twenty-some animals that they did locate were found alive. 92 were long since eaten or disposed of so they couldn’t be tested. What good did the tracking system do?

Not much by my measurements. Except for 23 animals still at the farm, which were negative anyhow, it was much too late to prevent disease from entering the food chain if was ever going to. NAIS is just a feel good program for the government to point to and say, “Look what we are doing for you.”

Farmers can say, "Look what you are doing to us," instead.


[NAIS]

Dad

Master of anything you have ever attempted.

Antique dealer. Gun collector and expert on them. Master cabinetmaker. Artifact finder. Mineral collector, stone cutter and wonderful jewelry craftsman. Silversmith. Award winning wood carver and painter. Bibliophile. Book dealer. Teacher of fishing and bird watching and citizenship. Book binder. Blacksmith, the forging kind, not the horseshoeing kind. Fly tier. Historian. Gardener. And so very much more….forgive me for anything I forgot.

The man who blanched but didn’t holler when I dropped his station wagon into park while driving down Main Street in Fonda, when he told me to stop. (Well I DID stop didn't I?"

Happy Father’s Day Dad. You have always been the greatest!