This is what happens....

when you try to take pictures of the guppies through the glass of the aquarium.

Tis the season

For all that winter is hurtling towards us like a frozen rocket (and yes I know that autumn doesn't officially start until tomorrow, but, trust me, winter is nipping at its heels like like a coyote on a white tail) this is a fabulous season. The air is so crisp and invigorating that it fair makes your skin tingle. When I have occasion to go outside to hang up laundry or fill the stove with wood, I don't want to come back inside. I think we are filled with the same instincts that set the Canada geese winging down the great flyways and the woodchucks and squirrels fattening up on alfalfa and corn. There is a constant, intense, urge to get something, anything at all, done and done right now. It is surely a restless time of year.

Every Friday it has become my task to drive Becky over to college and wait while she has three classes. You might think that three hours spent sitting in a car might come under the heading of cruel and unusual punishement, but it is nice in fact. I get to read all the papers in peace, and maybe a good book too, and the campus is tranquil and lovely. The girls both attend SUNY Cobleskill, an ag and tech school, which has liberal arts degree programs as well. It also has a renouned horticulture program, with much of the campus landscaped by students. Young maples are just now turning bronze and gold, flowers that are unfamiliar to me flourish in dozens of beds, and wonderful birds rustle in the shrubs.

In fact a small sparrow comes every week to torment me, hopping briskly back and forth along the curb under the front bumper. He is in constant motion and a frustrating puzzle. It is as if he were saying, "Nyah, nyah, bet you can't guess what I am."

He is right, I can't. Is he a chipping sparrow in fall plumage, or perhaps a juvenile? Probably not, although he has a dark russet cap reminiscent of a chipper's summer garb. Savannah sparrow? The notched tail and markings almost fit, but not quite. Something else altogether perhaps? I just don't know. He is always ruffled up as if recently injured and has a few upturned wing feathers that suggest the same. I even took the binoculars along this week to try to get a good look, but he is always on the move. It is really bugging me.

If we ever retire and can afford it, I would like to go to school at SUNY Cobleskill and study some of the horticulture and maybe fisheries and wildlife programs. They are just so darned interesting.

Fall

A coolish wind whistled through the goldenrod today. What heat comes upstairs from letting the hot water from the wood furnace circulate through the oil furnace plenum felt darned good. Everything is getting ready for the cold. Monarch butterflies like floating stained glass windows, teeter and tip on every breeze. There are a couple of early maples blazing like torches across the valley. I found the big wooly bear on the drive next to the compost bin. (Longest one I ever saw.) I don't think fall is going to wait for its official start this weekend. First frost won't be far behind so I am dragging house plants in a couple at a time.

The other night Alan saw quite a sight. A female coyote lay right in the middle of the farm road, in the second field behind the barn, nursing four pups. She barely bothered to get out of the way of the tractor, although her whelps hustled off into the corn. Wonder if she is rabid or sick with some other thing. Not normal to stay right there with a human around.

Another strange visitor is a bat, probably a little brown, that sleeps right downstairs in the barn, beside the vaccuum tank for the milk pump. What a weird spot to choose to sleep, as he (or she) is barely above head level, right out in the bright light, in the noisiest spot in the barn. It was so low tonight, clinging to the outside of a metal sheathed powerline, that if I had the camera with me, I could have made quite a close up. Of course it was over at the house. Naturally.

Wooly bear caterpillar

Question of the day. What does this guy's color pattern have to tell us about the weather we can look forward to here in the Northeast this winter? I am sure I don't know. Any ideas?
(If you can't see him well enough to tell, he was about the longest wooly bear I have ever seen with an exceptionally wide orange middle.)

Strange days

Sundae on the Farm 2006

Alan and I took a few pictures yesterday during the time when he wasn't carrying ice cream and I wasn't playing tour guide. As you can see a good time was had by all.

Another hazy morning

This picture of the water garden was taken a few weeks ago, but it still looks much the same. Hoping for some sunshine later for Sundae on the Farm.

19,000

Thank you to my 19,000th visitor, from Syracuse NY, referred by NYCO's blog at 8:06 PM today!

Horse auction

The boss dragged me across the river to a horse auction yesterday. I won't lie and say it wasn't fun, although I really didn't want to go. (Just lazy I guess). We came within about 25 bucks of bringing home a horse. (Whew, close one there.)

Anyhow, what an assortment of horses we saw. The migration of the Amish to the area brought a huge offering of draft horses of all ages and descriptions and there were a few local light horses and ponies too.

It was exciting. While we were standing behind the auctioneers' stand watching a pair of Halflingers being paraded at a high trot, I looked over at a commotion a few feet away and found myself staring right at a horse's belly button. Argghhh!!! A tall, flaxy chestnut mare was sunfishing right there among all the auction goers and horses waiting to be sold. Only the fact that a couple of big Amish boys were on her halter kept her from throwing herself right over backwards. We decided to go over by the grandstand until they got her through the ring. She was a hot one and I don't envy whoever has her in their stable today.

Just after she sold an Amish fellow brought in a little yellow colt. I was pretty sure it was a Halflinger, but it didn't have the refinement about the head you see in the hotblooded ones around here. It looked more like a miniature Belgian with a puffy little curly tail and thick, furry blonde ears. I liked it. It was very correct and seemed very quiet (could have been drugged of course.)

We watched a few more sell hoping to see what that one brought and then left. We were over in Fonda getting laundry detergent when the boss said, "I want to buy that colt."

O....ka-a-a-y.....we are about as broke as we could possibly be, milk prices are what they were in 1970, fuel prices aren't, and we already have two horses nobody does anything with. Still, the man works like a dog...two dogs maybe, and today is his 58th brithday. (Happy birthday, Ralph,we love you). So, I said, go get him, no more than four hundred bucks.

We rushed back to the sale where I sat in the car with a good Andrew Greeley book while he went in to see what he could do. He bid up to $250 on the little guy, then decided that was enough. A dealer took him home for $275.

Can't say I was really sorry. We knew nothing about the colt except that he was cute and had no real use for him. Still he was cute...... really, really cute. He had excellent feet and legs and was put together just right.


Horse prices ranged from ten dollars for a skeletal old thing that someone is hoping to rehabilitate, to near four thousand each for a pair of locally grown Paint showhorses. They must have sold a hundred head, and were still selling long after we left. You could hear the aucioneer's chant from here when the wind was right.

Finding my folks

When I first saw the picture below and a number of others that were given to my mom along with it, all was explained. I have always felt like a changeling child, dumped into my more conventional family from some weird place where girls like to wear boots and jeans and run around in the woods doing guy things. Heck, I have spent most of my five decades trying to outdo guys at what they do. I only got smart and let them take up the heavy lifting…and tractor driving, cow wrangling, ladder climbing, huntin’, fishin’ (wait a minute, I still fish and milk cows) and all that stuff a couple years ago. I haven’t owned a dress in over thirty years. (They damn well better bury me in blue jeans.)

Both my grandmas were lady-like. My mom went along with my dad whether he was digging rare minerals in the wilds of Canada or wearing the kilt and representing the clan at the games or carving or painting, lugging books into shows, or doing hands on archeology, but she was always a girly girl.
Not the kind of kid like I was, that brought in a dinner plate sized toad and dumped it in her lap when I was supposed to be on a date with that cute blond guy. Or had my big milk snake get loose at my graduation party and scare all the Lachmayer great aunts half to death. Or was the best, most un-tackle-able football player in our gang. Or played guitar in our garage band that graduated into a bar band that rocked any number of wild places, even one biker bar....where we played Born to be Wild for about three hours straight because we felt safer doing so. (After all some of our audience was out in the parking lot throwing some of their buddies off the roof onto parked cars...all in good fun, of course.)

I felt like a freak.

Until I saw the pictures. There were my great grandma, Carrie Montgomery, whom I never met, and a whole passel of great aunts, wearing rubber boots and men’s knickerbockers or baggy old men’s pants, camping along the beautiful Canesteo River. They held up massive bass they had hooked; they cooked rough in the woods. They rode in wonderful wooden boats and set up this delightfully inviting camp. (Don't be fooled by the dresses in the cooking picture. Others that are not posted show them dressed like female hunting guides and darned proud of it.)

When I saw the camp I wanted to just walk right into the picture. It said home like my own living room does.

Take a look at my mom’s blog, Tryon Books and More, and see my late great aunt Fanny. (That is her with the bass in the bottom picture. She is the one wearing knickers and close-cropped hair.) Fanny had a collie dog too!

How I wish I had known all my Grandpa Montgomery’s sisters-in-law and his mamma.

They were my kind of women. Or maybe I am theirs.

Comments

If you are a Blogger user stymied by the failure of Blogger Beta to allow you to comment, you can do so by signing in as "other". A pain in the neck I know, but I do love to hear from you.

Thanks
*sticky post, scroll down for new ones*

There is a story behind this picture

*Thanks to my wonderful mom for allowing me to use it. Story to follow, later when it isn't time to go to work. While you are waiting look closely, and think about just walking right into the picture......

The running of the wools

Yeah, yeah, I know, in Spain it's the running of the bulls, but we do things differently here at Northview Dairy.

See, I used to keep a half dozen or so of assorted sheep to introduce border collie puppies to the wonders of herding. Sheep stay together better than cows, don't kick as hard and are much easier to herd. However, Nick, our youngest, is seven now, so there has been no need for sheep for years. Still, there are two elderly hangers on around the place, Freckles and BS, her ancient dam. (And, yes, BS stands for just what you think it does.)

They are rarely any bother at all and we are quite fond of them. They live, by choice in the cow barn yard and the tool shed. They could duck under the fences and go wherever they wish, but they seem to like their chosen domain. However, there is one cardinal rule on a dairy farm. No sheep (or pigs, or horses, or chickens) in the cow barn. It is not only sensible practice, it is the law, enforced by the dreaded milk inspector.

This morning those naughty old ladies, who heretofore seemed to know better, strutted right into the stable behind the cows, ran up into the manger and began to fight the cows for their food. It was plumb ugly.

The boss was NOT happy. Beck and I quickly haltered them and led them across the bridge to the heifer yard and locked the gate. (I am grateful that they are halter broken, as dragging a reluctant sheep is nearly impossible.)


They were so miserable. You have not seen forlorn until you have viewed an elderly sheep deprived of its chosen hunting ground. They paced back and forth and blatted sadly with drooping ears. However, sheep have been sent to the auction for getting in the habit of coming in the cow barn. (There are any number of other buildings where their presence is acceptable.) We let them stew all day until we were done putting cows in for night milking. Beck went over and opened the gate.

Then it happened, the running of the wools. It is a good thing Beck was quick to get out of the way. Those two old ewes raced across the bridge and up the hill to the yard in front of the tool shed. There they fluffed their wooly coats and settled down to chew their cuds as if they had been there all along. I wonder if they will try to come in the barn tomorrow.

Still another sunrise

Carl DiFranco Tribute

Since September 11, 2001, when one of the planes that flew into the World Trade Center turned south just east of here over Amsterdam, it is hard not to notice the rattle of the kitchen windows when a jet passes by. I still stop to listen every single time I hear a plane. In the first days after the attacks it was estimated that more than five thousand people died in the assault. As bodies were counted and some of the missing found, authorities finally decided that only 2996 people actually died.

Only.

As if any single one of the souls who were lost that day, heroes and homebodies, doctors and stockbrokers, firemen, policemen, cooks and secretaries, could be encompassed by a word like only.

They were not only.

They were not some incomprehensible count of the dead and missing.

They were our friends and neighbors. People loved them. People wake still wake up today missing them and mourning them and go to bed each night bereft because they are gone.

One of those 2996 friends, neighbors and loved ones was 27 year-old Carl DiFranco.


This is to honor Carl on the fifth anniversary of the nightmare that took him from his loved ones. Raised in Huguenot, NY and a lifelong resident, Carl was assistant vice president of Marsh & McLennan Cos. Inc., located in the World Trade Center. He graduated from Monsignor Farrell High School and cum laude from St. Johns University. He liked to bowl, play tennis and jog. Married a short time before the attacks he was widowed within months, when heart problems while awaiting a transplant took his longtime sweetheart, Loren Bosso.

Carl must have been a wonderful person. He supported his sister through the birth of his niece, then helped through the difficult weeks that followed. The day he died his mother’s car had a flat tire, so like the decent son he was, he offered her the use of his truck. This made him a little later than usual, but not late enough to be saved. He also took his mother on “dates” and surprise trips. He pitched in willingly to help her with projects around the house and yard. In a New York Times article she said, “I keep thinking I hear him coming in the door, that I'll have a chance to help him get through it," (referring to the loss of his beloved wife.)

From what I read in many tributes from people who knew him, his kindness and caring for his mom reflected the way he always was. Friends remember him as someone who was brave and confident, kind, generous and quick with a joke. There are many poignant references to him by the people who knew him to be found all over the Internet. They make hard reading, but they put a face on what our nation lost that terrible day.

I hope this small tribute will help to remind us of Carl and the many other special people who were taken from us on September 11. I will try to think of him and the good life he lived when I hear planes overhead, instead of reflecting on the terror of those days.

***I would like to thank everyone whose written tributes at the time of the tragedy provided me with a glimpse into Carl’s life. I couldn’t know him, but I admire him just the same.
***The picture appears many places on the Internet, so I don’t know to whom to attribute it.
***I will cross post this to my other blogs in hopes that it will reach just a little further.

Foggy morning

*Cows crowding up to the barn door*

*Take the E-Train*

E-Train is a Golden-Oaks Andy calf, born last May out of my Citation R Maple daughter, England. I kept her up to show, but she didn't grow up either very big or very stunningly beautiful. She is a sweetie just the same. She runs with the milk cows and doesn't bother so she gets to stay down from the heifer pasture on the hill.

Bucky caught

I am sure anyone with in half a mile of a TV knows that Ralph "Bucky" Phillips was caught yesterday evening. I am pretty darned glad. Even though we are a goodly number of miles east of most of his hang outs, the guy stole cars like elephants eat peanuts. For five months he pretty much went wherever he wanted to, thanks to the shameless idiots who helped him hide.

I think we will keep up our new habit of locking the house while we milk anyhow. After the theft of our telephone pole a couple months ago, we obviously can't be in two places at once. Can't rely on the dogs for everything.

Apple Season

*Honeycrisps*

Just brought home a half bushel of the first apples of the year. We eat a lot of apples when they are in season...probably a couple of bushels or so. I usually like the later varieties best, but there are a couple of early kinds that are good too.

The very sweet man who owns the orchard around the corner from us lost his wife a few weeks ago and it was a sort of sad trip. First time we have seen him since that tragic event. I wish I was better at knowing what to say.

I think we will make some jelly with the Honeycrisps we bought and maybe take him up a jar.

Looking out my front door