Spring is a good time to make babies if you are a bird, an insect, mammal or herptile.....or plant, as far as that goes...you wouldn't believe the pollen.
Thus I end up feeling like a voyeur whenever I go outside. When I came in for breakfast, Mr. Fluff, the big white rooster, was cut-cut-cutting, over a pile of chicken feed, as he lured the little black hen, Michelle, in for a hot date. He looked like a Matre D, spreading his bright, white wings and bowing and sweeping before her. He also looked kind of silly, but I guess he can't help being a chicken.
There are millions of mosquito wigglers in the garden pond....evidence of an assignation I truly don't need to know about. I put the sunfish back out to take care of that situation...she will get fat and they will get gone.
The big flocks of geese are breaking up into twosomes now and making plenty of noise about it too. I was just finishing up prepping Pecan to be milked this morning when a pair flew right past the barn window behind her. They were lovely against the light of the rising sun and their calls were purely haunting.
I was even nearly an unwilling participant in some of the lusty spring activities this morning. I bent over to prep a little black Holstein named Magic and she threw her chin on my back and started to just hop right up. (It's nice to be loved, but dang.) She isn't a very big cow, but even a little bitty cow in the mood for love is more than I want to tangle with. I jumped right out of that stall in a heck of a hurry and let the boss finish prepping her. (AI service has been attended to. We bred her to a bull from the eighties, Woodbine Ellason. He throws nice big, framey daughters, so maybe if she has a calf from this service it will be a somewhat nicer-looking cow than she is.)
And yesterday morning...I was out in the barnyard just at the break of day, sending ETrain, Encore and Bayberry back up the hill after milking. The sky was bright orange, fading to clear ice blue; the air was as fresh as ice water melting off a glacier. I heard killy killy killeeeees call coming from right over my head. I looked up and there was the kestrel pair, performing their mating flight against the brilliant sky. They swooped and fluttered in huge circles and figure eights, chattering excitedly, then landed in the dead elm to actually mate. I was awed to be standing there in the swelling morning light and seeing their wonderful flight...and I am so happy to have them still nesting in the barn.
Thanks to Facebook I have made a very pleasant friend in Iceland, so I have been following this since long before it reached the main stream news here. I hope everyone in her wonderful country is safe.....
This is good news for farmers who haul crops by truck. Although it was meant to give folks tormented by hundreds of reeking garbage trucks each day some relief from that misery, the law of unintended consequences meant that this legislation would have spilled over onto farmers trucking corn, hay and produce. Even milk trucks would have been affected, as would farmers markets. Glad they didn't go ahead with it.
Liz was talking to the BF on the phone and getting ready to go out and work on the heifer pasture fence.
The boss was cleaning stables. We have two stable cleaners. He ran one and came over to the house to get a glass of milk. (I was soon very glad he didn't stay at the barn and get it out of the bulk tank.)
When he went back to work, maybe fifteen minutes after he left the barn, he had no electricity. There were rocks rolled out of the ground under the manure spreader shed.
It is a long story, which I will write up for the Farm Side, but the power was off because someone turned it off.
Right at the generator box (we have a PTO generator for use during power outages).
They needed to shut it off so they could cut the three thumb-sized, 35-foot long cables that are wired into the barn box for the generator. So as to steal them that is.....They also dug the lead cords he uses to plug the block heater on the tractor into the electric line out of the ground next to the barn...thus the rocks.
He is still wishing that he stayed in the barn to get his milk. I am still glad he didn't. He would definitely have seen the thieves, as they were right outside the milkhouse window....they would have seen him too. Maybe he could have prevented the theft...and maybe this could be a completely different story if they were organized copper thieves with more to lose than a few hundred dollars worth of cable.
The policemen who came told us that the nefarious bastards who took our cable will burn the coating off it at home and then sell the copper. (I hope they choke on the smoke.)
There has been an awful crime wave down in Amsterdam lately, and I guess we rural folks won't be escaping either. We do have some plans for dealing with such events....
****The only good part of the story....the perpetrators got stuck in a pile of cow manure and one of them had to push whatever they were driving out. BTW, if you live in the area and see a neighbor burning something nasty with something else nasty on their vehicle and shoes call the sheriff for us if you would please...thanks....
Well, chisel plowing anyhow. Alan got one field done after school last night and started another. Some wet spots but he was able to go most places. Now if it will just hold off on the raining so he can keep going.
The guinea hens are giving us fits. We got them as keets last summer, raised them in a box in the kitchen and kept them in the hen coop we built. They have had that to themselves since the laying hens went out in the new coop...well except for Mr. Fluff the white rooster anyhow.
I got the bright idea of letting one pair outdoors so they could do their whole tick control thing and learn where they live...(oh, and we may have a surprise for you sometime in the not too distant future and may need that coop for other residents.)
Thus Alan let a pair out for me the other day. For several days they were too stupid frightened to go out through the door. Then one discovered the door and went out.
Then the other.
They both promptly went down to the heifer barn and vanished, not to be seen or heard all day. So much for keeping ticks off the lawn...they never went anywhere near the lawn, just disappeared into the brush, home to foxes, coyotes, hawks, fishers, etc. etc. I cursed my own idiocy. Guinea fowl, besides being dumb and loud, are for some reason fairly valuable. Liz and I have this keet-rearing-Craigs List-selling scheme going on. I did not want to lose 2/5 of the flock first thing in the summer
They did not show their knobby little heads all day. However, at milking time they were back in the coop near their stay at home pals and Liz was quick to lock them in for the night.
I wonder where they went and whether I should shut them back up. They are not going to be much good to us if they nest down in the wilderness and are eaten by the plethora of varmints that live there.
My old flock, back in the day, stayed by the house and laid eggs (hundreds of them) right on the lawn. They hatched clutches, often of over thirty keets a piece, and proceeded to leave all but one behind each and every time. (Guinea fowl can't count and one chick is a good as a dozen to them.) However, we ran around every time a brood hatched, snatching up babies for indoor incubation. At one point I had at least 75 of the noisy, dramatic, wild and crazy critters.
I hope this bunch figures out where they live and soon.....before they join the menu.
It was just one of those things I was afraid to try, because I figured it might be nasty. Then we were given some of this brand by a family friend.
Even then I hesitated until Alan did the "He Likes it. Hey Mikey," thing, did like it a lot and said so...and ate two dishes in a row to prove it.
So I tried it too. And I am here to tell you, one bowlful and you will never again be satisfied by the thin, tasteless, watery, stuff they sell under the brand of a certain French dairy foods company, which I will not name, but it rhymes with cannon. My favorite Fage yogurt is the kind with thick, dark, smokey honey on the side. I love honey anyhow, but the combination of smooth, tart dairy with strong, sweet honey is just about unbeatable. It has become one of my favorite lunches.
****And no, they didn't pay me for this....they never even heard of me. I just didn't want you to miss this great stuff, which is produced just a few miles from here, up by my folks' house. Eating well while eating local just works for me.
e All the hands around here are so busy this time of year. So many jobs that must be done. So little time to do them. We have to remind ourselves to take a minute and stop...to pet the dog, enjoy the beauty, care for each other.....but those are the things that really matter. Have a great Sunday one and all and for more Sunday Stills....
If you Google videos for "mowing hay" this is the top entry that you find. It has been viewed over 6400 times.
Alan was mowing hay in our thirty-acre lot last June. He took the big camera up and took a video of himself. So much green, green alfalfa, green trees, green tractor. I thought it was pretty cool.
And I took a couple of pictures of the morning. Today the normal rainy chill of April is back, but we sure liked summer while it lasted. I tried to tell folks not to take the windows out of the barn last night, even though it was a bit hot in there...they are going to be plumb chilly this morning I'm afraid....
This is the time of year for firsts. Yesterday was no exception.
First herps. Other folks have seen snakes and frogs and all sorts of cool stuff, but here at Northview we were coming up empty in the reptile and amphibian department until yesterday when I was spring cleaning outside the milkhouse. I reached down to pick up some leftover trash and spotted two little orange things wiggling among the crushed stone. At first I thought they were earthworms, but in fact they were red-backed salamanders. Plethodon cinereus is a big favorite of mine. I picked them up to show the girls, then returned them to whatever they were doing when I found them. (I'll bet I can guess.)
The day was full of cleaning and feeding and sweeping and being really ticked off about some BS with our water bill which is turning my hair grey and my temper black. Late in the afternoon I swore one of the guinea fowl had escaped and was down on the long lawn tuning up its unearthly cackle. I had just sat down and did NOT want to get up and go chase it.....However, the "guinea hen" soon turned into a sea gull and then to a cardinal/robin/song sparrow on steroids, and I realized that the mockingbird had just added a new sound to his repertoire.
Then late in the evening, just past first dark, I stood out in the driveway trying to hear the woodcock. I think he was still out there. I think I heard his whistling wing twitter over the din from the Thruway, but I could not be sure.It was really noisy last night with trucks and trains and tons of traffic. However, there was no doubt that the small dark thing that fluttered past my head and went whirling around the back lawn was the first flitter mausof the season.
With all the frantic spring clean up and the moving of young stock into new pens...each group as the individuals grow larger "graduates" to bigger spaces...we are busy all the time. We need to keep moving right along because if it ever dries out field work will start and then it will really get crazy.
Friday we moved the group that my 3-breed critter, Scotty, is in over to the heifer barn (she is a yearling now). Then we put some youngsters that had been inside the cow barn out in their old pen.
Yesterday, when the boss and I went into the heifer barn to water Scotty's bunch, Betty and Battlemint, a Citation R Maple daughter Alan gave me and a half shorty..hmmm he gave her to me too...were loose in the big, wide flat manger having the time of their lives. They had wormed their way through the feed through and were quite happy with the situation.
Alas they can't stay there where we store their hay, so we filled the water tub, and while we were waiting, fixed the wide place in the feed through where they had escaped.
Enter Kashette, Becky's yellow barn cat (named after a dragon and quite fittingly. she thinks she owns the world). She trotted into the barn and up the manger as if she owned that too.
Betty was quick to dispute that notion. If you have heifers you have probably seen them chase cats (and chickens..and dogs....) However, if you haven't let me tell you it is quite a sight. Hooves thundering on the hollow sounding concrete. Tails in the air. Noses down snorting hot breath on the victim's fanny. It is quite exciting. Battlemint joined the fun and all the big heifers in the other pen galloped along side cheering them on.
Poor Kash flew down the manger and out under the gate at the end. She must have kept right on going and exited by a window in the back of the barn, because when I went outside she was sitting there grooming her coat as if nothing had happened at all.....nothing to see here...move along...she seemed to be saying, but I knew better and so did she.
At daybreak a perfect half moon looks as if somebody chopped it off like a slice of silver cheese....A blazing sunrise, colors changing like a cinema, now peach, now tangerine, then cotton candy, clean bright white on to the blinding blue of noonday.
At sunset, pink sheep clouds nibbling their way across the heifer hill horizon, shepherded along towards evening by the tugging of the breeze. It snaps the laundry on the line and ruffles the border collie's fur as it passes. It is the kindest wind of the year, refreshing, sweet, and softly scented, with green earth and cow and clean, smooth water on its breath.
In between the day's bright ends, cleaning pens and moving heifers, fixing and filling and planning the planting. Heifers on Saturday, heifers on Monday. Salesmen and electric fences, shovels, wheelbarrows full of baleage (when is somebody going to straighten that bent axle and find some grease I want to know?) skirling skid steer, singing songbirds, snarling river, snaking brown Schoharie...it is spring in the valley, sit up and take notice.
I was on the telephone with one of the world's best brothers yesterday, our weekly Sunday catching up session, when I saw them for the first time and heard them killeee, killeee, killeee-ing as they fluttered over the yard. They were still there at just about dusk last night when Alan and I were out lugging in the last feeding of baleage. They made my day.
A pair of sparrow hawks...kestrels...the smallest American falcons. When the boss and I were younger, a lot younger, a pair nested each year between the roof boards in the heifer barn. They have always been among my favorite hawks and their presence nearby all summer long was always a delight.
Then West Nile virus wiped out most of the area hawk population (not to mention crows, jays and chickadees, the heifer barn hawk family included, and we never saw them down here by the house again.
Slowly, at least the population up in the fields returned to some semblance of normalcy. There were once again fluttering crosses of bird, hovering over the farm machinery waiting for large insects to be disturbed as the driver worked the land and gathered crops. (If you are a bird watcher a tractor seat is a wonderful place to be. The wild things are quick to take advantage of stirred up insects, mice and voles, or turned up earthworms and seem to be drawn in as if by a giant net when the engine starts. We have been delighted by ring-billed and herring gulls, foxes and coyote pups, swallows and swifts, juvenile red-tailed hawks, so new to the game that they had to walk around the field clutching at prey, and of course sparrow hawks, which take advantage of our actions by catching and stashing dozens of critters in nearby trees for future snacking.)
Thus yesterday I was overjoyed to see a single kestrel winging around the heifer yard peeking between the roof boards, checking out the old nesting site. When he was joined by a second my heart was thrilled. When I looked up late in the evening to hear that familiar call, my Easter was complete.
I have this love affair with lovage. My mom gave me a chunk from her plant several years ago and at first my reaction was mostly dismay. You know...the whole six feet tall and growing like kudzu thing. It smelled so strongly of celery that I was afraid to use it.
Last year I overcame my trepidation and slowly began to use leaves in soups, stews, spaghetti sauce etc. Then we all started cooking meat with it. Soon it became a staple, with dinner seeming downright bare without it. Last summer I froze some (wash it and throw it in a freezer bag) dried some in the oven, dried some on paper towels, left some on the counter to wither until I got around to using it, and we cooked with it all winter.
The last two jars are just about empty. Maybe two or three good tablespoons left. I was beginning to worry about running out and have been skimping the past couple of weeks. Then today I went out to shoot my Sunday Stills Easter pic and look what I found! If I was the type I would do a happy dance.
And on a totally different topic...how would you react, say you were pretty darned conservative and wrote a farm column for your local paper, and included in the text of your column, right at the end, not separated in any way from your paragraph (in a story about goats btw) the powers that be placed a public service announcement for the area Democratic Committee? I am sorta kinda dumbfounded.
Some of these are worth a click to see more detail...
Although there were a lot of thistles and I don't think I have ever seen it as wet as it is now. Liz did most of the thistle stomping, while I carried the hammer (in my handy dandy hammer loop, something which I usually cut off of jeans because of the danger from power take offs. However I don't use them any more, PTO's that is, being an old broad, and the hammer loop was sure handy). We got the field behind the barn up in single strand electric in just a couple of hours. Amazing that the snow and odocoileus didn't take it down worse than it did. usually heavy snow and rampaging deer are rough on fences every winter. This year in places the fence was up for several sections in a row and all the insulators were lying around in plain sight. It was GOOD to get outdoors.
Wish you could smell the maple trees in bloom. You don't smell much of anything outdoors in the winter, as many of us who work out there notice when things warm up and you can again. Yesterday as Liz and I came down after getting the electric fence up, wave after wave of it wafted over us. It was sweet as hot sugar and in fact smells a lot like hot sugar. It was wonderful for me...not so much Liz who is allergic to maple blossoms. (For some reason she won't let me plant any maple trees down by the house.) I have read that it was a poor season for the maple folks, with a short and spotty run.
Joated posted this video arrangement of the weather maps of the last 22 Hell Storms that have nailed the northeast. Wow! I had actually noticed that they looked a lot alike on the weather map but it is something to see them slashing up from Florida or over from the left coast one after another.
Sorry about that stuff yesterday. Things looked awful, scary and bad. We dodged that bullet, thanks to a hard working professional in town. A worry that has been hanging over me since last summer like a big, black blanket, hangs no more...or at least much less. And the grass is almost green. The sun came out yesterday after all that Godawful rain.
To make it up to you for me being such a party pooper yesterday, here are some fun things to do and cool folks to visit. Please pay them a call to get your grins on.
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