Drinking from the Wild Grape

Alan cut this big wild grape vine off the fence the other day...an amazing amount of liquid pours out of it.



Here he is enjoying a drink from a freshly cut one. He says it is the sweetest, clearest water you can find.....I cannot attest to that, as I didn't try it.


Here is a short video of the kid calling turkeys yesterday.

Fascination with Fencing

The woods in the heifer pasture

Trout Lily

Baby Cottonwood

Wild Violets...there was an incredible patch you could see from so far away.

Honey Locust

The boss, Alan and I finished the heifer pasture fence yesterday. Besides cutting a lot of wild rose bushes and looking for a short that we never found, there was much to see.

The Moon on One Coast

Sun on the other

Of our little hidden country

Moon dragging cloudwebs
white potato chip on the barn roof,

Sun waving ribbons bright as Saturn
weaving up the hedgerow

A present just for me.

River grinning through the cottonwoods,
toothy white smile peeking out
from under the Adirondacks, lying about how glad it is to see you

With oblivion on its breath
Treacherous shining snaking water, deadly under all the pretty.

Mountains rolling halfway south
fences, fields and polished cows

Like marble statues
standing in the moony sunlight

Secret deer and wild bird songs.

Waiting out there
for men on tractors and fencing families

Work first...play later...

This Morning's Post

Rudely interrupted by the diesel guy who wants the gates open and the cows out of his way...or else we must move the tank down below the barn where just anybody can pull up and take what they want and the men must drive through three gates to fuel the tractors.

I am thinking that maybe it is time to do some fuel shopping and perhaps change companies...... to someone who actually wants our business......hmmmm.......where was that phone book?

Thursday with Turkey Video

Stormy cold weather made the last few fields too soggy to work until they dry up a bit. They are wet ones anyhow and the added rain will make them traps for unwary tractor operators. Our place is partly made up of fine slate soil, black as coal and rich and crumbly...one of the best soil types in the state. The rest is mostly clay...not the worst kind of clay by any means, but too boggy to work when it is even damp, let alone this wet. The good Lord willing, it will dry out a little bit soon. It has been so cold the men have been hesitant to start planting. Now, maybe with the full moon behind us the weather will moderate a bit.

My dear brother brought me down some wild raspberry and blackberry bushes (wish they grew the electronic kind rather than the prickly type) that he found on Craig's List. Got to get them planted, plus potting up some errant herbs for the library plant sale. I hate to waste the volunteers and I am delighted that the library will be able to profit from them rather than me just tossing them in the compost bin. So far I have some hyssop, spearmint, garlic chives and lots of perennial top onions. I am hoping it is warm enough today that digging won't be a misery, like most everything else has been during our mini winter. Believe it or not, I had to drag the long johns back out yet again!

And here is the eagerly awaited turkey video with the profanity replaced by Jason Aldean's Hick Town....most appropriate I think. (I wanted to use the Roosters' Kill the Mullet, but alas, Becky couldn't get it to work. It is kind of jerky and has been shortened maybe more than it should be but....

Wordless Wednesday

Now I will update you on....the rest of the story...The figure above is not a real person. It is instead what happens when you leave your dirty clothes all over the floor and your next older sister (Becky) gets creative and makes a "new you" so to speak. The guy in Alan's sleeping bag is an Alan doppelganger constructed..... in its entirety...... of stuff he left lying around.
Sorry for any confusion this might have caused.

Rain has Arrived

And it is cold. However, before it arrived yesterday, Alan got over twenty acres with the disks and the boss got half the field under the power lines done. It is still pretty wet, but they have to go if they can. Freeze warning for tomorrow night and everything is in riotous bloom. The pear blossoms are fulling open, the apples just beginning. I hope it doesn't get TOO cold.

Turkey Day

Photo by Alan, taken through the living room window

A new hen turkey has taken up residence here by the house. Last year's neighborly bird was taken out by a coyote or fox.....we missed her. Alan also took a terrific video which I will post when we figure out how to get rid of the audio of somewhat profane exclamations of amazement at her nearness (thanks, Boss).

Monday

They are talking rain....no monsoons please. We could use just about five drops to get the hay growing...

All day Saturday helicopters flew over and hovered nearby. I was home alone with Beck as everyone else was at the auction. I thought it was early for pot hunts, but maybe that was what it was....or they were trapping speeders on the Thruway. I wondered at the pontoons on one of them.
The truth was much sadder. A poor man lost his life in the river.

That darned river is more like an industrial-strength-type river than something friendly and comforting. I have fished from shore a few times, but it is just too strong and scary for me. If you throw a lure in it races away down stream like it was towed by a barge. I have nightmares about it....I really do, several times a year......It is beautiful too though, like a shining mirror glowing up through the new leaves on the cottonwoods, early in the morning when I look out from the office. I don't much like to get close to it though......and I am so sorry for the family and friends of the poor man.

Sunday Stills...Barns

Looking down the scary stairs in the hop house that I had to go up for some pics

Click to enlarge

I had fun with this one. No shortage of material around here and with the boss and most of the crew gone to the auction for the day I needed to go out and keep an eye on our domain anyhow.

For more Sunday Stills....

The Auctioneer

The boss got a call the other day asking him to help with auctioneer duties over at the Sprout Brook machinery auction. They must have figured he would be willing because when he went over yesterday they had a company shirt with his name on it all ready for him. Here he is in front of his tractor display case in all his finery. (Note the nifty hair cut provided by yours truly. I HATE cutting hair but I do it when I gotta.)

Wild Hearts

Pepto Bismol Pink Pigs

Even my sleep is haunted by wooden lawn art.

And other painful painting projects....actually I am beginning to have a bit of fun with the lawn animals as I do more of them....can't wait to be done and go play outdoors though. There are two more pigs, a cow, which is about half done...all these bunnies to finish and a few duckies to round out the zoo.




And a couple of gratuitous guinea fowl. These fool birds are terrified of me even though they see me dozens of times a day. I put a short video of them trying to hide as I stood in the hen house door up over on The View

Every Day is Earth Day

If you live on a farm. Today, morning milking and chores are done. Cows are filling up on baled hay before some of them go to pasture. We are introducing them to the lush new grass a few at a time to avoid the fighting that usually takes place. When they go out for the summer, some of them take it upon themselves to settle old grievances and fight like crazy. They can really hurt each other. The "fresh", that is recently calved and heavily milking cows, just want to go out and eat. The dry cows and those that aren't working so hard would rather raise heck. If there is any sound I hate it is the scrambling and scraping of hooves on the concrete in the barnyard as somebody matches up heads with somebody else while they see who will get tossed on the ground and beaten up. Thus the dries will be the last ones to go outside for the summer.




Today the boss will probably plow way up in back. Then the men will disk and drag the ground and pick the stone and later plant. We are not growing corn this summer because it has become insanely expensive to do so. Going to go with sorghum instead. Much, much cheaper and needs a lot less commercial fertilizer. We are hearing talk of lower fertilizer prices this year and so far it has been dry-ish (our corn has been wiped out by excess rain two years running and fertilizer prices have been obscene) so maybe we will regret giving up corn. However, I am sick to death of paying through every body orifice to plant it, getting a paltry harvest, and then ending up buying feed anyhow. Might as well save the dollars we pour into the dirt and grow something cheaper...if we don't get a good crop at least we aren't out all that money.




Been planting garden...a little bit every day. The weather has been really nice and it is tempting to go all out and just put it in. However, the last two years our last frost date was Memorial Day weekend one year and the TENTH OFJUNE (!!!!) the next. I am just not that much of a gambler.

Anyhow, here at Northview every day is all about the earth. Feeding it, nurturing it, gathering its harvests for ourselves and our fellow humans. We may not have any ceremonies to celebrate it, but we are just as much a part of Earth Day as any urban environmental activist who goes to a rally in the park today and then forgets about it for the rest of the year.

I Have Avoided This Story

Because I strongly support local 4-H and don't want to damage their image. (That is the only thing keeping this topic out of the Farm Side. Local 4-H leadership isn't responsible for this nonsense and local kids shouldn't have to suffer for someone else's idiocy)......However, I think it is time that I mention it at least here where fewer local people read each day. Here is Congressman Steve King on HSUS being invited to speak at the national 4-H convention this year.

"To invite an organization committed to the eradication of animal agriculture to its national conference is at best a mistake by 4-H and at worst a troubling concession to anti-meat liberals working for the Obama administration at the U.S. Department of Agriculture. There is no excuse for 4-H allowing an organization actively working against a staple component of 4-H programs and our diets to present at its national conference."

Everyone in our family is a former 4-H member, including the boss and me. When the kids were young we had a small dairy club of which I was co-leader. It was one of the most active in the county at that time. We sold hundreds and hundreds of boxes of cookies, attended Cooperstown Junior Show and Fonda Fair as a club, and won herdsmanship more than once. The kids all judged dairy cows and participated in Dairy Quiz Bowl as well...I served as the novice QB coach for a number of years.

Although I have been keeping my mouth shut and my keyboard quiet ab, I was outraged right from the start that national leadership offered a forum to such a blatantly anti-agriculture organization as HSUS. I hope they rethink the idea and never repeat the offense. The Congressman seems to agree.

"Now would be a good time for the young leaders of 4-H to present and pass a resolution through national 4-H that formally refuses to grant a forum to organizations that are anathema to the grand traditions of 4-H. National 4-H needs to fully understand the consequences of partnering with an organization committed to ending the American livestock industry."

Wordless Wednesday

Sometimes it is Exciting

To be a writer. Even a low-paid or not paid at all writer. With the power of the Internet and the clicking of the keyboard, anyone can make a difference...a real difference. I won't go into detail, because some of the things I do and the people I talk to....they are not bad or anything..but they hold highly controversial points of view. Not all journalists are created equal and there are people who get to say things that I wouldn't dare even mention. However, I can tell certain folks things that I find out in all my reading and researching...and they can give them the public attention they deserve.

I love it... when I see something making the news on Facebook or some place like that and just know....

The Song of Early

Border collie yawning that gap-jawed, noisy, whiny thing they do when they are all excited and eager and justcan'twait to go out doors. Hips swinging with pendulum of tail, ears drawn back in glee.

Border collie gleaming black-and-white against glowing electric greengreengreen grass. Border collie blowing a song sparrow off a swaying leftover dead weed stalk and up into the apple tree among the baby buds. It flies back down, he flies back through and sends it skying up again.

Breakfast Breakfast Breakfast time for doggies.

Grass jumping up tangle-foot tall, almost ready for cows to graze...today maybe? (Please let it be today...)

Dawn chorus. Last week a thin selection of early robins. Today almost a din. The little alarm clock bird is trilling its low key murmur.....softly...softly....day break whistle. (someday I will give it a true name...all I know is that it sounds exactly like Liz's alarm clock and fools me into morning every day)

White-throated sparrows conjuring up old Sam Peabody from every rose tangle and honeysuckle clump. Song sparrows seeking over the freshly turned earth of the gardens. Freshly turned garden...ain't THAT a fine thing!

Liz's boyfriend, who is pretty darned high on my list right now, brought down his grandpa's big ol' Troy Built yesterday, and spent all the middle of the day turning my bony weed patches into delightful swatches of smooth, crumbling, rich and ready to plant, dark black earth..... just begging for seeds. It is still too cold for tender hearted stuff, but radishes, peas and their ilk will be planted apace.

Yesterday the boss fixed the broken water pipe over #171 (who got an early vacation in the pasture, which she celebrated with much kicking up of heels and skirmishing with the handful of others who are out already) and the broken stable cleaner shaft, and brought home corn meal and soy meal and barn calcite to keep the barn floor from being slippery (in the house everyone spreads sand from their shoes, whether I like it or not...the floor is rarely clean, but it is never slippery).

Today the decks are clear. I should write, but I want to go out...fences, gardens, dirt or woodstove. I don't care what the job is....

If it is out...then I am in!

Baseball Hall of Fame

A dear family member took Alan yesterday and Alan took some pictures... Here is my all time favorite baseball player, former Mets catcher, Gary Carter

And here is a Lou Gehrig signed baseball

Sunday Stills...Potluck- Sassafras

Forsythias along the trail among the trees

Part of the college beef herd

One of the college ponds

It took a while...a couple months in fact, but I sold my sheep clipper set on Craig's List to a very nice lady, whom we met yesterday in a parking lot in town. Alas we have no more sheep, so I had no more need of them.

Then Alan took me grocery shopping. On the way home we made a side trip we have been wanting to do for a long time to the arboretum and ski lodge at SUNY Cobleskill (which the powers that be, in their infinite wisdom recently closed because of budget cuts. Great asset-short sighted administrators).

He wanted me to know what sassafras smells like. Rumor is that the crushed twig smells like Fruit Loops. However, the article says rootbeer, but I say, just nice...tangy...woodsy, outdoorsy. We brought my twig home, dusted it with rooting hormone and stuck it in a pot. Maybe I will have a sassafras tree in while.The pics are him running up the hill to get the twig and running back down in the rain and cold and miserable that has marked our weather this weekend.

Meanwhile I had a lot of fun and got some rain-darkened photos of the coolest college around. Where else can you find canoes and trout and rare trees and cows and sheep and horses and...and...and greenhouses and streams and so much stuff I want to go back to college just to play with it all?

For more Sunday Stills.....