Digging Herkimer Diamonds

A collage of baby brother and his handsome son mining for diamonds. Click for detail.

A vug, an opening in the limestone that they were mining, stuffed with lovely crystals on matrix.

My brother, his lovely wife and their family treated me to a mining expedition yesterday at Crystal Grove Campsite.


My usual method of digging for Herkimers is to take a garden trowel or even a spoon and scratch around in the tailings. However, they bring a pickup truck full of tools and indulge in hard rock mining. (Trust me their way is better albeit a lot harder too.) Although pickings were a little slim yesterday, they found some incredible clear crystals (not pictured, but I'll bet Lisa will have pics later) that seemed to roll right out of the ground as bright as shining ice cubes. It is a real ooh ah moment when a nice vug opens up and spills its treasure I'll tell you.



Matt dug for hours, processed probably about a dump truck load of rock, which started out as blocks about the size of an old-fashioned TV and ended up smaller than a bread box...some much smaller. I'll bet he is hurting today, but he found some nice stuff. And thanks guys for sharing such a great day with me.


We didn't find these, but the people who did kindly let me photograph them when they brought them over to show off. They are the size of a fist, but don't have the usual amazing clarity of gems from this site, as they are much cracked by winter frosts.

Sunday Stills...Controls

When this challenge called for knobs and switches and things that control non-living objects I was stumped for anything fun. Oh, we have keyboards and tractor controls and stuff...but they just didn't flip my buttons so to speak. Then this morning I remembered that this old house has knobs and switches and controls...many of which don't do anything any more...that are kind of cool...so here they are.




For more Sunday Stills...

The Cows are Going Out

To grass now. A few of them have been going out since the weather allowed, but now all but a few heifers who will be phased into the group will be outdoors every day. The pics above were taken in the pasture when we were finishing up the fence.

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....