Running in Place

Amish horse looks a little short of groceries

Good weather. You gotta grab it. So the men are running in all directions at once trying to make up for our mostly lost summer. Building fences, mowing and chopping, cleaning pens, welding, patching tires that keep getting cut because the rushing water exposed sharp slate ledges and so on. Yowsa, it makes my head spin just keeping track of them.

The days sure have been pretty too. You just have to be outdoors all that you can. The air is so fresh and sweet it seems drinkable, the sun just warm enough to feel like a gentle blanket and the migrants are passing through, unwinding their coils in the north to thread south like fabric unwoven...

Song sparrows in flocks, cedar waxwings ditto, turkey vultures soaring past and one pair even seeming to play, drifting lazy over the river, then dive bombing one another over the barn. Ubiquitous little brownish warblers, calling from all over and flitting through the trees, plus the birds that will winter with us coming back from wherever they go.

I was picking tomatoes when I heard a creaky chickadee, calling half-heartedly from the mountain ash. I pished a little because I wasn't even sure that it was a chickadee and not a catbird or mocker. The thing bolted straight toward me like a bullet on a mission and barely swerved aside before it hit my head. Then it sat in the honey locust cussing me out in no uncertain terms. I ran into the house for seeds, but it had moved along when I came out. I am guessing that one of last winter's tame birds may just be back from its summer adventures.

I am not ready for winter, even though we are running in place getting ready for winter, but still....it is nice to see my friends again.

Holy C**p update! Liz just saw people throw two dogs out of a van, a little chihuahua and a lab. She got their license number and called the police on them....wonder if they will pursue it. I'll bet you can all think of some suitable punishments for such &^%%$^&*. Makes me sick. A dog is a commitment, a long commitment, but if you have to end it there are better ways. Geez.

The Bright Side

Of an impending first frost. You get to pick all the tiny little baby squashes with the flowers still unopened on the end and saute them with garlic...in butter of course. With home grown roast beef and the boss's signature Cole slaw it was quite a feast...all thanks to the weather.

Washing Down a Mountain

Quick run to Fort Plain yesterday for parts for the milkers (inflations for you who milk cows). We took Route 5 because they just announced that it had reopened after the flood and we wanted to see what had happened that the clean up took so long. Liz drove home that way one night and called me on the phone later. She was incoherent about what she saw.

Once we got to Big Nose, so were we.

Gratuitous mild profanity erupted in its own little flood, mile after mile. (Holy S**t was the most common epithet.) Ordinary words just couldn't capture our astonishment at what had happened. The vicious flood waters carved huge channels down the flanks of that whole mountain...just scored the earth like the claws of some great beast, many feet back into the mountainside, right down to the bone and even into it..

These photos do not do justice to the vigorous new streams and water falls that splash merrily down the sides of Big Nose Mountain now. They look as if they have always been there.

I wish my Grandpa Lachmayer, who took us on many road trips down the valley on the road that curves around its steep green sides, could be alive to see. He would have enjoyed the astonishment.

Nature is powerful beyond imagination and erosion apparently does not take centuries, just a lot of water.

The boss thought he counted seven or so of these gigantic gashes in the mountainside. They went many, many feet into its sides and stretched out of sight toward the top. Can you imagine all that rock and dirt and trees and debris dumped on the roadway below? I am impressed that they got it all cleared up before freeze up.


****Just a few weeks ago this whole area was smoothly rounded and covered with forest.....

Mag-tastico!

Yesterday was. The sun shone. Oh, there were clouds but they were a minor annoyance. The tractor had a flat tire...the big expensive rear tire. But our good tire guy came down and fixed it right away and charged a very reasonable amount so that was okay too.

And when I walked past the window on the way to who knows what, something flitted across the yard and flirted with the laundry. I am always thinking bird, and watching hard to see them, but this was something else, a monarch butterfly so bright and orange against the vibrant green left behind by all the water. It was as if it came just to entertain me, testing the last bright, red, canna blossom, comparing the colors of the shirts and blue jeans, floating up and down on a freshening breeze. It only stayed a moment or two, but they were good moments.

Then at evening chore time, the setting sun was like a spotlight shining across the shadows to highlight each bright tree against the darkness of the retreating clouds. The sky to the west was a soft, bright, greenish-gold, with just a few puffy clouds that looked as if they had been shipped down from Heaven.

Just to make it perfect, better than perfect, beyond all that is perfect, a set of geese winged over low, heading straight into the sun. It lit their wings until they seemed to be made of burnished metal, tin foil geese, mirror geese, so beautiful they made my heart hurt. Their calls followed them to the horizon as we went to let the girls into the barn to eat their supper.

It was an amazing gift to see them, like finding a diamond in a crackerjack box. Plumb made my day.

Escaping from the Flood

Old Faithful

For the past several days we have been finding a few cows in places where they don't belong each morning. We figured it was probably due to the boss doing some electrical work and forgetting to plug the electric fencer back in on Saturday. He does stuff like that pretty often nowadays.

Yesterday morning we had all the cows and all the colored heifers, but every single black and white Holstein heifer was missing. Of course it was still raining but Liz and Alan went hunting for them, fond them in a hay field and brought them home.

Alan spent the entire day fixing fence. The problem was undoubtedly precipitated by the lack of electricity on the fence. A plethora of overgrown rose bushes lying on the wires didn't help.

However the biggest issue was that the flood took the corner off the fence, ripped the post right down. Our creek is usually just a trickle, but it has been swollen to little Niagara status a lot lately. Anyhow, the kid worked the whole day and got it about half finished...good enough to get by but he will have to finish it today.

Especially since he left my good hammer and my not quite as good, but good enough, brush cutters up along the fence in a bucket. It is unwise to fail to return mommy's tools around here.

It has been very weird this summer how the heifers have segregated themselves. Now and then they gather in one bunch, but most of the time the two brown Jerseys pair up with the two red milking shorthorns and the black and whites form another group entirely. It is not because they were particularly raised together or anything, but they sort by color pretty much every day....odd....

Well-Meaning But....

Great article here on how ill-informed folks often make the wrong call on animal welfare situations. One of the best I have read.

Monday

Quack, quack, ribbit....learning a new language here, the language of rain.

Sunday Stills....Water Droplets

No shortage of these. Bossman says the folks say there have been twelve days of rain in this set.

For more Sunday Stills......

Cool Stuff from other Folks

Jinglebob posted this link on the real result of letting folks exercise their Second Amendment rights.

A good friend participated in this Guinness Book record collection of boats in Inlet NY.

Take into account that Inlet, a tiny town in the Adirondack Mountains, has a population of well under 500, yet beat out Pittsburgh, PA for the record. The event raised money for the Susan G. Komen Foundation for breast cancer research and was called One Square Mile of Hope. (Record is not yet official but surely will be.)

Benefit Tractor Pull

At the Fonda Fair grounds October 29th and 30th. This sounds like it will be a tremendous amount of fun for pulling fans with proceeds going to flood victim relief.

***Thanks, Scott for the HT

Operation Swoop the Coop

The name flat cracked us up, although the subject isn't all that funny. Now we are just waiting to hear who dunnit.

***Ask and ye shall receive. Here's the answer.

***And yet another, and probably more accurate story, this time with photos.

Who is Really Getting Your Vote

Hacking the voting machines

Sunrise

We're having one!

Yesterday, not so much. This video shows one of the reasons Liz didn't make it home to milk last night. All the roads approaching the farm from the west, north and south were closed, so she just couldn't get here.

Beck, Alan and I did all the milking and Beck fed calves while the boss went out and churned up mud getting the cows fed. Took him all of chore time and then some and he cut a tire on the skid steer on the slate banks that were carved out by the water rushing down. There is a good eight inches of heavy gravel with rocks bigger than my fists piled up in front of the cow door. Guess when they get the skid steer tire fixed he can use it to fill those holes.

It was hard to even get to the barn last night, normally a five-minute or less walk. The mud was boot top deep, the creek under the culvert bridge, which normally holds barely enough water for a cow to get a careful drink sounded like Niagara and would have washed you away had you stepped into it.

It was spooky to even step out onto the darned bridge. It has washed out several times, once just as the milk truck was about to drive onto it, and it always makes me nervous to cross when we are getting a lot of rain.

Beck warned me not to step into the water rushing across the barnyard up on top too. However, I am a shorty and couldn't begin to step across, it so I waded right in. Sure enough it was racing fast enough to nearly pull my feet out from under me. Wow! The kids grabbed my hands because they are such nice folks, and, although I would have been fine without, I was thankful.

What a year!

Not Again

A huge thank you to friends, family members and caring neighbors who called us about the tornado warning. We had no idea....

We ended up spending around 45 minutes watching the skies to the west and south, ready to hit the cellar if we had to. We got an outrageous lot of rain and some pretty wild winds and rumor has it that something did some damage just a tiny bit to the south of us, but we are fine. Now it is raining hard and thundering wildly.

The boss just got the driveways half-way fixed up so the milk truck can get in all right and we can get the trucks and the Durango up and down. Guess he is looking at a couple more days on the skid steer. Guess I had better shut this down before the storm gets any closer.

Puddle Wonderful

Actually I don't think puddles are all that wonderful these days, as in, if I don't see another one this fall it will be soon enough. But aren't these puddling butterflies wonderful? I love their pink legs and little green tennis ball eyes.

Heartbreaking

This video features one of the farm families who lost the most in the recent floods.

The nice lady doing the narration has sat at our kitchen table a couple of times....they are hard working, highly-respected folks, who made a good name for farming wherever they went. The video will just break your heart if you love the land, the animals, and the people who care for them. It is long, but do watch.....

Hurricane Irene Aftermath: One Farmer's Story from SkeeterNYC on Vimeo.

Chopping Sorghum

Chopper man

Sorghum seeds

(where are the bobolinks?

they love them)

Happy Birthday, Mac

Wow, it is the 200th birthday of one of America's favorite apples, and NY's number one variety, the McIntosh. Do read the article if you have time. It is really interesting.

(When I asked the men of how old they thought Macs were Alan answered that they came out in 83. Huh? But he thought I meant the computer. Talk about a generation gap.)

Farmer's Bubble Wrap

Ready for just a little pinch

These seed pods of the pale touch me not, or jewel weed (the spotted orange ones work fine too) are more fun than the wrapping from a dozen packages. And they grow themselves out in the yard by the thousands.

I found a lovely plant yesterday, with at least fifty pods, fat, ripe, and pure green dynamite.

Greedy thing that I am, I popped them all. To achieve maximum results pinch the pointy little tip at the bottom and the seeds explode like quail out of a covey. I pinched maybe twenty or so, reveling in the crazy flight of the flinty little seeds, then shook the bush to make the rest of them detonate. (I was taking my life in my hands as this plant hung right over the electric fence...which may be why no one else had popped the seed pods before me.) You can't help but walk away smiling.....

The best ones are the fattest ones, with translucent skin showing the dark seeds within. (The thinner green-seeded ones will pop too, but no where near as wildly.) This video will give you an idea of what happens, but the individual has not been trained in touching-me-not and is pinching the top of unripe pods...it is important to pinch the bottom for best effect (true in many situations).

Anyhow, as you can see I am a cheap date and easily amused.

We know a lady who actually sells jewel weed seeds and touts it as a skin-soothing medicinal plant. Here we let Ma Nature decide where the stuff will grow and pop 'em where we find 'em.

Can you imagine how many folks would garden if everything we grew was this much fun to plant?

Surprise from the Garden Pond

Look closely, now. This is the base of one of the water cannas, the big variegated one, which I brought inside and placed in a ten-gallon fish tank full of water.

I like to keep them going from year to year so they bloom in the pond, which this one did, quite enthusiastically. A couple of days after it came in I spotted these tiny brown specks all over the inside of the tank. They are growing fast now and it is much easier to tell what they are.

See them? Tiny, baby snails.