Happy Birthday, Brother

Today is my next younger brother's birthday. Being Irish twins so to speak we will be the same age for the next few days. 

He enjoyed this way too much when we were kids. Thank goodness for our nation's birthday, when I get to jump ahead again. Whew.....oh, wait a minute...we are so old now, it isn't so hot being eleven months older.

Anyhow.....

Happy Birthday, Michael. Hope you have a wonderful day!

Boidies

Blue Cochin rooster. I love the way he crows.

The kids got a new rooster Sunday and a few new chicks, plus Laura has her little brood.

Thus the coops are pretty well populated.

  

And so, it's Summer

Magnificent sunrise, all golden and peach. Fitz Bew ringing from the fence along the long lawn, where the Willow Flycatcher hides his nest, while the Cardinal tunes up his whistle, and a sleepy Yellow Warbler sweetens the morning, sweet, sweet, sweeter sweet.

The air IS sweet, as pure and clean and cool as if this little farm was perched atop a mountain way up in the Dacks. Dew drips from the eaves of the sitting porch, each crystal droplet lit on fire by the glow of the rising sun.

Time to tidy up the ravages of yesterday and get some writing done. If breakdowns of both tractor and barn cleaner yesterday are anything to go by, time to produce and process the Farm Side may be in short supply this week.

Get busy, get busy.

The screen door swings and slaps the wall, whine, bam, slam, as the young men head off to their jobs. Our boy is back in the 518 for a couple of weeks, as his other job in DC shut down for a bit.

It is an unfamiliar but delightful thing to have him here, even for a little while...we don't see him enough for sure.

And check out this addition to my garden rock collection. It is a NYC cobblestone, possibly from as early as the 1700s, 

It certainly is at least very early, as it was found 7 feet down, under a waterfront street in Manhattan. I am excited to have it, and to learn that it was placed small-side-up, rather than laying flat as you might expect.

Just imagine the stories this chunk of granite could tell... What famous people might have walked over it, how many horses and wagons and barrels of beer may have rumbled over it and its neighbors? No one could know but.....

Thanks, Mappy...

Good morning to all, and back to the word processor......

The Wild Side

Poultry style. The kids are building hen coops in the heifer barn and gathering up laying birds so as to sell eggs...speaking of which, we are eating the eggs they raise and they sure are good.

Anyhow, they are off to the swap this morning with a mean hen and a superfluous and bad-tempered rooster, plus a some herb plants to sell or trade.

While they were up in the old hen coop, catching the rooster, they discovered that Laura, the little banty Cochin that Teri gave us, has chickies. They were running in and out of the peacock coop, not a safe locale for babies, so Becky is out catching them to cage them safely with their mama.

Laura is an old chicken and a good, smart mama. She used to have a paramour of her own ilk named George, but varmints got him.

Sunday Stills....Macro

Macro is my favorite challenge for Sunday Stills....except maybe birds.....

As You Can See Below

The younger two of our three offspring (Alan and Becky.....you know who you are) thought it would be fun to hack Northview last night, since I left the computer up on the kitchen table when I went into the living room.

After Liz and I canned 18 jars of strawberry jam yesterday. 

And froze four quarts of berries for shortcake next winter.

And cooked a turkey dinner.

And planted 18 hills of squash and helped move manure and mulch around the edges of the garden. And such.

And got a TICK!!!!! EEEEKKKKKK A TICK!!!!

  I am utterly phobic about ticks and it was a deer tick too.

Rotten ingrates. Alas, they know I have a certain strange sense of humor and wouldn't really get mad....just pseudo mad so to speak.

And I love them, and love having them around, so I put up with them.....but they had better watch out....just sayin'

Transition and Transformation

Out with the old

From a weed patch full of nettles and cow parsley to a squash garden in just a few steps.

This actually was a small garden bed where I grew beans and sometimes tomatoes and root crops. However, with the recent rainy years, it grew overgrown and was abandoned.

The boss fixed it for me yesterday while he still had the rock bucket on the skid steer.

He took out the weeds and all the roots and replaced them with well-rotted cow manure, which looks just like dark, rich, earth.


Planting it to squash first thing today.

The robins moved right in. 

The Supervisor

Gifts

Good things this week.

Our son took his lovely fiance hiking up Castle Rock last weekend. At the very top he picked me a pocket full of balsam fir tips. He knows how much I love the scent of firs.....
So I have them on the bookcase by the bed....the Adirondacks all night, every night.

And then there was his dad...you know what they say about apples and all....

He worked two long days for some friends, driving our skid steer while rock was picked. You would think it would have taken up all of his time just thinking about the work...anyone who has picked stone knows it's a job.

However, he found time to select one great, big, lovely rock and brought it home for me.

Gifts of the land..the very best kind. 

Wait for It

Hmmm, what looks good today?

Ants?

Keep an eye on the sky

Aren't I fancy?

WHAM! Catbird photo bomb.
Right in the back of the head.

Well That was Interesting

Corner of Lusso and Borden Roads in the wake of last week's storm

Another big storm. Haven't heard yet about any damage, but everything we had in the yard took a hike, including a heavy stainless steel milk house bucket and the big barrels we use to haul water to the barn.

Started out with warning tones from the National Weather Service interrupting the boss's TV. Didn't sound good atall, atall. "Continuous cloud-to-ground lightning.....seventy-mile-per-hour wind gusts."

When I paused on the stair landing there were still a few stars glimmering in the west but that continuous cloud-to-ground was already flickering against the gathering clouds. 

Not much later both bedroom doors blasted open despite being firmly latched closed. The whistling started and the whining and the lashing rain and booming and blasting of the thunder. I should have gotten out of bed and tried for that elusive lightning shot I have been chasing for so many years, but I was sleepy.....after a while it tapered off and sleep returned, but it was a hummer of a storm.

And now, this morning, we are looking for stuff. 

Last week's big one took down a box elder tree in the barnyard. To our great hilarity all three cows take some time every morning to eat the leaves. Must be something there they want or need because it is just about bare now.

Anyhow, these photos are of the end of the road that runs behind us, Lusso Road, and Borden Road. I don't know where the water came from, but it sure cut a heck of a channel. It is no wonder the roads were all closed in that area. 

Dunno about you, but I am ready for some warm, dry weather for making hay and drying laundry. That is all.

Catbird Lessons

Or, I should have figured this out a long time ago.

Although I make as much of our jam and jelly as I can, time and questionable crops often leave us buying some at the grocery store.

And it ALWAYS ends up getting tossed. We will enjoy some delicious toast or ice cream with some kind of exotic jelly, then forget it is in the fridge, and voila, mold.

Then last summer the boss bought me a gigantic jar of grape jelly for the catbirds and orioles.

So big that most of it was still left at the end of summer. I stuck it in the freezer for this year. When I started to feed it I discovered that it was easily spooned even when frozen, so I just left it in the freezer. When it was gone I bought a new jar and did the same.

Now everybody is using my catbird food on their toast! (We ran out of homemade strawberry.)

But, lesson learned. From now on when we buy jelly at the store it is going into the freezer so we will get to enjoy it much longer. 

I feel kind of foolish considering that I do about ten batches of strawberry freezer jam every year and eat that right out of the freezer sometimes...oh, well, live and learn.

Just Another

Day in Paradise. The soft chuckling of a sleepy hen. Strident peeping from not one, but two, cowbird chicks tormenting their song sparrow foster mom. 

The scent of something minty out on the lawn where Jade is mowing. Finally it is not raining so he can.

Deep, rich, black, garden earth, crumbling underfoot. Two rows of beans failed...old seed I guess...so there is replanting in the sweet, sweet sun, listening to singing from gold finches and the Carolina wren and the distant clamor of the crows. For the wrens a second nesting maybe...they have been on the porch, but they spend a lot of time over at the cow barn too.

The air is redolent, ripe, and drowsy with the heavy scent of wild, white roses. All the rest of the year they are a hated pest, spoken of in the same voice as skunks and slugs...but in June, ah, sweet, strawberry June, they are the most wonderful thing around.

The sun is up before we are and hangs just below the silvered horizon at bed time. It is tame as a kitten in June, warm, friendly, close enough for comfort.

Nights are open-window brisk, air as clean as mountain water, and as clear and sweetly savored.

 Not for nothing is June my favorite month, but rather for everything.
  

Bird Wing

She smells of soft and feathery things

Her mother's love and angel wings.

Her call is like the catbird's cry

Her mama runs and so do I

Whenever we hear that plaintive song 

as it

Rings through Northview's sunny halls.......

The call of the wild granddaughter


Early, late, and often

New Kid in Town

The new guy

Beef calves, powered by Moon

Cinnamon, "You talkin' to me?"

Alan added the little guy above to the beef side of the operation this weekend. He bought him from his fiance's family. He is a vigorous little fellow and is already drinking his bottle from a bottle rack.

To Our Fathers, Our Teachers, Happy Father's Day

To my own dad, who led me to the wide world, and showed me amazement, from starting my interest in birding when I was just a little kid, to getting me going on nature and camping and history, books, and art, music, and all that this wonderful world has to offer. If you notice that I notice the wonder....it is because Dad noticed when I was little, and always wanted to learn...... So much of who I am grew from the roots from which life sprang.

Thanks Dad, for teaching me see what a spectacular sphere we spin upon. Hope you have a wonderful day!

Love you!



And to my husband who taught me purebred cows....I knew a little when we met, but he built the foundation of understanding pedigrees, type, production, and the beauty of the right cow, the good calf, and the feet and legs and udders and ribs, and all the other parts that make them up. Incidentally along the way he taught me to drive tractors, pull the forage chopper...and rake, and ted, and unload and store hay, and much....most....of what I know about what it takes to be a farmer.

Hope your day is all you could wish it to be....love you too. 

Oh, and happy anniversary....I am not going to ever forget a certain small wedding 29 years ago....just two best friends beside us and tears of wonder at the joy....We have come so far since that distant, fondly remembered, day. I hope the journey can continue. Never a dull moment in all those decades......

And to the new dad under our roof, having his first Father's Day today....you must be doing something right because that beautiful baby girl sure gets mad when you have to work late. Happy first Father's Day, Jade. Have a good one and many, many more to come. 

And to all you dads out there, who are there for your kids from birth through youth, the difficult teenage years, and whenever you are needed, knowing you are loved, even as grandpas with grandbabies bouncing on your knees. Changing tires, offering advice, giving rescue, and succor, and love, and the solid strength of good men to your families all their lives. Where would we be without you?

Good job, good fathers, this is your day.

Babies Everywhere

Saw a beautiful new baby boy on Facebook just now, not even two hours old. The tears came quickly to my eyes. His mama and our Peggy's mama, our beloved middle girl, our dear sweet boy, plus a waxing and waning bunch of assorted neighborhood kids, used to play in our backyard down in town.

There were little tow heads and smiling red heads and kids with brown hair and black. Tall ones, short ones, older ones, funny ones. This new boy's mama was one of the closest, Liz's best friend for years and years.

They played in the sandbox, helped in the garden, socialized border collie puppies, ran in and out the back door all day long, and stopped in for a story sometimes when they were littler. There were dolls, and trucks, thundering herds of plastic horses, homemade wooden barns and stables.......and tanks and soldiers, a kiddie pool and Legos, all the stuff of kidhood scattered here and there. We tripped over it and picked it up a thousand times and complained and complained, but we wouldn't have missed it for the world.

There were fights. There were friendships formed.....some that will probably last their lifetimes. New kids moved in, others moved away and were missed. 

Then we moved up here to the farm and everybody grew up and we don't see them so much any more.

Now the babies are coming.

And they all touch my heart...all over again....Congratulations Lina....

Sound of the Storm

Amish farm just between the storms

Below is a little video I took last night of the tiny stream between the house and barn. Normally this is barely deep enough for the cows to get their noses down for a drink. This was taken a couple of hours after the first really bad round of rain had passed, so it was probably much higher a little earlier. Turn your sound up if you would like to hear it.

However, I have a deep and abiding love for the camera and don't take it out in that kind of weather. Plus it probably wasn't all that safe up on the bridge then. It has calmed down considerable since then....butter wouldn't melt in its mouth so to speak. 

I hope this is over, but the strong warmth of the sun on this really chilly, wet morning, are making me think otherwise. 

The kids are at the event below with Diamond, if you want to stop by and visit....and with Peggy Ann too!


Click image for details.