Gleaning

I would have passed these vegetables by, just a few weeks ago. Big old beans gone too mature, missed under heavy leaves somehow and forging into to leathery toughness. At the other end of the spectrum, tiny beans, no more than threads, but succulent and sweet.

I should not pick them. They will fit right down the sink drain in a swoosh of water. I'm sure that isn't good for the plumbing. I should just eat them right off the vine instead. Or leave them.

Left to grow they would only get fatter and better.

However, there is no more left to grow this year. What the meteorologists euphemistically call "the end of the growing season" is upon us.

Killing frost.

The big freeze.

It will fall tonight sure as November, unless somehow this icy wind holds it off. I don't think so. But maybe

Minuscule squashes, barely more than blossoms, a single grape that the wind tore off the apple tree. One apple just to see if somehow the Winesaps taste better this year than last.

I know better than to test them before frost, but they always tempt me beyond reason. It will be dry and bland and mealy, just as they always are until the frost turns them tangy

We will have a stew tonight of mostly homegrown. Beef from the big steer, the beans and squash, and a few store bought carrots...ours are all gone alas...though they surely were delicious.

After a breakfast of French toast made with eggs from the kids' hens, topped with jelly made from apple cider that Alan helped squeeze....delicious stuff, think i'll have some with dinner...we will feel well-fed indeed.

The electric fencing is holding so far, down on the chicken coop, although there were reports of an outlandish howling out there in the night, as if something had tried to crawl through and got zapped.

And zapped.

And zapped.

And zapped again.

What a shame......

Sunday Stills....Guess the Challenge

I guessed the color green or perhaps the letter G, so I went with grazing, green, and golden....lots of all those around here this fall. I meant to put a cap on a pumpkin, but it rained....pretty cool challenge, even if I got it wrong,.

For more Sunday Stills.......

So Far, So Good

Did anybody get the number of that truck?

The kids spent a lot of time yesterday and last night putting up a electrified grid of cattle panel over the heifer barn door and putting a very hot fence around the turkey tractor, oh, and Becky put a bunch of used kitty litter down where they were coming in from the north. I went out an hour or so ago and all the birds were resting quietly.....

I would have liked to have been watching when the foxes checked out that fence...so hot the charge zapped Jade through a stick.....maybe a trail cam would be an asset....

A minor, but entertaining, murmuration of starlings

In other news we have several hawks hanging around hunting the birds, which fortunately are well protected against assault from the air.

However, something went after a chickadee right outside the kitchen window and it fled, striking the window. I ran out to find it upside down, but alive, on the step.

I warmed it in my hand and set it in a flower pot. A little while later it was upright and soon after gone. I wish it well. 

Chickadees share the favorite bird spot in my world with Carolina Wrens. Guess I like to root for the little guy. I would also like to be sure the accipiter I see every day hunting in the backyard is a Cooper's. I have seen several sharpies and this bird looks larger....too fast to be sure though...so far.

And that did Too

These guys are.....or were....much bigger now

I'm thankful for a phone call this morning. Normally I just let Daisy out the back door and maybe stand on the porch while I wait, or possibly even come in and get her dog food ready.

However, this morning Alan called me to chat for a while before he went to sleep for the day, as he is on nights, way down in the big city.

Thus I went out in my bathrobe to enjoy the dawn, the talking with my boy, and just being alive.

Heard something wrong. Saw something out of the corner of my eye that didn't look quite right. The big chickens down in the barn were making a monotonous alarm call as if they had been at it for a long time. They sounded tired.

Then Pumpkin, the fluffy logger cat, ran up the driveway and I thought, 'Okay, they were alarming at the cat."

But they didn't stop. So mini Dachshund in tow I meandered down toward the heifer barn where the big hen flock is. Sneakers untied, eyes still blurred with sleep, not exactly at my best.....

Out of the barn sprang a huge, motley-looking red fox, literally licking his chops. This was a really big fox. Usually when I see one I am surprised by how small they actually are. Not this guy.

I hustled down to find the wire all mashed down on the brooder, some beady, terrified eyes looking up at me, and bodies mashed under the wire. 

Yep, he got the chicks Liz featured on her blog in a post she wrote just yesterday.

I called the kids out to look at the situation. The fox ate eight chicks, and killed a couple others, leaving only six out of sixteen. The six are now in a cat kennel in the dining room, Driving Miss Daisy plumb crazy. She came to us because she is a poultry killer herself and did much damage in a past life. She would like to finish what the fox started I fear. Thank goodness for the kitchen baby gate (which has been keeping dogs in the kitchen for over twenty years.)

So....although I am always glad when my boy calls me, but today I am extra glad. Now there are big jobs to be done before that son of a gun gets the big hens, or the coop full of guineas, turkey and a couple of chickens up on the lawn. 

Or Heaven forbid the turkeys.

Well that Sucked

That load of hay we were gonna unload this morning? Yeah, that miserable so and so. right from the get go, I had a lot of trouble with the bales, too big and heavy for wienie me.

However, I was gettin' 'er done. Sorta

Until....the motor cut out on the cross mow elevator, and I didn't see it, as I was trying to get bales down off the pile and they were wedged together like badgers in a burrow.

Then I heard the clanking. By the time I climbed over the tractor tire to shut off the PTO a whole lot of cross paddles on the big elevator were bent.

The boss had to bang them all straight again. After all that fun, I convinced him by looking all weak and worn down to throw the rest of the bales off himself. Soon the cross mow quit again. And again. And again.

Finally he pulled the plug and said, "Let's go get breakfast." 

I will give the man credit. He never said a cross word to me, although he wasn't exactly smiling either.

I didn't argue about breakfast either. There are only a dozen bales or so left on there. If they won't go up into the mow the heifers and cows can eat them. And we were hungry

October Redux

The rosemary bloomed and made seeds this year.
Since I grew it from seed itself that seems kind of cool
It didn't bloom sideways, but it is determined to look like it

Can't get away from the amazement of this month. Who ever heard of making hay in October? Well,actually the boss has been making hay right into November in recent years, thanks to cool, very wet summers and springs.

We have another load to throw off today. I am so proud of myself, throwing off two loads on Monday. And I wasn't even stiff the next day, which utterly astonished me.

Not that I am tough or anything. It is just knowing how to use leverage to get the load apart and get the bales on the elevator.

Still....

The rosemary

Today is another balmy, soft one, with the sun rising all silver and gold, and the trees slowly undressing right down to their bones, and putting on quite a floor show as they do.

I have finished the Farm Side for this week....a tale of unloading hay....time to fill the bird feeder, see Becky off to work, and get that wagon done.

Katydid....nope, not a katydid, a leafhopper.... on a clothespin

Lawn Art

Decorative, innit?

Things with Wings

A Downy Woodpecker got caught on the back porch.
He was very reluctant to leave.

Yellow-rumped Warbler

Purple Finches

Eastern Tiger Swallowtail

The world is in motion these days, whether it be dozens of woolly bears tumbling from the bales of hay as we unload the hay...sorry to disturb your hibernation guys, but this hay needs to go into the barn....or butterflies, or passing hawks, or massive flocks of grackles and blackbirds so noisy that I swear they echo.

Waking up Winter

First of the season, Dark-Eyed Junco

The Carolina Wren is singing loudly by the kitchen.

It's a not unpleasant 38 degrees, supposed to go to 66 later today. Maybe a little rain later, which hopefully will hold off until the two big loads of hay the boss got yesterday are unloaded and stored in the mow.

Fox Tails are so over this year

However, the birds have changed, willy nilly. Not a catbird to be heard or seen. No buntings or orioles, only an occasional robin or two. Warblers are still filtering through..... saw some butter butts yesterday and the common Yellowthroat is still quite common indeed.

But Milkweed is in

But the winter sparrows are threading their way south. The jays are loud and omnipresent again. Clouds of chickadees and white-breasted nuthatches swirl around the feeders as if the snow was three feet deep. We have so many woodpeckers, big beaked and small.

Last of the season

They say it will be 80 by midweek and then cold for the weekend.


The birds know though.....

Sunday Stills...on the Water

Funny how luck can mess with you. We live right on a river. We went down to said river during a bass and walleye tournament, and during heavy migration time for geese and ducks.

We went right to the parking lot of the tourney and right to the village dock and the grassy area where the geese congregate. We saw thousands of dollars worth of fancy trucks and boat trailers. 

And logs....lots of logs....

We saw hundreds of happy geese.

But not one goose in the water. Or one single bass boat.

We did see leaves and logs floating in the river. And the dock. And two boats moored at another dock. 

For more Sunday Stills.......

What's Missing from this Equation?

Fill in the Blank

Heifers and Apple Jelly

Go together like fish and marshmallows.

Yeah, after finally getting things in order to make jelly out of the apples we got yesterday, I was letting the apples boil when the phone rang.

It was Liz checking in with an offer to get dinner tonight. That is always welcome, of course. 

To answer the phone I had to go over to the dining room windows.....where I spied a bit more red and white than i like to see, even if it is autumn.

The heifers were out. The boss was back mowing. I stammered an excuse, hung up and rushed away.

Enough presence of mind to turn off the stove. Not enough to pick up my phone, which was in its measuring cup for music-making purposes.

I feared that I was going to be dealing with the bull that attacked the boss a bit ago, and thus grabbed an old mop as a weapon.

Thankfully though, he had stayed in the barnyard and it was just Abby, a shorthorn, and Tequila, a red-and-white Holstein of Liz's.

I quickly got them out of the house road, but the gate was shut, with the other three head on the other side of it wanting to join their buddies. I won't bore you with the details of getting the three inside to run away from the gate, while the two outside were chased up the lane so I could open said gate, and then the waiting for the escapees to come back down and look for their friends......

And once they were all inside the barnyard a sumac tree served to fill the gap where they tore down the fence. Then Liz and Jade rushed home to help me get them all back into their regular pen.

Big sigh of relief.

Now, the apples are merrily boiling and the kitchen smells just lovely.

Greylag

I love to see this Greylag goose, which lives with a flock of resident Canadas down by the state canal building in Fonda. It has been with them for at least five years.

The Greylag goose is a European breed, as well as a common barnyard fowl, said to be the foundation breed for most domestic geese.

They seem to hybridize fairly frequently with Canadas but I have never noticed any crossbreds in the little flock of half a dozen that this one lives with.

Yesterday, probably because I needed photos of floating things for Sunday Stills, the little flock was combined with this larger one, and not one single one was in the river when we went down by the state canal building to take pics. 

What a mess they leave on the grass, and they have almost no fear of people. A few of them stood up when I walked down near the water, and there was a bit of sporadic honking, but mostly they just kept an eye on me as they went about the business of resting in the sun.

We went to the new Fultonville dock and river access area too. That is really nice! I hope it is still open and accessible after the water is let out of the dams...at least the upper part anyhow. It would make a nice place to view the masses of gulls, geese, diving and puddle ducks, eagles, crows, ravens, and other birds that frequent the shallows in front of McDonald's when the water is down.

How I would love to be able to safely put the binoculars on that flock!

 It always frustrates the heck out of me not to be able to photograph the wonderful aggregation of birds that congregates there, because of the danger of the highway running right next to the water.

And This isn't Chicago

Pumpkins

But, wow, what a wind we had yesterday! I was watching Peggy for Liz and had just put her down for a little nap when an absolute wall of blasting air hit the house.

Pumpkins

It was so strong that it BROKE most of my clothespins, even though I ran right out to rescue the laundry as soon as it hit. Granted, you can't buy a decent clothespin these days, but still.

It also blew Alan's coyote hunting blind way up by the horse yard. That was a big disappointment to me, as he left it set up so I could bird watch from it. It was really cool to sit inside and look out.

Anything that didn't blow away in that maelstrom, just isn't going to blow away.

And more pumpkins

Doesn't look like any real harm was done though, and Becky and Ralph rescued the blind.

Today we ran up to the orchard for apples for jelly and stopped to take pics of their lovely pumpkin fields, then down to the river for photos of floating things. Of course, nothing much was floating.....

Our favorite little pumpkin of all

We Aren't Cowboys

But we often wish that we were. After the debacle of loading the horned heifer last week we decided that it might be a good plan to catch Marv and remove his budding toad stabbers before we faced a similar situation with him.

All those months on the hill with his mother and aunties has rendered him more than a little bit leery of human interference. 

Thus we rigged up some gates by the watering trough.

And drove him among them and fastened them shut.

Whereupon he waited until we were nearly ready to attend to the dehorning process and then nonchalantly, easy as pie, hopped over the five-bar gate and scrambled off.

Time for plan B.

Not the eclipse...slept through that...just last night's moon rise

GMOs and Ebola

Afraid of GMOs? Frankenfoods? Buying in to all that hype?

Check this out. The very  technology that makes GMO foods possible (and safe...trillions served without harm) is being used to produce drugs to fight this horrific modern plague.

Cows may be used to make a vaccine too. They had better hurry....