Hopping Down the Bunny Trail

We have a plethora of cottontail rabbits. It is hilarious to watch them elude Daisy every morning. Being a scent hound, she does not see them as they hop by ten feet away, but carefully downwind of her. I see them every day, trying to remain undetected.

They are such sneaky little fellers that you can't really perceive the sheer numbers of them until the snow makes tracking possible.

Then, wow! There are a lot. The yard is laced with tracks if the snow is shallow.

If it is deep, then they make trails like a deer yard.

Like the one in the pics. This runs right along the side of the house to the honey locust tree where they scavenge for the seed pods, which are filled with nutrient-dense beans. 

I tossed some half-spoiled apples out yesterday under the bird feeders. This morning they are simply half-apples, having served as sylvilagus hors d'oeuvres sometime in the night. 

Housekeeping...or Not

Part of the kitchen sink barricade 

Housekeeping around this place has become a horror that I literally have nightmares about. I am not exactly Susie Homemaker at the best of times, but dogs, people, stuff....there are a lot of them living here and they have a lot of the latter, which results in quite a mess.

And water! Plus the objects needed to move it. With the cows gone, all the barn water lines promptly froze. Not much to do but turn off the water and haul what the remaining animals need.

There are four cows, four horses, a large flock of chickens and guinea fowl, and a buncha bunnies.

They all need to drink a lot of water every day, so Liz and the boss and Becky haul a lot of water every day.

FROM THE KITCHEN!!!

Yeah, those barrels in the pic used to contain stuff for the milk house. Now they move water from here to the barn. And there are chicken waterers, bunny bottles, pony pails, all kinds of water containers drug in and out every day, several times a day. 

I have to wait my turn at the sink to do dishes, as the waterline that feeds the cold water is a little frozen and it takes a long time to run all that water. (This is actually a fine excuse to put off my least favorite job.) All of the smaller animals buckets and bottles must thaw too, some at every heat register, kitchen and dining room.

There is always hay in the sink. On the floor. Everywhere. And sand from sanding the walkways gets tracked...lots of that too. Sawdust and wood chips from the stove ditto.

I have pretty much given up on any semblance of tidiness, opting instead to sweep the sand and hay back out the door a couple times a week, just because it makes me feel better, not that it makes any lasting difference....

Add in the mountains of outdoor clothing and mounds of boots, gloves galore drying everywhere there is heat, and you have the perfect recipe for disaster. These are the times when being nearsighted has its advantages.

Sunday Stills.....Sepia

This is always a fun challenge.

For more Sunday Stills.....

In the Middle

We are in the middle of winter now....lurching forward toward spring, one day, sliding backward on a tide of ice and storms another.

Poised on the brink of the brightest change of the year, the segue from ice and snow to Ice Follies Daffodils and Snow Drops.

I have been noticing.....

Outdoors in the late afternoon, almost evening, to try to photograph the crazy yellow sky as the sun went down.

Lo and behold the sun was setting halfway north on the cow barn roof!

By high summer it will set clear north of the heifer barn, which is now the kids' chicken and pony palace, but at least it is no longer sinking more south than west behind the 60-acre lot hill.

Just now a White-throated Sparrow sang its whole song. Over the past few weeks with the arbor feeder that Jade got me right in front of the kitchen window, I have come to know their richly whistled notes...so deep for a bird....quite well. However, their songs have been truncated, one short whistle here, another tiny tweet there.

This morning, right under the window in the not quite dawn, "Old Sam Peabody, Peabody, Peabody," rang out loud and strong and then was repeated. 

No migrants yet, and the snow is ever-deepening, but the birds know.....it will not be many days I think before we see the first Red-winged Blackbirds, Grackles, and Robins...although the latter stay all winter on the other side of the river and we might see them any time....

And soon it will be maple sugaring time.

It's a Question of Music

If the night light from the heifer barn was music this is how it would sound

Country, pop, and rock, from the fifties to today, I have heard a lot and remember many.

Riding in the Camaro with the kid we sing along with the Beach Boys, Led Zeppelin, Manfred Mann, Hinder.....and many, many more..... Music has always been a real big thing and all.....

 (And on side note, ain't it cool that kids today still love the music we grew up with?)

However, although I like classical music and really love some of it, (Beethoven's 9th, Toccata and Fugue in D Minor) I know very little about it.

Thus for YEARS I have been trying to find out what the piece of music is that is played during the Quadrille part of the Lipizzaner show in Vienna. It sounds like maybe Strauss or something .....

If you watched the PBS show on the stallions last night you heard it. (And thanks Mom!!!! For calling me and telling me that it was on. I was getting ready for bed, but I was real happy to stay up for a while.)

So, if anyone can help me figure out what that piece is I would be most grateful. I know you are a real smart bunch of clever folks and all.....

Thanks in advance.

Hard Edge of Hunger

This weather changes things outside. Normally Cardinals are the leeriest of birds, except maybe for the Blue Jays. And if I fill the feeders half-way the seed lasts two days to a week.

This week however, the birds are emptying the feeders in less than a day.

When I went out at dawn to put out seed this morning the whole Cardinal flock landed right behind me and started eating before I even finished filling the feeders.

Ground feeders are finding ways to eat even on the suet blocks. Nothing like an American Tree Sparrow clinging to a wire cage trying to peck woodpecker blocks.....

I'll bet they are more eager for spring than we are. 

BYOB.... Strategies for Coping with the Weather

Chicken soup

Peasant bread

Wearing your husband's clothes in multiple layers

Or, if you are a dog, dancing through it, radiating glee in all directions.

Bring your own bottle

BYOB

Deadly Beauty

Grandma say stay warm out there

Five o'clock this morning and the moon was setting behind the heifer barn. I took a moment to open the plastic curtain over the dining room windows...about the only ones you could see out between the frost and sheets of plastic everywhere.

Outside the snow shimmered with crystals, nearly bright as day, spinning monochrome rainbows across the indigo ice. It was beautiful beyond description, but just that momentary lifting of the plastic let icy air flow across my feet.

It is only five below just now, no biggie in the cold winter scheme of things, but this is a time to be careful out there. Cold can kill. Stay safe.

And on that note the kids have been inveigling me into movie nights, catching me up on all the Disney's I have missed in recent years.

Tangled was good. I liked Brave.

However, I absolutely refuse to watch Frozen until the seasons change....and maybe not even then. Brrr......

Ain't it Perfect

Our boy waited three weeks, laid off at home, with all sorts of unpleasant stuff going on, so he could ride that Arctic Cat at home. He and Jade went out once up on the Tug Hill Plateau and had a nice time, but he wanted to ride HERE.....all those acres, all those familiar woods, and fields, and farm roads.

But, for nearly a month, despite extravagant threats from the weather forecasters and political gurus in Albany we got no snow. Zip, zilch, nada.

He finally got called back to work yesterday....in DC again. I guess the driving wasn't too bad because the folks who would normally be creating traffic were watching the Super Bowl instead....so except for some folks with southern plates that panicked at the first flake he had a decent drive.

However, now that he is far from this area code, we have snow.

Lots of snow

Not quite snowpacalypse but enough that I had to shovel to feed the birds and take Daisy the low-tranny dachsie out this morning. (As you can see, she ignored my efforts)

And it is still snowing.

Sorry Al, wish it was different than it is. Cold as it has been it will probably still be here when you get home.

And meanwhile, guess I will make some chicken soup.

Bring me another Smurf

...is Grandma's favorite meme on the whole Internet so....

Aunt Becky killed two birds with one stone

She baked a Tardis cake

 And then Peggy modeled for the home version

More Smurfs please!

Sunday Stills...the Letter O

My mom bought me this opal ring when I turned 16.
 I simply could not capture how blue the stones actually are

For more Sunday Stills.....

Middle Child

Works two jobs just to keep things going.

Brings good books, finds the best authors, pushes me off the deep end of reading.

Time after time.

Whovian

Best Mac and Cheese in the world....

Need to know something? She'll research it for you. Fastest search in the west...or east....

Always willing, quiet, but strong.

Middle child.....

My Becky

Happy Birthday kiddo...when you choose your birthday books from my collection, choose well.

Love you!

Warms you Twice

These are actually some of the smaller pieces

When we logged off some woods last year at tax time our logger friend left us with some huge boles of maple and some other hard woods that were not what was needed for log wood.

Those we are burning in the wood boiler. Sometimes that takes some serious preparation as they are far too big to lift or to fit through the door.

These pics were taken a couple of weeks ago. As you can see we have had our boy home for a bit, but now he is headed back to our nation's capitol, just in time to miss the Super Bowl, as he has to drive then.

Oh, well, I don't think anyone in the family has any dogs in that fight anyhow. Becky and he conspired to buy their dad a nice TV. The one he had I bought for him way back when we lived in town...since we moved up here in 2001 it was an oldie and not so goody. There is something wrong with the sound on it and whenever the boss went to sleep in front of it, it would creep up from a setting of maybe five to twelve...or twenty.....or nine million and six. It was awful!!!

Since any farmer's wife knows that as soon as a farm guy comes indoors and sits down where it's warm he goes right to sleep, that happened all too often. The new one has a nice picture and the sound is clear and stays where you set it. Ahh....the quiet.....

All well and good, but I still don't watch TV. Maybe the next time the boy comes home we can watch some movies....I still have only seen the first Hobbit movie....then again maybe not. There are still an awful lot of books in the world that I haven't read yet.

*First bird today Northern Cardinal

Tax Time

What tax time feels like

Or at least---catching up on the book work you should have been doing all year so that you are ready for the accountant---- time.

Last year was depressing. Selling the cows was like losing a family member. Having to do days upon days of new and unfamiliar record keeping and creating of accounts and stuff to tell the tale so that the government can get their share was too painful to contemplate.

So I didn't.

Silly me. It didn't go away just because I avoided the office like a root canal.

So now I am in a full time crappy mood, running back and forth from the office to the kitchen...where I can visit the online banking site to try to figure out what the heck I was doing during those ugly times. 

Note to self...no matter how downed out you are, keep putting those notes in the checkbook. You know, the ones that explain exactly why you transferred five bucks from the boss's account to the farm account. Why you gave one of the kids $17 off the farm account. Where that extra $200 in that deposit came from.

Much as I have hated keeping the books, ever since the boss's mom handed me the bills, the check book, and the meager milk check, and signed off on the job in 2001, I have kept careful, faithful, books. Our beloved bookkeeper, who comes and fixes my mistakes and balances stuff for the accountant has always had kind things to say.

Last year I just didn't. I moped and grouched and hid my head in the sand. It was a lousy year and I was a lousy bookkeeper.

Talking to you all here helped and thanks....blogging is a lifeline for me sometimes, taking the place of keeping a journal, which helped me stay sane (or perhaps sane-ish at least) for many years before this.

However, going back through the months leading up to and right after selling the girls is awful. The story of every inch of disaster is laid right out in black and white....and red....lots of red. Who knew that a checkbook could have a plot and a story line?

It makes me sad to see that a reasonably prosperous 2014 for most who remained in the dairy industry looks like being followed by another bad year for dairy folks, one which may be as horrible as 2009...that awful year of disastrous prices that plowed many farmers under and pulled the rug out from under us in a big way.

Okay, there, thanks for giving me a minute to whine. I know that in real life I am downright stupid with good fortune, great family, good place to live, lots of land both wild and tame to enjoy, dogs, cats, a couple cows left in the barn, poultry, ponies, and plant projects for spring...heck I can talk to all my kids every day, ditto my mom and dad, lots of aunts and uncles too. Beautiful brothers with magnificent wives. Lovely granddaughters all over the place......I have nothing to complain about, and as soon as I get the checkbooks caught up I will do my best to rejoice and not whine.

Meanwhile, stay warm and have a great day!

And a Couple of Mine

Mama's Art

Paintings my mother did of our girls some years ago.

Snow Day

It does NOT look anything like this outside our door

The fridge is full of milk, two families worth. Essential paper products stockpiled  in another room...check.

And bread, we have bread.

The boss met his hay customer extra early so she has feed for her animals.

Our stock is all fed, extra well.

Three loads of wood brought in and covered.

Just in case.

We are ready for this!

And now, not a flake....except for the ones on TV

I ain't complaining cuz I ain't a fan, but after a while it is like the boy who  cried "wolf".

Only instead, it's the forecasters and public officials who haven't got a clue.

The best forecast I heard was from the nice man who brings me bird seed now and then. He said, "I don't think you will get much if any. Probably nothing."

And he was right. However, to the east and south of us folks are getting nailed. Power is out and winds and snow totals are high. I will hold good thoughts for them. 

***all ire directed at hyped up TV broadcasts, not the hard-working people who try to figure out what our weather will be. And at politicians who go so far over the top that they become irresistible targets. You know who I mean.

Whence Commeth these Cats

Miss Cattie fach, one of the three remaining official cats

When the cows left we had maybe eight barn cats. We never have too many as the varmints and the road keep the population low.

We decided to let attrition winnow the ranks and it did. Fighting amongst themselves, the road, mysterious disappearances, they are mostly gone. We now have three cats plus Elvis, who is a story unto himself. 

And then this morning I went over to the barn to tell the boss that his hay customer was waiting for him at the bottom of the hill, and there it was, another cat.

A fairly pretty one, long, black fur, bright green eyes, sitting on the stable cleaner chute and yowling and howling at me for all it's worth.

But just where did he come from?

Blizzard Warning

Now you see us...species number 21 for 2015

For tomorrow until Wednesday.

Oh, yay. Yes I know it is January but on top of everything else that is going on, we do not need a major storm.

However, that and a dollar will get you a coffee..at some stores at least.

So the boss is talking to hay customers about whether they need hay right away or can wait until after the storm to get it, as he needs to make sure we have plenty of wood to keep everyone warm. Meanwhile, Liz's husband has a serious medical crisis in his family...good thoughts and prayers would be appreciated...so they are wrapped up with that. 

And now you don't, although we are there if you look closely

 I hope you who live within reach of this big storm are going to be somewhere safe and warm with plenty of supplies. Meanwhile, as always when the weather gets bad, make sure to stock up on milk. NY dairy farmers will thank you.

Crows in the backyard during a small squall

Good Grooming

Snowcat making trails for Arctic Cats....