Fondness

Alas the Riverbank Grapes are about done for the year.
I love the way they smell

They do say that absence makes the heart grow fonder. I hope it's true. The recent hiatus here was caused by our boy being really sick with a bad wisdom tooth and his mommy being too darned worried to feel like writing.

Top Onions are getting their tops.
 I need to start a new pot to use indoors for winter

The culprit was finally removed yesterday, along with one of its mates and he is back to work. Now his worry wort mom can brood about the nasty pain relievers and horrific antibiotics he must take......reading the inserts that come with medicines these days is worse than starting a new Steven King at midnight on Halloween with a storm rumbling in the background and werewolves howling on the hill.

After an April emptying and cleaning the garden pond has finally balanced itself
and is clear.
 First time it's been emptied in ten years or more
because it had such a nice balance of water lilies and pond plants.
Alas two horrible winters in a row killed all but one iris.
That one had to be lifted out by three people and chopped up with and axe before being hauled away by the skid steer.
Maybe a heater this fall....keep my new lilies from going the way of the old ones.
 Nice to see the little fishies

Meanwhile, it has been raining and has turned off cold, shutting down garden work , and leading to the furnace running full blast even as we speak. Here are a few sunny pics from before the weather reversal.....

Water Canna roots

Ponies

Gambit

Jack

Yeah, Jack was invited onto the back porch for a short visit the other evening. Having pretty much seen it all, he was unimpressed. No hay here, ho, hum....

Peggy, however, who was sitting in her highchair nomming some supper, went wild, screaming with joy to see a horse....not quite, but almost....in the house.

She is her mama's daughter for sure.

The kids brought old Deranged Richard into the kitchen once when this was their grandma's house and they thought she wouldn't notice.....

Deranged Richard, teaching the girls about ponies, back in the day

Wake Up Sleepyhead

Unedited...just as the morning was given to us.

A slow-moving cow rising from her bed to meander down to the barnyard gate.

Cardinal talking
Catbird
Crow
Black-throated Blue Warbler
Yellow Warbler
Common Yellowthroat
Willow Flycatcher

And too many more to remember or mention.....

It was just a little foggy and mysterious and more than a little amazing and wonderful.

Liz reported a doe with twin fawns over in the cow barnyard when she went to get hay.....looked brand new. Safety in numbers or safety by farm dogs.....

It is hard not to love this amazing land...as long as I stuff all those horrible memories of winter into the closet along with the down vests and snowmobile pants. 

June and Dairy Month is almost here.

Country of Origin Labeling

These are places where American food is grown

Or COOL.

Are you one of those people? Who read every label and peruse every sticker on every single bag of fruit or package of vegetables or Styrofoam container of sausages to see where the food originated?

I am and I don't regret it one bit.

We have good friends who farm in this area

I want to know that when I serve a bowl of strawberries to Peggy or bite into a crisp Granny Smith that it was grown by American farmers and picked and shipped and processed under American food safety regulations.

Having been a dairy farmer for the majority of my life, working in what may be one of the most regulated of food industries, I have first hand knowledge of what goes into making our food safe....I have been forced by milk inspectors to pressure wash the gutter behind the cows......I know ten thousand ways to clean a bulk tank and keep it that way.

Having been an ag  columnist for 17 years I have learned a lot about what is done to inspect food being imported. There is NO comparison! A lot of food that comes into this country comes in on a sort of honor system...an inspection here and there, but by no means ubiquitous oversight.

It is one thing to import from neighboring nations that also work under stringent rules....but our new food trading buddies are going to be Pacific Rim nations...possibly including..... you know....China....thanks to the TPP

Those stickers and labels are probably going bye-bye. Since the World Trade Organization has once again struck down US COOL laws and Congress is scurrying to comply, I have one simple, homegrown solution to not wanting my apples and chicken to come from China...where we all know feed safety is not exactly paramount.

We are making plans to remove the old cement sink that clutters up the back porch and buy another freezer. We already raise our own beef, turkeys, get venison off our own land, and grow and freeze a lot of vegetables. We get strawberries locally and apples and other things we don't yet grow ourselves.

Black locust in bloom Town of Glen

Once the old sink is gone we are going shopping for another medium-sized freezer. Storage space has been one of the constraints holding us back from growing more of our own....we can fix that.

Jade's grandpa is giving him his rototiller, which makes expanding the gardens quite possible. 

A river flats cornfield in the Town of Glen

We can do this.

And Congress and their donors and their caving in to world interests at the expense of American interests can all go to Hell.

Maybe this little farm can't feed the world, but we can sure go a long way towards feeding ourselves.

Some tasty food stories for your enjoyment and enlightenment:

Donkey Meat recalled
It hasn't worked for Mexico
Or pets

The Chinese stories...horror stories that is....never end.

McDonalds
Yummy....we can get chicken there now
And pork (Meanwhile on American dairy farms water sources are inspected several times a year and water samples pulled and tested by official inspectors)

I could do this all day. The stories of tainted food from countries that will now be our best buddy trading partners and won't have to say so on the packaging are everywhere you care to look. Overseas newspapers are on them like white on rice so to speak. You won't see much here.

Been Farming too Long?

No doubt you've seen that cute little photo of two farm boys in overalls, "You been farming long?"

The little fellows have long since grown up, but the meme is iconic.

Sometimes I get to thinking that it is possible to have been farming too long though.

Like last night.

Things have not been going well recently. Our boy is horribly ill with tooth trouble and hundreds of miles from home. Jade's truck died an unwelcome death, leaving them scrambling for transportation. And on and on. As we all know, there's always something.

Thus last night when I heard a metallic trill as I sat at the kitchen table wishing that it was dark enough to call it a day and go to bed, I was horrified.

OMG, the fan on the refrigerator  freezer is dying too. I'm a farmer's wife. I know what machinery death sounds like.

Oh, no, oh, no.....

But wait! I've heard that sound before. I probably should have recognized it but it was so ridiculously loud that I couldn't believe it that it was animal rather than mineral in origin.

I went right outdoors to try to sneak up on the culprit. He was just a few feet off the ground in the Winesap apple tree that the boss's mom planted so long ago, but it was too dark to see him. I sure could hear him though.

Once I started paying attention I realized that he had plenty of buddies all over the fields, singing the same old song too. How wonderful to be moving slow enough to notice all the firsts of the year.

Boy, was I glad it wasn't the freezer though!

Happy Birthday, Liz

Some Gave All

This weekend we remember.......

Sunday Stills.....Babies

Baby Peggy

Tis the season of babies.......

Baby Lambs

Goslings

 For more Sunday Stills.......

Hey, Grandma, I know you're out there!!

Listen to the Mockingbird

Savannah Sparrow

Well, actually, listen to the Bobolinks and Red-Winged Blackbirds. This field was seething with birds yesterday when I went up. Savannah Sparrows dotted the edges singing their sweet little raspy songs.

Two hen turkeys took off at my passing.






An Upland Sandpiper called almost right in my ear to make sure I noticed his passing.

Common Yellowthoat, the little masked bandit of spring

Cardinals sang, Common Yellowthroats, Yellow Warblers, Willow Flycathcers everywhere....a Harrier passed, rocking low over the grass, pursued by half a dozen smaller birds that didn't like the look of her.

Great Crested Flycatcher seen from the sitting porch

I took a short video so you could hear some of the din. Turn your sound up to experience the techno music of a hay field in spring. The actual video quality is negligible...this is just for the songs.

Brown Thrasher on the Long Lawn

Oh, and I drove this too....although that is not me in the  photo.....

Friday on the Farm

 

Crossover

"Whoa!!!!"

How things have changed around here in the past few years......we used to the know the name of the owner of every farm around. Knew their kids and their wives, and sometimes even their farm dogs. Knew them to talk to at auctions and meetings, or were even good friends and good neighbors.

"Whew, got 'em stopped just in time

We knew how long they had farmed their land.

And who farmed it before them.

Must be a campfire

That is all done now.

Everything has changed. Everything. Almost every dairy farm has gone out of business...there are barely any left. Some have been replaced by small Amish farms, but all the folks we used to know have left the industry, left the area, left the land.....or even died, all too often untimely.

All new people now....all different, all changed. We know a few of them.....have hired them to do some construction, bought a few things, chased away particularly persistent elders who wanted to buy the place whether we wanted to sell it or not, which can be generally pretty aggravating. 

Still, I'm sure glad someone is farming this ground...plus reopening other land that had been grown up to brush and weeds....

On a ride around last night though, we could barely recognize places we have known for all our lives..... and I sure do miss the old neighbors.

I Wonder if the Crow

Masquerading as a Raven, what with molting outside feathers leaving him a pesky wedge tail, worries about  the Grackle eggs he is stealing.... are they organic....

All stealthy as he sneaks from apple branch to cedar stem, a screeching stream of iridescent black and green and blueshine parents flowing behind him, wishing in his wake that he was more selective in his dining.

Do the selfsame Grackles post on social media about the GMOs in the Catbird eggs they maraud upon or the nestlings they make away with?



Hmm....I wonder....

That fine, large, whitetail buck that gallumphed across the pasture just a little while ago...so pretty against the green...seemed unconcerned, but what do we know? Does he fret about cholesterol in his clover? Will it interfere with antler growth? Could he be low T?



Or the cottontails nibbling at the edges of the iris patch. All that grass....Gluten free? Free range?

I wonder....but wait...there's more. I'm pretty sure none of these creatures worry about anything other than enough.

They certainly don't have to worry about where their food originates. It's all one big farmer's market to them and they are our most frequent customers.

Too busy to fret about factory farming as long as their bellies are full and their homes are snug and secret.

Farm Kids Can

Frieland LF Bama Breeze

Congratulations to Sawyer Fredericks who lives on a farm a couple of miles from us. I've even been on that farm several times when other folks were farming there....seems like a great place to grow up.

I am glad this fine young man won last night. He truly deserved it. I don't have the patience to watch TV, but Ralph had it on in the other room. Every time Sawyer came on and his fine, pure, yet gritty, powerful, but still sweet, voice drifted out to the kitchen I had to go listen.

He is that compelling. I would have been very disappointed if the other performers, no doubt fine in their own genre, but sounding to me very slick and commercialized, had beat him.

I wish him all the best.

A Little Slice of Farm Life

Liz made this video of the young birds the kids have raised from chicks, which have now moved up to a big coop. You can hear the sounds of the day in the background, the lambs querying when their next meal will arrive, the roosters crowing, the radio playing country music in hopes of keeping varmints at bay.

I like it and find myself playing it over and over again, despite being able to walk right down to the barn if I want to.

On and Off

When the wood boiler is going, which it generally is if we want hot water, unless the water is diverted, heat flows upstairs through the ducts even if the furnace fan is off.

This can be shut off, and during the recent heat wave it was.

Then we had the boss turn it back on because it got chilly.

Yesterday we wanted to ask him to do it again as it was hot enough to be uncomfortable out planting the peas and beans, and was downright excessively cozy in here...but he had had a tooth out and we didn't want to be mean to him.

Boy, are we glad today! Brr...it is downright shiverish.

Lots of rain last night too. I have a tool tray, which I keep filled with water and keep mint plants in pots in it. It was empty yesterday. This morning it is full...on the porch!! And not under the drip either.

Must have been some storms. I dunno. Having managed over 7000 steps yesterday I missed them due to sleep.
  

281 Steps

That's how many it takes to get downstairs, start the first load of laundry, put coffee in the microwave and let the little dachsie out for a minute.

How do I know?





Our boy couldn't be home last week for Mother's Day. Thousands of young men couldn't be. Soldiers, men who live far away, men like himself, whose jobs take them out of state for weeks at a time.

I missed him just the same, but it is one of my jobs as a mother to accept that our young people have made their own lives....good ones and I am proud of them all.....

 

And the waiting was worth it as there was all the fun when he was finally able to come home this weekend.

He picked up the tractor and he and his dad got it fitted up with new batteries and the required hydraulic couplers to hook it up to our tillage tools.

Then he ripped the disks over a field that has lain fallow for several years, one of our best. Then tried to chisel it, but wound up turning it over with the moldboard plows.

Went to the races with his dad, brother and brother-in-law. I guess despite a rain out they had a great time.

And bought me a phone. For someone who grew up having no phone sometimes and party lines others, any cell phone at all is a wonder. I have used a little one he got me many Mother's Days ago very happily, even though it quickly became outmoded.

However, I did wish for a pedometer and none that we could find worked. I step very softly....

This phone counts them very nicely. (Among other cool things too numerous to mention).

So now I can look at my morning's activities, which sometimes seem like so much when still clouded by sleep and realize.....if I am going to meet that 10,000 step goal I am going to have to get moving......