Dramatis Chickenae

There was much excitement here last night. 

 Our good friend Teri, a llama farmer and a blogger whom we have actually met, gave us some little chickies once....quite a long time ago.

Two of them were little white bantam cochins, which we named George and Laura. George eventually met the fate of many free roaming chickens and was eaten by who knows what.

Laura was smarter. She still walks among us.....and she will still willingly brood anything we put under her. She has hatched many poultry critters that were not of her ilk.

However, one of her first broods, also many years ago, produced Silver, her own daughter. Silver is one of those gorgeous blue and golden birds that sometimes pop out among the Americaunas or Easter Eggers. That's what the rooster side of that equation happened to be. She is not a particularly productive chicken but she sure is pretty.

Laura lives indoors now, due to the plethora of varmints we have been experiencing, and Silver has been in the little coop Mappy gave us, with the big cochins.

The other day, naughty Daisy, who is BAD with chickens, bombed the window of that little coop just as Liz raised the lid to feed the birds.

Out flew Silver. She and Laura are favorite chickens, senior citizen chickens, special chickens. Flocks have come and flocks have gone, birds have come and birds have gone, life has changed....George and Laura used to come over to the barn each morning while we were milking and entertain us with their antics out in the barnyard. Cows have gone too, but Laura and her chick are still here.

Losing Silver made us sad. Although everybody tried to catch her she proved elusive, here one minute, gone the next. She has lived free for many of her years and is good in the brush, but with all the foxes, fishers, yotes and weasels around here her days were numbered if someone couldn't grab her.

Last night....bed time...Liz came up on the porch from last time around the barn checking and door closing. In one hand a flashlight. In the other a great big grey chicken (Silver would make four of her tiny mother). She had been sleeping on top of the wall of the dog kennel.

I grabbed the camera. Just as I clicked the shutter the hen bated with a scream, the flashlight went crashing to the floor, and Alan came flying out of the living room, thinking the horrific squawking and crash were Peggy getting hurt. He was not impressed with the whole chicken in the house concept, but hey, she's smaller than a calf or a pony.

And she is now safe back in the coop with Blue, the big cochin rooster and his other ladies,

Whew, 

I was worried about her. 

Who me?

Habit dies Hard

Aunt Sandy, you were right!

There is no reason to get up at 4, before the sun, before the birds. There are no cows to milk and only the steer needs feeding. The boss takes care of that.

But old habits are strong and if I'm awake, I'm awake. First bird today was an American Crow. All the blackbirds are in motion, Starlings, Red-winged Blackbirds and Common Grackles in busy mixed flocks, all looking as if they are going somewhere important.

It is nice to watch the sun come up, enjoy a good cup of coffee, and think, in peace....for a while before the chaos starts.

This weekend we have to watch for Bama to come into season. She showed signs of heat about three weeks ago and that is the interval between estrous periods for cows. We are hoping to get her down to the barn and breed her to our Milking Shorthorn bull for a calf next year.

Cows take nine months to produce offspring, not unlike folks. You can count back three months to see when she would be expected to calve if we catch her in heat. If she catches to the service...looks like May to me.

And here's hoping. The old girls don't really have to do anything but eat, but another calf would be nice. Moon's baby, Moonshine, is running with them. She is fairly tame for a pasture calf because Liz brought her in the barn for a few days... a good thing too. It is much easier to handle tame cattle.

Supposed to rain today and I wouldn't be surprised. it is so humid that the least breath of moving air feels like Heaven...you can smell the river on days like this and all the trucks and trains sound as if they were coming right up the driveway.

Have a good one.

I Think it's Time

So busy, she's blurry

OK, grandma, I did it....

I admit it....

has a perfectly good high chair.
Hates it and fights it, kicking and screaming
So this little table and chair serves....

Lovey

Bossy

Messy..like a good baby!

For a Peggy fix.

Blue Collar Heart

Thought you night need this today

Liz and I were talking about Mike Rowe this morning...of all things...I truly don't watch TV any more than is required by love of family...but I do admire the man. We then got onto politics, but I won't go there....

You're welcome....

Later came another conversation about things that people of our way of life take for granted and accept as normal that are remarkable in other lives. It made me think.

I guess I have a blue collar heart. I love and respect and admire our guys for the work they do...the building and fixing, repairing and growing, driving and delivering, and making this country go. I know many men just like them, far wiser than their job description might make you think.

I used to work nights while we were milking, helping our boy memorize the Latin names of pretty near every plant and critter in NY for college (and I have duly forgotten most of same). However, I am not one bit sorry that he does what he does, which does not require knowledge of who Gavia Immer is.

 In fact I am astonished and amazed every day about the places he has worked and the things he has helped build there. Plus I have the added benefit of the Nocomis Micropogon joke......and we both remember the secret wood song of the first and the story of the second.

I feel the same about capable daughters who can. Change a radiator hose with their own tools. Catch straying cows. Raise livestock. Milk and feed and roll out round bales the size of a Volkswagen. Work in a thankless job and excel just the same, rather than lie down and whine. I guess apples and trees come into play here, as my mom has always been able to do anything she set her mind to, and still can....

Anyhow, we are sure enough blue collar I guess, but we aren't too awful blue about it. 

When Ordinary is all you Need

New York Soybeans and the Auriesville Shrine

Yesterday was.....just a day.....the sun came up. People went to work or went out for chores. Things were dug from the garden and brought in and animals fed and watered. It was hot and humid....just a day....

Except that any day can be amazing if you watch closely and get lucky. 

 Alan is on a job in this state and can drive home at night, at least most nights. Means I can feed him up on good farm food and sleep better at night knowing he isn't in the dangerous big city. The garden is full of stuff, which I really need to get into the freezer, but we sure don't eat like this in the winter....

More NY beans

 I was doing dishes, for all my life one of the jobs i hate the most. At least I finally have a window over the sink, something I aspired to for many years in other houses.

I was grumbling through a LOT of them from two families living together, when a bird landed a couple of feet from my face in the arbor among the scarlet runner beans. 

I knew, instantly that it was a new one to me....so beautiful, so brilliant, so incredible a yellow, barred with black with a sort of penciled triangle around the eyes.....a Prairie Warbler!

It was a life bird for me. I know the woods warblers are everyday for a lot of people, but I am only slowly getting them on my life list....I literally got cold chills.I think the girls thought I was having a heart attack.

A short time later the dogs tuned up like they meant it. I looked outside to see a truck, out of which a young farm man was climbing. He is one of only two or three people whom we let hunt here and a good friend of Alan and the family, one of those fine young folks you can talk to with no generation or culture gap.

Turns out he was carrying his petition to run for town council. We were happy to sign and to get a chance for a nice visit. I was delighted to see a young farmer, a well-educated and well-raised young citizen, looking to get into area politics. 

Young matters because we need young folks to take an interest and take the world into the future. Farmer is important to me, because most farmers are common-sense, practical, business people, who get how the world works. Far too few people  realize how much ag drives our area economy, how necessary profitable businesses are to keep that economy healthy, or that tax money comes from people's hard work, not from the bottomless coffers of a benevolent government. I can't wait to vote for him if he gets on the ballot.

Dipping her hair in the river at dusk...

Then, come evening; both young guys were home early enough to actually get a hot dinner, roast beef, potatoes, and beets, all grown right here and cooked by Liz and me. We watched a movie together...Wild America....and had a nice gathering.

A good time was had by all. Now I am going to do the dishes with hopes that something else interesting will show up in the arbor.

Sunburned Serenity

After taking us to breakfast at my cousin's delightful restaurant, our boy suggested renting a boat and going fishing for our Sunday. I am not inclined to say no to a spot of lake, and even though the boss is a bit intimidated by water in large quantities he came along too.

We only caught a handful of fish, but some of them were downright exciting...little bass that leapt out of the water, wildly shaking at the hook...sometimes successfully...a rock bass for me so I could feel all successful...and lots more little bass that seemed to think the boss was the mostest and had the tastiest bait.

We let them all go of course, and took home the memories we reeled in instead ....dark blue denim water sparkling with wind-tossed glitter, all tied up with wakes of silver ribbon, knitting itself neatly back together in our own wake as we gently motored the entire lake, end to end and back again, trolling, drifting, swinging quietly at anchor. Spray flicking our faces, cooling the heat of the sun with water so clean it left no spots on my glasses.

It was truly a fishing day, with more boats on the hunt than I have ever seen before. We laughed over the way the waves surged up inside an old stump and then sprayed out a hole in the side for all the world like those little boy stickers guys put up in the back windows of pickup trucks...I'm sure you know the ones I mean.

We came home in time for a movie together and then our boy had to get some sleep for back to work today. The sun found all the places the sunblock missed, but the little sting is just a reminder of a really great day doing what we love with the ones we love.....and I think the boss may have lost some of his fear of the water too...

Speaking of movies....a few seconds of peace...turn up your sound for the best of it....

Sunday Stills....Clouds in Black and White

For more Sunday Stills......

The Wind Beneath your Wings

Eastern Phoebe intently hunting a foot from the window

It is a calm and foggy morning, utterly still, barely a breath of air to be found. Everyone is asleep but me, which is fine...I like this quiet time....

Yesterday the boss finished first cutting, which should have been cause for great celebration. However, a series of pop-up thunderstorms, which did just that, popped up, seemingly out of nowhere, certainly out of a clear blue sky, hit just as he was bringing the wagons down. No time to even put canvases on them.

They just got wet. 

It ate a lot of spiders....hey Phoebe, come again and bring your friends.

 Very wet. Some bales were certainly turned from a salable commodity to mulch or insulation for the foundation.

Anyhow, sitting here at the kitchen table in my late mother-in-law's spot....I will probably never fill her shoes, but I do use her chair....noodling through the morning's news of friends around the world...when moving leaves on the scarlet runner beans on the bird feeder arbor caught my eye.

Yeah, Yeah, I seriously need to get a ladder and do something about this dirty window
but I never left my seat for any of these photos except the turkeys on the bottom

I watched for a minute...no breeze at all you know...and there she was, a tiny Ruby-throated Hummingbird perusing the red blossoms for nectar.

I am so glad the kids brought that arbor down and gladder still that we grew the beans on it. Next year I will plant them thicker, but it is like a little play house of green and red, soon to be followed by blue when the morning glories finally get their act together....there are buds!

What a lovely little wind moving the flowers in the stillness....what lovely company the window brings....

Lookin' out my back door

Family Farm, not Factory Farm

Bama Breeze

We drove past one of the biggest farms in the county last night.... a number of barns, dozens upon dozens of calf hutches in long white rows, lots of feed and bedding storage, hundreds of cows, some new construction projects, corn fields, ponds, and all.

I am sure that activists and those not in the know would have been horrified. OMG, it's big! It has barns! It must be bad!!!!

I was instead quite tickled. The calves were obviously contented...happy even...out in their little individual yards, schmoozing with each other or prancing around. They were fat and clean and healthy. Their coats were sleek and fluffy and nice.

The cows were having supper, heads reaching through their feeders to piles and piles of lovely total mixed ration, or TMR. They were clearly contented too, just doing what cows generally choose to do, eating and hanging around together.

Everything, and I do mean everything, was spotlessly clean, and neat, and tidy. That is saying something right there. Animals make a mess and cows are particularly messy as creatures go.

Yet this place was tidier than my living room.

And it smelled good! There was no odor of manure at all, despite the large number of cattle house there. All you could smell was the corn in the ration, which by the way smells tangy and delicious, and the warm bodies of the cows....which to me is a wonderful smell.

It is sad that people who have no idea what they are seeing perceive farms like these as less than ideal. Instead this is a business built by a farming family who care for their animals and their land and take care of things with state of the art equipment. Hats off to them.

Update, here is a link I save about how cows feel about pasture vs housing in summer. 

Do Apples Portend?

Or pears prognosticate?

Does it mean anything that I have heard from both Washington DC and Alaska over the past couple of days that the geese are already on the move?

Samaras anyone? No ash borers in this tree yet I guess

I don't know, but I was out on the sitting porch yesterday and SMELLED fall. The weedy, harsh scent of crushed goldenrod and dying leaves was blowing on the stiff, chilly breeze. The male honeylocust is turning golden already and you should hear the cottonwoods chattering their leaves.

I am in no way ready for this, but I don't think it cares out there. Early winter? Hard winter? El nino like the experts are saying?




 If only I could read the future in the fruit......

Harbinger?

And so

The rain is flouncing down, dampening everything including everyone's spirits. After the hefty weekend work everyone is kind of tired anyhow and the rain just makes us all want to sleep. 

Working on a Farm Side about retaliatory trade protections by Russia against the US and EU and some of the ramifications thereof.

Some folks are pretty creative in their reactions.

 I would love to take advantage of this sleepy day.....however.....have a good one. 

Hay There

The weekend was all about hay, all hay, all day, on all the screens of this wild rural cinema.

The clack and the rattle of the elevators was nearly constant, driven in their duty by electric motors and the sassy "new" Massy, which works the nuts as the guys say.

All was punctuated of course by the usual run of flat tires and wonky elevators jamming up and all that sort of stuff.

The mows are getting high, making it harder to unload each one, but for all the extra effort involved, that is nothing but a good thing. One more field of first cutting, then a short break to give the equipment a little shakedown, and back at it with second cutting.

Having our boy home moved it all at Caesar speed...if you read the old Mary Stewarts you'll remember that term. In fact on Saturday everybody got into the act, including Peggy and her whole family.

You should have seen her tromping back and forth to the barn in her little rubber chore boots. She was cute for sure, but mostly she was determined. Stomp, stomp, stomp, over to see Unca Alan and Pop Pop. Back to the house to check on Nana. Back to the barn. Back to the house. I think she wore her mama out. 

Me, I fed them. With my messed up thumbs I'm not much use in the haymow, but I can still cook. The good earth here generously provided beef, freshly dug potatoes, newly picked green beans, squash, onions, garlic, and the herbs with which to prepare them. I fed the hay crew sandwich steaks with peppers and onions (frozen a couple of weeks earlier from one of Alan's grill extravaganzas) on Saturday and beef stew on Sunday. 

A big thumbs up on the thumbs thing. They have hurt for years...since I started milking cows when I was twenty-something. I laid it to milking cows...who wouldn't? They take turns ouching and between that and decades of guitar playing I have become pretty much ambidextrous. In fact the left one is worst just now because I've been babying the right, and I miss it because the right one made me something of a lefty if you get what I mean.

 I was whining to my dear aunt who brought my dear uncle to visit one day last week....or maybe it was the other way around.....but they came anyhow and we had a great visit. She told me it was probably tendinitis, instead of the arthritis I'd been blaming it on for decades.

I read up on that, saw there was a brace for it, and Alan got me one on Saturday before the dew was off the hay so they could work. It worked. Stupid things still hurt but there is a lot of relief involved. Yay! And maybe it would help if I avoided pulling amaranth that is higher than my head and nearly as thick as my ankles....that was dumb and I knew it when I was doing it, but what the hey...the onions are all harvested.

On Sunday afternoon, when the elevator quit clacking and the sun began to sink over the heifer barn, our boy headed back to a different kind of wild...that of the dangerous, lurking swamp of a certain big city. Peggy pressed her nose against the screen door, waving bye bye and was sad. We all were......but  he was gone, leaving behind a trail of hay dust and good coffee.....

Pony training.....

Today, even though I covered the curing onions and brought some of them in, it isn't raining, so maybe the boss can get the last load, which they canvased last night, off the wagon. Then the last field....