The Week that Was

Head 'em up, move 'em out.....er.....in.....

How did we end up being busier in retirement than we were when we had sixty cows and forty or fifty heifers?

Or at least as busy? maybe we are just older and slower so we seem busier......

I dunno, but it feels as if we are going every minute. 

The excitement for the week included an eagle swooping down to take a hen right by the barn. The birds are normally safe inside the stone and wood building and their coop, but they were outside while the coop was getting cleaned.

An evening head count, or beak count if you prefer, seemed to show that at least most of the birds were still there, so maybe he didn't get any, but he was sure after them. They were scattered all over all the buildings, when normally they just hang around in front of the barn. It was a big job to round them all up.

I stood down at the barn while the kids finished up the cleaning, and recapturing, watching him sail back and forth in front of the barn looking to come in for lunch. Pretty exciting way to get a year bird.

And then there were mundane jobs like keeping the stove going, helping get a canvas on the new load of sand, and all the ordinary things we do.

Like answering the phone. I'll tell you what..hay is getting scarce out there. We are getting down to where we have to be careful to keep enough to feed our cows and sheep and horses until spring, so we took all our hay ads down. We have enough to sell a bit, but we are getting enough business from repeat customers for that.

Anyhow, until we took the ads down we were getting nine or ten calls or more right in a row, from all over several states and a big chunk of NY.

 The worst of it was that I kept answering the phone when Rachel from Cardholder Services called, because the phone numbers "she" uses look just like cell phones from other states. I sure do make the guy who answers when you press "1" mad when I tell him I'm turning him over to the FTC. He has called me some downright unpleasant names.

The boss got a pretty flattering comment on the hay the guys put up though. One of our regular buyers has a brother with horses on the race track and he is going to buy some. That is the gold standard around here....hay that is good enough for race horses.

It is important to have good help

Cat Person

All things at high speed except....

This morning I was wondering why the Good Lord, in his infinite wisdom, made me a dog person. Normally I am quite happy being a dog person. I like dogs. They tend to like me.

However.....

While the head cat person in the family slept soundly, kitty cats snuggled around her, I shivered miserably in the rain waiting for my dog.

Flannel shirt over my head, shoulders hunched, dripping,and muttering, cold, unhappy, getting cranky real fast, with a cute little doggy at the end of a drooping leash....waiting.

And waiting.

And waiting. 

Of course he's is a bird dog too. Not that Jack Russell Terriers are noted for such, but this one finds birds entrancing. He's my dog. Of course he does.

This was not a help this morning.

"Nope, not here...
nor here.....
Not here either......."

First, just as he settled tentatively into that tell-tale hunch, a Carolina Wren yodeled from the honey locust. Normally this is one of my favorite sounds. But loud. There is a thriving pair visiting the feeders every day and I enjoy them so much.

Except....today..... not so much. The pup instantly stopped what he was almost doing and  froze into a point, listening intently to the bird.

Which sang, and sang, and sang. "Glad you are so happy with the rain and all, but do you wanna shut up a minute?' I thought to myself.

Eventually the mutt grew bored  or accustomed or whatever and settled down to tend to business....again...

And CHEEP!!! a House Sparrow, also known around here as a %$@&** Sassenach, chirped about three feet behind him. He shot skyward, swapped ends, and turned his attention to that bird.

And then he spotted the flock under the feeders. Bark, bark, barkbarkbarkbark.

'Enough of this', I muttered. 'This is why they invented newspapers.'

So I hauled him away from his storm of invective and the Lord's storm of precipitation and went inside to get busy on my own newspaper job. I was finishing up the Farm Side, which hopefully contains more palatable information than his newspaper jobs.

Although someone, somewhere, is no doubt using the editorial page where my prose resides, as a puppy paper.....or maybe to line a litter box. 



***Hey Alan, mine is all in and done, so if you get bored......

"Steal Clementines, you ask?"
"Why, thanks, yes I will."

Chinook

Sunset a couple nights ago, just as it came off the camera.
Thank you Liz for calling it to my attention, as it only lasted a minute or two.

We are a long way from the Rockies, so I guess technically you couldn't call this a Chinook wind. However, it is warm and soft and weird out and I think whatever we have going will be followed by a storm. It feels impending so to speak.

And noisy.

The trains across the river sound as if they are going to join me right here in the kitchen. I can hear the individual rattle of every cross tie and join in the tracks. Clackity, clackity, clackity, clack. Normally they are just a dull roar in the background. Today one must notice.

Everything that hasn't blown away in previous storms is banging and clanging and crashing around out there. The last twigs of the morning glory vines are lashing and slashing across the kitchen window and a draft is sneaking in from somewhere.

If it were March I would just settle down and enjoy it, or maybe go out and slosh around in the mud. However, this is kinda strange for February and I am more inclined to watch it go by outside the windows and wait and see what follows.

Sunrise the day the big snows hit to the south
Those bands of clouds are as close as it got to us

The Best

Got cattitude? (Or when Peggy wants the kitties, Peggy gets the kitties

Birthday ever, to the best Becky ever. Hope you have a great one! Love you.

Working for the Government

They tax us at play

Everyone around here has been largely working for the government lately. I've been doing hours and hours and days of bookkeeping, which is why I haven't been writing much.

The boss has been selling hay that he made last summer to pay the county property tax and the school taxes. It takes most of what he makes. I've been struggling over the health insurance penalty and decided just to pay it.

They tax us at work

The girls worked hard doing their taxes over the past week too. We also paid taxes on Alan's snowmobiles and fees to register them. Dog licenses. Tolls on the highway. And that's besides working to know how much we need to pay.

I checked when Tax Freedom Day, the day when the average working stiff has paid their share for the year, will occur for 2016. Last year it was April 24th for the nation as a whole. NY with its high tax rate is usually even later. 

Over the past several years the day has come later each year, so I expect that this year it will occur after the 24th.

In contrast Food Check Out Day, the day when the average American has worked long enough to pay for their food for the year, generally falls in February, generally during the third week. 

Kinda makes you think. All you can eat paid for in under two months, yet the government bite takes nearly twice as long.

Dang.

If they have to reach that deep into our pockets, I wish they would at least do their own bookwork.

Even the sheep has an opinion

Crafting Love

Aunt Bee crocheted a little blue bear for Peggy...it was love at first hug.

A Chance of Magic

The one we grew last year

Last summer I grew morning glories.........finally ....I know, I know....they are easy, almost pests, etc. etc.

Well, that wasn't quite how it worked out for me, but last year marked a very happy success. The flowers were a beautiful shade of faded denim blue and the size of saucers. The boss and I counted the blooms every morning and rejoiced in their amazingness.

Then, come fall, as frost claimed the last of them and the winds began to whittle away even the tangled vines, I found some spectacular varieties with online searches. We planned to order this one, and that one, and maybe another one come spring and then I forgot all about them.

The other day the boss took me to Runnings to get orange-flavored suet balls to fill Jonna's feeder for the Carolina Wrens...Ohio has been important to our birds you see....

The seed racks were full and pulled out across some aisles so you couldn't miss them when you walked into the front door. Like a blaze of summer promises laid out to tantalize even the hardiest.

The boss, who is very kind to me in that way, asked, "Is there anything you need?"

And as I was replying, "No, we are pretty well supplied and we will make an order with Pinetree a little later, and get some Slendrette beans over at Sunnycrest come spring...."

 I saw these! They were right there front and center like bears that might just bite us. And they  jumped right off the rack and into the cart.

They are the exact ones we found online last fall and have never seen for sale anywhere else.

Magic? Maybe.....and now we have just one more reason to hurry spring....

Oh, the Weather Outside is Frightful

But nowhere near that frightful..... This is a screen capture of this blog's weather button a few minutes ago. Now it is back to showing 43 degrees, which is warm for January, but not THAT warm.

Interstates, Hawks and NYC Snowstorms

Leftover snow in Queens

Alan was home today because of the storm, so of course he needed to go to the big city on other business. He asked me to ride along and I did, even though I am not of fan of that particular apple. (I prefer the ones that grow on trees up here in the other NY.

The trip was uneventful, the city streets cleaned up enough for reasonably normal travel and we even found a pretty decent parking place.

The most notable part of the trip was the roadside Red-tailed Hawks. They are pretty much a feature of every Interstate trip and after a while you develop an eye for the puffy light buff breast with the rusty band across it. Even I can spot them from a great distance.

Anyhow we saw a lot of them, beyond anything I have ever experience. Wish I had started counting in the morning, because we would have racked up quite a tally.

The city was in pretty good shape for being just a couple days after stormageddon, but I still don't like it there, even though we saw a couple of Red-tails right in town.

Confusion

Last night after all the hay customers had gone on their way I was sitting in my Sunday chair reading when Peggy came to visit.

Peggy visits are better than any book, so I set it aside so we could chat. She pointed over my shoulder out the big window.....

What was that thing glowing in the sky?

I told her it was the moon and she began to moo at me. I thought that she thought that I was saying "Moo" not "Moon" so I made myself clearer.

However, she kept pointing up at the window and saying, "Moo".

Um.....huh......?????

Then her mama explained. One of the cows is named Neon Moon....who when she talks, says, "Moo."

I am sure in time that we will be able to straighten this out, but for now, both moons are mooing. 

Lost and Found

The boss lost a big cherry log on the way down the hill. Not sure why he didn't notice, but a few minutes later he came back with this one. Don't think it's the same log, but I think it does say something...

Facebook Follies

Just as a benchmark here, I've been eligible for senior citizen discounts for quite a while now. As might be expected my mama is even older than I am...funny how that works isn't it?

Anyhow, we play Facebook games together and send each other little treasures and stuff every day. It always kinda lights up my morning when I open some game and find that my mama has sent me goodies.

I mean, how lucky, how blessed, can you be, to have both senior citizen discounts and a delightful mama that you can interact with every single day? I treasure it I'll tell you.

Thus when this morning I opened my Mousehunt game to go after those awful underwater mousies and it said that she wasn't my friend any more I was stunned. At first I wondered if I had said something.....you know how you do....but I couldn't think of anything. We get along real well.

Then the girls checked their friends list too and she was just.....gone....vanished....couldn't even find her with a search.

Facebook be darned, I could sure find her with a phone call. 

However, I have been well-trained not to call her early. She has always liked to sleep in, something utterly incomprehensible to a dawn chaser like myself, but I have learned to respect our differences.

I waited, fidgeting, and discussing with the girls what might have happened, until I just couldn't stand it any more and called.

She and dad are fine and I was most grateful indeed.

But then the questions about the whereabouts of her FB account were answered and now I am more puzzled than ever. Remember, neither she nor I are spring chickens....we aren't prudes either, but still. She was shut down for excessive nudity in her photographs!

WHAT! Do they maybe mean the pattern for a crocheted sheep she shared? That was pretty much undressed, but like most sheep it had a woolly coat...

No, wait! I know what it was! It was the Assateague Island ponies sunbathing that she shared yesterday! They were ALL naked!

Whew, I was getting kind of worried.

Speed

I have tried repeatedly to get a decent video of this little flexible flyer, but this is the best I can do. He is literally so fast that by the time I get him in the viewfinder he is gone.....

Winter Solace

Having passed the winter solstice we must look for solace in the small things that continue to entertain and warm hearts through the frigid doldrums.

These torn up jeans were destined to be kindling, but Mack had other ideas

I may have mentioned how I am not a winter person....no more than a thousand times or so....but I do try valiantly not to waste at least six months of the year, if not more in bad years, and so look for the good side of things.

Red-tailed Hawk soaring out of the Black Walnut tree right next to the driveway

Managed a walk yesterday, minus JRT due to the ice, but plus binoculars and camera. Not much to see but an anemic sunset and some of the biggest coyote tracks I have ever found. They were nice and crisp too, not sprawled out by melting.

Said walk was cut quite short but the combination of slippery ice and icy hands and cheeks...for a day that was warmer than many previous it sure was nippy. It did me good to get out though.

Big yote track. If our last remaining barn kitty goes missing, we will have a good idea why,
as this is right behind the old cow barn

 I am looking forward to the time when the snow folds in upon itself and decays from underneath, looking for all the world like icing piled on a too warm cake. And below it we will find something better than cake.....spring!

A little sunshine every day......

Hover Dog

Not wishing to land

Lookin' Out

Not my back door, but our boy's hotel window. He keeps his blinds open so he can see the Freedom Tower, upon which he worked at one time.

And there are all kinds of fancy waterfowl down in that dark water. So far he has seen Long Tailed Ducks and Harlequin Ducks. How cool is that?

A Perfect Split

Beyond

Bizarre. The weather that is. Woke up to rain and a sweet chuckling bird song that pulled me right out of slumber. It took me a few minutes to even realize what it was, as it is so out of place right now.

A robin. Not that there haven't been robins around. Many of them routinely winter up here in the north. We had at least ninety a couple weeks ago. Still to have one chortling right outside the window was startling.

And then....

Either the boss forgot to cover the wood or the wind blew the canvas off because we are faced with getting the fire ramped up with ice-covered wood and a rather low bed of coals. Probably isn't going to matter much as it is oddly warm..welcome to the weirdest winter I remember, but I ain't complaining. Every odd day brings us closer to spring and the robin is here to remind us.