MooseQuest

The word for the weekend was intrepid. What else could you say about "Let's go to Maine," at around 8:30 on Friday morning?

On the road by 9:24?

A thousand or so odd miles, some of them very odd indeed, in pursuit of the elusive moose?

And we did see moose. Moose on realty signs. Moose on stores. Moose on township names and lakes. Moose statues, moose figurines, moose menus. I even saw the neck and ear of a road killed moose on I 95.

The Golden Road

It is MUCH worse than it looks

We drove 59 miles (one way) on a dirt and "pavement" washboard, corduroy, "road" to see Moose Head Lake. We listened trustingly to the b*tch in the box....er...Garmin, who said that the thing we were on was a through road. We rolled along dodging hunters and other general madmen, driving at us at fifty or sixty mph in the middle of the road sending rooster tails of mud, rocks, and dust in our general direction......(she led us astray several other times and may find herself at the bottom of the Camaro sized pothole at the beginning of the Golden Road if she isn't careful.)

We drove and drove and drove for hours, only to find a checkpoint where we had to stop...yes, a checkpoint...manned by a pleasant, if dour, Canadian fellow who said when asked where the road went.

"Can-a-da."

Us, "What's out there?"

"Nothing much."

Us, "Can we make it?"

"I wouldn't advise it in your ve-hi-cle," he muttered, shaking his head at the muddy Camaro....because yeah, Camaro.....

He was very funny what with his dry way of looking at the loons from NY who drove a thousand miles to not see an actual live moose (hunting season just ended.....) and get a lot of mud on their car. I don't think he found us very amusing though. We turned around and drove 59 miles on back.

Alan was admiring the mud on the CamCam
when I suggested all it lacked was flames on the side...
so he made some....got some good laughs on the Interstate I'll tell you.

Oddly enough, other than being scared spitless on the "Golden Road", (the article guy's description of the road is a downright lie, except for the pickup trucks) we really had a lot of fun. 

We share the same sarcastic humor, so the jokes and quips and digs and squibs flew all weekend, and we laughed a lot, until we ran out of giddy-up-go and put a Ranger's Apprentice book on Audible on the car speakers for the last dark miles of the trip.


We saw mountains. Katahdin. Washington, and plenty of others perhaps less famous.... they were stunning...jaw dropping...wonderful...what with their shawls of lacy snow, scarves of dense grey clouds, and attitudes of haughty grandeur. I did not get one single good photo of any of them so you will have to trust me on this.....

We fell in love with New Hampshire. I could live there and I don't often say that of places that aren't NY.

Nonetheless, we were not sorry to see the bottom of the Northview driveway around 8 last night.. 

If you want to see pictures of actual moose...go here. We decided that if we ever do indeed go there we will not take the Camaro. Chevy did not intend her for off-roading. However, she deserves mad props for getting us there and getting us home and showing her mettle to everything Maine had to offer.

Neighbors

We have some dear neighbors who have been through some real hard times lately. I won't say; it's their story. Suffice to say there is no such thing as enough sympathy...... The dad of the family stops in every now and then to talk to the boss. There are many decades of friendship there and they can always talk....

The house always looks like a cyclone touched down on those days and I always apologize and wish it was clean. Not that it is ever very clean, but it is sometimes worse than other times.

This morning I woke up and thought, 'I've got to get this kitchen in order because x is going to stop today. It would be nice if was clean for a change.'

I just had a feeling.....Of course I didn't think it was really going to happen, but I dabbled around doing some dishes and picked up a bit here and there.....it's still a mess, but somewhat less of a mess than it was when I got up.

And then came the knock on the door....yeah, as a dear friend said the other day.... We are all connected in our minds, some closer than others.....

So there is some therapeutic talking over of the old times of farming going on all around me. The kitchen is still a mess....maybe later, maybe later.

Or maybe not.

It's all Downhill

Bacon Bone!!!

Yesterday was one of those days that start off kilter and go downhill from there. First was the ice cold shower. I know there are people who choose that option, but myself not so much. The stove was hot. The water wasn't.

Then it was just too crazy to finish any of my writing chores. Wednesday is deadline, but I do love to be done on Tuesday and have those decks all clear the rest of the week.

The washer acted up. It took all day to get it to spin.

The cold water situation turned out to require several trips for parts and a lot of wrenching.

The heat quit. It wasn't all that cold yesterday but it sure was too cold for no heat.

The litany of minor but messy woes just went on and on. By day's end I was afraid to touch a dial or turn a faucet.

However, the guys soldiered on and replaced a valve in the hot water plenum, found where the circulation pump for the heat had gotten unplugged, eventually the washer worked, and we all survived to do it again another day.

On the bright side it turns out that the valve was the reason we have had very limited hot water for a very long time. Last night there were hot showers all around, a bath for Peggy and some very happy people.

The old S 10 truck got repaired and painted to be a mobile birding blind...the ticks are so terrible that we don't even want to ride the four-wheeler up in the field..... and we had a great supper of homemade beef stew.  

It's all good.

A Wall of Wings

What is this guy doing in the wildlife refuge hanging out with the Canada Geese?
A barnyard goose, known when wild as a Greylag. 

Triangles of black, diamonds of red, flashing before our eyes, or in my case before the binoculars, like moving wallpaper against the sky. Red-winged Blackbirds. Hundreds.....thousands even, taking off in unison just as we parked the car near a marsh in Wayne County. A veritable quilt of birds like something in a National Geographic special.

Scaup

It was a sight I will never forget. All I could say was wow...wow.....wow....over and over again. We tried to get photos of the phenomenon, but they weren't all that afraid of us, and there was only the shuttling of a few here and a few there after that first great flight. Still, even the sound of their calls was amazing.

Click to embiggen

It was the culmination of one of the greatest days of birding I have ever experienced. 

Before we even left our home county we passed under a sky penciled with flocks of hundreds upon hundreds of Canada Geese. At the swamp the flights seemed endless, and included stunning clouds of ducks. More ducks than I ever imagined existed.

They dove and dabbled and napped on the surface of the pools near the access loop road, just waiting to be admired and photographed.

There were so many American Wigeons, Ring-necked Ducks, Northern Shovelers, and Gadwalls, that we soon looked past them for more exotic fare. Mind you I never saw a Gadwall before our Florida trip but yesterday we saw hundreds.

Ruddy Ducks and Canvasbacks are normally big deal-type birds for us. Yesterday we saw a plethora of the latter and enough of the former to actually get photos of them. Lots of Scaup too.

Alan hunted down the marsh where the Sandhill Cranes nested this summer. As we drove up the dirt road, a flock of swans flew across in front of us. Swans. I know they are common in some places, but we sure don't see them very often down here on the eastern Mohawk. There was even a flock of twenty or so noodling around in a cornfield, for all the world like Canada Geese only bigger. Whiter. Rarer by far.

It was really a lot of fun.

The S10 'Blackbird'

Or, how to turn your old red lawn ornament into a traveling birding stealth blind.

Some of the tools involved.....nasty vicious blackberry vines from up behind the lawn.

The original, although she didn't look quite this pristine after a year and a half of trips back and forth to Jersey and another couple of years sitting in the yard. 

Picking Pumpkins

I pick the one on the front of the sled!

Because of This

Cross

My Favorite Fruit

I could not resist the Ozark Golds

We did it.

The boss and Becky and I went up to Bellinger's lovely new apple store, picked up a couple of half-bushel bags to fill, and headed out to pick Pink Ladies.....

 I love picking apples almost as much as I love eating them. It was fun!

Looking through the trees to the farm of some friends

Puffball clouds rolling overhead, friends' and neighbors' farms and fields all around us, pumpkins in the patch, a sweet, swift breeze passing by....the orchard one of the most beautiful places in a beautiful county, and so close to home too.

And apples, so many glorious, lovely, juicy apples of every color known to fruit.

I always go to the orchard intending to pick just the kind or kinds I need for keeping....

I am always seduced by the plumpness of the eat-'em-now varieties and we end up grabbing a few of those too. 

Pink Ladies

This trip we picked most of the bushel of Pink Ladies, a few Granny Smiths, and some Ozark Golds. Just couldn't resist those fat golden globes, even though we will need to eat them up pretty quick. (What punishment). Becky and I just split a pair of apples, half a Honey Crisp she bought a couple weeks ago and half an Ozark Gold still cold from the tree for each of us. Unless you have eaten a freshly picked, ice cold apple lately you just can't imagine....

I checked and the orchard will be open well into November. There are lots and lots of gorgeous apples left on the trees and more in the new apple barn. Don't miss your chance for a fruitful adventure. I think we may go back Friday. I do love to pick apples.

The branches lean down close so you can reach
and the apples practically beg to come home with you. I swear they are like puppies, so eager to join you on your journewy.

Bitey Face

The attempt to tire out the Border Collie and the Jack Russell Terrier by letting them play bitey face for a couple of hours has failed.

Before this week they were not allowed loose together. Mack is so terribly tough and terrier fierce. I was afraid he would really hurt the pup. Now the latter is enough larger than he to mitigate that advantage, so I introduced them to game time.

They play and play and play. There was a little gore the other day, but I think it was from teeth clacking together with somebody's tongue in between. I have to back all the chairs in the kitchen up against the walls so they can't knock them over....

Or at least not as easily.

This morning, I had to call the game on account of Peggy getting up. They are both lying in their crates trying to get me to open the doors with power stares.

Nope, not yet. Maybe later fellas. 

In other news our boy is back at work over in the Bay State so things are sorta quiet around here. His B-I-L is driving to that state today for his job so they will be quite close together for guys who are so far from home. Kinda strange huh?

Going to try to get up to Bellinger's Apple Orchard this afternoon, hopefully to pick some Pink Ladies if there are enough left.

Not the best known apple in the world but my hands down favorite for still being delicious in January and good enough for pies in March.

Hope you enjoy this last nice day before snow, sleet and freezing humbug tomorrow.

The new porch in daybreak pink

The Presidential Election through the Lens of Agriculture

This week's Farm Side sent me searching for where the two combatants, and I use that word intentionally, stand on various issues of importance to agriculture.

For the first time since I have been writing the Farm Side....1998...there exists more than enough information on their stances on ag to put together a meaningful column on the topic.

There is little question in my mind that pretty much everyone has made up theirs, so this is just for information if you are interested. Don't be whipping on me for what you find here.....I only report....I did not write these stories, nor did I sort them in manner that would skew the results. This is what there is.

WOTUS

Differences

Farm Futures

Ballotpedia

A Senate committee report on WOTUS. Note that the Army Coprs of Engineers sees furrows from plowing as "small mountains". You can't make this stuff up.

Estate Tax

These are only some of the sources that I perused in making the Farm Side possible this week. However, there is naturally a lot of duplication and these seem to cover many of the major issues.

Happy reading.

Pod Day

Ma Nature's original podcast

Have I mentioned that I hate pod day? Perhaps not.....we normally just have pod week or pod month. Those are bad enough, but at least the pod-slaught is spread out over a longer time....fewer pps...that's pods per second...it makes it easier to withstand the deluge.

However, every now and then we have a blustery fall day at the same time that the honey locust pods are ripe and ready to fall. Travel in the back yard becomes downright perilous for those who are tender of head.

And that's me. I cringe and flinch my way out with dogs and back in with same. I want to do yard work, but only last a couple of minutes before I've had enough pods to the head and hurry back indoors, out of the podstorm. Ack! It gets downright crazy!

There are so many that one even blew into the house through TWO doors and a porch a little while ago. There are windrows of pods!

Yesterday there were a few down but most of them were still on the tree. Today the wind is ripping them off and flinging them about with wild abandon. I have been hit a couple-three times already.

The pods are bad enough on their own, but the small loose branches and twigs are even worse.

Bah humbug. Enough already

Plenty more where those came from

Sustainable my left......toenail.....

The kids' new Call Ducks. Note that eagles can't get to them

I subscribe to farm publications and birding publications galore, via the wonders of the web. Sometimes the blindness I see on both sides, but mostly on the birdy side, is downright painful.

If you happen to be a farmer, take a read of this article. What the heck.....even if you are not a farmer, give 'er a go. Better than a cup of coffee for getting your blood boiling on a cold November October morning.

It's long, but it's chock full of valuable organic fertilizer, AKA BS about conventional farming and sustainability.

I mean, seriously, how is letting 75 Bald Eagles dine on your goats, chickens, and turkeys, to the tune of thousands of bucks of loss daily, sustainable?

Um, you know what? It isn't.

Losses to wildlife like these are among the reasons why farmers invented hen houses. If you leave tasty poultry outside wild things eat them. Some of the wild things are glamorous like eagles.

Some of them are a little less exciting like coyotes and foxes. However, if it tastes good on our dinner table, the wild ones like it too, from cabbage to cow.

Talk about inaccurate.

I absolutely cringed at the line about cattle being injected with antibiotics regularly...

No, no, and no again. No farmer in their right mind would inject medicines with long withdrawal times just for the fun of it. 

And how telling is it that the business run as a conventional beef farm was profitable...and thus sustainable from the point of view of staying in agriculture as opposed to being made into a shopping mall....until some wheel-reinventing took place and the eagles came to call?

After the wheel was reinvented the article author admitted that the place has yet to be profitable enough to justify the huge investment of going "sustainable."

The mortality rate on the farm, and not just from eagles either, is 11% higher than that projected for confinement housing. My dead computer has a link to a study showing the comparative health of hens in various housing situations. It ain't what you think.....

How I love the proposed solutions to the eagle problem. Ask the government to help and/or everybody farm in this same magical way so the eagles will go eat everybody's animals instead of just concentrating on one free buffet  er, farm.

Too bad only 1% of people try to make a living farming and actually understand what works and why...as well as what simply doesn't.

 I love birds, but sometimes it is hard to identify with others who also do.....