Whose Day is it Anyhow?

This guy's.

If you see him today in the far away home of Philly cheese steaks, wish him a happy birthday....or hit him up here if it's handier.

Meanwhile, happy birthday, kiddo. Hope the weekends make up for spending it on the job. Love you!

Farming Styles

Breaking a horse to lead. This Percheron was not having any of it
and threw himself down in the road after we passed. After being dragged a little bit by the Belgian pair he got up again right quick.

I expect by the end of this exercise he will know what the halter is all about.
How he got to such an age and size without knowing is another question.

Five horse assortment coming back from spreading manure on a snowy field

Large bales of straw being unloaded, probably for calf and pen bedding, on a large dairy. Nice stuff.
Despite the several freestall barns full of hundreds of cows, there was no smell except that of good quality feed.
There was also a nice pile of fresh sand for cow comfort in the free stalls and lots of cows eating and going about their bovine business.

Different things work for different folks. We went out around town a bit today while waiting for Becky to get out of work. We saw examples of some of the more old-fashioned methods of gettin' er done and passed two of the largest and most modern farms in the area a couple of miles later.

So different and yet alike in some ways as well.

Mommy, there's Eggs

"There's eggs, Mommy, there's two! Come and see, come and see!"

"Mommy!"

Eggs means new chicks in toddler speak.

In fact there are three new chickies in the incubator in the dining room. Peepeepeepeep PEEP!

Guess how many times a day a toddler peeks in through the window of the incubator....

She brought me a brown-brockled quail egg yesterday for show and tell.

After exclaiming over its amazing cuteness I asked her, "What are you going to do with that?"

"Put it in the inkerbator and hatch out a chickie," she replied. 

Science lessons for three-year-olds, free for the learning.

It's Meltin-g-g-g-g-g-g-g

One thing about a mid-March snowstorm. The after effects don't linger as long as if it were mid-winter. 

Not that there isn't still plenty to go around. Can't walk to most places that I usually like to go...

On the other hand the wrens survived and new migrants are appearing every day....a Purple Finch yesterday. 

Becky bought me new glasses this week...been wearing the same ones for around fifteen years or so. I like them.....although the ground seems to be farther away than it used to be. Sure can see the birds and trees better!

Hopping down the bunny trail....

Otherwise not much for excitement. We saw a big police presence on the bike path yesterday as they stopped snowmobiles to look them over. Must be most of them were in compliance as they were going on their way. I don't begrudge them their fun. It has been a really open winter up until now. Wish they would be careful though...so many deaths this year...and stay off the lakes!

The Dregs of the Dervish

Click me, click me!

Sometimes after a storm the light will stagger you with beauty, plumb blind you with excess brightness, then throw a veil over your vision, with blowing snow causing white-outs that sometimes dismay and bamboozle you. We stayed home during the worst of the aftermath..... then ventured into the dregs of the dervish.

Sometimes it IS easy being Green

Or at least wearing green. I am sporting the Argosy Casino , Hotel and Spa sweatshirt Liz brought me home from a National Farmers Organization meeting in Missouri a few years back. Although green is one of my favorite colors for some reason I don't seem to have much in the way of green clothing. We did have our corned beef the other day though.....

Been saving the photo above since we visited Daphne, Alabama late last year....just waiting for today to share it. This was growing in the park we visited there.

Anyhow, Happy St. Patrick's Day to everyone, Irish or otherwise.....with all those McGiverns and McIntoshes back there in the pedigree I can wear my green shirt legitimately.

Yesterday I rode up to Bass Pro in Auburn with Alan and then the boss took me out around town for a bit. On the way west we saw so much evidence of the seriousness of the storm...it was downright sobering. An overturned semi, wheels toward the road, just left there awaiting resources to move it. Another semi, thirty feed off the road, with no tracks anywhere around it so it had been there a while....and the poor driver was still sitting inside it waiting for help. They were finally removing it when we came back east. Hundreds...literally....of power company trucks convoying east....

Roads everywhere were thronged with birds, assorted blackbirds, Snow Buntings, Horned Larks and even a single Eastern Meadowlark. I have read reports of Woodcocks struggling and starving all over the state and haven't seen or heard our Carolina Wrens in two days. Normally they are among the first birds I hear every morning and visit the feeders off and on all day. This is going to be bad for the early migrants I'm afraid.

Horned Lark on a snowbank up by Bichler's old farm

Lookit This!!!!

Right under the feeder today!

Not much to Sing About

Before the tempest

Today's other post was actually written yesterday..... 

And then.....After the fun with little birdies was over and the sun went down, news about storm damage began to trickle in.

Several barns collapsed. So sorry for the folks involved. Cows had to be moved but at this point we don't know much more. Farmers all over the region were forced to dump milk, as roads were impassable and trucks outlawed in some areas. This was a terrible, awful, nasty bad storm.

Then as I sat in my chair, done for the day, glad of it and looking at my phone, stories began to pop up from town. They were not good news.

Fultonville Methodist Church, a lovely and iconic white board building just a couple of blocks from where we used to live in town, was on fire.

Although we never attended services there, the kids went to an after school program there that they really enjoyed. Friends got married there. People we know well live on the street and their homes were threatened. We could see the flames from the living room.

It was a sad night.

When the going gets Tough

Yes, it was snowing that hard....

Yesterday the birds were so desperate that we often had thirty or forty Brown-headed Cowbirds at the feeder, seventy-five Red-winged Blackbirds, three pairs of Northern Cardinals, and dozens upon dozens of others. It was as if more and more of them kept pouring in all day, as the word got out about the seeds.

I kept filling the feeders all day as the snow piled up and the hordes emptied them. Around noon I went out for the forth time to find a half a dozen Black-capped Chickadees hurriedly diving in while I was there...they are not afraid of me and the other birds are...in hopes of getting at least a couple of seeds. However, the feeder was empty.

I filled my hand with sunflower seeds....within seconds one was perched in my palm grabbing one. That is desperation. I have coaxed them to eat from my hand before, but it has always taken a long, cold wait in stillness, until some bold individual snatched a seed and fled. This one sat on my hand long enough for me to feel his tiny weight and wonder at such trust and such hunger.

I didn't want to tease them when they were so hungry, so I filled the feeder and came back inside. Whenever I went out to shovel out the door so we could still get out of the house, they all rushed in to eat while the other birds fled.

And then it got so bad that even the wilder birds utterly ignored me while I worked. Not a good storm at all.

Contrast

February 18th

Same view today

It was Still too Dark to See

When I first went out, but the birds were already looking for food.

The river shore in front of the house was packed with Canada Geese. American Tree Sparrows were jingling, picking at the seed balls and fighting the cardinals for the trays.

Now there are so many assorted blackbirds the box elders look like Halloween Christmas trees.

Because snow. A lot of snow. I came downstairs between four and five, and the boss, who takes Becky to work between three and four said, "It hasn't started yet."

However, I had just passed the stair landing window...and it had. Now it is snowing fine sparkly snow, very pretty in the glow from the yard lights. There is already at least three inches and it supposed to get a lot worse.

Every job that anyone works at off the farm is shut down for the day....except one. Jade is off anyhow, as it is his regular day off, but the trucking company he works for told the other drivers to stay home.

Mappy and Alan are both home from their construction jobs in the big cities. Too much snow. I am thankful they were both able to make the drive before this all got started!

The boss has wood piled up and under canvas and the kids have extra hay in the barns and stables so everyone can be fed without starting the skid steer.

However, one of the crew had to go to work and will have to get home somehow in what will probably be the worst of the storm. All those truckers holed up in the village truck stops, all the people pulling off the Interstate for respite, all the locals who like the good coffee she makes, are relying on Becky and the rest of the crew at our local McDonald's to have the sammiches and milk shakes and coffee going.

And so they are. And before you pick on a college graduate for working fast food....she can't see well enough to safely drive so she needed a job within a mile or so of the house.....and she has worked her way up to manager too. No complaints from this quarter.

In other news friends of Ralph lost their machine shed in a nasty fire yesterday. Neighbors and local businesses rallied, so even though they lost feeding equipment, tractors and some hay, they should be able to get the cows fed. Rural people are like that as can be seen in the incredible response to the needs of the farmers and ranchers devastated by the wildfires in Texas, Colorado and Kansas.

Napoleon of the Henhouse

With a feather in his hat.

Glug, glug, glug

Somebody get a snow brush...there's a Camaro under there

As if the snow wasn't enough, we had other fun too. Jade and Liz came out into the kitchen where I was writing just in time to hear the oddest and most alarming gurgling noise you could imagine.

Oh no! Sounds like it's coming from the refrigerator. 

It's an oldie and a not-so-goody and we quickly concluded that it was dying.

Or even dead.

Just what we needed with feet of snow in the driveway, more still falling, more on the way and the potential for high winds.

We kept listening to it.

Not running.

We kept feeling it.

Not running.

We made plans to put the stuff in its freezer in the big freezer and the regular foods in the front hall where it's cold but not freezing.

I worried. Not that it is the biggest deal in the world, but there have been so many things...we just didn't need another one. We plotted and planned and puzzled for quite some time.

I was standing by it fretting about how we would deal if it really was dead, when the gurgling sound came again.

From a bucket full of bunny waterers that was sitting in front of it thawing and occasionally letting out some bubbles and giggles. 

Then the refrigerator motor started up...it was just idle because the house was pretty cold.

I may have threatened Liz with GBH when I realized that was where the sound came from.

Anybody seen a Border Collie around here?