Recycling

Drainage holes bored with a screw setter

Hinged lid

The wait begins

 An empty kitty litter jug.

Germination
Now, if only they don't damp off on me

My life as a Sous Chef

 

Yesterday I found myself browning chopped up sweet Italian sausage, ground venison, celery, and homegrown garlic on the small burner on the stove, in a bath of butter and herbs.

In the oven a tired head of cabbage was roasting, coated in dark, rich, olive oil, sprinkled with everything from fennel to Italian seasoning, with a bit more butter on top.

The basic recipe was not my idea. The methods and flavorings were.

See, I work under Becky now, as a sous chef. She works under the big yellow sign down in the village so she has no time.

I have nothing but. When she got home she assembled my contribution into deconstructed golumpki casserole, and let me tell you, it was awesome. We came away with ideas of how to make it better next time, but we really liked it. (More cabbage. Fresh cabbage. Less rice. Different, fluffier, rice) 

I have cooked since I was small, pestering at the elbows of my family in the kitchen when barely tall enough to see over the edge of the table....Uncle Larry, do you remember the horrible-looking cakes we made in Grandma Lachmayer's kitchen, all purple and green, with runny, weird-looking frosting that nobody else wanted to eat? Man, were they ever good!...

My brothers and I grew up tasting the Great Depression in the kitchens of our grandparents who lived it. We learned food from the ingredients up and how to substitute what we didn't have and enhance what we did with what was in the cupboard. Both grandmas, all the aunties, and many of the uncles, knew how to make do, and still make tasty and nourishing meals.

My next younger brother and I were cooking when we were just kids. We got off the school bus, ravenous as kids tend to be, but both parents worked, so we were on our own. Sometimes there were snackie things around the house, but that was not a major industry then, (I think there was only ONE kind of potato chip then) so we either made popcorn on the stove top, or corn meal muffins, and devoured same.

 Every single person in my immediate family cooked all through my childhood. Dad was a master at his own special bread recipe, which he would not, and never did, share with the rest of us, alas.

But it's all right. I can make bread. My brothers can make bread. My kids can all make bread...and pizza crust, rolls, muffins, etc.

Counting back, I have made at least fifty Thanksgiving dinners and many unofficial turkeys, including wild ones over the years.

However, when Becky started to get serious in the kitchen, I was admittedly in a rut. We ate good, wholesome, cooked from scratch food, but it was boring, same stuff, different day.

Now, she sees a recipe and wants to make it. No time for elaborate preparations, as she works most days. Enter mom, who is sick of thinking up stuff, but knows how to sauté and season, and has had a lot of practice. We did a whole chicken the other day, stuffed with a large onion, garlic, thyme from the garden, and sundry other spices, seasoned with sage and that kind of stuff. Made soup from the leavings. That one bird fed us four days and well. We made chicken stock, which bammed subsequent soups and sauced up a notch, big time. 

Our brainstorming and cooking by committee has produced all manner of new kinds of cookies, great (and interesting!) meals, and a lot of fun. I like it.

The other two kids have always cooked as well. Being deeply stuck in the stereotypical rut of my youth I did not expect my son to become a homegrown chef. However, since his early teens when he made lemon bars for school, entirely on his own, he has been a master in the kitchen. As a teenager he taught me things about seasoning meats and cooking wild game that I still use every day. He sends me pictures of things he cooks....and I know from eating at his house that they are spectacular. Wish we lived closer...

Liz feeds her farm family with special dietary needs things that sound fabulous to me and keeps them happy and healthy. It's her pizza crust recipe that helps us feed Ralph well, while keeping him within the boundaries of his diabetic diet.

Anyhow, I am liking this new role as a sous chef. I know how to do my part and i don't have to do the other part.

As the Barred Owl says, who cooks for you? And what do you like?

I don't usually do This

 But....

It might help ease the grim January weather...

Nesting Season

 

We saw a Bald Eagle carrying a big stick to the Sprakers nest today. It was the first time Ralph had ever seen that and perhaps the third for me. It almost felt like Spring despite the foot of snow on the ground and the winter field birds thronging the roadsides.

Much more exciting were the events of January 5th, when the nesting season gave to us a brand new granddaughter, Riley Mae Friers. She is a beautiful baby and joins her delightful sister Bailey Rae, and lovely cousins Peggy Ann Marie, Madeline, and Claire, to give us a full house of grandbabies.

It won't be long before the owls are hooting sweet love songs in the night, but none will be as wonderful as all those little girls.

Have a Very

 

Take two, they're small!

Christmas Gull

 

I guess a Christmas goose is traditional, but Becky made us chicken, which was excellent. Nice having a chef in the house and home on vacation. I don't think I've cooked in days, and no lie, I don't miss it.

We did our traditional Christmas spin around our local favorite spots and found a pretty good representation of expected species, plus the above Iceland Gull, which although not the first for the year, a decent find. Hope he sticks around until next week.

Otherwise the holiday was about as uneventful as it can get, which was fine for me. Talked and video chatted with some family members, saw videos of our distant baby and had a visit from a closer one. 

Nice

No complaints.

Hope things stay calm. A very, very, very, super important event is to take place in our family really soon and I am at once nervous and excited about it. And praying hard as always.

Hugs from Northview and best wishes for the coming year.

Conversations of Dairy and Derriere

 

Twas the Eve of the Solstice.

When inside the house....

"You almost had to drive me to the hospital."

Said by a man in outdoor boots and clothes, steaming and huffing at the edge of the dining room door. At least he was kind enough to keep his boots off the rug.

"What!" Three simultaneous gasps from the audience in the living room.

"I fell off the woodpile."

"What the heck were you doing on the woodpile?"

"Putting a chain on a log."

Mind you it's dark out. There are plenty of daylight hours, but he is a real night owl.

"Are you okay? Did you break anything?"

"Well, my butt is sore. Maybe my hip."

Not even funny. He in fact did not sustain any serious injuries and seems okay today.

I figure its the gallons, and gallons, and gallons of milk he drank over the years, and the large amount he still does.

And the toughness. He is farmer tough, ( old fart foolish), and farmer brave.

But (and butt)...

We are getting too old for this stuff. 

Roadside Friends and Acquaintances

Peaceful Puppers

I think this guy would have come right in the window, 
if he could fit.

These ladies were munching at a hay feeder when
we encountered them while counting birds.
As soon as they saw the car their heads came up and they looked with great interest
When we paused to chat with their owner they
ambled right up. Friendly ladies indeed

Patience

 

Down the Rabbit Hole

 

The Internet has given us a lot of things, some of them horrible, but it has also supplied us access to an incredible wealth of information.

I can remember not so many years ago having family members get into intense discussions over many esoteric subjects. They/we would argue for hours and hours and even days and weeks over who was right about something of such utter triviality as to be meaningless. Sometimes we never found out.

Now, you can learn just about anything you want to, almost instantly, and if you are handy with search engine research, you can dig pretty darned deep into the topic of your choice.

A couple of cases in point...a good Facebook friend shared a meme comparing the relative sizes of polar vs black bears. It was a holy cow moment. I probably spent an hour, when I should have been hanging up laundry, delving into just how big bears are. I discovered that a polar bear could easily bump its head on our living room ceiling, which is ten feet above the ugly red shag rug. Dang! I am glad they live a heck of a long way from here. There was a black bear out in our woods a couple of weeks ago, at least according to the trail cams, and that is more than enough excitement for me.

Then there was the matter of the Buffleheads. We saw a little clutch of them during a bird count, energetically diving into the shallows of a nearby lake. It was downright awesome to find them on a CBC as open water is rare here this time of year. My friend and mentor opined that they eat vegetation and are highly popular with hunters as they taste really good. No question that fish ducks, such as mergansers are said to taste like a good dose of cod liver oil, but I thought diving duck=fish duck, and thus disagreed.

Thanks to modern technology, I now know, that although they occasionally dine on mini-minnows, their cuisine of choice consists of crustaceans, insects, and snail-type critters. (The former might explain their tastiness.) It all made sense after I thought about the matter a bit. Most fish ducks are streamlined for catching fast-moving prey, while Buffleheads are fluffy and fat and ridiculously cute. I don't suppose they have to essentially fly underwater like mergansers to catch snails after all.

However, I had to wait to get home to delve into that bit of trivia. No Internet in the 'Dacks. It was like flying blind!

I have to say that I in no way miss those prolonged and tedious discussions about minutia that often plagued our personal argumentative clan. (Montgomerys love to argue and Friers aren't far behind.) Nowadays when I hear one start to brew and bubble here in our normally peaceful living room, with a click of a mouse, clatter of a keyboard, or tap, tap, slide on a cellphone screen, I can shut them all up almost instantly.

BITD

 

Not Quite

 

Northern Mockingbird

Eighteen hours of birding, spread over two days and two Christmas Bird Counts. 

What an adventure! For the Schenectady count the weather was ridiculously nice, mixed sun and light clouds, balmy, and pleasant.

Driving around with the windows down and the sunroof open didn't seem weird at all, but then it didn't feel like December.

October maybe, but not December.

We saw throngs of birds, although no real ooh-ahh birds, just a lot of them. A lot is good though. You sure don't get bored!

At the end of the day, we had 39 species, which is not bad at all. Best bird from my point of view was a Barred Owl first thing in the morning, but the many Black-capped Chickadees, Golden-crowned Kinglets and 3 Brown Creepers were pretty interesting as well. And who can resist 3 Swamp Sparrows buzzing up out of the marsh to greet us! I am always astonished to see them in winter, but sometimes we do.

Largest of several flocks of Cedar Waxwings we saw
There were at least 100

Day two, the Johnstown CBC, produced an abrupt turnaround in the weather. Although the temperature lingered in the 40s most of the day, there was a lazy wind...it went right through you, rather than around...and it was shiverishly damp. However, there was open water and there were ducks!

With a nasty storm impending, we again saw a lot of birds. We ended with 32 species, and once again, a tiny bird palooza of a count. It didn't hurt that friend, mentor, and leader for this part of the circle, George Steele, is a master at pishing. Within seconds after he stopped the car and started the show, the little birds came boiling out of the woods to investigate. They screamed and peeped and clucked their outrage at the invasion of noisy alarm calls. It was great fun to watch and listen, and oh, how I wish I could pish like that. I am getting better but...

Cryptic little Brown Creeper

Usually the Black-capped Chickadees were first and we saw amazing numbers of them. It reminded me of the good old days doing the count with my dad, when we saw hundreds every year. Next Tufted Titmice, Golden-crowned Kinglets, Red-breasted Nuthatches, White-breasted Nuthatches, and Brown Creepers arrived. I have never seen as many BRCR, RBNU, or GCKI in one year before, let alone in one day. We ended up with 291 BCCH, 15 GCKI, 29 RBNU and 9 BRCR. 

At some stops other birds showed up too, Blue Jays, shrill and strident in their opinions, and Norther Cardinals cheeping urgently. A couple of times Common Ravens came soaring over to intone Nevermore-ishly from above.

At the end of the day, kind of cold and tired, it felt good to get home. I foolishly had dressed for Saturday's weather and it was insufficient for Sunday, alas. However, as I said to George, when he asked if I was up for another bird day sometime next year, I said, "If I'm not dead, I'm game."

And I am. If I can I will chase birds, pretty much every time, even if it's just in our backyard.

BTW, the promised storm is no joke. A local friend says water flow in the Schoharie has reached the level of the 93 flood. Hopefully the rain stops before it gets any higher!

Don't know if you can see these, but here are links to our trip reports for the two days.

Schenectady CBC

Johnstown CBC

House Sparrow, nasty things remind me of today's weather

Like a Scene from a Book

 

Three-o-Nine AM.

The loudest, longest crack of thunder you could imagine. It rolled and tolled long enough for me to awaken from deep sleep, wonder what was going on, and realize that it was thunder.

Windows rattled, the house shook. The whole valley reverberated. Ralph said he timed one boomer and it lasted six whole seconds. That is a long one in thunder hours.

I was reminded of the scene in Mercedes Lackey's book, Joust, one of my all time favorites, when the thunder goes on for hours but brings no rain. This storm brought plenty of it though and now the morning is all weird with opaque clouds painted pinky orange by some vestige of sun hiding somewhere.

Guess we are going to get a big storm tonight. If that was just the prequel, I shudder to think what's coming.

The Oklahoma Snow Roller

 

And the Western NY Wild Wendigo.

 I walk them both, or most days each, every morning, as well as four or five times a day later on.

However, it's the early walk that makes the magic.

The Snow Roller came from Oklahoma and ended up here through a somewhat convoluted set of travels. Jilly hates the camera, as do all good Border Collies, but she loves the snow. When we are out there on business, hoping for deliberates, so we can avoid nasty accidents (there was a kennel somewhere in her previous life and she isn't as careful as she could be) she often prefers rolling to...erm, ahem...you know.

When there is snow, ALL bets are off. This morning, even with the Wendigo out with us, she rolled halfway down the hill before she remembered why we were out there.

The Wendigo was born in a hunting kennel out in the western part of the state. His parents helped hunting hounds do what they were bred for, and he came to us with all the instincts, spite, and spunk of same.

They are both nine years old and somewhat...only somewhat...mellowed.

On normal days, it's Mack out first because he feels the imperative most strongly, and Jill second. Both are leashed, Mack always, and Jill when it is dark. There are critters out there, from fishers to bears, with coyotes and bobcats between, and she is soft and sweet....and not always as obedient as she might be. Mack is an unrepentant death machine. He has taken on even a Shorthorn bull and terrified the poor thing, before I got him out of the pen.

However, on some days everyone is whining and moaning and crossing their legs at the door, so I put one on one long leash and the other on another and hope for the best...no dog fights, no wild things on the lawn, etc. etc.

This was one of those mornings. Out we went. All of us. Jill commenced to roll as soon as we got around the parked car. Mack was fascinated and wanted to run right over and interfere. His leash is just enough shorter that he failed in that endeavor. Thus he began to take care of bidness, as only a boy dog can. 

Waning gibbous over the back porch roof

There was fresh snow reflecting the faintest early light, and there were geese talking down on the river, an early morning contact murmur that could barely be heard. An sleepy White-throated Sparrow tried out a tentative chirp from a nearby bush, but subsided back to slumber a second later. The WTSPs and Northern Cardinals are generally the first birds up in winter, but it was still pretty dark.

Somehow...eventually... the rolling reached the saturation point and the dragon was entirely drained. No fighting, not too much leash tangling, and no tripping of the elderly. All in all, a successful morning excursion. For the rest of the day, now that the sun is up, they can go out separately, with Jill off leash and Mack less desperate. 

But I feel like a hearty...and hardy too....adventurer.

If You See this Guy

 Wish him a very happy birthday. He is a great dad and very special man all around. Happy Birthday, Scott, from all of us!

Dark

 Keeping farmer's hours, a lifelong habit that started when I was walking hots at Saratoga Race Track when I was 20, means we spend a lot of time in the dark. This morning the boss and I walked dogs at around 4:30 AM. The moon had set a long time before and it was dark!!!

Except, that is, for a sky full of stars so bright that they glittered like the creepy eyes of creatures out there in the night when you wish you were inside where it is light and warm. You could find as many constellations as you cared to, shining neon-bright, except for your freezing feet and hands.

And ice frost on all the grass, that glinted in the glow from our flashlights like a dragon's hoard of sparkly diamonds.

Sure was cold though.

Sure was cold.