Because I Can

Another old Farm Side....

Moose Quest

Did someone mention Maine? If you’re a farmer, you probably thought of potatoes, Katahdin sheep, or maybe lobsters, which although not exactly farm animals, are included under the heading of farms, fisheries, and forests.

And if you are us, you thought about moose. We want to see one, and have been chasing the Adirondacks in hot pursuit for years. Thus the other day when our intrepid lad suggested that he and I go to Maine to look for moose, I figured I would learn a little
about the state’s agriculture while having a heck of a time. And that is just what we did.

We did not see any potatoes though, not so much as a single French fry in a fast food parking lot. We did, however, spot a couple of Ring-Billed Gulls perched on a lamp post
as if they were waiting for them.

Does that count?

In case you were wondering, potatoes came to the New World in two large cedar chests,
sent in 1621 to Governor Francis Wyatt of Virginia at Jamestown, by the Governor of Bermuda, Nathaniel Butler.

Potatoes are the second most popular food item in America. We each eat around 135 pounds a year, about a potato a day. I’ll bet we consume the majority of them in the same form desired by gulls too. 34% of the 46 billion pounds raised in the USA each year are consumed as frozen products, as in “Do you want fries with that?”

We saw no Katahdin sheep either, although we saw a good number of the regular, fluffy white kind. I remember the Katahdin brand of sheep from the days of attending sheepdog
trials and trying to train my own Border Collies up to some semblance of usefulness.
They are hair sheep, no need for shearing, and used largely for meat production.
Michael Piel developed them in Maine with an eye toward clearing power lines
and rights-of-way without spraying or mowing. In the sheepdog world they are sometimes bred to produce flighty, challenging, sheep that make the dogs sit up and take notice.

We saw a lot of wild country, and many pretty and prosperous looking farms. We passed streams and ponds and lakes, each filled with limpid, whiskey-colored water, sliding along all smooth, and pretty as a doe’s eyes looking out of the tangled woods.

We saw Long Tailed Ducks, which were once known as Old Squaws. I’ll bet I’m not the only birder who sees a flock and has to mentally change gears to call them by their new politically correct name either.

There were Snow Buntings too, pretty tan-and-white birds, which are a great treat for our local Audubon Christmas Bird Count some years. (However until then, the far, far north is a good place for them and their chosen weather.)

But no moose.

We saw busty mountains, draped with shawls of lacy snow, shouldering aside the clouds

that circled their majesty in the cold autumn air. I guess they like to take a higher view of things or something. Mount Washington is pretty impressive by the way and I just loved Mount Katahdin, after which the sheep are named.

Across all the New England states the oaks still clung bitterly to their leaves, releasing them a reluctant twigfull at a time. They whirled in the wind, trending up more than down,
bamboozling birders into looking for winged rarities. If I had been counting birds there would have been a lot of hash marks in the line labeled “flying oak leaves”.

We discovered that farm houses in Maine are connected to barns and outbuildings by enclosed walkways. What does that say about winters there, I wondered.

Still no moose.

So we decided we would go to Moosehead Lake. Gotta be moose there, right?

Said lake is accessed via the so-called Golden Road. The Garmin, which in our minds we referred to in slightly less kindly terms, insisted that the GR was a virtual expressway, going around the lake, and taking us out to another road.

She lied. 

The Golden Road is a logging road, built to accommodate log trucks, which are reputed to travel at high speeds, claiming the right of way over people from NY driving Camaros. (Everyone offroads in muscle cars, right?)

Thank goodness it was Saturday, when the loggers are parked for the weekend. However hunters traveling at supersonic speeds made up for any lack of logging excitement.

The GR is paved in just enough places to lure the unwary into proceeding down her rocky, muddy, pitted, potholed, lumpy, bumpy, no-guardrails-over-hundred-foot drops, and no shoulders length.

If you are crazy enough you can drive on her at speeds approaching ten or fifteen miles an hour.

Naturally we did so. 

For fifty-nine miles.

Because, through road and all.


Then came the checkpoint, manned by a dour fellow with a strong Canadian accent. Seems that after the first 59 glorious miles, the “highway” becomes a toll road.

14 bucks for the two of us to proceed….to Canada...which is where the road ends up.
(See, it is a through road, just not quite what Lady Garmin bamboozled us into believing.)

We declined the pleasures of foreign travel and turned around to drive 59 miles back to civilization.

Time to go home. On the way south we passed bogs full of Tamarack trees spreading golden skirts across watery purple dance floors. Winterberry Holly lent brilliant red candles to light the show.

Milkweed by the acre, for all the world like autumn cotton, was setting seed for next summer’s Monarchs.

What with the 75 MPH speed limit we saw a lot of roadkill too, mostly porcupines and foxes, but at one point a deer, actually suspended in a tree where it had been flung willy-nilly
by someone going faster than was wise.

No moose though.

We will be calling it MooseQuest, this strange desire to see the great even-toed ungulate
of the Northwoods.

And someday, just maybe, we will actually find one.

The Good, the Bad, and the.....

A bald Eagle is almost always a "good" bird
The boss spotted this one along Riverside Drive the other day
and he posed obligingly. 

Not "bad" exactly, but we weren't thrilled to find one in the driveway last nigh

Came upon this scene the other day while chasing ruffies

Not really weird, just hunters picking up their dogs after a hunt

Just plain weird. 

This defines weird.

Found in a state park where we bird almost every day.
The possible explanations shared on the Facebook group "Sh*t birders see other than birds"
were downright enlightening....
and scary.....

Opening Day South

Be careful out there! There are a lot more people in the woods and fields than on a normal fall morning. Some of them are not exactly woodsmen, but hopefully no one will squeeze the trigger until there is an actual deer in their sights.

Beautiful day for it though. Cold, frosty, with a peach and gold and green and blue sunrise just now flowing over the horizon like cool, bright water in an exotic fruit drink. Mango anyone?

Birds aren't up yet, so I don't know first bird for the day...oops, there it is, a Chickadee peeping on the feeder......but a Bald Eagle visited right behind the house yesterday.

And of course when I was creeping up the lawn trying to get some good shots, some power company tree trimmers walked right up behind me to ask it they could cut some box elders....I am always glad when they are polite enough to ask before hacking down trees. Plus delighted to tell them that they could cut as many box elders as they wanted to. What are the odds though?

Their timing stank to say the least.

There were Crows earlier. Lots of Crows. Red-tailed hawks, what I thought was a Harrier, (no pics of the latter) plus the normal cast of characters at the feeders, which they now empty in a day or less.

It's supposed to snow tomorrow night. Guess everything is on the move.

And, as always on this special holiday for Upstate NY deer hunters, the Youpers.... Second Week of Deer Camp



.

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.

Pennants

October's flying her last flags;  she won't surrender to November. 

Walk the wild side, 

Walk it now. Get her before she leaves us;

We went out west again yesterday to visit, and bird, and so Becky could shop. The colors were fine as frog's hair, all purple, puce, and magenta.....plus every single shade of brown and gold that the good Lord chose to send us. 

Oaks of every shape and sort were clinging to their leaves like oak trees always do. 

I think they're bashful. 

Maples, sumacs, the tender deciduous trees, they just let it all hang out.

Toss their leaves on the closet floor, race away naked, rustle, rustle, rustle.

Oaks hug their wrappers tight around them, like grannies wearing curlers, clutching flannel to their breasts, as if to ward off peepers.

Peeping Toms that we are, we delighted in the colors, and a good thing too, as at least hereabouts the woods are getting awful bare.

All too soon comes the penance of November, payback for every inch of summer.

I was grateful today for one last wild walk....well, maybe not the last, but the end of these passable days is coming soon....before the white stuff flies and ice and hunters keep me near the house.

Jersey Plus Shorthorn Equals....

I am smart and I know it.

I was loose in the barn this morning and gave the boss lady quite a run for her money.

We have been waiting more than patiently for Liz's Jersey, Moments to calve. She is the one who aborted her baby last year at this time when hunters were harassing the heifers. We sold Hillbilly, the other animal affected by the affair, but nobody had the heart to part with Moments...even those among us who prefer the black-and-white cow or the milking shorthorn to the little brown cow. In order to get her bred back as quickly as possible she was serviced to our shorthorn bull. She started looking as if she was going to pop any second now about two weeks ago. That is kind of a Jersey thing...they always seem to do that. We kept her up in the barn and barnyard and watched....and watched....and watched....

Not sure what to think about all this

Liz stayed up all night with her on Tuesday. I ran to the barn far more often than was convenient yesterday.

No calf.

Then last night right after milking she got down to business and popped out a little girl in just a little more time than it took to tell the story. She is quite an interesting color as you can see. Except for a dished Jersey face and a black nose she looks a lot like a shorthorn.

First milking with the machine.
Moments was a very good girl about it. Liz hand milked her last night.

Our one winged warrior

Is mostly back to work now. His shoulder will probably never be the same as there are muscles detatched from the bone that are not going to grow back. However, he is a typical tough farmer and just keeps going and going. He managed to get all the corn chopped and finished up Thursday. You can see in this picture from last week that his right arm doesn't work too well, but he gets things done some how...(he is bringing me firewood in this picture, bless his heart.)

Farming is different from most jobs in that respect. There are a finite number of people to do work that is absolutely unforgiving. Cows must eat, drink and be milked. The stove must have wood. Things have been kind of ugly....cows don't get bedded or stables cleaned until late afternoon and I do most of the former. Not so neat and tidy as it might be, but they have something to lie on at night anyhow. One side of the stable manure has been piled outside under the chute for weeks....that will get cleaned up pretty quick now that he doesn't have to try to chop acres and acres of corn with one arm and worn out equipment. Just yesterday, Liz and I helped him get all the fans out of the barn, move calves, change calf collars, build stalls, clean mangers and a half dozen other jobs that have gone begging until we had enough help and time to do them.

Now we have to rebuild the sawdust shed for yearling calf housing, tear out half of the old calf tie up and put in the new headlocks so we can catch the yearling heifers to breed them...oh, and get some Amish in to patch the roof if we can... rebuild the pig housing....get the five bred heifers and two dry cows down off the hill ....and on, and on, and on..etc.....

I am awful glad to have him done with corn and able to help in the barn all day....you just can't imagine how glad.

On another note, today is opening day South, deer season. Cows are all staying in the barn except the seven out on the heifer pasture hill and they have a lot of feed down here to keep them busy and close to the barn. Show heifers are locked in the barn yard. Horses are in the barn.....and my son is somewhere out on Seven County Hill with a twenty gauge and a dream.
I forgot to have him borrow a cell phone from one of his sisters, so I will worry and worry.
I trust him.
It is the poachers who will have by passed our no trespassing signs I worry about. The ones who hunt in full cammo and take sound shots and can't tell a deer from a billy goat or a Jersey cow. It is an insult to call them hunters. They are just idiots. I hope he doesn't meet any.

Ice Fog

Walked out on the hill this morning and didn't see a single bird the whole way up and all the way down. I did HEAR a bunch and that counts too, but it was downright foggy out there. At least the mud was frozen so it wasn't so slippery as it has been.

I sang out several times as I walked along on the frozen leaves, "I'm not a deer, I'm not a deer"....I hoped that would deter anyone hunting on us from taking a sound shot and finishing me off....not that I have seen any tracks that I couldn't account for in the past couple of weeks. And I do wear bright orange, but you can't HEAR orange, unless of course you are ingesting illegal substances, which I suppose some of the less responsible among the deer hunters may indeed do.

Anyhow, it was pretty, if not so very birdy out there.

Recycling

Remember the poachers last deer season? The guys who shot the buck in the rump and shoulder after dusk, on our posted property, right next to the boys in the driveway?

Well, Alan found that buck a good while later, injured, full of rot and death, and put him out of the misery the not-so-good hunters inflicted.

He could have called DEC...we had already been in touch with them over the incident..and gotten the animal, which was not edible, picked up and had a new tag issued to him. However, we already had venison enough for winter, and he wanted to mount the antlers, so he kept him.

As suggested by the DEC officers, and as we have done in the past, we put the carcass out for the scavengers. Usually coyotes and crows fill that niche, but sometimes we get Bald Eagles.

The bones, long since picked clean, lie in the thick grass of the field behind the house. I had been thinking maybe I should move them down in the woods for the mice to chew, but hadn't...

Then this morning I thought I saw a turkey out there. Something thick and black and clunky was hunkering down there....I got the binoculars and, no, it was not a turkey, but a Turkey Vulture, picking away. Now there are several. I can't imagine what they are finding to eat, but they seem to be enjoying their bony breakfast.

Right now we have the weirdest bunch of heifers I have ever had to deal with. All our calves are hand raised from birth on bottle and bucket. They are as familiar with people as puppies and generally act about as tame. However, this summer, the fifteen or so we had turned out on the field behind the house have turned as wild as foxes. They have gotten so they bolt for the back of the farm the minute they see a person. We have no idea if they have been bothered by hunters, pestered by the remote control air planes we have lately been plagued with, or if it is that two of the ring leaders are daughters of a bull we used to have that sometimes threw them a little spooky.

Anyhow, anything we did with them all summer was problematic. This is the bunch from yearlings up to springers, so there were many times when we had to bring in new milkers with calves. Every single time it was like chasing deer. The dogs are old and the cattle aren’t dog broke so using them wasn’t really an option either.

We finally got them down into the cow barnyard the other day, more or less by accident. Liz and I went out at four AM to milk and found the yard full of cow tracks. We finished up chores, hoping it would be light by the time we finished. Of course it wasn’t, so we went looking by flashlights. They were sleeping up on the flats by the woodstove and we just hustled them into the barnyard slick as spit. They were a real pain in the neck there as the guys have to feed through with the tractor and they were always in the way. Then of course last night someone left the gate open and they got up on the lot behind the barn. We had to chase them again. Great fun in the dark with the flashlights spooking them and the burdocks flying.

That was the final straw. This afternoon the whole five of us set out to put the darned things in the heifer barnyard with the shorthorn bull. It was highly entertaining. They decided that the bridge between the farms was haunted and they weren’t going to cross it-no way, no how. It was really cold, the wind was shrieking and it was a plumb lousy day to move nervous cattle. However, eventually they got tired of trying to run over the men and slipped in through the gate where we wanted them. They immediately forgot their worries as the scramble began to sort out a new pecking order with the seven that were already there.

Now all we have to do is figure out how to get the last one, Egrec, down from the hill. She ran back up the first time they got out and she is the wildest one of the group. I have never seen a cow that likes to be away from the herd before, but she actually prefers staying up there alone and cold to coming down to the barn with the rest of the bunch. Maybe when the snow gets deep she will slow down so we can catch her.