Sunday Stills.....Trash

The photos above were taken by our son-in-law, Jade, who drives one of those great big trucks to various landfills. Thanks Jade!!

The "trash" below was found on our lawn the other day. Did a cowbird raid a robin nest? Or maybe it was just a failed egg that the robins tossed out themselves.....

For more Sunday Stills......

For My Husband

On one of his biggest days.

Thank you, Robert, for reminding me of this.

Bright Eyes

Peggy Ann has graduated from staring at the photos of my grandparents and great grandfather, the railroad conductor, on the kitchen wall, to watching this picture.

Liz drew it in seventh grade. I have always liked it, so I framed it and it also hangs in the kitchen.

The baby finds it utterly fascinating. 

And I think she smiled at me today.

Sprout Brook Auction

Is today and starting soon. Don't let the rain slow you down. Grab your umbrella and galoshes and head over to watch them sell.

Rumor has it that there is a record, or near record amount of stuff, from milking equipment, to antique machinery, to modern farm machines ready to roll. Not to mention all sorts of interesting odds and ends.....

And if all else fails, you can watch my significant other put his Missouri Auction School training to the test as he and another fine fellow sell one of the many rows of stuff.

Agriculture...ever Changing

John Deere horse drawn cultivator

The other one...over at the sale

 Although they look the same, there are two different horse-drawn cultivators here. The top one is an old John Deere set, the lower something else, a bit more complicated.

The top one, after who knows how many decades sitting up in the barn, can still be adjusted to open and close and work at different depths. With a little WD-40 and elbow grease that is probably also true of the one in the other photos.

The boss kept the JD set and took the other over to the auction to sell. He also took over a 16...or 18...there was some discussion on this...foot wide set, also made by the famous green and yellow equipment company, of field drags, which perform somewhat the same job. 

Except that instead of a single horse hooked to the singletree, which you can see in the third photo pretty clearly, it needs to be pulled by a pretty darned big tractor.What would take days with the little ones, and a lot of sweat, and grunt, and misery, can be done, literally in minutes with the big one.

See the singletree?

So many activists want to see ag go back to the days before big fields and big tractors and big farms....but how many of them would like to hook up a horse at dawn and struggle all day long holding on to the handles of this device, shoving it through the rocky, bumpy, hard, hard earth, and then have only a little bit to show for it at the end of the day? After about the first hour's worth of blisters and bone-busting work, I'll bet not very many of them.

And I'll tell you a secret about the Amish guys....they love nothing better than a chance to get up on an English guy's tractor and control all those horses and rip up some dirt.

Our logger friend came over with his rollback truck and hauled the big drags and some other stuff over to Sprout Brook for us...and I thank him for it. With only Alan's little S10 and Jade having to work, so he only can come now and then with his bigger truck, it was a huge help.

Pretty Bells

Turn up the sound to enjoy. ***Thank you Becky for being my bell ringer....note the Dr. Who nail polish for Impossible Astronaut Day

In a One Horse Open Sleigh

I had always planned to clean up this cute little cutter and put it in the parlor in front of the windows. However, we could never get the second big door open and it languished up in the building.

It doesn't look like I am ever going to get around to that job, so the boss took it over to the auction to sell this Saturday. If you are interested, get there early....

It belonged to his dad...he is said to have bought it for ten dollars from some people he did grounds keeping for.

We kept the bells, and if I can get somebody to ring them while I take video, you will soon get to hear them. They are the mellowest, most sweet-sounding sleigh bells I have ever heard. I have them in the kitchen right now and I jingle them several times a day just for the sheer enjoyment of it. 

I can just see it spanking down a snowy road with a little bay horse in front....and those bells making merry for all who could hear as it passed by.

Lost or Strayed

Cat fruit

My direction that is. My every single day has been bracketed by cows since I was roughly 26 years old. Maybe even younger...I don't quite remember when I started milking a hundred and fifty twice a day at Hollenbeck's and actually had cows even before then. That was a very long time ago. 

Now, without them.......

I help with the meager helping of chores, what with the few animals we have left and then polish off all the other stuff I have always done, laundry, housework to my admittedly low standards, a little bookkeeping and filing. It takes maybe twenty minutes or half an hour to pick the stalls, milk Moon, feed hay and grain and feed the four bucket calves their milk. There are three of us to do it....

And then....what? I have been accustomed to a constant, unrelenting, and generally unreachable goal. And now, eh, it really doesn't matter. No milk inspector, no quality premiums to pursue.

Can't wait for it to be warm enough and dry enough to at least get some garden planted. Can't wait for the auction to be over, as the boss is going all day every day getting ready for that. Can't wait to figure out what comes next.

That blasted wild, grey Tom, has poor Jetsam up a tree again.

What the Heck?

I usually get up at or near, or on days when I have a lot of writing to do and need some peace and quiet, well before dawn.

This is one of those days so.....

First of all I got to stand in the center of the dawn chorus. Wow. We have an absurd number of robins around this spring and one was singing about ten feet from me when I walked Daisy by flashlight. Dozens of others warbled from every hedgerow and hillside. In fact they still are.

Nice. I think it may be going to rain because they are crazy loud.

Then as I sat here imbibing the first cup of coffee and putting off calling up this week's Farm Side and getting my act together, I heard this sorta familiar, but semi-out of place song.

Just faintly.

What the heck? 

And then it dawned. Last night just before we went to bed certain people who had been wheeling and dealing poultry showed up with three guinea hens and put them in the small chicken coop.

Yep, that is what I hear. Guinea fowl.

Now if only I could explain as easily the huge boom from off to the west that rattled the plates and shook the windows.

Gratuitous Peggy Pictures

Lemee alone, I'm sleepin'

Not sure about this bath stuff

I know, I'll pretend it's a spa

I want a pony, a bunny, a lambie.......

Pretty feet

He is Risen

Happy Easter to All

Pony on the Lam

NOT taken yesterday, lol

Knees flung high and ears pinned back she bolts, freedom in her cross hairs.

Swings by mistake into the heifer yard and stands there, head high and back, snorting down her long, black and white nose.

At the fence that sprang up all around, mane snarled around her ears, forelock blowing in the sharp east wind.

Woof.....woof...snort, snort, whistle, pause to grab a hank of grass, eyes rolling at the prison guards as they approach, treats in nervous fists, halters hanging on arms like spaghetti. 

Throws back her head, to pivot, whirl, and race again, divots of dirt and grass springing from her flying feet.

Halts against the fence again, a wild stallion silhouetted on a mountain ridge, except she's just a little mare, caught by accident against a cattle panel fence.

And none the less adamant because of that.

"No, I will not go back.

No barns for me!

I'm free, I'm free, I'm free.

Don't touch me! Can't you see that I am a mustang now, all wild and woolly, I'm free, I'm free.

Oh, well, if you must insist, gimme another treat and I'll let you buckle on my halter....


But, dang, that was fun. Let's do it again sometime." 

*****Um, no, let's not.....

The Real Stuff on the Bundy Ranch

Lots of misleading and downright wrong information out there on this. Some of it is malicious and some of it is because this isn't something people deal with every day.

However, there are some real good articles written by people who understand what is going on and can make it a little plainer for those of us who don't live near ranch country.

Beef Magazine....a clear explanation of what is going on.

Oregon Green Blog's take on it. 

The BLM on solar power.

Another One

And another one.

Buried tractors that is.

The boss has been rounding up old, derelict machinery for disposal.

Been doing pretty good too, for one guy working alone, with everything else that is going on.

Then it all went south. The JD 4430 slid off the hard ground and buried its butt deep in a rut, with an 892 chopper firmly in tow. With no other tractor, there was no way to get it out.

Enter a kind neighbor who brought his tractor up to pull it out. And got stuck.

So he brought his other tractor up to get them both out.

And then they had to use the skid steer too. Yeah, it is the worst kind of muddy here....the frost going out of the ground, raining, snowing, wet since last year kind of muddy.

Glad the chopper was about the last thing to be dragged down here.

Glad we have nice neighbors.

Glad I was in the house waiting to take yet another meeting and didn't have to go play in the mud too. 

Throwback Thursday

I talked to this young man last night until almost midnight. Nice visit about the birds, botany, and dialect of the area where is is working now. He has a mean ear for an accent and should fit right in.

Snow in April

2012...no daffs here yet

Kind of a bewildering betrayal, especially coming on the heels of eighty-degree weather. It really felt like spring for a while there. Still, this is to be expected in the wilds of Upstate.

We button up the barn again.....not being neophytes to the vagaries of spring in NY, we hadn't stripped things down any farther than to pull down a couple tarps off fans, and crack a few doors.

No biggie to put it all back the way it was.

Since the weather prognosticators got it right this time, the boss has already brought in extra firewood. Extra blankets on the beds. Long johns washed but not put away. (Wouldn't that be folly!)

 Bama's day out the other day....six or seven luscious hours in the barnyard, soaking up sun and gobbling up hay...are just a memory now. We let her out and not Moon so they wouldn't fight and knock each other down. Still pretty slippery even with most of the snow and ice gone. Now she is back in her stall, safe from the weather and warm.

 Spring, it makes a young man's fancy turn to thoughts of love, and an old man's fancy turn to thoughts of homemade spaghetti and meatballs with lots of good Parmesan cheese on top.

Can You See Him?

I went out the other night to try to get a photo of the woodcock. No luck there. By the time I went in the house for the camera he had stopped peenting.

I did however, get a magnificent shot of a distant cow flop. In the dusky dimness, just before the sun set, it looked like a bird....really it did. Maybe an odd duck. No, wait, that was the photographer*. I deleted that puppy darned quick I can tell you. Talk about embarrassing.

Anyhow, as I came down across the bowling green I saw this wild beast rampaging in the brush in the old horse pasture.

Can you see him?

Is he a stag? A wild horse? A jackass....no, wait, see above*. 

Or could he be a manifestation of imagination springing from the roots of a wild rose encampment?

What's your best guess?

Rainy Night in NY

We missed the eclipse because it was pouring last night. And because we were asleep, which is a tremendous hindrance to successful photography.

However, we didn't miss the advent of real spring. It was here this morning when we went out. Oh, I know we are returning to wind and rain and even the dreaded "s" word, starting tonight and lingering who knows how long. However, that little rain brought red buds to the maples across the river, green to all the hillsides, and blooms to the wild plum trees. The air is fragrant with it, the birds are frenzied with it, and it puts bounce in our steps and vigor in our plans.

Not much else exciting going on....just year end book work and new career set up. The boy is way down south, having driven through the season yesterday, starting here where it is barely beginning to green and the box elders are just showing first bud, to green grass and cherry blossoms and loads of mockingbirds everywhere.

.

I know I couldn't begin to do his job, but I envy his proximity to the ocean, the presence of real, honest to sunshine spring, and the amazing birds he must be seeing.

I suspect that while we are piling the layers of sweatshirts back on, he will be slathering on sunblock and sporting a tee.

How Sweet it Is

The back porch where we keep the barn boots is abuzz with Carolina wrens. Such noise! Such drama! I cut a porthole in the plastic over the screen door the other day, in order to be able to look out when it is warm, but not lose all its insulation and wind break value when it gets cold again.

I thought they were complaining about a cat and so shut off the inside light so they wouldn't see me and tiptoed over to see what was causing the commotion.

No cat. Just love in the air. She is perched on an old bar of metal outside the window. He is flying in and out of the porch with a bit of some sort of fluff, trying to convince her that the half-built nest inside the hard hat is a condo on the beach. 

She is looking at him like he is nuts and nattering about moving to Nantucket.

Such wealth! Not only did the silly things survive the winter, but they are setting up housekeeping ten feet from my kitchen sink. 

Did I mention that they are loud? He is alternating between something like the buzz of a distant jack hammer and the beeping of a backhoe in reverse. They make me laugh.

Pretty Horses

Ralph's son and daughter-in-law and their delightful daughter (Grandbaby fix...we saw both grandbabies the same day!!!) took us to visit a local horse farm on Saturday. There were lovely foals and handsome mares everywhere we looked.

The owner was gracious enough to let me use these photographs from our day of visiting the thoroughbred farm, where the 2003 Derby and Preakness winner, Funnycide, was born.

It was great fun to try to capture good shots of the antics of the babies....of course I missed more than I managed, but you can see how entertaining they are.....Thanks guys.

One of the stallions