Things with Wings

A Downy Woodpecker got caught on the back porch.
He was very reluctant to leave.

Yellow-rumped Warbler

Purple Finches

Eastern Tiger Swallowtail

The world is in motion these days, whether it be dozens of woolly bears tumbling from the bales of hay as we unload the hay...sorry to disturb your hibernation guys, but this hay needs to go into the barn....or butterflies, or passing hawks, or massive flocks of grackles and blackbirds so noisy that I swear they echo.

Waking up Winter

First of the season, Dark-Eyed Junco

The Carolina Wren is singing loudly by the kitchen.

It's a not unpleasant 38 degrees, supposed to go to 66 later today. Maybe a little rain later, which hopefully will hold off until the two big loads of hay the boss got yesterday are unloaded and stored in the mow.

Fox Tails are so over this year

However, the birds have changed, willy nilly. Not a catbird to be heard or seen. No buntings or orioles, only an occasional robin or two. Warblers are still filtering through..... saw some butter butts yesterday and the common Yellowthroat is still quite common indeed.

But Milkweed is in

But the winter sparrows are threading their way south. The jays are loud and omnipresent again. Clouds of chickadees and white-breasted nuthatches swirl around the feeders as if the snow was three feet deep. We have so many woodpeckers, big beaked and small.

Last of the season

They say it will be 80 by midweek and then cold for the weekend.


The birds know though.....

Sunday Stills...on the Water

Funny how luck can mess with you. We live right on a river. We went down to said river during a bass and walleye tournament, and during heavy migration time for geese and ducks.

We went right to the parking lot of the tourney and right to the village dock and the grassy area where the geese congregate. We saw thousands of dollars worth of fancy trucks and boat trailers. 

And logs....lots of logs....

We saw hundreds of happy geese.

But not one goose in the water. Or one single bass boat.

We did see leaves and logs floating in the river. And the dock. And two boats moored at another dock. 

For more Sunday Stills.......

What's Missing from this Equation?

Fill in the Blank

Heifers and Apple Jelly

Go together like fish and marshmallows.

Yeah, after finally getting things in order to make jelly out of the apples we got yesterday, I was letting the apples boil when the phone rang.

It was Liz checking in with an offer to get dinner tonight. That is always welcome, of course. 

To answer the phone I had to go over to the dining room windows.....where I spied a bit more red and white than i like to see, even if it is autumn.

The heifers were out. The boss was back mowing. I stammered an excuse, hung up and rushed away.

Enough presence of mind to turn off the stove. Not enough to pick up my phone, which was in its measuring cup for music-making purposes.

I feared that I was going to be dealing with the bull that attacked the boss a bit ago, and thus grabbed an old mop as a weapon.

Thankfully though, he had stayed in the barnyard and it was just Abby, a shorthorn, and Tequila, a red-and-white Holstein of Liz's.

I quickly got them out of the house road, but the gate was shut, with the other three head on the other side of it wanting to join their buddies. I won't bore you with the details of getting the three inside to run away from the gate, while the two outside were chased up the lane so I could open said gate, and then the waiting for the escapees to come back down and look for their friends......

And once they were all inside the barnyard a sumac tree served to fill the gap where they tore down the fence. Then Liz and Jade rushed home to help me get them all back into their regular pen.

Big sigh of relief.

Now, the apples are merrily boiling and the kitchen smells just lovely.

Greylag

I love to see this Greylag goose, which lives with a flock of resident Canadas down by the state canal building in Fonda. It has been with them for at least five years.

The Greylag goose is a European breed, as well as a common barnyard fowl, said to be the foundation breed for most domestic geese.

They seem to hybridize fairly frequently with Canadas but I have never noticed any crossbreds in the little flock of half a dozen that this one lives with.

Yesterday, probably because I needed photos of floating things for Sunday Stills, the little flock was combined with this larger one, and not one single one was in the river when we went down by the state canal building to take pics. 

What a mess they leave on the grass, and they have almost no fear of people. A few of them stood up when I walked down near the water, and there was a bit of sporadic honking, but mostly they just kept an eye on me as they went about the business of resting in the sun.

We went to the new Fultonville dock and river access area too. That is really nice! I hope it is still open and accessible after the water is let out of the dams...at least the upper part anyhow. It would make a nice place to view the masses of gulls, geese, diving and puddle ducks, eagles, crows, ravens, and other birds that frequent the shallows in front of McDonald's when the water is down.

How I would love to be able to safely put the binoculars on that flock!

 It always frustrates the heck out of me not to be able to photograph the wonderful aggregation of birds that congregates there, because of the danger of the highway running right next to the water.

And This isn't Chicago

Pumpkins

But, wow, what a wind we had yesterday! I was watching Peggy for Liz and had just put her down for a little nap when an absolute wall of blasting air hit the house.

Pumpkins

It was so strong that it BROKE most of my clothespins, even though I ran right out to rescue the laundry as soon as it hit. Granted, you can't buy a decent clothespin these days, but still.

It also blew Alan's coyote hunting blind way up by the horse yard. That was a big disappointment to me, as he left it set up so I could bird watch from it. It was really cool to sit inside and look out.

Anything that didn't blow away in that maelstrom, just isn't going to blow away.

And more pumpkins

Doesn't look like any real harm was done though, and Becky and Ralph rescued the blind.

Today we ran up to the orchard for apples for jelly and stopped to take pics of their lovely pumpkin fields, then down to the river for photos of floating things. Of course, nothing much was floating.....

Our favorite little pumpkin of all

We Aren't Cowboys

But we often wish that we were. After the debacle of loading the horned heifer last week we decided that it might be a good plan to catch Marv and remove his budding toad stabbers before we faced a similar situation with him.

All those months on the hill with his mother and aunties has rendered him more than a little bit leery of human interference. 

Thus we rigged up some gates by the watering trough.

And drove him among them and fastened them shut.

Whereupon he waited until we were nearly ready to attend to the dehorning process and then nonchalantly, easy as pie, hopped over the five-bar gate and scrambled off.

Time for plan B.

Not the eclipse...slept through that...just last night's moon rise

GMOs and Ebola

Afraid of GMOs? Frankenfoods? Buying in to all that hype?

Check this out. The very  technology that makes GMO foods possible (and safe...trillions served without harm) is being used to produce drugs to fight this horrific modern plague.

Cows may be used to make a vaccine too. They had better hurry....

A Sunday which was not Still

The boss was heading out the door to cut a little firewood.
 after chores yesterday. 

 Alan asked, "You have another saw? I'll give you a hand."

And Jade said, "Me too."

So three saws roared all day, way out in the fields. 

And the girls went out to get plastic and staples for the annual buttoning up ceremony, not one of my favorite times of year, but necessary in this old and drafty place.

The garden was gleaned by the old lady, a large bowl of carrots, another of beans, a couple of stray tomatoes and a bit of this and that, hurrying against the frost warning.

A huge stew was made with beef that we raised and all those garden goodies, and much wood was sawed and a wagon filled with more, and the covering of the windows against the cold was undertaken. Doors were planed so they closed right after years of sticking and grating.

I don't think it froze right here by the house. Too dark to tell yet. But the grass is silver out on the hill....we'll see when the sun comes up.

Sunday Stills....Planes

Eh, this was a hard one....I never go anywhere....but while I was out chasing sunsets this little prop plane from the Johnstown airport flew over, so viola, a plane....

For more Sunday Stills......

Antique Milking Machines

This display, Mike's Antique Milkers, is seen at the Fonda Fair every year and attracts a lot of attention. We have come a very long way in modern milking technology......

Sun Flower

Secret Service

I always try to use the most appropriate photos available

My personal experience with the Secret Service took place in October of 1984, when the boss and I were attending Missouri Auction School. During our stay in Kansas City Ronald Reagan debated George Mondale in the Kansas City Municipal Auditorium right across the street from our hotel.

Other than seeing the motorcade, the whole affair was not amusing for residents of what was then, I believe, the Kansas City Best Western. We were told to stay out of our rooms while they were searched by the Secret Service. We rode on elevators with the Secret Service. Often.

Students at auction school were a sorta sarcastic bunch. However, the Secret Service did not find our jokes in said elevator amusing. Nothing funny about a bunch of cowboys, realtors, and farmers from NY I guess. They surely did not smile.

Some of them spent the evening before the debate in the bar of the hotel where students gathered to gripe and practice chants at one another, grimly overseeing us potential threats, and making everyone uncomfortable..... although not too uncomfortable to practice Betty Botter over and over again.

Or maybe they were trying to blend in. If so they failed utterly, as gigantic guys with necks so thick they could barely button their collars kind of stood out among the cowboy hats and girly dresses of our classmates. 

Plus none of them were chanting, "One dollar bid and now two, now two," which was a dead giveaway.

On the day of the debate we were forced to stay out of our rooms for many hours, and we couldn't have our car....we got pretty bored walking around that section of KC. It was a little dangerous too. We were followed by a gang of youth that political correctness forbids me from describing, but I'll bet you can picture them. The boss scared them off with his best mean glare.

Always

The Secret Service guys were scarier. In the end though, it was just another story to tell about what were probably the strangest two weeks of my life.....one dollar bid, and now two, now two......

It was Mid-October

And the autumn breeze

Shook the colors out of the trees

Time was passing, but who were we to care.....

Yeah, I know it's only the first but looking around the yards and fields reminds me of this old Doug Supernaw song, State Fair.

Somewhere I have a couple worn out tapes of his albums....nothing to play them on any more. Sad how his career ended up, but I still love his music, particularly the above song and Red and Rio Grand.

Kind of quiet around here, which is weird. With six head gone the barn is awfully empty and the boss has one wing all cleaned up. We are burning the wood pallets we used to make portable stalls for the past few years. 

He saw an article about building stalls out of second-hand pallets like it was a fabulous new idea....been doing it for probably forty years for one species or another. Had to laugh about that. 

One nice thing about pallets, is you can start fires with them when they get too grubby to use.

With the big heifer sold, the big inside pen is empty, so the boss cleaned it up and we put five steers in there. Three of them are milk calves and I wanted to keep them on milk so as not to have to dump the extra from the girls....between them they make way more than we can use in the house or Marv can drink. 

We didn't know how it would work trying to feed three milk in a pen, and not letting the other two have any. So far so good. The three know what the buckets are and stick their heads right out through the feed-through. The other two just kind of look on in wonder. I did get my thumb jammed yesterday taking a bucket away but nothing serious.....