Chikin

The kids built another new hen coop over the past few days. With Alan laid off for a few weeks things got DONE.

Added to the new brooder,

 Lots and lots of new chicks....

It all equals.....eggs! Present and future

My Maserati Does 185

Peggy is feeling much better...talking to her other grandma on the phone

I lost my license. Now I don't drive

Not so true, but life has surely been good to me so far.

However, we've all been sick for the past couple of weeks, with the plague starting with Becky and toppling us all like slow motion ten pins.

 Guess I am on the mending side of the equation, but I sure have felt better. so I will finish up my weekly writing chores, listen to some good old music that was revived during the Florida trip, and gasp like a guppy all day.

It's hard to leave when you can't find the door.

Sunday Stills.....Agriculture

For more Sunday Stills......I had to stop myself at these.....

Pruning

Yesterday was deliciously puttery. The air was warm and forgiving and even the wind lacked bite. The boss and Alan sold a little hay, and then Alan and I set out to clear the area in front of the wood stove and get a better fire going so the evening would be warm and cozy.

While we worked I heard a sort of guttural croaky sound, and thought, ah, a blackbird. I looked up and sure enough a pair of Common Grackles flew over. Like the Cowbirds the other day, by midsummer they will not be favorites, but the first ones are always welcome.

For some reason we walked up where the guys took out that old apple tree and Al glanced at my little Ida Red and his Grandma's old dwarf Red Delicious.

The Ida Red had never been pruned and needed her leading branch lopped out and some grapevines sheared off. The other tree had been pruned by me...maybe twenty years ago or so...and it was planted too deep so suckers had come up from the graft. It looked like a witch's broom on a bad hair day. He cut and cut.....

"Enough," he said....I looked and pointed. Onward and pruneward! More, more, more.

There is much less tree left now, but the big sucker the size of the main trunk is gone, some of the top has become bunny food....and lo, it looks like an apple tree again.

Then this morning I discovered some more pruning. Just for fun I partake of what might be called torturary.....topiary being far too tame a word. The little Honey Locust trees that spring from the seeds of the big one get twisted, tangled, tied, and knotted into interesting shapes each summer. Thus they stay small and don't have to be ripped out of the flower beds by the back door, where big trees can't be allowed.

 My favorite looks like an old fashioned carpet beater.

Anyhoo.....over the winter they were under the snow right up to their chins. Down underneath the bunnies had been busy...snip snip here. Snip snip there....they don't exactly look like they did last fall.

But no big deal. They grow like weeds and there will be plenty of new twigs to turn and tame once the weather warms up. Maybe I will train the two of them together into a bower or something....

A Dog at My Feet

My own dog, Daisy, lies at my feet sometimes...if there happens to be something comfortable upon which to do so. With her though, it is about soft and fluffy, not companionship. She is perfectly independent as only a dachsie can be.

However, when the kids' dog, Ren, lies beside me, I know that it is because she is a dog and I am a dog person and so she is comfortable there.

She is here now.

No pillows needed.

Kinda Pasty

As you may know the kids have been working toward a sideline in poultry and poultry products. They have a small flock of layers, they raised turkeys on grass last summer, and now they have chicks.

Lots of chicks from a number of sources. Word has it there are 80-some in that nice brooder the boys recycled.

Some of these chicks arrived with pasty fannies and others, after all the stress of moving several times, developed them.

Thus yesterday was baby chick butt washing day. Some of them received this lifesaving attention in the kitchen, before the operation was moved to the barn.

I retreated from this affair. Not that I haven't had chicks in the house. I used to raise them in a 20-gallon aquarium with a light bulb when we lived down in town. At least we had an enclosed porch for that enterprise. I raised many broods and had a substantial flock at one time....maybe a hundred or so birds, and certainly 75 guinea fowl.

And I have tended to pasty chicken fannies more than once.

It was just that I didn't have to.... so I didn't. 

That torch has been passed.

 Have fun kids.

Winter Week on the Farm

Bunny banquet....or cottontail cuisine

Brown-headed Cowbird

Could this crow be counting?

Gold Finches

Framed

For Great Grandma M

The Birthday Girl

Not so much

With mommy and daddy

 

Uncle Alan, Uncle Alan, get offa my airplane

That's better. Now can I ride both at one time???

As requested, Peggy's first birthday pics.....I have many, many....did I mention many....more.

Feather ID

Does anyone recognize these feathers? They were stuck to the big windows in the living room one morning. Thanks

Changing of the Guard

The boys modified an old brooder into this nifty structure for baby chicks.
The kids also managed to find a lot more than these.......

I guess Peggy had a rough night, going to sleep just in time for her daddy to go to work and her mama to catch a few winks before the day begins. Cutting molars at just one year old is tough stuff!

Thus paths just missed crossing on the way to daylight. I get up early to work on the Farm Side while it is still quiet..... and just because I am a morning person.

This is often time for private joy. Lonesome sunrise, early bird song, the whistle of a passing train.... It can be nice to be alone in the earliest part of the day. Sometimes there are issues though.




This morning walking the dog with leash and flashlight, rather than just opening the door and mixing the dog food, showed discretion rather than valor, thanks to our ever present wildlife.

The past couple of early mornings and late evenings have offered us the fragrant aroma of Mephitis Mephitis wandering the neighborhood in search of love, grubs, stuff in the compost bin, or whatever it is that brings skunks out in late winter. (And way late this year...we usually notice them in January.)

Dogs that want to live in the house with the folks must beware. Skunk is not a popular bouquet among the denizens of den and parlor, thus pups must not sport it, no matter how appealing they might find it.

Kinda like rolling on fresh cow patties or random dead things. People just don't get it.

Anyhow, with Alan home, and spring on the way, things are moving and shaking around the place. He refurbished an old fish tank, so we have guppies, glow tetras, and neons, brightening up the living room, a newly reconstructed brooder full of chickies in the heifer barn and all sorts of other projects starting or in the planning stages awaiting better weather.

Never a dull moment around this place!

First Bird

I keep track of the first bird I see or hear every day, just for fun. Usually it is an American Crow or some other common critter, but today it was something unusual.

Over the past few weeks the boss and Alan have been finding turkey carcasses all over the old pasture and even right down in the barnyard. They think they have been torn up by coyotes or eaten by owls or something, but at any rate they are getting eaten.

This morning when I stepped outside I saw some of them, up on the hill behind the house. I wonder if they moved because of the killing or because the snow is going down.

At any rate, first bird was a turkey.

Sunday Stills......Clouds

Had to hit the archives this week. It was overcast most of the week and then not a cloud in the sky....

For more Sunday Stills.....

Hope

There was a robin yesterday on one of the  big trees between us and the neighbors. The sun was lighting up his russet breast like a fiery coal from the wood stove. I was like a little kid when I saw it. Bout time!

I sure hope winter is mostly done with us. Reading stories of barn roof collapses in NY and PA this morning and I had to cry for the people and cattle involved. Too many folks don't get it, but farmers love their animals. They really do. It is not like dairying is a get-rich-quick scheme or anything. You have to love it to work that hard and ride the ups and downs of the weather, the markets, and suffer through tragedies like these, and plan for how to get going again.

If you get a chance read this story by my FB friend Sherrie Bunting....she understands what farming really is like and writes very well about it. 

As always the reaction of the farming community to tragedy among its members is stunning. We have been on the receiving end and there is nothing as humbling as knowing your neighbors are eager to go so far to help you, nothing

Trout Fishing in America

Dueling Plowboys

 In something like 25 days trout season will open here in NY. And, yes, I do need to get down to see a certain special someone in the Town Clerk's office and buy a license.



However, the way things are looking I am going to need an ice auger and tip ups if I want to start the season on time. 

Dagnabbit

The water garden is not looking its best these days

Just as the weather threatens to improve, I wind up hobbling around like an old wooden puppet. Went over to the barn to help the boss move the little steer the other day. Don't remember doing anything unusual, but when we came back my "good" knee felt odd.

Grandpa Delbert's old plow looks a little happier here

By the next morning it wasn't working. A few days later it is a little better but darn it, I want to go out and walk and do stuff, not creep and hobble.

Whine, whine, whine......

Liquid water......

Happy Birthday Peggy-Ann Marie

One year old today. And you can tell by all the baby toys and new books and all that she is popular around here.

Gratitude

I'm grateful for ponies. Isn't everyone?

The snow slid off the heifer barn roof yesterday and I am grateful. I remember when the horses...long gone fellows that gave us so much fun....used to stand next to that barn to soak up winter sun. Suddenly, for no apparent reason, they would bolt up the hill and turn and glare back down, manes and tails all a flutter, and eyes as wild as winter.

And then the snow would cascade off with a thunderous crash. Must be they could hear it cracking loose and got away before it could get them. 

Although it makes a big mess next to the barn and a lot of noise and all, I am grateful that the men who built these barns built them steep with steel roofs so they dump their snow before it hurts anything.

All over the Northeast barns are giving up under the snow load. Animals have been injured and killed and hopes and dreams and happiness destroyed. My heart aches for these poor cows.

 For the people who care for them as well. If you live with animals and have a heart, seeing them in distress is more painful that you would believe. Many a night's sleep has been lost around here when some cow or calf wasn't doing right and we weren't sure how to fix her.I can't imagine how awful all this must be for the farmers involved.

I pray for a respite from winter while things get cleared up and some of this snow gets gone. I also hope that the ignorant animal rights jerks who comment on heart-wrenching stories like this find jobs or something, so they can stop feeding off the misery of others. They know nothing about cows. Nothing. But they sure want to lecture people who do.

I guess there are some awful floods to the south as well. The guys are always complaining about our hills, and wishing for a farm on the level....all I can think is what the floods over the past few years would have done to us if we weren't perched up here. Today I am grateful for hills.

I am also grateful, more than you could possibly imagine, that the lambs have gone to the barn.

Lambs are LOUD! It is so quiet here this morning.....and they are happy to be able to race around the barn every time Liz goes down to give them their bottles. 

Lamb in a turkey tractor

If by chance you are one of those animal rights folks who is just stopping by to harass a caring farmer...little Klondike stays in the turkey tractor when no one is in the barn so the foxes, and weasels, and coyotes, and fishers, and owls, and eagles, and all the myriad other predators that share our land with us can't eat him.

Update...ht to a FB friend. Did you read this story? How could anyone call themselves an animal lover and do, or condone, something like this? Sick bastards.

First Dinosaur Book

Thanks for reading Uncle Alan.....it was a great big book so mama had to hold me.