Sunday Stills.....Groups of Birds

Getting ready to rumble

Duck wars

And stay out!

A perfect challenge for us for this week, as we were at the lake, where birds abounded. Ducks, as you can see, don't much like each other. The Mallards and Black Ducks were at war all week. They would start a quick, staccato quacking as soon as they saw each other, sail towards one another, check each other out, and then erupt into violent ducking and splashing. Quite entertaining, even if wet....even in the photos only showing a couple of ducks there were actually many more....they were just underneath the melee. 

For more Sunday Stills......

What was That....Wait, what IS that?

Camp starts this noon. See you next Saturday afternoon.

However, things are still rolling here at the farm. Welcome to the madhouse....I get up  a couple hours before the rest of the crew for some quiet time and to get some chores done while house is still.

First job is to take Daisy out for her little walkies.

I opened the porch door to find that during the night something had wreaked havoc.

The snow shovel, brush nippers, tool boxes, garden stuff, hose nozzles, etc. were strewn and tangled everywhere.

The wood of the wall....not the world's sturdiest wall...was chewed away on the corner of the door to make a round hole so whatever it was could escape.

My guess when I went out there and sniffed the air was fox...it was sort of a wet, rank, doggy odor. The hole is about the right size....

I woke up the boss, because that is what wives do. He got out the .410 and put in a couple of shells and we took a look around. 

After I put on gloves and cleaned up the mess that is. Lots of rabies around here....so Peggy will have to be carried through the porch for a few days.

Something rustled in the bushes under the mulberry tree, but odds are that was just a deer. We went back inside to talk about the Amsterdam Mohawks ball game he went to last night...guess he had quite a time.

And then.....my cell phone rang. It was Liz, making no sense at all. Something about a calf, but incoherent with excitement.

 We bred both old cows last year. Moon didn't calve to the service we had on record and neither did Bama. We didn't care too much....

We had vague memories of talking about breeding Moon a second time, but it wasn't written down (my bad) and no one actually remembered doing it. I thought she looked bred when we brought them in the barn last Saturday because of concern that local fireworks might scare them. She wasn't bagging though, and I just said, nah, we never bred her again.

Guess we did though. It's a girl.

Field Names

Speaking of cars, I miss this guy

They tend to grow from descriptions that pop up in conversations about the day's plans and adventures.

"You know, the field where Dad put the little tree through the haybine...." The boss's dad that is.....it soon becomes "The Brush Lot." Trees and brush are not friends to haybines.

60-Acre Lot, 30-Acre Lot, Field behind the Barn, Old Pasture Lot, Hickory Tree Field, and Seven County Hill are self-explanatory.

The T Field is shaped like a "T", which shows clearly on aerial photographs.

The Old Spreader Field is where they tipped up an old manure spreader to cannibalize the wheels for something else.

Sometimes there is a story behind the names. So it is with Stolen Car Lot. It was before my time, so I don't know what it's old name was, but years ago, when the boss was a boy, someone stole a car nearby. They must have panicked when pursued, because they didn't keep it long.

It was just after the family bought this farm....they had been farming on the other one a while.

 His older brother was hunting out there when he spotted something shiny stuffed under the brush of the hedgerow.

It was the stolen car. It had been partly dismantled and the parts were scattered under canvases. 

The situation was reported to the appropriate authorities, who came and investigated and had it towed out.

So the field got a new name. We still wonder how they got it back there. 

Lookin' out my Back Door

An affinity for mud

For Camo

A Green Green Frog......not redundant at all

Ravens

Everybody likes mulberries

It has been a weird year for counting birds. Normally Eastern Kingbirds show up early in the season and are seen on the horse pasture all summer long.

This year we didn't see any until last week and even now they are in and out.

No Eastern Towhees. No Eastern Bluebirds. Only House Wrens representing the wren family......

Sigh.....

And up until this past weekend, no Common Ravens either. We usually see more of them during the colder months so they tend to get counted early.

However, a flock of at least five flew over when we cooking out the other day. Every morning since they have been perching in the dead elm behind the heifer barn croaking up a storm.

And every day I hurry for the camera. And every day they are gone.

I guess they prefer to take their quothing elsewhere.

Despite these notable holes in the count list we have still seen 72 species so far this year, which nearly equals last year's total of 73 for the whole year. No reason to think we won't pick up something else as fall migration sets in. 

I am looking forward to counting next week at Peck's Lake....family members have spotted nesting Common Loons there...it is always good for mountain birds we don't see down here in the valleys and foothills....

Green

The guys worked this field up and then couldn't get it planted.
The mustard was glad to plant itself.

I think this is the greenest summer I have ever seen. Even the morning and evening light is green. A glance out the kitchen window shows nothing but....even the sky seems green-tinted because every inch is surrounded by green leaves and green grass. It rains pretty much two out of three days....great for growing things, awful for harvesting them.

It is decadently lush. 

The garden is pretty stable...Beans are blooming; baby peas and squash are forming.

As are weeds, which return daily and with great enthusiasm. 

They are really going to get a stranglehold next week when we go to camp.

Barnyard...no cows. The rain has washed a lot of gravel down here

 I've been packing, a little each day. Poles and noodles and swim suits and personal flotation devices and spoons and forks and paper plates. It takes a lotta stuff to live a week away from home the way we do it, but it sure is fun.

Hit the library yesterday for one of the most important ingredients of the week.

You can see why they call it Birdsfoot Trefoil

Books! I was thrilled to find a Del Shannon that I don't have, out in back in the free stuff. Shannon is so much fun to read. No political correctness, no sobbing sympathy for the bad guys, just good, strong, good vs evil mysteries. I guess that dates me, but I can remember when things were different than now.

We will be here until Saturday......

Meanwhile, the river is awful high.

This Guy

Is working far from home, missing his family and his farm, as well as missing all the sunny days during a miserably rainy hay season.

He is also having a birthday today, so if you see him, wish him a happy.....he is a great guy and a real good brother.

Happy Birthday, Mappy.

Mad Skillz

This weekend, soda bottles were harmed

I fixed the washing machine.

All by myself too. As you know, if you've been reading here long, farm women are surrounded by the kind of men who can split huge tractors in half and repair whatsoever is borked in there.

Stuff was grilled, including steaks and hamburgers from our most recent beef

They can weld old balers up and get another few years out of them, change oil, replace brakes, and all manner of other impressive and esoteric repair and maintenance tasks that I wouldn't touch with a ten-foot wrench.

However, none of them messes with washing machines. They are not so much complicated as encased in inconvenient metal parts that make them hard to fix.

When ours started screaming this weekend whenever it was on the spin cycle, my thoughts turned to spun bearings, broken pulleys, jammed wingnuts, and other things that are hidden deep in the guts of the white monster.

Dang.

The boss made his famous potatoes

That poor little machine works nearly continuously. When the herd of adults who live here aren't washing clothes, there are baby things in there...and you know babies....and in the interim should there be one, I wash Alan's grouty clothes from his job. 

When I do that there are crumbs of cement in the tub when I get done...I could darned near pave the driveway with them.

Thus its apparent demise brought consternation and frantic plans for getting a new one...quickly.

This morning I figured I'd run one last load of small blankets through it.

What could happen but that it would break completely?

As I was putting them in...I'm a shorty...I had to lean on it to reach.

Moving it a tiny bit produced that same Godawful shriek......from the OUTSIDE!!!

I dug around in the clutter of old plastic bags, misplaced tee shirts and other detritus that lurks beside it and found.........wait for it......ta da........ the culprit.

The big metal dustpan had gotten shoved up against the side and was making the noise when the washer jiggled in the spin cycle.

I moved it.

Like magic the little washer that could is working fine again....

Is that cool or what?

I am very happy.

Sunday Stills....the Color White

For more Sunday Stills.......

Barbecue and Baling

Or perhaps not.....Happy Birthday America. You may know that there is no crying in baseball, and I truly wish you would dry your birthday tears and let the sun shine through so the guys can bale today.

Not likely, but they were able to grab a couple of small loads yesterday and put them right in the mow.

Hope you all have a wonderful day....and that we all remember why we celebrate. Take care.

Peanut Butter

Hi, Gramma, I haz dis

See...It's dulishious

An, it's all mine

Buh Bye

Thank you, mama

Now, if only I can hold onto this

We are supposed to get a little stretch of good weather, starting today. Maybe....I don't trust the gurus, as, once it starts raining like it has been, the air just keeps sucking up water over the ground and dumping it back down on us.

However, we will take it if we can get it. 

The doe and fawn on the hill the other day came right down to the horse barn day before yesterday. This is about the length of the outstretched honey locust tree...were it to lie down....or maybe even a little less from the house.

It is also about thirty feet from the garden, which is still being mauled by bunnies. I put out fabric softener sheets and they thought those were so nifty they started stealing them.

Prolly some real sweet scented bunny nests out there.... aluminum foil pans on strings going up today. Shoulda put them up a week ago, but it has just been so rainy and cold I have hated to go in the garden for fear of spreading disease among susceptible plants.

Otherwise, it is all catching up paper work and packing for camp. Every single year I put my packing list away where I can find it and then forget where I put it. Last year I let Beck in on the secret, but she forgot too. Guess I put camp away in a quiet closet in my mind and only take the memory out when things get to be too much....

Anyhow, we are busily adding to yet another new list and taking care of business......Only six months filing to do....going on seven.

Oh, well, maybe it will keep me off of Facebook, which instead of sporting cute pictures of kitties and pretty cows, has become a septic tank of outrage and ignorance.

Missing the Boat

Japan has at least fifty words for rain.

Hawaii has even more.

As do the Welsh.

Considering the weather here I think we may be missing the boat on this.......and no one wants to be missing their boat with all this coming down. I am thinking we maybe should bring the canoe down from the shed and park it in the dining room.....just in case. I already dug the paddles out of the closet.

What I mean to say is that we need to come up with more words for rain to serve us here in the eastern and central parts of the US.

It's all very well to list downpour, drizzle, deluge, mist, fog, steady, intermittent, may be heavy at times, torrential and all, but somehow these are not enough. 

I think that we need to hit the shift key and amalgamate some of those uppercase symbols on the top row of the keyboard into all new words with which to express our feelings about rain.

Meanwhile, Ooame, pakaku, go away...and don't let the door hit you in the backside on your way out. We have enough cats and dogs inside without them falling from the sky for a month, thank you.

Looking out my Back Door

Looking out my back door

Sorry for skipping days. The rain and cold kinda get me down. This has been one of the wettest Junes in history. We need to make hay to pay the infernal property tax. We can live on our other income...we are pretty frugal folks....but the taxes we have to pay to keep on farming are pretty steep.

You cannot make hay in the rain. At least no flooding so far this year.

Great Spangled Fritillary right on the back step

However, there is always a bright side. You can see deer and fawns pretty much every day without leaving the yard. Foxes. Bunnies with a predilection for beans and peas. I hung some fabric softener sheets on strings out in the pea patch and laid down a big swath of mulch between the brushy fence line and the veggies.

Time will tell if this will work.

The robins and catbirds are planting mulberries
I wonder if they think they will grow here.

I think there was a deer eating mulberries yesterday when I went out to walk Daisy. Something coughed right under the trees...about ten feet from me...and then the bushes rustled and parted as if something large was in there. The touch-me-not is already tall enough to hide a deer. It loves this weather.

Deer path going through our hedgerow to the housing development next door

Although we do not love this weather...and that is putting it mildly, there is always something of interest and delight right outside the door. If I could speak crow I would be getting quite and earful right now in fact.

And speaking of crows. If you want to see...and hear...a small flock of Fish Crows, the parking lot of the Gloversville Tractor Supply has them, along with a mess of Ring-Billed Gulls. Their caw is very distinct from that of the American Crow that is more common here. Sounds kind of like a cartoon! You'll know it when you hear it.