Deer's Ears

In the driveway......as seen from the sitting porch.

Sunday Stills....Muscle Cars

The muscle car that lives in our driveway

And has taken us all over the East Coast

It runs away to Washington DC every week

'Cuse 4 life....that was typed by the owner and driver
I was just going to say that this is my least favorite view of it....
heading off for the big city.

For more Sunday Stills.......

Tiny Magic and a "New" Tractor

 This is Hummingbird feather stuck to the cord where the feeder hangs among some flowers. One of the females sits there all the time guarding the feeder from all the other ones. I was astonished to see this tiny thing, no bigger than the scale of a bass, stuck there flipping back and forth in the breeze. It only stayed for a few minutes and then was blown away on the wind, but how cool to see such an iridescent little thing.

And this is the "new" tractor. The guys went out last week to purchase a small power tool for Alan's job and/or maybe some suitcase weights for the big tractor, which came without any...not a great plan on these hills.

Instead of getting either Alan bought this tractor at an area dealership. They plan on running the hay elevator with it or and maybe raking hay. One less thing to hook up and unhook in the rush to finish first cutting. It sounds pretty good when they start it up.

Putting A Face on Agriculture

Ten years ago farm organizations were just beginning to encourage farmers to take to social media to tell the farming story. They wanted everyday farm people to talk to our neighbors and customers and put a face on farming.

Activists were certainly telling stories, half truths, untruths, and downright outrageous whoppers, trying to end modern agriculture as we know it. Folks figured that farmers had better get on board with that before they missed the whole darned train.

The Farm Side was seven years old by then, but its reach was and is mostly limited to local folks. This is a farming county so it probably tends toward preaching to the choir.

I thought I'd give blogging a try, maybe talk about farming with some new and different people and do my share to promote farming. 

The folks around this house are a pretty vociferous lot so it was also a chance to get a turn to talk.

That was ten years ago today. If you've been around for the whole ride, you have seen a small family dairy farm prosper, struggle, and fall.

Talk about a train wreck. Selling the cows sure felt like one.

You've seen it do a small scale phoenix act with the hay business and maybe even grab a little toehold on hope for a different but positive future.

I hope you have enjoyed it. I sure have.

It has been the most amazing trip that I could never have imagined, before I hopped on that agvocation train. I found friends from Colorado to California and from Canada to England. From Tennessee and Indiana and Florida and Texas. South Dakota, Minnesota, North Carolina and South, Oklahoma, Arizona and nearly every state you could name. East, West, North and South of here and places I had never heard of before this..

People whom I've never met and most likely never will are as close as talking over the back fence with a neighbor. They...you... have become very dear to my heart.

I've actually gotten to meet a couple of you and enjoyed that a great deal. I've lost a good friend and wondered how you mourn somebody you didn't really know, except that you did.

It's been great. Thanks for riding along. 

Today dozens of bright young farmers are doing a spectacular job of putting a face on farming and telling our story. I salute them for the connection they are making with people everywhere.

Meanwhile, I guess I'll keep on too, because, let's face it....this is fun.

Here is something I rarely share....the actual face that I have turned toward agriculture for the last few decades.

A little Throwback Thursday...
Guess I still look as stubborn as I did in Kindergarten 

And I still hate having my picture taken

A Great Visit

I love to talk gardening, flowers, plants, and birds and all. It's my kind of gossip and there are never enough opportunities for same.

Thus a late morning visit from a favorite aunt and uncle of mine was spectacular in every way and way, way too short.

 I am making refrigerator dills out of the cukes they brought us, and soon I will freeze the zucchini.....ours has been pretty sad this year.

I already potted up the lovely coleus...what amazing colors!!!!

Now to savor memories of all we talked about and to look forward to the next time we can get together. How sweet it is to have such family all around us.

Storm

Inside a rotten lemon

Last night just the three of us, Becky, the boss, and I, were home, enjoying a quiet supper. Home grown beef and stuff from the garden makes it all good.

Then the kids called from up west where they had attended a wedding and said, "Batten down the hatches; it's hailing here and power lines are lying right in the road."

Huh.

When we came inside the sun was shining and all was calm and peaceful. We abandoned our plates and hustled outside to find the darndest sky we had ever seen. It was like being inside a lemon.

A rotten lemon.

Complete with mid-storm rainbow

We barely had time to snatch the curing onions off the wagon, cardboard box them into the dining room, and drag the laundry upstairs, shutting windows all the way, before it hit. 

Wham! I don't think we got much damage, but the winds were wild and the rain torrential...

I spent nearly the whole storm, after the hatches were suitably battened, running around taking pictures of the crazy clouds. The colors were insane....colors none of us had ever seen in the sky before.

Eerie clouds just the color of cotton candy...the blue kind!

Pretty awesome in fact. 

It stormed off and on all night, with wild lightning waking us more than once.

Hope by now everyone up around Fort Plain has their power back on. They are predicting a replay for tonight.

 I find it interesting that I read just this week that the weather is going to get really, really bad by 2050 or 2060. Since this storm started out by being predicted to be a 20% chance of scattered showers it kinda makes me wonder.....just sayin'

Plus a turtle as the storm slowly moved away to make room for the next one

Making Hay while the Sun Shines

The boss is mowing some hay today, gambling that the thunderstorms that might pop up this afternoon will miss us.

I don't blame him a bit. It is getting late in the year; the days are getting shorter, which allows fewer hours of sunshine to dry the crop. The dew is heavy these days too, and often lies until after noon. 

As you can see above, Alan is pretty quick at getting bales off though, which is a tremendous help. They got three loads yesterday.

It was a picture perfect hay day. However, at one point a bale got stuck in the deflector and caused some problems.

It just happened that I was trying to get a video of bales coming off the elevator when it bound up, so no harm was done. 

I grabbed my shepherd's whistle and managed to get Alan's attention way up behind the barn before any chains were broken or motors burned out.

I do love that sheep dog training whistle, and even though I have no sheepdogs any more, I am never without one. 

I did get a few seconds of one bale falling, but it was so dark and dusty that it isn't much. Multiply it by several hundred though.....

Climbing up to fix stuff

This goes fast 

I love the sound of the paddles turning over on the big elevator that goes up to the window (you can hear it in the video). When it is clacking away like that you know that everything is working as it should and feed is getting put away right.

Got the Blues

Early morning walk yesterday just to have a look around. We seem to have the blues.

You have to look closely...maybe click and enlarge,
but there are three adult male Indigo Buntings hanging around the diskbine here

Two in this one

And one.....

I went over to the barnyard with the exact purpose of looking for Indigo Buntings. I knew there had been a pair there all summer. Yesterday morning though, the foxtails were full of them. I saw at least three adult males and another bunch of females and youngsters. I know these photos aren't the greatest. They are very shy and I had to sneak up behind the skid steer even to get them..... but if you look closely.....

Chicory provided bits of fallen sky. Nice accents among the Queen Ann's Lace.

And then there was that leftover Blue Moon. It got stuck for a while on the old lightning rod before it set behind the heifer barn.

Later in the day much hay was made....bears crocheted....machines repaired...oil changes enacted and dust produced on roads and in mows. Our boy had to climb out on the cross mow elevator to dislodge a sticky bale. That is never fun.

The morning though, was like a stained glass window in shades of blue and beauty...so calm and soft and serene. I sure enjoyed it.

Becky's Baby Bears

Which she taught herself to crochet via YouTube videos....are a big hit with the younger set. The yarn for this one was provided by a dear friend out in the middle of the country. Purple ones are growing even as Peggy enjoys Pinky here. 

Places of the Heart

View from the back seat

Our boy took me out scouting fields yesterday on his quad. We stopped to see what the boss was doing with one of the hay wagons...cannibalizing a hub off an old derelict one to get this functional one back in business.

Will the old one fit?

Then we went to some of the back fields to see what the hay looks like. Some is pretty good. Some is pretty awful. It is all pretty though.

It was a nice ride. I love to get a chance to see all the way back fields without hiking up all those hills, although I do walk as far as the 30-Acre Lot pretty much every week, and back to Hickory Tree Field and the Old Spreader Field pretty often.

Sunday Stills.....Red

For more Sunday Stills........

Raising the next Generation

Of birds and birders......

The robins are fledging today. Peggy is so excited. Me too. Now I can use my porch.

Prepping

For the Zombie Apocalypse. 

We'll get the vampires first!

And you know what? As I watch the world being sucked ever-downward in a spiral of junior high school drama, no substance, no sense, I wonder if being prepared for some kind of apocalypse might not be a bad idea.

I try to keep things cheerful here, but I sure have seen some crazy stuff this week. Seriously, has everyone lost their values completely? Don't look for me to get all worked up over that infamous large carnivorous kitty cat that perished a world away from here. I didn't know him personally and neither did the loonies who think he was the Messiah.

They believe that they did though and I guess that's all that matters.

Meanwhile we had a marvelous crop of garlic...bloodsucking undead need not apply at Northview Farm. I need to find somewhere other than the kitchen to hang the three braids we made though. The place smells like a pizzeria...not a bad thing, but a little goes a long way.

Keep smiling....it confuses the heck out of them. 

The aliens landed while we were looking the other way, worrying about silly stuff.
The pods were left behind and will hatch any day now.

Hunter

Intrepid

I have always somewhat disrespected Daisy....not that I wasn't fond of her or anything....but..... 

We got her because of the cute factor...and because she had eaten some turkeys that were off limits and was facing eviction from her premises....

For the two years that she has lived here I have tended her faithfully. Tending faithfully is in a farmer's heart.... I found dog food she can eat and a way she can eat it.

Never saw such a dog for digestive difficulties. For two years, twice a day, a third of can of minced chicken Pedigree mixed with ample water has been served...it usually works...she is generally okay. Her housebreaking is pretty shaky. No biggie...she is small and so are her "accidents". She is however, confined to the kitchen.

After half a lifetime with herding dogs....they live to serve and protect and be partners...her independence was a barrier to us being buddies of the heart. I didn't blame her a bit. She had no reason to trust a stranger...me....and hounds tend to go their own way anyhow.

Not that I haven't always liked her, quite a lot in fact...I'm a doggy person, and she is certainly a dog, albeit in a pretty small package...but she was never quite a border collie. With a border collie there is an intense sensation of minds that are tied together...an invisible bond of cooperation and love and the will to work..I haven't found it with any other dogs, but if you have BCs you know what I mean. You can feel their brains there, reaching out to link with yours...a bond like no other. I still want another one....

Then one day she convinced us to let her get the mouse in the dining room. Ten minutes and it was dispatched and delivered.

Second mouse. Ditto.

The plague of chipmunks and bunnies on the porches and the garden was next. She made them her life's work right after I pointed them out to her.

 I don't think she has caught any yet, but not for lack of effort.

I am proud of her. She weighs about ten pounds and isn't much more than a hand and a half high at the withers.

She is eight, and has many health problems related to a hard life and being a double dapple dachshund with all that implies. She can barely see out of her too-small blue eyes.

That does not stop her from being a hunter.

This morning she was out, slowly making her way up the big back lawn to where the deer are eating Liz's garden. I think she is kind of tired after an insane cracker dog session last night when I was making much of her, and it is hot...but she is still game.

This is not a place where dogs can run unsupervised. Besides the Thruway, the state highway, the coyotes, owls, and foxes, there are leash laws. However, I suspect that if I did just let her run, the chipmunks and bunnies would be forced to take their business elsewhere.

I never expected to have a hunting dog, but I do. Good girl, Daisy.