Hold on to Summer

This may be the last warm day. Heavy rains tonight with colder temps to follow. It's downright dry, but I can't say I like to see the rain get started. It tends to forget how to stop.

When we went to sleep yesterday local farmers were chopping corn in the dark, headlights on the machinery lighting up the night. I saw a video one area farm shared of the corn shivering and shaking as it was gathered by the corn head to be chopped for silage. 

It sure took me back. If I chopped all day, watching closely to line up the rows of corn with the openings in the head, come sleepy time I would see corn shaking before my eyes all night.

 It always bugged me, but then I didn't chop all that much corn, being more of a hay specialist. Sometimes I went a whole summer and only sheared one or two shear bolts on the chopper. The boss was kind of proud of me. And although it required a bit of concentration to keep track of the tractor engine, the chopper head....feed rolls, little pointy-toothy-pick-up things, the chopping mechanism itself, the direction of the discharge chute, how full the wagon was, and whether all the wheels were still on everything and still turning, I more or less liked chopping hay. After a few years at it I got almost as good as a 13-year-old boy at backing the chopper up to a wagon so I could hook it up myself...and then along came a boy and I didn't need to do it any more. 

Never had to do any of it in the dark though, although the guys did. However, I can remember at least one time when the kids were small and we lived down in town, packing all three of them up and going up in the fields after ten PM to find the boss who hadn't come home...I was real scared I'll tell you.

He was fixing a forage wagon head by flashlight, so he could get the load off before all the chains were pinned by the weight. He was not in any way a happy man....

Anyhow, on farms around here it's hurry up, hurry up, beat the bad weather and get 'er done.

I spent a few minutes on the sitting porch this morning...been too busy for much of that lately...and picked up a year bird-Field Sparrow-but I have a bad case of too restless to sit still.

And you know what that means. Something is up weatherwise.

The boss needs to get a load of hay off today. Guess I, or Becky and I, will put it on the elevator because the hay is too high up near the roof to just dump it in.

So I guess today will involve hurrying up to hang on to the last vestige of summer before things change.....

Blue Monday

The color, not the farmer. We couldn't have asked for a nicer weekend. For me hitting Montezuma for a few hours of birding with Alan is like shopping in the Big Apple for ladies of a different stripe. Seeing a real ooh-ah bird was just frosting on the cake. And having a good friend, who birds the area often, reluctant to even believe that we had seen it was pretty cool too.

Then yesterday we got to see a number of favorite farm and professional friends at a customer picnic provided by our longtime...thirty years worth...favorite farm vet (and particularly good friend outside the business world as well.)



That all made for a splendid day. Alas, I was so sleepy by 8 PM, after several nights of not sleeping well, that I totally missed the totally awesome eclipse. I wanted to see it so bad, but I just couldn't stay awake anywhere near late enough.

Today it's back to the fall is here hurry up. Tomatoes to process, lotsa laundry, plants to clean up and bring in safe from the coming frosts.

Puppy to pet and clean up after, grumpy baby off to visit her other grandma and grandpa who will see to the spoiling for the day.

Hope you have a good one!

A Big Day

Female Northern Harrier on the hunt. Photo by Alan

Like Darth Vader all in brown that was almost black she sailed low over the marshes, teetering on long, straight wings.

Slowly, slowly she slipped up on the pool of puddle ducks, then, BAM! she stooped, looking for a cheap meal.

Teal etc. explode out of the water. I took this one.

With a thunderous clapping of wings and a flume of flying water a hundred puddle and diving ducks hit the air....Green and Blue Winged Teal, Redheads, Wood Ducks, a Mallard or two, a single Mallard/Black Duck hybrid (probably, purple speculum, light tan bird)....she put them all to flight.

Duck soup. Just for fun if you want to, click and embiggen this one
 and see how many species you can find.
And let us know, because we are far from experts and always looking for advice!

The Northern Shovelers and Grebes just sat, unconcerned by her attack.

All day she plied the open water, putting the small ducks up and hunting kind of casualy, but we never saw her take one.

The female Northern Harrier was not the high point of another day at Montezuma National Wildlife Refuge though.

The big bird so far....we are still going through photos looking for lurkers in the cattails...was a large brown shorebird we spotted in the last big pool on the right. We looked.

And looked

And looked at it for quite a long time. Other birders pulled up behind us, trained lenses on the nearly empty space, and moved on uninterested. But we were curious.We took pictures.

At home I looked up what might be available ...birds that occur regularly at the refuge....and when I saw a photo of a Hudsonian Godwit I thought, "Yes! That's it!" 

Put it up on FB Bird ID and so it was. Another exciting lifer for both of us. There are more sandpipers and shorebirds to be sure of and more duck photos to pore over.....

We saw:

Canada Geese
Ring Billed Gulls
A Blue Jay
American Goldfinch
Tree Swallows
Mallards

Great Blue Heron
American Crow

Bald Eagle
Red-winged Blackbird
Northern Harrier
Green Winged Teal
Pied Billed Grebe
American Coot
Wood Duck
Blue Winged Teal
Northern Shoveler
Killdeer
American Wigeon (another lifer)
Greater Yellowlegs
Great Egret
Mallard/Black Duck hybrid...probably
Rock Dove
Redhead

Hudsonian Godwit

It was a great day! Thanks, Alan!

Puppy Problems

Get him out of my bed!

Seriously! He's got MY chew toy

Who me?

I can't watch....

YRWA

I have looked all year for one. One of the very commonest warbler species... I always get some every single year without fail. This year though I have hunted and hunted to no avail.

All those bird walks.

All the time on the porch with binoculars and camera.

Not a one, no way no how. More exotic warblers have sung and danced and flaunted their feathers at me...Prairie, Black-throated Blue.....plus the other common kinds.

But no YRWA.

Then today, finally alone for a few minutes...and I do mean only a few...hanging laundry in the back yard, using my Blue Tooth to listen to music.

Singing along.

Because....alone you know....I try not to embarrass myself any more than I have to.

I was belting out Acadian Driftwood as loud as I could and no doubt way off key.

The local winter birds are so accustomed to me that, even though the feeder is on the clothesline, and even though it was bouncing up and down as I pinned up towels,

And even though there was all that loud, bad singing and all...they kept right on grabbing sunflower seeds and chortling gleefully that someone was keeping the chipmunks at bay. 

Suddenly, a small brownish bird came in right behind the chickadees and nuthatches. I paused to look at it a little sitting in the bottom branches of the old blue spruce, just because it seemed different.

And there it was, at the most unlikely of times, utterly without effort, no walking, no peering through binoculars and whistling at bushes.....a Yellow-rumped Warbler!

Yay! 

Fluffing Hay

Beck and I...and Gil...took a long walk way back in the fields. We met the boss coming out to ted some of the last of the hay. It is kind of sparse but it bales up nice and makes fine feed. (I liked finding out that the word, "ted" comes from the Old Norse and is related to dung.....unless it is Middle English of course.)

The boss offered Gil a little drink as he was hot from being so furry and out in the sun. He cheerfully declined and waited for his bucket down at the barn.

He was a very good boy and much enjoyed our little hike.

Not too many interesting birds around. We keep seeing warblers and they keep all being Common Yellowthroats.

The fields are all dressed up with no place to go

Let us have Lettuce

Then lettuce have tacos....which we did, what with it being tomato season and all...plus homegrown ground beef. I made a lot, but it didn't last long....

 It must have caused these Southwestern desert sunsets, right here in the yard.

And a bubble...the dish soap caused the bubble, but I thought it was pretty

Anyone have an id for this plant?
Seen at my cousin's restaurant...pretty, but no one knows what it is.

Research

Clever round bale art at SotF

Behind the scenes at the Farm Side

White Holland House demolished

White Holland Turkeys

The monthly turkey market report

Minnesota Turkey Growers Assoc. on Avian Influenza affect on Thanksgiving.

New USDA plans for bird flu response

We took a ride around the area Sunday evening and were fascinated by the number of new Amish pasture turkey flocks. Lots of small, shaggy white turkeys all over the place. I wonder how they plan to market them.

Also, I was absurdly tickled to see that some of my Sundae on the Farm photos did make the Recorder yesterday. Although I love to take pictures and have a camera that is one of the delights of my life, I am utterly untrained, just a point and shoot kind of person. The paper has at least one spectacularly capable photographer and has had other wonderful talents in the past, so I was flattered to make the pages.....very cool.

Cows!!

Sometimes they can be as annoying as the little guy pictured above.

On Saturday Jade was kind enough to take his four-wheeler out on the hill with a fifty-pound block of mineral salt for the girls.

We had planned carefully to place it where I could see it from the window over the sink, making it easy for me to see the girls every day and make sure they were all okay.

We even exchanged three-way phone messages getting it just right.

And then this morning both cows and the calf were out in the middle of the pasture....a very long way from where the salt had been placed. I thought maybe one was in heat as their heads were very close together and they were kind of leaning up against one another.

All three of them.

And then I saw it.

The salt block.

Not only all the way down off the hill but at least half way across the flat part of the field too.

Dagnabbit! Somebody must have decided to play with it and rolled it all the way down there, well out of sight of anyone not way up on the back lawn.

Those cows are both 8-years old! You'd think they'd be over that nonsense by now!

Sunday on the Farms

Alan and I partook of breakfast at my cousin's fine restaurant yesterday in the company and as guests of my brother and his lovely wife.

Pandora the Painted Cow

it was excellent.

Then we stopped to see my dear aunt and uncle in their new home, themselves having retired from farming after a fine career in the field. To our surprise, naughty drop-ins that we were, the whole clan was there, more aunts, uncles, cousins, and their offspring and spouses. 

Better baler daydreams

We are fortunate enough to enjoy the kind of family who gathered us in and offered us further sustenance, of which alas, we were unable to partake...see above.

However, we were hugged and loved on and welcomed and teased about kindergarten photos and such, and went away feeling in fine family fettle. Such good folks..... I love them all!

A pretty Jersey, udderly unconcerned about the crowd

Hence to Sundae on the Farm at Karen's Produce, where I had been invited by my boss at the paper to attempt some photos for same. No idea if any of them will ever see print, but we had a great time...a pretty venue, lots of fine farm folks, lots of folks visiting to learn about farming, and a fantastic day weather-wise.

Then the boss wanted his turn to shine so we went for a bit of a Sunday drive. Found our favorite orchard absolutely thronged with people enjoying the weather and picking apples and pumpkins and that was good to see. I always wish them the best of seasons!

Percherons

There are very few days as lovely as that, although the evening brought a taste of cold. It is early days yet and us old folks could have put on sweatshirts, but the boss changed the routing of the hot water in the cellar so it goes through the heating plenum on the furnace.

No turning on the forced air or anything, just a little passive warm air movement for the convenience of our miss Peggy......

Pretty much a good time had by all and I am downright thankful for it.

Kidz 'n' Dogz