Rogue Weather

Last night the wind got up and it rained every which way and was not nice.

Something made me bring everything inside...even chairs and "drying" bathing suits.

Good thing. I don't think it rained sideways but the fog is flowing everywhere and even the screens sheltered by the porch are rimed with water droplets.

Spider webs are dew strung floating on the rising wind like filling sails on spider ships.

I woke to fog this morning cotton candy pink, then orange, then green. But now just grey and chilly.

I will brave the porch for a while do a bird list...maybe fish a little, but then I'm going in I guess....Mack doesn't like it out here in the almost rain.

Scarlet Tanager for excitement this morning, singing in the woods behind the cabin.

Fishy

Caught a Fall Fish yesterday night during an entertaining visit from a favorite nephew.

Man oh man how they fight,  considering that they are just over sized minnows. They were biting thick and fast but it was hard to hook 'em. They tend to mouth the hook and drag out line and just let go.

My little pole got a workout though.

Alas Alan and Amber had to leave.....miss them a lot.

Mack is loving camp though. Lots and lots of walks while I try to get mt 10,000 steps.

Have a good one....

Just an Everyday Thing

Rainy morning but....walking back to the wee hoosie in the woods.  Right by the driveway a Veery is singing.

If you have never heard one it is worth a quick search. The song echoes off the cabin and rolls out over the lake rich,  and clean, and poweeful.

Then standing at the porch door, toothbrush in hand, as a loon goggles for minnows right off the dock. He is stark and serious against the hammered metal surface of the rainy lake.....

It would be impossible not to love the woods and waters even on a wet day....and. so I surrender.

Please excuse terrible formatting and all. Learning to do this on my phone, which is not so very elegant.  Thanks. And it is worth chasing tiny keys and missing buttons to sit here writing with a fishing pole in my lap and the waves tugging at the porch pilings...... I just got a nice bite but missed it...prolly cause I was holding the phone

Dawn Chorus

Awesome

Fish are biting.  It is all I can do to count birds with a line down. Was just reeling last night when a largish Rock Bass nailed with a splash.

Goodish birds.

Dog likes it now. Just one long walk with all the wild woods scents and he was as hooked as that fish.

I love this place.

Water Light.

We are here...at Cabin 2 on my favorite lake in the world.     There was thunder in the morning and rain and humid misery but now the air is sweet and cool, the wind is clean and soft, the light is pouring off the water...........and the birds are good.   However........                                                The very definition of folly....taking a Jack Russell Terrier camping.     He accidentally put himself in the lake thinking that it looked solid enough to him...alas it wasn't. Anyhow he is not a terribly happy boy alrhough I am sure he will get used to it.......in time.                                        

Happy Birthday, Mappy

If you see this guy...which is kinda unlikely, but always possible....wish him a wonderful birthday. Hope he and the family are having a great time.

By the way, he is the guy who will always come to the rescue whenever you need a knight in shining denim, an all around great guy, and a wonderful brother.

Love you, Matthew.

Thanks

Dancing moose with a tambourine and a kilt, with Christmas lights in his antlers,
being pecked by a crow so he can kick higher. He says thanks

For all those good thoughts. The boss got the hay baled and he and Liz got it unloaded just before it started to sprinkle. I can't say the same about me and the laundry, but that is not so very important.

Sun

Just a couple of hours worth plus some cooperation from the equipment and they will maybe have another couple of loads of hay. They got two yesterday. Good thoughts appreciated.

Hay, Man

Looks like today or tomorrow will mark the shakedown cruise for most of the hay equipment. We could use your good thoughts. 

Bobolink

Medicare

I'm eligible now.

And for my birthday I "got" a Scarlet Tanager singing right in the backyard. Thanks to the One what sent it!

Almanac

Still raining every day. Flooding up west and at least two tornadoes. The Chicory came in bloom today, just in time for July.

Today would have been my grandfather's birthday. He was such a good man...I still miss him.

I walked up back this morning; the roads are like quicksand, the hay over my head. You can barely see Alan's Warlock through it.

The Bobolinks have gone silent and secret. I only saw four. Guess this is what they do at nesting time. Hope they hurry up and get done, as the hay must come off as soon as the weather allows. 

For Linda and Boomer

Lots of fledglings around, finches, chickadees, and titmice among others. Just counted a dozen Chimney Swifts when the guys were loading out hay. There have only been two in recent weeks, but they may be done nesting and gathering up into larger flocks. Our nephew nearly stepping on a Dark-eyed Junco's nest up where we camp. I had no idea that any of them nested that far south.

Anyhow, I sure hope summer doesn't fly by as fast and and miserably as spring did. We are ready for some hay weather for sure.

Rain for Sale

Schoharie Creek, which is really a river, after it was over.

Cheap! I know there are those of you needing rain, and indeed even praying for it.  I would sure like to share some of ours with you........all I ask is that you take care of shipping and handling.

It's getting ridiculous. It rains every day, or almost every day, and doesn't ever dry out in between. Yesterday it poured, washed out the driveway, ruined plans, and made a mess, and that was just here. North and west of us there were tornadoes, barns leveled, power lines down.

Enough.

Just provide a shipping address and an appropriate container and all this water will be on its way to you........pronto.

Thanks. (Do turn up your sound for the video. The rain even drowned out the highway noise.)



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Week on the Farm

Fun with daddy

The seductive scent of wild milkweed

Working on a new duck pen

Getting hay for the bull

Walk on the wild side

A new cow....

Not Quite Panic

After I hollered

A strange bird called this morning at nobody-else-up-yet-thirty.  The light lay golden like a mantle over the heifer pasture hill, the sky was plumed with pretty peach and purple fog, and the air was cool and clean.... I just had to go out with camera and binoculars.....

Up on the hillside, under the boss's leaning tree, I saw a great, big, black-and-white, cow belly, but no head showing in the grass.

Oh, no! We had several intense thunderstorms yesterday and the cows are on a steep hillside. Sometimes cattle roll the wrong way up on hills and die before they can be righted. It is very rare to see one lying flat out on her side unless something is wrong. (Horses on the other hand do it all the time and can scare the heck out of you.)

I thought it was old Neon Moon. What could have happened? Lightning? Bloat from being upside down? Bad thoughts raced through my head.

I hurried up where Mack was whipping around his circle barking and hollered, "Hey, you!"

A big horned head popped up out of the grass. It wasn't Moon at all, but her big daughter, Moonshine, who was just fine, and seemingly a bit irritated at being awakened after the restless night.

I was plumb relieved! I never did find that mystery bird. 

Mack

Uncommonly Rare

Chestnut-sided Warblers are common. It says so right in their description on All About Birds.

This does not however mean that I could find one....ever....except once when I was maybe in my twenties. That notation is in an old field guide that I can't even find any more.




Thus yesterday when we were over at Lyker's Pond looking and listening and I thought I heard one I was really excited. We must have scanned the shrubbery for an hour trying to set eyes on any one of three that were singing but just couldn't. However, I made a little video of the call to run by the experts. I was darned near positive that it wasn't just another American Redstart, of which we have several pairs right around the house and barns.

I was tickled pink to find that I was right. Isn't it funny how you might see birds that show up on the NY Rare Bird Alerts practically every day and can't find a common, and relatively easy to identify warbler like that? I am so grateful for Internet technology that made it possible for me to learn the song of a bird I had never heard in person....especially with my tin ear and all.

Anyhow it made my day, as did the kids' accounts of the birds they are seeing way down in North Carolina on the Outer Banks. Black Skimmers....seriously...wow.

Sunday on the Farm

Happy Birthday, Michael

How does it feel to catch up with your old vintage sister? Hope you have a wonderful day.....

Love you!

Serial

Nick, looking askance. 

Each dog, Mack first, and then Finn, felt the need to carry the blinkie ball up to the backyard this morning. The blinkie ball is a much contested treasure...beloved by both....but they usually leave it in the kitchen.

What was up with that anyhow? 

Debating on doggy arrangements for camp. Thinking take Mack, leave lovely Finn home, just because he is big and hairy. Not to mention young and a little timid and I fear losing hold of him and having him vanish in the wilderness. On the other hand he is really a much nicer doggy...

What do you think?

Beef with Brazil

Unless you are a Farm Side reader you probably didn't know how many times I have written about the USDA's folly in opening the USA to imports of fresh beef from Brazil. There have been a good many columns on the subject, including one last week.

Brazil is an endemic Foot and Mouth Disease country. America had its last case during the 1920s, reportedly at a farm across the river from us, the house upon which was built by the same people as constructed this one, and looked almost like our house as well. They were like twins to the north and south of the river...except that the cows there died and were burned and buried on that farm.....

The house burned too a few years ago and little is left except a sharp curve in the road and even sharper memories in a few minds here and there.

Foot and Mouth Disease is literally more contagious than the common cold. It can be spread great distances on water, air, by animals passing from farm to farm, and by products such as beef. Even laboratories studying the disease have been blamed for letting it loose on innocent animals. It is commonly recommended that farmers who visit countries where the disease is endemic quarantine themselves from their own livestock for a period after they return.  (How I wish I had my old computer with all the links to a couple of decades of research stories...the stuff is getting hard to find now, most links return 404 not found messages.....)

Great Britain has seen some horrific outbreaks in recent years, which devastated that nation's farm economy and resulted in the culling of 10 MILLION hoofed stock.

Imagine what an outbreak would do in this country. The cost of quarantines. The death of millions upon millions of cows, sheep, goats etc. With our wild population of hoofed animals, consider the cost and death toll of controlling an outbreak that affected them. We stink at getting rid of feral hogs. What if they got Foot and Mouth?

There are many columns worth of reasons why the change in our import rules was a lousy idea. Rampant corruption in Brazil. Adulterated meat. A lack of reciprocity in import/export balance....we would take in millions of bucks worth of their beef, while they bought almost none of ours. Even claims of slavery. 

However, the potential for Foot and Mouth disease is enough all on its own to make the opening of trade to fresh beef a fool's errand. One big mistake just waiting for disaster to happen. And it almost did.

Late yesterday evening the USDA abruptly halted the program and closed our borders to Brazilian beef. "A statement from the Brazilian Association of Beef Industry Exports says the self-suspension happened "after the detection of [bovine] reactions to the vaccine for foot-and-mouth disease, that in some cases can provoke internal, and not externally visible abscesses."...from Drovers Magazine.

I applaud the USDA for taking action in light of the number of code infractions found in meat from Brazil by FSIS inspections. However, it shouldn't have been a problem in the first place and I fear the suspension won't last long. Or at least not long enough.