Aliens have Landed

Take me to your leader

Polar ice cap landing zone

The ship

A tiny alien toupee 

A wee alien den high in a tree

Or maybe it's Treebeard

Ruffies

Light Morph individual

Liz and I have been birding together a couple of times a week lately. We have a great time hitting the river and the back roads to see what we can see.

I have many photographs of what is probably this same bird over
the past five years up by Dykeman's Dairy. It is reliable
and tame and feels like an old friend. It is often joined by a dark morph beauty.

Another shot

This winter has been an extravaganza of Rough-legged Hawks. There is an area over toward Charleston and Root, where it seems as if there are a couple every mile or so.

One day we got seven on one list and saw two more shortly afterwards.

As they run to charcoal and grey colors it is not easy to photograph them but they are birds of great beauty.

They are not worried by snow or wind

Sure is cool to see so many.  My favorites are the dark-morph ones....

Dark morph Rough-legged Hawk on Lynk Street today

Superb Owl Sunday

Alas, we can't seem to find any owls at all this year, superb or otherwise.

It was Meant with Love

One of our offspring was sometimes called "bezoar" as a child, although I mentally spelled it "bezore".

I once used that moniker in the doctor's office, and our pediatrician asked, "Do you know what that word means?"

Naturally I answered in the affirmative.

"Of course you do," he replied, shaking his head, and making it obvious that he had come to know us well indeed.

Nobody likes it when their children are ill, but if we had to deal with such...and with three asthmatics, we sure did...Dr. Konieczny was the man to visit. Our children were safe in his capable hands.

And he got us. He understood that an awful nickname like hairball could be used with great affection and fun. I suppose though that it was rough to be a middle kid whose nickname, Beezey, got changed to Beezer, and then swiftly morphed to Bezoar in the minds...and mouths...of her siblings and her terrible mother.

Now her online moniker is Breezey375, no mention of hair, or balls, or cow stomachs, because cows are where we found them back in the day.

Today is her birthday, and despite the terrible abuse she endured as a child, or perhaps because of it, she has come to be a truly compassionate, sweet, loving, caring person.

Sarcastic too.

Happy Birthday, Becky, it was all meant with love. 

An Old Farm Side

That I stumbled upon while reading emails from my late best friend...been missing her something awful lately even though it has been three years now. This column ran in 2011. We still have little Jack and he is still full of beans...

Jack and Tyler

Horses are surely not the focus at Northview. However it seems as if there have always been a couple stabled in the reinvented garage that serves as their barn. Some of them were ridden daily, adventuring around the land, chasing cows down from the field, exploring trails and woodlands, doing half passes at the trot and changing leads every stride like dancers.

Others were driven to cart and wagon. One harness pony often took me jogging with the dog of the day running alongside for miles and miles. I can’t tell you how much fun that was, with butterflies dancing and dandelions dazzling yellow all around, as we whirled down the farm roads. Selling that pony was a mistake. He ended up in a wonderful home, but he was quite a guy.

In recent years the horse du jour has been an almost-small-enough-to-be-a-mini dark bay pony named Jack. Jack was purchased as a pasture ornament and has served admirably in that capacity. He is handsome just standing still, with his hugely fluffy black mane puffing up between his little pricked ears and his sweeping tail behind him.

However, it is when he is in motion that his real decorative abilities come to the fore. Although not many hands high, he has a trot like a war horse in a medieval movie. He flings his feathered fetlocks out before him and then races to catch up. With tossing head and snapping black eyes, nostrils flared and snorting, he makes quite a picture when Becky takes him out for a jaunt in hand.

I am right fond of Jack and talk to him whenever I pass the stable. He always sticks his head out his stall door and nickers nicely back too.

He recently lost his best friend. It was a lesson for me in animal understanding that, although I have learned it a time or two before, always strikes me anew.

A couple of years ago Liz was given an older horse. He was a fine, tall fellow, kind of a pinky-gold and white paint named Tyler. She kept him at a boarding stable for a while, then in a pasture up near her home, then eventually brought him here to stay. He and Jack buddied up as horses usually do.

For some reason he never liked me. It is my habit, when the horses call to me, to toss them each a flake of hay or a handful of green grass, or a piece of apple from the tree positioned so handily right next to the door. Jack would always greet me like a long lost friend, chuckling and chortling deep in his throat. Ponies like to eat and he is surely all pony.

Ty would stand with his head over his door, but never took food from my hand, spooked if I tossed it in the stall with him, and snapped at me if I got too close.

 He loved Liz though.

Sadly, not too many months after he arrived he began to display odd symptoms. First he was lame in one foot, then another. Next he seemed to suffer from the cold more than is normal so she was forced to buy him a blanket. (The other day I took that blanket off the clothes line to fold it up and put it away and didn’t know how. Of all the horses that have shared my life since I bought Magnum when he was 2 and I was 21, none has ever needed a blanket.)

Then tall Ty, who turned out to be much older than he was originally represented to be, somewhere close to thirty, began to lose weight. Liz tried everything. Had his teeth checked several times. Horses’ teeth emerge slowly as they age and are worn down and sometimes get sharp edges from wear. When this happens chewing can become painful (you know how it feels to bite your cheek). Sometimes acute weight loss follows until the teeth are “floated” or filed so there are no edges to pinch and pain.

Tyler’s teeth were always fine.

She tried soft tender hay. Old horse grain with special ingredients. Green grass and lots of it. He would pick up and start to look better, filling everyone with hopeful optimism, then slide back into the slow decline.

Finally a few weeks ago one of our veterinarians came to the conclusion that he had cancer and just wasn’t going to get better. She told Liz, “You’ll know when it’s time.” Then she worked up a regimen of palliative care to keep him comfortable as long as possible.

The day came though. The old boy was miserable enough to not even want Liz to handle him.

She made the dreaded call, set up a time and on the morning of the day, took him out to his yard to graze one last time. It was sad. Even a few weeks ago, when she loosed him up there, he would trot that big boy trot of his back and forth up the fence, just floating along like a race horse and yelling for his pal, Jack.

This time he simply stood in one spot nibbling desultorily at the frozen grass.

Jack did plenty of hollering though. He has a piercing little whinny and he called and called. He couldn’t see Tyler and he didn’t like it one bit.

After a while our kind and compassionate veterinarian, who seemed to feel as bad as Liz did about the whole affair, did what was necessary. 

Jack yelled some more.

Right up until the second that his dear friend passed on. And then he stopped. He couldn’t see or hear, but somehow he just knew.

Every time a horse has ended its days here, the other ones always knew.

 Every single time.

It has always amazed and humbled me.

Every time.

Now Jack only whinnies when he sees me or Becky and is hoping for some spoiling. 

We make sure that he gets it.

I Tawt I Taw a Snowy Owl

We did see this one......in March of 2018!

We were returning from a little birding excursion yesterday, having successfully found and photographed Glaucous and Iceland Gulls, which made me pretty happy.

Cute little Iceland Gull

We had also seen a number of Rough-legged Hawks, which are wintering in the area. We are literally seeing more of them than of Red-tailed Hawks, which is pretty surprising.

Anyhow, we were tooling along Logtown Road, hurrying home for brekkus, when I spotted a white shape in a distant tree.

"I think I saw a Snowy Owl, back there on that Amish farm!"

And so the boss, good guy that he is, turned around and we went back.

Alas and unfortunately........

Even in Winter

Northern Cardinal

Elksquatch

That deer in the headlights look

Blood on the snow?
No, the remains of some sumac berries

The aqueduct at Schoharie Crossing

Owl fail? Tracks led to and from this print in the snow. Could have been a hawk too
but looks as if it missed its dinner.

There is so much to see.....

Ice harvest is going on apace

Preaching to the Choir

Telling it like it is 

A commenter recently suggested that it might be a good idea to share some of the sources mentioned in the other day's post about the demise of the Farm Side.

Seems like a pretty good idea, so here goes.

For New York and local ag news you can't beat Morning Ag Clips. I will certainly be continuing to subscribe to that excellent compilation of stories as long as it's available. Here is a link to the subscribe page: Morning Ag Clips

I subscribe to everything Agweb and Farm Journal publications will send me...and it is a lot. Dairy Herd Management, Drovers, and any number of other farm magazines can either be accessed through subscription, or if you don't qualify for that, Facebook pages, which offer links to stories almost endlessly. I have an email address pretty much dedicated to farm news and it is filled every day.

It is also helpful to subscribe to daily emails from the NY DEC. Not everything is related to farming, but it is a way to keep up with environmental news.

It is by no means a bad idea to follow Farm Bureau pages on Facebook, which is free and easy. New York is a good place to start but there are pages from all over the country, as well as AFBF. There are many other ag organizations that have web pages and a Facebook presence as well.

Here are some Facebook pages, which you might miss that are useful sources of information.

The Calvary Group

Farm Watcher UK

Green Shirts

97 Milk

Farmers who are tired of....

Dr. Dairy

Protect the Harvest

There are more. Many more. I will share them as I come upon them if anyone is interested.

And the Painted Ponies go up and Down

A dear friend of ours restores carousel horses with astonishing skill and passion. She somehow finds their hearts and brings them back to life. When finished they are alive and full of personality and vigor. It's magic.

We are big fans of her and her work.

Liz and I stopped for a moment at a carousel of local fame yesterday when we were out running errands and looking for birds. We grabbed a couple of photos while we were there.

 I have fond memories of Sherman's Amusement Park in its heyday, especially the carousel. I always looked fondly at the brass ring as we passed, but I was far too timid to let go of the reins on the prancers I chose. 

It is now shuttered and still and has been the subject of much acrimonious local controversy. 

It is still beautiful though, even from outside.

This one's for you, Grey. 

And here is a song I like on the topic.

If you Missed the Farm Side last Week

Here is my fellow columnist's take on what happened. I thank him for doing such a fine job of saying what has been on minds here at Northview Farm. He is very eloquent.

I can honestly say I am okay with losing my job. I will miss the paycheck. It wasn't big, but it paid about one small bill a month.

However, I was writing books when it was offered to me...none of them published, alas....and maybe I will go back to that. Or maybe I will just blog here and share the photos I have so much fun taking. And it was hard to come up with a topic every single week for so very long.

That being said, I now realize that whenever I read anything I am watching for material I can use. Did the president speak to Farm Bureau? Yeah. I will read up on that. What are the animal rights people up to lately? Nothing good. People need to know. Who is hosting Sundae on the Farm? Will there even be one with the farm economy what it is? And if so what stories can I tell about their farm and family?

And so on. It's hard to stop doing that, but sometimes it's a relief too. There are a lot of email newsletters that I don't have to read any more if I don't want to. I used to put at least four or five hours into each column, and sometimes much more when some topic required deep research. 

It would have been 22 years in March.

No one bothered to tell me or the other writer that we were no longer needed. I actually wrote and submitted a column last Friday. It wasn't published so I was able to assume that I wasn't quite going to make that 22-year mark.

All in all it's been fun. I have met a lot of nice people and worked with some wonderful editors who pretty much gave me free rein.....and believe me I used every inch of it. 

If you have been a reader, thanks. If you are one one of those editors, thank you as well. You sure came up with some great headlines over the years. 

The best part of all those years, besides the cool people, was how much I learned. It is amazing how much information is out there if you are willing to dig. I read newspapers from all over the world, Great Britain, South Africa, China, Japan, and often Russia. My advice for folks looking for trends is watch Europe. So much political shenanigans and animal rights madness starts there and then migrates here like a mess of demented lemmings. 

I think I will keep on studying the wonderful world of agriculture. It is too important to ignore.                  

The Color of the Cold

The sun is sliding slowly nearer, floating up from below the horizon and slicing the sky like an orange......or maybe a really cold, frozen, peach. 

These very cold days are events of great beauty, if equally intense discomfort.

Such colors! Especially at the bookends of the days.

Lyker's Pond, good birding in all seasons

Raw blue and turquoise. Oranges and golden lights that defy description.

The evenings are equal to the dawns, like a rewind of the emerging beauty, folding the flaming tents and tucking them below the rim of the earth. 

We went out early yesterday, as Liz didn't need our car...no school, the bus does not seem to be exactly Peggy-friendly..... and although we saw few birds, every single vista of frost rimed farms and steaming chimneys, cows' breath pluming, snow sparkling, made the trip amazing. Like a slide show spectacle of wonder. 

Same pond, different day, facing in the other direction

A short run for owls in the late afternoon was similarly fruitless, but at least equally gorgeous.

I am ever so thankful for birding even when we don't find birds. It gets me out. It keeps me watching. It gives me a reason to go, when my entire instinct in winter is to hibernate like a good, fat bear, and wait for seasons a bit more to my liking weather-wise.
 

Blue Jay soaking up the morning sun.
There were 22 in one tree and more flying in as we watched

Good Morning Bird Day

Blue Jay

Mourning Dove

White-throated Sparrow

Downy Woodpecker

Seen out and around the yard this morning.