March Roars In

A lot like February. Cold, windy, uninviting.

Take a closer look....

However, migration has started, albeit a little sluggishly.

The sun is out...today at least....

Gadwall

Makes you want to get out even though once you do you want to get back indoors just as quickly.

See what I mean?

Adding Insult

Y'all know how I got fired....and they didn't even bother to tell me, just stopped publishing columns that I took the time to write and send....

Well, it appears that even though the Gazette ran two of my columns in the Recorder which they purchased....back the first two weeks in January...nobody is going to pay me.

Nobody is even going to answer my emails.

Am I ticked off? 

Why, yes, yes I am. Don't really need the stress, do really need the money.

That is all.

Finding Joy

Tundra Swans

It's not much fun to get old.

Doing tax bookkeeping is also not on my list of delights.

However, interspersed among the miserable chores and the inevitable consequences of life there are joys.

Over the past week we have been blessed with several of them.

First we found Tundra Swans at Schoharie Crossing boat launch. It appears that they have never been reported in this county before, although they are not rare elsewhere. Lifers for me for sure.

Then last night, after several weeks of driving Lynk Street and Columbia Road where found them last year, we "got" a Short-eared Owl. It flew right next to the car, giving us great looks and me a major thrill. Any and all owls fall under the joy heading in my word but I LOVE Short-eared Owls even more than Snowies. 

And then there was yesterday afternoon. We went down to the Crossing as we often do...it's a lovely place and a great birding hot spot. Not surprisingly, what with the nice weather and all, it was busy with dog walkers, snowmobilers, and folks just taking in the sun.

There was a massive collection of gulls out on the gravel bar and I was chomping at the bit to get some photos to peruse before they flew. Gulls are hard, but enough patience in pouring over photos will sometimes find rarities. I like to find rarities.

Just as I hopped out of the car two fellows on the fanciest 4-wheelers I have ever seen bombed down the point across the river and the gulls blew out of there as if their tails were on fire. Looked like fun, although one of them drove right out into the river. (Kinda cold for that.)

Dagnabbit.

Anonymous buteo last night against the setting sun

However, a few gulls came up and landed on the water right by the car. I didn't have many good gull photos so I grabbed a few....looking through the camera made me realize that there was a while gull among the common jobs. I thought it was a Glaucous Gull, not super common but I have seen several already this year. Good shot though so I saved the pics.

Today when I was going through adding pictures to my bird list I realized that the bird just didn't look right. The long feathers at the ends of the wings, the primaries, not to be confused with the one in Nevada last night, were grey. Glaucous Gulls have white ones and Herring Gulls have black.

Not wanting to look like an idiot I posted it on What's this Bird, on Facebook, a resource I love, as second-guessing myself on bird IDs is one of my favorite hobbies.

Turns out that it WAS different. It was a Nelson's Gull, a hybrid between a Herring and a Glaucous Gull. How cool is that?

When you add yesterday's dancing deer, the fisher, the bobcat, and all the beauty of the long winter sunsets, I guess I shouldn't be complaining, should I?

And shhh....I am just whispering here but have you been noticing how the willow branches and the red osier dog wood and the poplar trees are beginning to glow with new life? I think it may soon be spring.....

Thanks for reading.

Nelson's Gull

Have fun, Deer

We were out on our usual Sunday morning bird quest...take Liz over to work, then drive around our favorite haunts until she is done....then bring her back home...

We stopped at Lyker's Pond to see what was shaking...nothing exciting, a few crows, first of the year Red-winged Blackbirds, some jays.....

We sat for a minute then I turned to open the car door and out on the ice were five deer. Or maybe six. I was so enthralled by their prancing and play that I plumb forgot to count them.

They were unconcerned by our presence and only left when they got bored. Then they flung up their tails and departed right vigorously.


A good time had by all.


 

Discovering Winter

Most of my life I have hated the season of cold and snow. To be fair, from the time I was in 3rd grade I have usually lived in cold houses. Most of them were heated with inadequate wood or coal stoves. Often there was a shortage of fuel for same. Brrr......

However, birding has changed all that.

Shivering is still not a favorite and we still do a certain amount of it, what with living in this beast of a house built for summer, and heating with an outdoor wood stove.

Now though, I am awake to the blinding beauty of the season. If you get a chance, drive in the country on a clear day, dusk or dawn. Besides the opportunity to find exciting birds...last night we think we spotted two Short-eared Owls!!!!...the colors are heart-stopping.

Colors that don't have names yet surround the horizons.

Snow is said to be white but, early and late, colors reflected by the low-hanging sun stain it with a magical palette that defies such a simple description.

Stubble from last year's corn and grasses punctuate that snowy canvas in shades of pure, rich gold.

The rarely seen Pink-butted Goose, not
to be confused with the better-known Pink-footed Goose.
Nothing like sunrise.....

I won't say that I love winter now....see above about shivering....and after all, it isn't spring is it?

But I have warm clothes...a lot of them, hot water bottles for the worst days....and most days I just can't wait to get out in winter. 

And as a bonus-no ticks!

Another kind of winter fun

Brandy and the Squeegee Men

Brandy and the Chevy

He was a rescue in the truest sense of the word, about to be put down the very day I persuaded my boss to let me have him. 

I guess he rescued me as well. Every college girl should have a fierce yellow dog to keep her safe from harm.

The wild little fellow had been brought into the animal hospital where I worked with claims that he had "fallen down the stairs."

Kicked down the stairs was more like it. The veterinarian I worked for put a pin in his broken leg, put all the other broken, twisted pieces back together and sent for the owners. They never returned. The teenaged pup was messy and barky and kind of snappy so his fate was sealed. Until I begged so long and hard to have him.

He was one of the best two dogs I ever had. I took him everywhere I went, college, visiting, out at night, every single place. He was not popular with some, beloved by others. Stole ham, learned to climb ladders, dig when and where directed, and tops in his obedience class. He never saw a ball, stick, or Frisbee he didn't want to chase. 

He would not let anyone he didn't know touch me or my truck. To reach for the door handle was to trigger a display of gnashing teeth and fierce snarling and slavering at the window that would back pretty much anyone right straight down. Came in handy now and then.

It was the early 70s. My Chevy pick up was the best vehicle among us so off we went to the Big Apple to buy cheap textbooks.

There is not much about that city that appeals to me and in those years it was even more lawless than now. Scary stuff was commonplace.

Cramped in traffic on a back block off the mainstream streets, the truck was overrun by squeegee men. They climbed all over all the cars and trucks, grinning and slapping dirty rags on windshields. Being a child of the boondocks I was terrified. The boys were just disgruntled, because, yeah, there were quite a few of us crammed in that cab. College kids and all, you know.

Did I mention that I was a strong proponent of love me, love my dog? And that he agreed? Thus even NYC was his oyster. 

A leering face loomed over our window as a nasty rag slopped some nameless substance across it. Several tattered men clambered up on the truck from all sides. We were stopped whether we wanted to be or not. Yikes!

Up from the floor, where he had been stuffed among the feet, came a screaming  fur missile. 

Teeth slammed the inside of the windshield, nom, nom, nom, while paws scrabbled for purchase on the dash. Drool flew.

It was awesome. He was only a 35-pound fluffy yellow mutt, but Brandy was a mighty fierce boy. 

Squeegee men tumbled off the truck as if they had received a terrible shock.

Which I suppose they had.

We grabbed a green light and hustled to Barnes and Noble, where we parked illegally and bought a lot of books. 

I won't call it fun exactly but it sure was an adventure.

And every time I see a headline about the new onslaught of unwanted car detailers these days, I remember that bright golden dog. What a good boi he was. 

Let's all Point and Laugh..or maybe just Cry.....

Widely divergent

When I was a yearling a president was elected who said, "Farming looks mighty easy when your plow is a pencil and you're a thousand miles from the corn field."

At that period in my life I thought that my paternal grandfather was the president, partly because his first and second names were Theodore and Roosevelt and partly because he looked a lot like the gentleman responsible for the above quote. (I guess the only resemblance was that they were both bald, but hey, I was a little kid.) Plus he was a pretty important man in my life, always willing to let me sit on his lap at the kitchen table while he drew stick horses for me. Oh, how I loved that guy.

Nowadays, however, the folks who feed the world....literally feed the world...plus grow fiber, care for land, livestock, families, and communities, are not quite as well considered by those in power.

Check out the contrast between the first quote and this one, from a surging candidate in the current presidential race.


"I could teach anybody, even people in this room no offense intended, to be a farmer. It’s a process. You dig a hole, you put a seed in, you put dirt on top, add water, up comes the corn.”


I could point out soil testing, seed varieties, weather, excess water, lack of water, fertilizers, weed control, and a daunting number of other factors involved in growing corn. Then there are the other myriad crops and animals raised by farmers and pests and plagues and problems that they face each day. Plus functioning in a global economy that places little value on their efforts.


We don't have land grant colleges for nothing. Farming is complicated and becoming ever more so.


For 20 points and a virtual Willkie button, who was responsible for these widely divergent statements about farming?

And here is a virtual Willkie button
sent to me by my mother.
Thanks, Mom!

In Another World

Cold, clear, and sunny this morning. Managed to trip over the dog, no harm to her, no improvements to me....but I will be okay. Just a few bumps and bruises. Concrete is not forgiving.

Meanwhile, there is another world parallel to ours, which we experience pretty much every day. Alike in some ways, different in many others

It is astounding how the county has changed in the past 20 years or so. We used to have to go to Lancaster, now Lancaster has come to us. Used to be dozens of small English farms were scattered everywhere. Fifty or sixty cow dairies, pastures, small square hay bales, and concrete silos or Harvestores. Farm machinery auctions and cattle sales were abundant and a lot of fun for participants and spectators. 

Almost all of them are gone now, leaving a handful of larger farms and hundreds of little Amish sawmills, tiny dairies with communal milk houses, goat, sheep and horse farms and greenhouses. 

Like everything in life it has its good and not quite as good aspects. We share the roads with both tanker trucks, flying along taking up most of the road and wagons with a milk can or two, horses limping along at a snail's pace. It can be very scary driving at night. No matter how slow you go it isn't easy to see unlit farm wagons drawn by bay or brown horses...at least most of the buggies have some form of light now.

On the other hand it is good that the land is farmed still and nice to be able to buy produce along the road. We froze many pints and quarts of winter squash this year thanks to a neighbor who sells his less than perfect ones along the roadside. The better ones go up to the big auction up west.

One way or the other change is constant....might as well embrace it.

All the Sauce that's fit to Print

While enjoying the first rhubarb crisp of the season I pondered an age old question. Is rhubarb a vegetable or a fruit? Because if it is either, then maybe this amazing concoction of sugar, butter, cinnamon, oatmeal and flour, along with, of course, some rhubarb, could be considered a healthy snack, rather than the breakfast of slackers.

The first definition of fruit I came across read thusly, “the sweet and fleshy product of a tree or other plant that contains seed and can be eaten as food.”

Hmm...I can see rhubarb failing pretty resoundingly in most of those attributes. It certainly isn’t sweet, having a pucker factor that is off the charts for sourness. It’s pretty fleshy, but doesn’t grow on trees. No seeds either. It can indeed be eaten, but so can tofu and that certainly isn’t fruit.

Then how about a vegetable. Veggies are even better for you, right?

The same source said, “a plant or part of a plant used as food, typically as accompaniment to meat or fish, such as a cabbage, potato, carrot, or bean.”

Nope, not a bean, although certainly part of a plant used as food. Not served in accompaniment to meat or fish either and much tastier than cabbage, when served with enough brown sugar to ward off the tang.

I decided to pursue this conundrum a bit farther.

According to Wikipedia, that sometimes flawed guru of the Internet, the plant is an herbaceous perennial with poisonous leaves. Okay, I knew the part about the leaves. As virtual toddlers at our grandpa’s knee my brothers, cousins, and I all learned that you don’t eat the leaves.

We also learned the culture of the plant, following grandpa around his tangled and magical garden, which was much given to wild things and sour things that could be mystically turned into culinary wonders by his partner in life (and grandchildren), my dear grandmother. He grew red currants, which are berries, so sour they would knot your eyebrows if you ate them without sugar.

However, what amazing jelly grandma made with them. I wish I had a patch today. Back when that garden was growing on what now is a barren city lawn, I learned to use currents to extend raspberries, which were always hard to come by, to make jelly as lovely as if only bramble fruit was involved.

Grandpa also grew pinksters, the wild azaleas of the mountains, which produced showers and fountains of pristine pink blossoms every single spring. I saw my first Ovenbird under one of them a fistful of decades ago and have never forgotten. Good thing, because they are gone from the lot along with the fruits and flowers.

Rhubarb is certainly perennial. You can spot the foundations of long gone farm houses by the lilac bushes still waving purple and white blooms above the fireweed and burdock. And by the seed heads of the rhubarb patch that provided desserts for farm folks whose names might be carved in stones in some long forgotten cemetery nearby. The people are gone and maybe forgotten. The buildings have long since fallen into their foundations or been consumed by flames or cannibalized for lumber.

However, the herbaceous perennial still thrives.

I soon discovered that the Chinese were thought to have used the plant medicinally for centuries. Certainly without the addition of some sort of sweetener it rivals the bitterest of remedies. The plant was mentioned in an herbal remedy treatise that was written 2700 years ago, and is said to have come to Europe via the Silk Road, where it arrived during the 14th century.

According to the Rhubarb Compendium, “Marco Polo, who knew all about the Chinese rhubarb rhizome, talked about it at length in the accounts of his travels in China. So much of interest on the past of Marco Polo is accounted for by the fact that in those days Venice was an extremely important trading center, and that as a result of eastern Arabic influence, Chinese rhubarb was already widely used in European pharmacy, especially in the school of Salerno.”

The plant is said to have first been cultivated on this continent in Maine around 1790 from whence it soon spread to Massachusetts and beyond, eventually arriving in my grandpa’s garden in Johnstown, NY sometime during the last century. However, another account claims that the plant arrived via seeds sent to a man in Philadelphia during the 1730s.

I was astonished to learn that there is a Rhubarb Triangle in England. My thoughts first sprang to mysteriously vanishing desserts. Certainly the huge dish of rhubarb crisp I concocted for a visit from our boy and his girlfriend disappeared in a most confounding fashion. However, the one in England is a 9-square mile area where the plant is grown in the dark in greenhouses, supposedly rendering a sweeter and tenderer product. The stalks are plucked by candlelight to keep the plants as dark as possible.

I kinda like the stuff we grow in the flowerbed right out there in the sun and all but to each their own.

Either way rhubarb is tasty when prepared properly, but none of this answers my question about my unconventional breakfast.

Imagine my dismay when I discovered that the part of the rhubarb plants that we turn into desserts and sauces and wonderful pies is in fact a leaf petiole.

A stem.

Nowhere have I seen stems mentioned as health food, although a good timothy stem to chew while walking out to the hay field is probably a fine aid to rumination of the mental variety.

I guess I will have to admit that rhubarb crisp for breakfast is at least as decadent as potato chips and milk, which are known around here as the breakfast of champions.

But, wait. There’s oatmeal in it. What could possibly be healthier than that? And butter is a fine, upstanding, dairy fat, said to contribute to a healthy body weight and all.

Whew, I was worried for a minute there.

Last Year's Show Lamb and this Year's Happy Girl

Peggy and her lamb, Fire, who is a very nice lamb indeed.

Because I Can

Another old Farm Side....

Moose Quest

Did someone mention Maine? If you’re a farmer, you probably thought of potatoes, Katahdin sheep, or maybe lobsters, which although not exactly farm animals, are included under the heading of farms, fisheries, and forests.

And if you are us, you thought about moose. We want to see one, and have been chasing the Adirondacks in hot pursuit for years. Thus the other day when our intrepid lad suggested that he and I go to Maine to look for moose, I figured I would learn a little
about the state’s agriculture while having a heck of a time. And that is just what we did.

We did not see any potatoes though, not so much as a single French fry in a fast food parking lot. We did, however, spot a couple of Ring-Billed Gulls perched on a lamp post
as if they were waiting for them.

Does that count?

In case you were wondering, potatoes came to the New World in two large cedar chests,
sent in 1621 to Governor Francis Wyatt of Virginia at Jamestown, by the Governor of Bermuda, Nathaniel Butler.

Potatoes are the second most popular food item in America. We each eat around 135 pounds a year, about a potato a day. I’ll bet we consume the majority of them in the same form desired by gulls too. 34% of the 46 billion pounds raised in the USA each year are consumed as frozen products, as in “Do you want fries with that?”

We saw no Katahdin sheep either, although we saw a good number of the regular, fluffy white kind. I remember the Katahdin brand of sheep from the days of attending sheepdog
trials and trying to train my own Border Collies up to some semblance of usefulness.
They are hair sheep, no need for shearing, and used largely for meat production.
Michael Piel developed them in Maine with an eye toward clearing power lines
and rights-of-way without spraying or mowing. In the sheepdog world they are sometimes bred to produce flighty, challenging, sheep that make the dogs sit up and take notice.

We saw a lot of wild country, and many pretty and prosperous looking farms. We passed streams and ponds and lakes, each filled with limpid, whiskey-colored water, sliding along all smooth, and pretty as a doe’s eyes looking out of the tangled woods.

We saw Long Tailed Ducks, which were once known as Old Squaws. I’ll bet I’m not the only birder who sees a flock and has to mentally change gears to call them by their new politically correct name either.

There were Snow Buntings too, pretty tan-and-white birds, which are a great treat for our local Audubon Christmas Bird Count some years. (However until then, the far, far north is a good place for them and their chosen weather.)

But no moose.

We saw busty mountains, draped with shawls of lacy snow, shouldering aside the clouds

that circled their majesty in the cold autumn air. I guess they like to take a higher view of things or something. Mount Washington is pretty impressive by the way and I just loved Mount Katahdin, after which the sheep are named.

Across all the New England states the oaks still clung bitterly to their leaves, releasing them a reluctant twigfull at a time. They whirled in the wind, trending up more than down,
bamboozling birders into looking for winged rarities. If I had been counting birds there would have been a lot of hash marks in the line labeled “flying oak leaves”.

We discovered that farm houses in Maine are connected to barns and outbuildings by enclosed walkways. What does that say about winters there, I wondered.

Still no moose.

So we decided we would go to Moosehead Lake. Gotta be moose there, right?

Said lake is accessed via the so-called Golden Road. The Garmin, which in our minds we referred to in slightly less kindly terms, insisted that the GR was a virtual expressway, going around the lake, and taking us out to another road.

She lied. 

The Golden Road is a logging road, built to accommodate log trucks, which are reputed to travel at high speeds, claiming the right of way over people from NY driving Camaros. (Everyone offroads in muscle cars, right?)

Thank goodness it was Saturday, when the loggers are parked for the weekend. However hunters traveling at supersonic speeds made up for any lack of logging excitement.

The GR is paved in just enough places to lure the unwary into proceeding down her rocky, muddy, pitted, potholed, lumpy, bumpy, no-guardrails-over-hundred-foot drops, and no shoulders length.

If you are crazy enough you can drive on her at speeds approaching ten or fifteen miles an hour.

Naturally we did so. 

For fifty-nine miles.

Because, through road and all.


Then came the checkpoint, manned by a dour fellow with a strong Canadian accent. Seems that after the first 59 glorious miles, the “highway” becomes a toll road.

14 bucks for the two of us to proceed….to Canada...which is where the road ends up.
(See, it is a through road, just not quite what Lady Garmin bamboozled us into believing.)

We declined the pleasures of foreign travel and turned around to drive 59 miles back to civilization.

Time to go home. On the way south we passed bogs full of Tamarack trees spreading golden skirts across watery purple dance floors. Winterberry Holly lent brilliant red candles to light the show.

Milkweed by the acre, for all the world like autumn cotton, was setting seed for next summer’s Monarchs.

What with the 75 MPH speed limit we saw a lot of roadkill too, mostly porcupines and foxes, but at one point a deer, actually suspended in a tree where it had been flung willy-nilly
by someone going faster than was wise.

No moose though.

We will be calling it MooseQuest, this strange desire to see the great even-toed ungulate
of the Northwoods.

And someday, just maybe, we will actually find one.

Unsaved

For nearly 22 years I was paid....modestly...but paid....to write editorial content on agriculture. I scanned news from all over the world for trends, items of interest, differing viewpoints, and everything I could find on agriculture.

At first when I started this blog, I delved into the same realm, but as time went by I saved most...not all, but most...of the politics side of things for the paper, and the stories of home and wild nature for here.

However, with that outlet for opinion and news gone now, I am afraid interspersed with birds, dogs, cows, and grand babies, you may find more of that other stuff here now...like the story on solar yesterday.

Same deal on Facebook...I apologize..... I am a terribly opinionated animal.

Nuff said. 

Meanwhile, this is interesting in light of this. The latter story is an old one, but probably still matters. I suspect that the harassment intended to disperse the crows may be doing them a favor in light of the disease. Tens of thousands in close proximity seems likely to increase the sharing of sickness. 

It won't be long until the crows spread out on their own anyhow, as nesting time will soon be here. They can be downright staggering on winter roosts though. Used to be a big one over by the old county courthouse in Fonda and holy cow! Noisy, messy, and incredibly numerous.

BTW, I get a lot of my personal weather information from crow-go-out and crow-go-home time here at the farm. They head west every morning, probably from that big roost in Amsterdam, and back east every evening or late afternoon. Departure times and height of flight are highly variable depending on atmospheric pressure and precipitation, or so I assume. 

Anyhow, brace yourselves......I am no longer saving things for the Farm Side

Kee Kee Birds

Horned Larks

From out of the far, far, North, the little kee kee birds come down, crying, kee, kee.....no, I had better not share the rest of this joke of the boss's.

Snow Buntnings

But yes, riding the rural roads this time of year offers lucky opportunities to see Snow Buntings, Horned Larks like those in the video, and every now and then a Lapland Longspur.

I love seeing them. The Horned Larks were dusting along the road up by Ridgedale Farm and were really cute. We saw 300 or so Snow Buntings just down the road, plus a few other flocks along other roads today. 

Know Before you Go.....Solar

With the wild proliferation of solar arrays across valuable farm land, scrub land, and pretty near everywhere else, and with solar companies approaching and pressuring farmers to lease or sell, it is important to know the potential ramifications of signing a deal.

Below is an excellent article, which brings up some issues I hadn't previously considered. We have been approached by at least seven or eight companies, so there has been a lot of research done by Northview folks. The solar company reps who call, write, or stop by in pickup trucks don't seem to like that very much.

Considerations when leasing to a solar company.

Here is one I have shared before, but good info.

Good luck to anyone who gets involved. The money looks good but the details are way above my pay grade. 

Short Ma, Tall Blankie

Becky crocheted me this amazing lap blanket in three days! Used almost three skeins of I wanna make a blankie yarn.

It is warm and amazing and I love it.

Thanks Beck!

We were Friends

We started our blogs the same year and "met" on a blog promotion site where people looked at your blog if you looked at theirs. The Poodle (and dog) blog, kept cropping up on the list I was served and I guess Northview Diary popped up on Jan's.

Over the years we became the best of web friends. She sent me stories I could use and I did the same for her. I subscribe heartily to her philosophy that if the dog dies the book isn't worth reading. (Take that Old Yeller!)

We "got" each other's humor and saw serious issues in much the same light. She was a better blogger than I will ever be and I tried to never miss a single one of her wonderful posts. Golden Poodle Awards, Lizard brain awards, all so much fun. I love learning from my blog friends and Jan was a talented teacher.

I can't tell you how horrible it was to read that she had passed away in a terrible and senseless accident. The day has changed direction and not in a good way.

Condolences to her family and to all of you who knew her through her blog and her delightful Facebook presence. Rest in peace, Jan Williams and know you were loved. 

Here is a link to an interview her daughter gave.

And here is a Go Fund Me if you can help with the financial strain on the family.

A news story. 

Wet Feathers

Didn't turn the yard light on for dog walking this morning. Snow gathers all the light and brings a glow to all it covers. You can see just fine out there. There is no dark.

Walking out the door with tiny Mack Attack I could feel it brushing gently on my shirt, uncovered head and the little dog too.....it felt like wet feathers.

So quiet was the morning that I could hear it too, rustling and shuffling and snuffling .....like wet feathers....

The Good, the Bad, and the.....

A bald Eagle is almost always a "good" bird
The boss spotted this one along Riverside Drive the other day
and he posed obligingly. 

Not "bad" exactly, but we weren't thrilled to find one in the driveway last nigh

Came upon this scene the other day while chasing ruffies

Not really weird, just hunters picking up their dogs after a hunt

Just plain weird. 

This defines weird.

Found in a state park where we bird almost every day.
The possible explanations shared on the Facebook group "Sh*t birders see other than birds"
were downright enlightening....
and scary.....