Wow! Where have I been lately? I've missed pecking away at something swimming around in my head and turning it into concrete symbols like this blog. I've been reading Deep Ecology (2007) by Bill McKibben after reading Wes Jackson's latest book trying to figure out what my point is in day caring this soil on Blue Moon Farm. The point seems to come from within as there isn't much incentive from the outside to care for the carbon sink we call soil. Amazing what one realizes in reading some of this work by men and women who have the tenacity to dig, dig, dig into the works of others and their own curiosity to write for us.
Bill McKibben is one of those earthlings who's trying to make a difference with his pen or typewriter or keyboard. Thanks Bill. Personally I seem to be too lazy to dig up enough stuff myself to take a thesis to fruition. I like how Bill explained "Global Warming" in my near slumber reading event last night. Here's what he said: "(A gallon of gasoline weighs about six pounds, and when you burn it you release about five pounds of carbon into the atmosphere.) It accumulates in the atmosphere, creating almost a mirror image of the reservoir you drilled it from in the first place. Which is a problem, because the molecular structure of carbon dioxide traps heat from the sun that would otherwise radiate back out to space. That's all global warming is--the gaseous remains of oil fields and coal beds acting like an insulating blanket."
Pretty simple, Bill. I knew that, but not quite that simply. Crap, I get it when you put it like that. Given that we've supposedly passed the halfway point on burning our fossil oil and gas, mostly in the last 50 years, it kind of makes me wonder how the old atmosphere is doing cleaning up that CO2. Since matter is neither created or destroyed and I don't believe we're pumping much of that CO2 back in the ground I guess we're counting on vegetation around the planet to suck it up and photosynthesize it into plant matter and O2. Wow, we're saved. Ooops, forgot. We're cutting down the Amazon Rain Forest like a John Deere combine takes in wheat and soybeans near our farm in Becker County, Minnesota, and the gradual warming of the earth over the last decade or two is causing my woodlot to age faster and thus recycle faster and not take up so much CO2 as it used to (this is happening everywhere for the most part I suspect). And then, since we are turning our soil upside down every year to grow annual grains to feed the masses, we don't sequester so much carbon in the soil as we used to. In fact with the heavy rains we get in these more violent storms I'm sensing, there is surely more soil erosion going on now in America that there was during the Dust Bowl Era of the 20s and 30s.
OK. So we're converting our carbon reserves to CO2. So what? Well, so what is exactly what I'm doing on this farm. Growing food and I'm going to coach my kids to grow their own food or at least know how to do that. Yet, there are so many Catch 22s in this whole mess of carbon sinking, sequestering and converting I could write for hours and barely touch the surface of the complications we are facing in the direction we are heading with our "more is better" attitude or our "grow the economy" mindset we entrenched in our brains since WW II.
This crystal ball work is mind boggling. It's like predicting whether the Vikings have a chance at the Superbowl this year. Maybe it's too much like that. Our chance of changing our mind about when, where, what and why we use our fossil fuels and soil carbon for is about the same probability as the Vikings winning the Superbowl this year. Not! In the past we have learned to clean up our act by getting richer and applying our science to our pollution and "voila" rivers got cleaner, the air got de-sulphured, etc., but this carbon deal is trickier. Getting richer only causes more people to use more fossil carbon and turn more soil into annuals and erosion. Looks to me like we're in for some resilience training and for the first time in the history of humanity we're going to have to learn to live with less in some kind of near future or we'll be dry, hungry, and hot. We have gone to war in isolated skirmishes and regionalized world wars many times for many humanitarian and selfish reasons in the thousands of years of written history. I don't think we've ever gone to war because we didn't have the technology to solve a problem of fear over being too hot, too hungry and too dry or maybe too flooded before.
Bill McKibben
Better get out and check the cows I guess. Can't seem to fix this global warming issue in one blog. Anyway, it's been so cold here in Northwestern Minnesota this November I can't believe there is any global warming going on. There is that old saying you know, that if you can't fathom something you sure as hell aren't going to believe in it. I am anxious though for that new technology to come along and help the earth recycle our CO2 emissions before its too late. That technology is called poverty or at least a mutation in us humans that causes us to loose our ability to seek pleasure.
Walk more and keep the green side up.
Sunday, November 28, 2010
Friday, October 29, 2010
Fall Visitors
Oh, Boy, Mike B. and Diane M. are coming for a visit. It's a great day for a walk in the woods and a lunch before they depart later this afternoon. Here's a little fall poem to announce their coming.
We have stretched a tarp over the farm.
It covers the rush of last summer's
Produce tucked into cellar
Jars and freezer bags.
A mist settles over the marsh
Cattails wave more slowly wetted
And the cattle are milling
Now, their favorite bedding,
Reed canary grass, matted;
No longer a comfort from the wind.
Chickens seem to notice
Scratching like crazy
Forlorn too as the crawlers
Dig in from the push of frost.
Colors evaporating
Air filling with earth-tone smells
Trees stretching silenced by sun's
Abandonment, while I linger
Inside bidding farewell
In this prayer.
Ron and Lyn on Blue Moon Farm....
We have stretched a tarp over the farm.
It covers the rush of last summer's
Produce tucked into cellar
Jars and freezer bags.
A mist settles over the marsh
Cattails wave more slowly wetted
And the cattle are milling
Now, their favorite bedding,
Reed canary grass, matted;
No longer a comfort from the wind.
Chickens seem to notice
Scratching like crazy
Forlorn too as the crawlers
Dig in from the push of frost.
Colors evaporating
Air filling with earth-tone smells
Trees stretching silenced by sun's
Abandonment, while I linger
Inside bidding farewell
In this prayer.
Ron and Lyn on Blue Moon Farm....
Friday, October 1, 2010
Falling
That seems like an ironic title for this time of year. I'm seeing the trees bare themselves in public now and the nighttime temperatures have dropped five degrees on average each of the last weeks since early September. Yet, there is an uplifting feeling this time of year that cannot be escaped. I've talked to some of the feelings of men in the fall. The return or youthfulness that comes with the urgency to gather and store, sort and take stock, and arrange the territory for the great shoveling that is about to begin; again.
Here, in Northwestern Minnesota as in other places above the 45th Parallel, winter sneaks in and out for a month or two before settling in for the duration ending about the time the May Pole goes up. The Meteor Guys and Dolls talk about the great mixing that happens above that mid latitude. The Gulf sending up moisture, the `Buesselers in Alaska sending down arctic air masses all overlapping in my back yard or maybe yours too. It's a mess really. Nothing feels consistent and I suspect we experience a type of 'conditional anxiety' for it all and that is what makes the hearts of men pound in their ears at night and drive their actions during the day.
From childhood I have been motivated in The Fall. Hunting squirrels with my father as a youngster; carrying the old BB gun while my older brother had the Stevens .22 single shot and dad his Mossberg manlicker seven-shot bolt action may have set the stage for the anticipation that grabs onto me each Fall and hangs on until I am housebound or have stockpiled enough to satisfy the urgency of the season. Bowhunting with Mike during those high school and college years didn't help. We attended the homemade tree stands way more often than classes and never felt missed during a professorial lecture or meal call with our fellow dorm mates. Now, in these "senior moments" nothing seems changed. I peer out at the marsh and distant woodlots from this farmhouse living room and I'm torn between hooking up the boat or putting on the chaps for a grouse hunt in this light rain wetting the colors dignifying each species of plant in view. Farm chores call to me too and don't seem like "chores" anymore than the recreation I'm contemplating. Outside is the draw, not the action taken on arrival. We want to be part of the departing summer. We want to push our luck with the fall, falling and fallen all around. It's a recycling of the energy we have stored from all the fine eating of fresh summer garden vegetables; the handling of the free-range chicken eggs; the moving of the cattle from one paddock to the next listening to them munch their way in circles around the the fence lines. Each growing black calf in it's mother's tow mimicking and suckling and learning the ways of the herd.
I'm inclined now to throw out a proposition. Let's say we go toward the urgency of Fall for a while and see what sorts itself out of the millions of choices we seem to face each of these perfect days of summer winding down. Gather back here around the tea cups say in a month and defend out choices for this new month of October. Let's not linger any longer at the keyboard reminiscing of old times long gone. Let's make something new of ourselves before the big freeze and maybe, just maybe, we'll have a better sense of the flush of Spring after this impending Winter gives up it's grip and it's signature darkness recedes into the brightness of a new year next April or May. I think the stories we'll bring to the gathering when November arrives will bring us fortunes better than the telling of the leaves in our teacups that day. I know I'm ready to participate in Fall. Aren't you? Maybe I'll put on my Robert Frost costume and start with a 'gathering of leaves' and some whistling to get a good snort of earthy smells flowing through my nostrils and go from there to all the next things presented in the colored canvass of Fall. Hi Hooooo.....
Here, in Northwestern Minnesota as in other places above the 45th Parallel, winter sneaks in and out for a month or two before settling in for the duration ending about the time the May Pole goes up. The Meteor Guys and Dolls talk about the great mixing that happens above that mid latitude. The Gulf sending up moisture, the `Buesselers in Alaska sending down arctic air masses all overlapping in my back yard or maybe yours too. It's a mess really. Nothing feels consistent and I suspect we experience a type of 'conditional anxiety' for it all and that is what makes the hearts of men pound in their ears at night and drive their actions during the day.
From childhood I have been motivated in The Fall. Hunting squirrels with my father as a youngster; carrying the old BB gun while my older brother had the Stevens .22 single shot and dad his Mossberg manlicker seven-shot bolt action may have set the stage for the anticipation that grabs onto me each Fall and hangs on until I am housebound or have stockpiled enough to satisfy the urgency of the season. Bowhunting with Mike during those high school and college years didn't help. We attended the homemade tree stands way more often than classes and never felt missed during a professorial lecture or meal call with our fellow dorm mates. Now, in these "senior moments" nothing seems changed. I peer out at the marsh and distant woodlots from this farmhouse living room and I'm torn between hooking up the boat or putting on the chaps for a grouse hunt in this light rain wetting the colors dignifying each species of plant in view. Farm chores call to me too and don't seem like "chores" anymore than the recreation I'm contemplating. Outside is the draw, not the action taken on arrival. We want to be part of the departing summer. We want to push our luck with the fall, falling and fallen all around. It's a recycling of the energy we have stored from all the fine eating of fresh summer garden vegetables; the handling of the free-range chicken eggs; the moving of the cattle from one paddock to the next listening to them munch their way in circles around the the fence lines. Each growing black calf in it's mother's tow mimicking and suckling and learning the ways of the herd.
I'm inclined now to throw out a proposition. Let's say we go toward the urgency of Fall for a while and see what sorts itself out of the millions of choices we seem to face each of these perfect days of summer winding down. Gather back here around the tea cups say in a month and defend out choices for this new month of October. Let's not linger any longer at the keyboard reminiscing of old times long gone. Let's make something new of ourselves before the big freeze and maybe, just maybe, we'll have a better sense of the flush of Spring after this impending Winter gives up it's grip and it's signature darkness recedes into the brightness of a new year next April or May. I think the stories we'll bring to the gathering when November arrives will bring us fortunes better than the telling of the leaves in our teacups that day. I know I'm ready to participate in Fall. Aren't you? Maybe I'll put on my Robert Frost costume and start with a 'gathering of leaves' and some whistling to get a good snort of earthy smells flowing through my nostrils and go from there to all the next things presented in the colored canvass of Fall. Hi Hooooo.....
Sunday, August 15, 2010
Earth to Ron
Earth: Come in Ron.
Ron: Ron here! Whazup?
Earth: You've been nursing for some time.
Ron: Yes, sixty-two years or so. Which reminds me. Why don't we count the first year and natal time?
Earth: First, you must know, the answer to your question is trivial. Then, you also know, it's a human convention, not mine. And, sixty-two years is not trivial in "human years". You are coming into a life span, Ron, and your nursing days are numbered.
Ron: I've been thinking of that since starting my apprenticeship as a farmer. These first three years have made me reflect often on my time on your teat. I've seen the other live things coming and going on Blue Moon Farm far faster than neighbors or myself and Lyn.
Earth: You are a keen observer of the trivial, Ron.
Ron: Oh, I don't think of it as trivial. I take my death very personally. Everyone seems to know something about dying. Not everyone knows much at all about their own death.
Earth: That's what I mean, Ron. Contemplating your own death is just more trivia. My humans are unique in one way. You all try to keep track of how many of you you are on me. Hey, it's like 6 or 7 billion on last report, but then I'm not counting; you guys are.
Ron: Now there's some trivia for you. Earth is now keeping score. If you're not keeping count what's the point?
Earth: All my pets are different, Ron. Humans are my big spenders. They dip into my savings account like wayward children. No caution lights on there, for sure. The other little live things just keep doing their part, coming and going. Humans have a tendency to push their luck I'm beginning to notice. Usually I don't notice for ten or twenty million years, but my humans are quite advanced in their demands after only a couple million years of trials. Notice, Ron, how I didn't follow "trials" with the trite use of "errors". I don't make errors, Ronnie. I do trials. To error is human and a convention that doesn't work on the grand scheme scale of things.
Ron: What do you mean you don't make mistakes. How about the dodo bird or dinosaurs and such extinctions. Weren't they mistakes?
Earth: No more than you were, Ron. Do you consider yourself a mistake?
Ron: Hell no! That would be absurd. Well, some days I think I've abused my share of the teat, but I'm an American son of the Great Generation.
Earth: Blow it out your butt, Ron. You're making hay out of sunshine; pure trivia.
Ron: Whoaaa, Horse! You're loosing me here. You write like nothing matters.
Earth: Well?
Ron: Well, what? "Making hay out of sunshine is not trivial. It's essential!
Earth: Making grass out of sunshine is not trivial, Ron. Making "hay" out of sunshine is human convention and trivial.
Ron: Well, that depends on your point of view, wouldn't you say?
Earth: Daaaaaaa!, Ron.
Universe to Earth, come in Earth.
Earth: Yeah, Earth here. What?
Universe: Go for a spin, Earth, you don't know what you're writing about.
Ron: Ron here! Whazup?
Earth: You've been nursing for some time.
Ron: Yes, sixty-two years or so. Which reminds me. Why don't we count the first year and natal time?
Earth: First, you must know, the answer to your question is trivial. Then, you also know, it's a human convention, not mine. And, sixty-two years is not trivial in "human years". You are coming into a life span, Ron, and your nursing days are numbered.
Ron: I've been thinking of that since starting my apprenticeship as a farmer. These first three years have made me reflect often on my time on your teat. I've seen the other live things coming and going on Blue Moon Farm far faster than neighbors or myself and Lyn.
Earth: You are a keen observer of the trivial, Ron.
Ron: Oh, I don't think of it as trivial. I take my death very personally. Everyone seems to know something about dying. Not everyone knows much at all about their own death.
Earth: That's what I mean, Ron. Contemplating your own death is just more trivia. My humans are unique in one way. You all try to keep track of how many of you you are on me. Hey, it's like 6 or 7 billion on last report, but then I'm not counting; you guys are.
Ron: Now there's some trivia for you. Earth is now keeping score. If you're not keeping count what's the point?
Earth: All my pets are different, Ron. Humans are my big spenders. They dip into my savings account like wayward children. No caution lights on there, for sure. The other little live things just keep doing their part, coming and going. Humans have a tendency to push their luck I'm beginning to notice. Usually I don't notice for ten or twenty million years, but my humans are quite advanced in their demands after only a couple million years of trials. Notice, Ron, how I didn't follow "trials" with the trite use of "errors". I don't make errors, Ronnie. I do trials. To error is human and a convention that doesn't work on the grand scheme scale of things.
Ron: What do you mean you don't make mistakes. How about the dodo bird or dinosaurs and such extinctions. Weren't they mistakes?
Earth: No more than you were, Ron. Do you consider yourself a mistake?
Ron: Hell no! That would be absurd. Well, some days I think I've abused my share of the teat, but I'm an American son of the Great Generation.
Earth: Blow it out your butt, Ron. You're making hay out of sunshine; pure trivia.
Ron: Whoaaa, Horse! You're loosing me here. You write like nothing matters.
Earth: Well?
Ron: Well, what? "Making hay out of sunshine is not trivial. It's essential!
Earth: Making grass out of sunshine is not trivial, Ron. Making "hay" out of sunshine is human convention and trivial.
Ron: Well, that depends on your point of view, wouldn't you say?
Earth: Daaaaaaa!, Ron.
Universe to Earth, come in Earth.
Earth: Yeah, Earth here. What?
Universe: Go for a spin, Earth, you don't know what you're writing about.
Sunday, July 18, 2010
What a Summer at Blue Moon Farm
Well, it's about time to settle up some old business and get on with some new. On the old side, Mike B. sent me a note on the "Hoola Popper" entry into the blog posted a while ago. Mike was there on Homer Spit, AK, that day and his memory is to be trusted. I tend to take license within my writing to "make things up" as I go along. You know, kind of a novelists license to forget or tell lies, depending on your point of view. Anyway, that fish I caught on the "popper" was a dolly varden moving from it's adventures in the ocean into one of the streams running into the Cook Inlet. Really doesn't matter much to the story. The fact remains a hoola popper with it's rubber skirt just might be the ticket to a strike when the fishing get's slow and boring. I can also admit that I have caught northern pike of those poppers too. Bass; everyone has caught a bass on a hoola popper, haven't they?
On another note. I'm taking apart Wilbert Crete's old bus turned into and RV. Yup, Pop left it to me to tend to and I'm learning all kinds of things about building RVs by dismantling his old bus. In fact, that bus represents the culmination of his life experiences and accumulated skills making camping trailers and RVs from scratch. Amazing guy, when you undo his work one screw at a time, one addition to the RV at a time. I honestly don't know how many times he "remodeled" that bus, but several I can remember and probably more that I can't remember because I wasn't around much when he was tinkering with it. He is the last of a dying breed for sure when it comes to scratching together "nuttin' from nuttin'" is all I know. I'll keep whatever might serve Blue Moon Farm in future building projects and I hope to refashion the bus into a flatbed one ton hay hauler with a hitch for pulling stock trailers. I have to get these beeves to the butcher somehow and the old bus is the only outfit I have that will pull that much weight. Dad was all for the project when I told him before he died what I had planned for it. His only comment when I asked him how to take apart one of his most important personal projects was, "just get in there and start removing screws until something comes apart. Then keep going."
Well, that's what I've been doing and the interior of the bus is now denuded. I'm looking at removing the water tank and grey water tank next. As I look at the collection of sliding windows, sink materials, pumps and other items I begin to see another project coming to life. Lyn and I have been butchering chickens in the slip shod fashion the last couple of summers and have begun talking about pulling together a small building to do the work in. You might think of a fish cleaning shack or the like stationed in a side yard near the garage/barn with access to running water. I might not get power to it other than an extension cord, but I have a thought I can get gas to it for heating water to dunk chickens in before plucking and for lighting, etc. The bus contained enough appliances to outfit a fish/chicken cleaning shack. Dad's bus then becomes two new ideas and time marches on.
Enjoy the day. It's July 18th in one of the best summers I can ever remember in Minnesota. Boy, oh boy, is it green in the pasture, marshes and woods this summer.
Oh, look for a website about our farm and products in the near future. It'll be at: www.bluegrassangus.com when it gets on line.
Farmer Ron and Mrs. Farmer Lyn
On another note. I'm taking apart Wilbert Crete's old bus turned into and RV. Yup, Pop left it to me to tend to and I'm learning all kinds of things about building RVs by dismantling his old bus. In fact, that bus represents the culmination of his life experiences and accumulated skills making camping trailers and RVs from scratch. Amazing guy, when you undo his work one screw at a time, one addition to the RV at a time. I honestly don't know how many times he "remodeled" that bus, but several I can remember and probably more that I can't remember because I wasn't around much when he was tinkering with it. He is the last of a dying breed for sure when it comes to scratching together "nuttin' from nuttin'" is all I know. I'll keep whatever might serve Blue Moon Farm in future building projects and I hope to refashion the bus into a flatbed one ton hay hauler with a hitch for pulling stock trailers. I have to get these beeves to the butcher somehow and the old bus is the only outfit I have that will pull that much weight. Dad was all for the project when I told him before he died what I had planned for it. His only comment when I asked him how to take apart one of his most important personal projects was, "just get in there and start removing screws until something comes apart. Then keep going."
Well, that's what I've been doing and the interior of the bus is now denuded. I'm looking at removing the water tank and grey water tank next. As I look at the collection of sliding windows, sink materials, pumps and other items I begin to see another project coming to life. Lyn and I have been butchering chickens in the slip shod fashion the last couple of summers and have begun talking about pulling together a small building to do the work in. You might think of a fish cleaning shack or the like stationed in a side yard near the garage/barn with access to running water. I might not get power to it other than an extension cord, but I have a thought I can get gas to it for heating water to dunk chickens in before plucking and for lighting, etc. The bus contained enough appliances to outfit a fish/chicken cleaning shack. Dad's bus then becomes two new ideas and time marches on.
Enjoy the day. It's July 18th in one of the best summers I can ever remember in Minnesota. Boy, oh boy, is it green in the pasture, marshes and woods this summer.
Oh, look for a website about our farm and products in the near future. It'll be at: www.bluegrassangus.com when it gets on line.
Farmer Ron and Mrs. Farmer Lyn
Wednesday, June 9, 2010
Morning Sounds and Memories
Lyn and I woke up this morning at about 5:05 listening to the sounds of bird songs and the wind in the oak leaves coming through our screened bedroom window. The sounds shook loose some memories locked in my brain for 50-some years. I rolled over on my side and told Lyn the story of my dad waking me up to almost exactly those sounds when I was sleepy-eyed kid laying beneath a screened window on a June morning in White Bear Lake. "Ronnie, let's go bass fishing" were the magic words he used. It was such an identical memory experience brought on by those ancient sounds this morning that I could remember with precision details of the event including details of his homemade wooden boat and pancakes at the Malt Shoppe uptown before launching the boat at my Uncle Con's dock (caretaker of Manitou Island, then and before they had a public landing of any sort near the bridge to the island). I was able to tell Lyn where we fished, the hazards of bait casting reels with heavy nylon line and the joys of backlashes and having bass hit my casted "hoola popper" while in the middle of untangling the bird nest of line in my old Pfleuger bait casting reel. We talked about the Johnson closed faced spinning reel I ordered off of a Cheerios box for $2 and how my father's generation was slow to adapt to mono filament line (thus the Johnson reel company advertised their new product on kids cereal boxes knowing it was the next generation they needed to sell to). All in all it was an amazing morning hour we spent in laughter and amazement of how sounds can trigger video quality recall of a time well spent and self made father who lived with his hands as so few do anymore. My father was about 30 when he built wood boat because we couldn't afford to buy one of those new "fange-dangled" aluminum ones. It was a reminder to me of why I've always wanted to build a wood boat. I had forgotten except in my minds eye that I had helped him sand and imagine that boat into being in our one car garage that winter of 1954. Did I ever tell you about the time I caught a silver salmon fishing from the shore of Cook Inlet near the Homer, Alaska Spit using a Fred Arbogast hoola popper? Guess not, but I know I told my dad and thanked him for the fishing tip too.
Saturday, May 1, 2010
May 1, 2010
"Happy Uno de Mayo", writes my friend Mike B in Montana. He likes to celebrate a lot so he names days, most of them so he can have another excuse to go out to lunch and mess with peoples minds. Here's how I responded and a little bit more.
Holy Crappie (Mike), I almost forgot; mostly because I was learning the lessons of the cattlemen yesterday. All in all April ended like a lion. May enters with a bluster. I had a heifer try to deliver a calf head first yesterday. I saved the heifer, lost the calf. I'm trying Lyn's patience and soul with this "Cowboy" stuff. It's a long story and one for the books for sure. If I could learn that much about anything in one day I would have only had to live 10 years to know everything knowable. So, I have a big old tired heifer walking around with a umbilical cord hanging out of her oven door, a plastic bag full of calf, seven curious on lookers waiting their turn at being in the stable with the 'fat guy in a baseball cap' and a wife with the soul of a saint slapping her forehead and trying to make sense out of it all. In the meantime Tess the hunting dog runs around the yard with her nose in the air scenting like the greatest smell in the universe was dropped in her playground and 'the old man' is real bitchy about her wanting to have some fun with the offal.
Adjusting to reality,
May Day, May Day; we've lost an engine and we're going down....
_______________
As you can see it was not just another day on the Blue Moon Farm yesterday. The rains of late have me keeping the cows in so my paddocks aren't pugged to hell, but boy oh girl is the green side up now. These heifers are biting at the cud to get into them and grab bucket loads at a time to mangle in their muzzles and re-chew when they find an old bale pile to lay on and slobber on themselves for a few hours. I can tell they are perturbed about the heifer going through the post-partum blues, trying to push out her afterbirth and laying around the shelter where her dead calf lay yesterday.
I never realized how much cows were telling the cowboys I met out west or read about in my 'Gabby Hayes' childhood. I'm reading Jeremy Rifken's book The Empathic Civilization and I'm in the section on 'mirror neurons' and the role they play in not only humans, but now scientists say, in many kinds of mammals and other animals maybe too. These neurons are the ones that fire up when you are feeling like telling one of your soulmates in distress, "I know just how you feel". Apparently these collected cells do the job of mimicking feelings quite well enough that in fact we are having the same 'feelings' as that affected other. Sure, maybe not exactly the intensity or full force impact of say a friend who has just miscarried or been diagnosed with a cancer, but the feelings are the same they say because we share these little "mirrors" into the souls of a distressed clansman or loved one. As I mentioned in the past in this blog. "I Am A Strange Loop" by Dr. Douglas Hofstadter tells us this and more using metaphors like ice cream to suck us into his Malt Shoppe of mental dinning on the wonders of how we connect to other souls and keep them with us as long as we're able to recall events with them.
So now we have loops that web our tribes of Facebook and Twitter friends and family into our mind-souls. And we have hardware in our braincases making sure we can have 'real' empathy for others and in all likelihood these devices are evolved to keep us civil and able to cope with the ever expanding abilities of 'techdom' that widen our tribal connections on a global scale. As Rifken says, language probably evolved out of hand signals that evolved from mutual grooming, the basis of our empathetic nature. Goodness, are we getting to know ourselves here or what? That being so, I'm also seeing that it was right in front of our faces all the time, some smart guys are just writing the history of the obvious if you can let yourself go and watch the workings of small societies like my little herd of cows.
As the heifer lay in the cattle shelter yesterday "mooing" after I took away the dead calf I thought I could hear something in that "mooing" I'd never heard before, a simple form of forlornness or loss. Not just hear it, but feel it in a way I've never done before. Outside the corral surrounding the shelter stood seven herdmates looking in with all the curiosity of fellow pregnant teenagers at heifer No. 839. the lamentable post partum almost a mother . Wondering. I think I could feel them wondering what was going on with 839. They had been in and tried to sniff the dead calf, but were only allowed to look as 839 stood guard over the limp carcass grumble-'mooing threats it seemed and keeping them back.
A herd is a herd. Somehow knowing that our mirror neurons are helping us cope and identify with a fellow member is not necessarily helpful emotionally, but on the other hand it makes it all seem more real than it was the day before.
One never knows what the day will bring. Some days, like today it is rain. And some days like yesterday it is rain that is far more than wetness.
The Blue Moon Farmer
Holy Crappie (Mike), I almost forgot; mostly because I was learning the lessons of the cattlemen yesterday. All in all April ended like a lion. May enters with a bluster. I had a heifer try to deliver a calf head first yesterday. I saved the heifer, lost the calf. I'm trying Lyn's patience and soul with this "Cowboy" stuff. It's a long story and one for the books for sure. If I could learn that much about anything in one day I would have only had to live 10 years to know everything knowable. So, I have a big old tired heifer walking around with a umbilical cord hanging out of her oven door, a plastic bag full of calf, seven curious on lookers waiting their turn at being in the stable with the 'fat guy in a baseball cap' and a wife with the soul of a saint slapping her forehead and trying to make sense out of it all. In the meantime Tess the hunting dog runs around the yard with her nose in the air scenting like the greatest smell in the universe was dropped in her playground and 'the old man' is real bitchy about her wanting to have some fun with the offal.
Adjusting to reality,
May Day, May Day; we've lost an engine and we're going down....
_______________
As you can see it was not just another day on the Blue Moon Farm yesterday. The rains of late have me keeping the cows in so my paddocks aren't pugged to hell, but boy oh girl is the green side up now. These heifers are biting at the cud to get into them and grab bucket loads at a time to mangle in their muzzles and re-chew when they find an old bale pile to lay on and slobber on themselves for a few hours. I can tell they are perturbed about the heifer going through the post-partum blues, trying to push out her afterbirth and laying around the shelter where her dead calf lay yesterday.
I never realized how much cows were telling the cowboys I met out west or read about in my 'Gabby Hayes' childhood. I'm reading Jeremy Rifken's book The Empathic Civilization and I'm in the section on 'mirror neurons' and the role they play in not only humans, but now scientists say, in many kinds of mammals and other animals maybe too. These neurons are the ones that fire up when you are feeling like telling one of your soulmates in distress, "I know just how you feel". Apparently these collected cells do the job of mimicking feelings quite well enough that in fact we are having the same 'feelings' as that affected other. Sure, maybe not exactly the intensity or full force impact of say a friend who has just miscarried or been diagnosed with a cancer, but the feelings are the same they say because we share these little "mirrors" into the souls of a distressed clansman or loved one. As I mentioned in the past in this blog. "I Am A Strange Loop" by Dr. Douglas Hofstadter tells us this and more using metaphors like ice cream to suck us into his Malt Shoppe of mental dinning on the wonders of how we connect to other souls and keep them with us as long as we're able to recall events with them.
So now we have loops that web our tribes of Facebook and Twitter friends and family into our mind-souls. And we have hardware in our braincases making sure we can have 'real' empathy for others and in all likelihood these devices are evolved to keep us civil and able to cope with the ever expanding abilities of 'techdom' that widen our tribal connections on a global scale. As Rifken says, language probably evolved out of hand signals that evolved from mutual grooming, the basis of our empathetic nature. Goodness, are we getting to know ourselves here or what? That being so, I'm also seeing that it was right in front of our faces all the time, some smart guys are just writing the history of the obvious if you can let yourself go and watch the workings of small societies like my little herd of cows.
As the heifer lay in the cattle shelter yesterday "mooing" after I took away the dead calf I thought I could hear something in that "mooing" I'd never heard before, a simple form of forlornness or loss. Not just hear it, but feel it in a way I've never done before. Outside the corral surrounding the shelter stood seven herdmates looking in with all the curiosity of fellow pregnant teenagers at heifer No. 839. the lamentable post partum almost a mother . Wondering. I think I could feel them wondering what was going on with 839. They had been in and tried to sniff the dead calf, but were only allowed to look as 839 stood guard over the limp carcass grumble-'mooing threats it seemed and keeping them back.
A herd is a herd. Somehow knowing that our mirror neurons are helping us cope and identify with a fellow member is not necessarily helpful emotionally, but on the other hand it makes it all seem more real than it was the day before.
One never knows what the day will bring. Some days, like today it is rain. And some days like yesterday it is rain that is far more than wetness.
The Blue Moon Farmer
Sunday, April 18, 2010
Life Gets Tigis Sometimes
Sure it's spring here too. I can tell by the green coming out on Carlson's aspens across the marsh south of us. Cranes are coming everyday and playing tag and leap frog in the pasture. The heifers are walking the fence line re-eating the emerging grasses; pacing like kids waiting for the mall to open. Projects galore here. Like the pinch chute needing some plywood to close it off so the heifers don't go bonkers in there next time. Have the sides paneled now and I'm hoping they will behave in there until they get out the headgate and can romp off with their partners experiencing 'the lightness of being' again. Have a fence line in the works too. The plan is to fence in the northside rights of way and run the perimeter fence on the east and south side of the farm this spring. As dry as it's been so far, I might be grazing the marsh this summer for lack of grass. Guess I better stock up on some seven and a half foot long T-posts for the marsh crossing. That'll be fun carrying those buggers out there with a post pounder in hip boots and then trying to get them set in enough to be stable. Only have a single strand of high tensile wire to hang on them though so maybe if I get then down four feet they won't lean too badly and be snapping at the cattails all summer when that loop is hot. If I ever see my contractor to interseed some timothy for me I'll be able to work on the waterline to the paddocks too. Phewwweeeeee, it's spring on the farm.
We had time to head to the lake yesterday and flick some jigs for crappies. Nope. Nothing happening there yet. Lyn and I did catch and release a bass though. Simultaneously caught so it must have been a pair. Lyn was so excited. I knew why. She was thinking we had supper. What a let down for her when I told her the season was not open for bass. She denied I knew what I was talking about and was just kidding, "Right?" Oh, what a look to follow.
So, it's back to work and don't be too surprised if I'm slower than beans getting another post up. Do have a poem brewin' in my head and as soon as it sees the paper you'll get a look see. Should be a metaphor of an entire life if I get it right.
Thanks the stars for the green side. That from the chickens.
The Proprietor.
We had time to head to the lake yesterday and flick some jigs for crappies. Nope. Nothing happening there yet. Lyn and I did catch and release a bass though. Simultaneously caught so it must have been a pair. Lyn was so excited. I knew why. She was thinking we had supper. What a let down for her when I told her the season was not open for bass. She denied I knew what I was talking about and was just kidding, "Right?" Oh, what a look to follow.
So, it's back to work and don't be too surprised if I'm slower than beans getting another post up. Do have a poem brewin' in my head and as soon as it sees the paper you'll get a look see. Should be a metaphor of an entire life if I get it right.
Thanks the stars for the green side. That from the chickens.
The Proprietor.
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
A New Poem
Well, I've had a pretty dry spell causing poems of late so I took out my copy of Richard Hugo's "Triggering Town" with hope for inspiration. I must have drifted off into a mindscape of being an orphan or something and when that noun popped into my head it "triggered" an outburst; a poem, maybe....
The Orphan's Cook
Smoke-smudged amber glass
Tempers my view outside and below
A scatter of children milling
'Round the gravel yard watching their dusty feet.
Chattering English sparrows
The silent ones cannot hear.
A cloaked woman paddles the perimeter fence
Watching a peculiar child.
The spectator stops and turns her stale gaze inward.
She clutches the chain-link
Leaning her body against the mesh
While sunlight washes the courtyard.
A sedan stops nearby the intent watcher.
A door opens.
The driver calls out,
"Beth?"
With a final glance at Ami
Dragging her blue uniform jacket,
The woman steps away
Into the car.
The children follow the bell ringer.
Only a crumpled coat remains outside.
One runs back to pick it up.
The hardwood floors creak to lively steps
Marching toward their porridge.
___________________________________
The Orphan's Cook
Smoke-smudged amber glass
Tempers my view outside and below
A scatter of children milling
'Round the gravel yard watching their dusty feet.
Chattering English sparrows
The silent ones cannot hear.
A cloaked woman paddles the perimeter fence
Watching a peculiar child.
The spectator stops and turns her stale gaze inward.
She clutches the chain-link
Leaning her body against the mesh
While sunlight washes the courtyard.
A sedan stops nearby the intent watcher.
A door opens.
The driver calls out,
"Beth?"
With a final glance at Ami
Dragging her blue uniform jacket,
The woman steps away
Into the car.
The children follow the bell ringer.
Only a crumpled coat remains outside.
One runs back to pick it up.
The hardwood floors creak to lively steps
Marching toward their porridge.
___________________________________
Sunday, March 21, 2010
No Memory Layers
March has been pretty mild at Blue Moon Farm. Lambish as they say comin' in. Of course that doesn't mean we haven't had a bite of cold wind chiseling at our necklines now and then. I've been in a quandary over what to do with the eight black angus heifers we harbor here to mow our grass. I'm concerned that their unsettled attitude when confronted with novel experiences may hinder my plans to conduct management-intensive grazing on our pastures. The episode in the squeeze chute and headgate trying to give them a scours shot (whether I should have even given them such an injection is another whole topic to blog about soon) was quite traumatic for those cow-gals and a serious lesson in non-preparation for me. Having tended these heifers for a fall and winter, my mind is a tangled maze of experiences, ideas and ideals, and images or "patterns" (as Douglas Hofstadter of "I am a Strange Loop might tell us http://www.cogs.indiana.edu/people/homepages/hofstadter.htm). Most of the events I experience with these gestating heifers of mine are as novel for me as life is for them.
The heifers are supposed to be pregnant. I didn't have them "preg" checked as experienced hands would suggest. I considered the event in light of their skiddish behavior since arriving at this little ranch or ours. A stranger, envision a vet, walking up behind them one at a time, their heads in succession locked in a headgate after being encouraged to move down a pinch chute from a larger corral. This vet staged behind the gated heifer pushes his lubricated rubber suited arm up their vagina to his shoulder, spreading their cervix with his fingers, squeezes his hand on through into the uterus and then probes around inside for a fetus the size of a golf or tennis ball depending on the time since conception. These heifers were with the bull during some of July, all of August and part of September). Why "preg" check them if they are staying with us through their calving and thereafter? Well, my best laid plans for having cattle on this farm is not experience. Had I a brain full of experience I could have planned at least one or two other options or outcomes for these heifers depending on how accommodating they are to our farm plan, our ability to handle them and our willingness to put up with their 'attitude'. Sometimes, it seems, what I expect of a cows behavior and how the cow decides to behave when I present novel situations for them to react to are not similar.
I have no experience handling cattle. Sure I was around many cows in Montana for the twenty-some years I lived there, but it was not my job to handle them; make them do something I wanted them to do. The difference is huge between seeing a cow up close and personal and herding, manouvering or driving cows into places or situations in order to handle them or count them or brand, ear-tag, castrate, you name it, them.
This tangled image I'm laying out has a purpose or lesson to share. Farmers in America today are having a crisis in so many ways financially, technically, and personally. There are not many farmers in my area with young families. Most farmers near me mom and pop farmers that cannot afford to split the farm so their children can each go into farming on their own. In fact, because of modern monster-truck sized machines to do the work on today's farms most or all of the kids have split for college degrees and 'real' jobs in the American economy far away from the farms they grew up on. So who's going to take over these farms? Not the kids unless they are failing miserable at the American Dream and maybe those kids are not the right one's to run a farm anyway. So, some corporation is going to buy out Mom and Pop and the farm will be run by 'economists' who hire left over locals to "manage" the corporations "mega-industrial engineering project" that used to be called a farm. There is much lost when farm parents die and the brightest of the kids leave the farm for other occupations. The leftovers in rural areas might not be able to take over or be hired by corporations to serve their agendas with the land. A city kid like me doesn't bring any knowledge of the particular land at stake. So who's going to mind the henhouse of the future. Colleges seem to be training managers for corporate headquarters. I think we've seen the corporate, mega-industrial "farming" approach and have our doubts finally taking some action for change. But, "Who?", I ask remains unanswered. Meanwhile, the memory of the land slips away like the shipload of World War II vets they all were.
Am I driving you nuts yet? Well, here's my point. I wish I had grown up on a farm so I understood cow behavior better: What to expect from cows under even normal situations; how to respond when my heifers start acting up like teenagers getting their cellphones taken away for an hour of 'time-out' or some such. This whole dream I have of a cow-calf operation managed as an intensive grazing management scheme; feeding them sunshine via green pasture and finishing their little beeves on grass is pretty easy on paper. But, in fact, without the experiences of a child growing up on a farm under the mentoring of farmed honed parents, I'm a bit at a loss to find anything in my braincase that is of much help other than intuition and imagined experience from volumes of reading on the subject of grass farming with cattle.
I used to worry about who would be growing my food when I got old. Then, Lyn and I decided to find a farm and grow own food and some for our community. We've struggled through the learning process of raising chickens for meat and eggs and good humor. We've hutched rabbits with the plan of enjoying raising rabbits for meat and entertainment (albeit, entertainment at a very subdued level, since rabbits are pretty much lumps in the corners of their cages most the time). We've learned the in and outs of cutting our own firewood to heat our little farmhouse through winters "up north". And, along with our aging neighbors, some retired, some going to retire Lyn and I have weathered the winters in Northwestern Minnesota. Yet, we're missing so much memory of how dad used to do it when we were kids. Why? Because dad was not a farmer even though we were kids. And dad showed us lots of things we need to know to live, but the ins and outs of handling cattle is not one of them. So, we must learn those tricks of the trade the hard way; one stupid mistake at a time. Unfortunately, my technical training in biology, especially wildlife behavior, warns me that too many mistakes with these heifers and they will become unwilling to go into situations where they have experienced to much mental trauma from my mis-handlings. In other words, if they were timid when I got them I could make them wild again by not knowing how to condition them for upcoming novel experiences. Repeated 'bad' experiences will set me up with cows that run from anything unusual. And hyper cows are not herded well from one small pasture paddock to the next, especially the small half-acre or so sized ones this little farm is going to provide.
Oh, crap, this turns out to be harder than the reading I've done suggested, more complex than I planned, more demanding than I could have imagined. So, why are we trading in our old farmers for college educated industrial corporate farm managers? Seems to me its a perfect way to justify the continued direction high tech farming is headed. Huge machines so one person can farm three thousands acres or a few folks can run thousands of cows on industrial milking platforms or in concrete feedlots. Genetic altered seeds so we can grow exactly what we want so exactly that it doesn't take any experience to make a perfect 200 bushels per acre.
Sure I'd like some simple answers to my head scratching here, but this is not a short story. I'm feeling like this farming adventure takes years of ups and downs, ins and outs, shakes, rattles and rolls before the haze clears and common sense and experience take over. Heck, I'm in my first year at this. Guess I better just sit back, buckle up and hope the Toyota ranch I'm driving doesn't accelerate out of control.
OK, sun's out for a couple of late March days. Cows are waiting for their next conditioning sessions with the novice herdsman, a pocket full of alfalfa cubes and some novel activities like following me around this place they need to experience. I've got wood to split too. Let's talk about scours (that's diarrhea in cows) next time. We've all had personal experience with diarrhea, right? So I know you'll relate somehow.
I saw one of the heifers take a bite of new grass today. Keep it up sun I can't keep these heifers on hay forever.
The heifers are supposed to be pregnant. I didn't have them "preg" checked as experienced hands would suggest. I considered the event in light of their skiddish behavior since arriving at this little ranch or ours. A stranger, envision a vet, walking up behind them one at a time, their heads in succession locked in a headgate after being encouraged to move down a pinch chute from a larger corral. This vet staged behind the gated heifer pushes his lubricated rubber suited arm up their vagina to his shoulder, spreading their cervix with his fingers, squeezes his hand on through into the uterus and then probes around inside for a fetus the size of a golf or tennis ball depending on the time since conception. These heifers were with the bull during some of July, all of August and part of September). Why "preg" check them if they are staying with us through their calving and thereafter? Well, my best laid plans for having cattle on this farm is not experience. Had I a brain full of experience I could have planned at least one or two other options or outcomes for these heifers depending on how accommodating they are to our farm plan, our ability to handle them and our willingness to put up with their 'attitude'. Sometimes, it seems, what I expect of a cows behavior and how the cow decides to behave when I present novel situations for them to react to are not similar.
I have no experience handling cattle. Sure I was around many cows in Montana for the twenty-some years I lived there, but it was not my job to handle them; make them do something I wanted them to do. The difference is huge between seeing a cow up close and personal and herding, manouvering or driving cows into places or situations in order to handle them or count them or brand, ear-tag, castrate, you name it, them.
This tangled image I'm laying out has a purpose or lesson to share. Farmers in America today are having a crisis in so many ways financially, technically, and personally. There are not many farmers in my area with young families. Most farmers near me mom and pop farmers that cannot afford to split the farm so their children can each go into farming on their own. In fact, because of modern monster-truck sized machines to do the work on today's farms most or all of the kids have split for college degrees and 'real' jobs in the American economy far away from the farms they grew up on. So who's going to take over these farms? Not the kids unless they are failing miserable at the American Dream and maybe those kids are not the right one's to run a farm anyway. So, some corporation is going to buy out Mom and Pop and the farm will be run by 'economists' who hire left over locals to "manage" the corporations "mega-industrial engineering project" that used to be called a farm. There is much lost when farm parents die and the brightest of the kids leave the farm for other occupations. The leftovers in rural areas might not be able to take over or be hired by corporations to serve their agendas with the land. A city kid like me doesn't bring any knowledge of the particular land at stake. So who's going to mind the henhouse of the future. Colleges seem to be training managers for corporate headquarters. I think we've seen the corporate, mega-industrial "farming" approach and have our doubts finally taking some action for change. But, "Who?", I ask remains unanswered. Meanwhile, the memory of the land slips away like the shipload of World War II vets they all were.
Am I driving you nuts yet? Well, here's my point. I wish I had grown up on a farm so I understood cow behavior better: What to expect from cows under even normal situations; how to respond when my heifers start acting up like teenagers getting their cellphones taken away for an hour of 'time-out' or some such. This whole dream I have of a cow-calf operation managed as an intensive grazing management scheme; feeding them sunshine via green pasture and finishing their little beeves on grass is pretty easy on paper. But, in fact, without the experiences of a child growing up on a farm under the mentoring of farmed honed parents, I'm a bit at a loss to find anything in my braincase that is of much help other than intuition and imagined experience from volumes of reading on the subject of grass farming with cattle.
I used to worry about who would be growing my food when I got old. Then, Lyn and I decided to find a farm and grow own food and some for our community. We've struggled through the learning process of raising chickens for meat and eggs and good humor. We've hutched rabbits with the plan of enjoying raising rabbits for meat and entertainment (albeit, entertainment at a very subdued level, since rabbits are pretty much lumps in the corners of their cages most the time). We've learned the in and outs of cutting our own firewood to heat our little farmhouse through winters "up north". And, along with our aging neighbors, some retired, some going to retire Lyn and I have weathered the winters in Northwestern Minnesota. Yet, we're missing so much memory of how dad used to do it when we were kids. Why? Because dad was not a farmer even though we were kids. And dad showed us lots of things we need to know to live, but the ins and outs of handling cattle is not one of them. So, we must learn those tricks of the trade the hard way; one stupid mistake at a time. Unfortunately, my technical training in biology, especially wildlife behavior, warns me that too many mistakes with these heifers and they will become unwilling to go into situations where they have experienced to much mental trauma from my mis-handlings. In other words, if they were timid when I got them I could make them wild again by not knowing how to condition them for upcoming novel experiences. Repeated 'bad' experiences will set me up with cows that run from anything unusual. And hyper cows are not herded well from one small pasture paddock to the next, especially the small half-acre or so sized ones this little farm is going to provide.
Oh, crap, this turns out to be harder than the reading I've done suggested, more complex than I planned, more demanding than I could have imagined. So, why are we trading in our old farmers for college educated industrial corporate farm managers? Seems to me its a perfect way to justify the continued direction high tech farming is headed. Huge machines so one person can farm three thousands acres or a few folks can run thousands of cows on industrial milking platforms or in concrete feedlots. Genetic altered seeds so we can grow exactly what we want so exactly that it doesn't take any experience to make a perfect 200 bushels per acre.
Sure I'd like some simple answers to my head scratching here, but this is not a short story. I'm feeling like this farming adventure takes years of ups and downs, ins and outs, shakes, rattles and rolls before the haze clears and common sense and experience take over. Heck, I'm in my first year at this. Guess I better just sit back, buckle up and hope the Toyota ranch I'm driving doesn't accelerate out of control.
OK, sun's out for a couple of late March days. Cows are waiting for their next conditioning sessions with the novice herdsman, a pocket full of alfalfa cubes and some novel activities like following me around this place they need to experience. I've got wood to split too. Let's talk about scours (that's diarrhea in cows) next time. We've all had personal experience with diarrhea, right? So I know you'll relate somehow.
I saw one of the heifers take a bite of new grass today. Keep it up sun I can't keep these heifers on hay forever.
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
Red River Graphics
Getting ready to cut some firewood on the farm this morning. The snow has just about disappeared and so quickly we're dumbfounded. That only means that they are singing, "How Highs The Water Mama?" in Fargo and other points along the Red River. So, I thought I'd give you a link to a graphic of the watershed we are partial to here at Blue Moon Farm and Ranch. If you can expand the details of this graphic you'll be able to find the Buffalo River Watershed sub-basin. Follow the line representing the river in the polygon depicting the BR Watershed and just before the end of that line is Blue Moon Farm and Ranch. Wave if you can see us.
Red River of the North Watershed Basin
Lyn and I plan to drive over to the headwaters of the Buffalo River today and visit the Tamarac National Wildlife Refuge Headquarters. We're gathering some information for our granddaughter, Jaela. We're part of a school project with her and we're developing a "care" package for her so she is successful in her current job as student at Lolo Elementary School in Lolo, Montana.
Maybe I'll check out conditions on Tamarac Lake for a little ice fishing expedition this afternoon. Right now, though, I better get out with those heifers and see if I can temper their wild genes a bit.
Sure hope you all can send us a High Pressure weather system pretty soon. This mud will not dry enough for me to level the corral and sacrifice surface areas. Need some sun upon it pretty soon or the heifers will be up to their bellies in mud. The heifers are pugging it with their hooves and making a mess of things around high use areas; the bale feeders, mineral skid-feeders and water fountain.
Do good and keep your eye on the greenside.
Red River of the North Watershed Basin
Lyn and I plan to drive over to the headwaters of the Buffalo River today and visit the Tamarac National Wildlife Refuge Headquarters. We're gathering some information for our granddaughter, Jaela. We're part of a school project with her and we're developing a "care" package for her so she is successful in her current job as student at Lolo Elementary School in Lolo, Montana.
Maybe I'll check out conditions on Tamarac Lake for a little ice fishing expedition this afternoon. Right now, though, I better get out with those heifers and see if I can temper their wild genes a bit.
Sure hope you all can send us a High Pressure weather system pretty soon. This mud will not dry enough for me to level the corral and sacrifice surface areas. Need some sun upon it pretty soon or the heifers will be up to their bellies in mud. The heifers are pugging it with their hooves and making a mess of things around high use areas; the bale feeders, mineral skid-feeders and water fountain.
Do good and keep your eye on the greenside.
Monday, March 15, 2010
The Cow Dilemma; Or Condiment Depending.
This in from friend, Mike B of Great Falls, MT in an effort to help me figure out if my black angus heifers were going to be too fearful/aggressive for my intensive grazing operation on Blue Moon Farm. Mike has a way of keeping me trimmed and tabbed and the world in perspective. Being a new guy in the world of ranching it's nice to know there are other ways to look at a often times too serious experience in handling the wild and crazy ways cows respond in the pinch chute and headgate for the novice handler. Thanks, Mike.
Subject: Re: Cows
Date: March 15, 2010 6:44:04 AM CDT
To: rondolyn@arvig.net
When I ponder raising cattle--and I never do, really--I had not thought that one would encounter this problem. We've seen so many cows, walked among them, etc, I just hadn't considered the problem.
I remember Floddy telling about the time maybe Jay waved a garbage bag in front of some of his dad's milk cows years ago. It f..ked them up for weeks, according to CF. But, you don't milk.
I'm no help, that's for sure. You got experts all over whose opinions matter. Hope you get this sorted out.
Yes, conundrum and condom are the same thing. Also condiments, condominiums, and condoleeza. The Eskimos have 32 words for 'snow.' We have five for 'rubbers.' This is one of the many Mysteries of Our English Tongue. I'm glad you asked me this question.
Now, 'dilemma' is another word altogether. That is what you have here, a dilemma. Not a rubber. Shine a light on a rubber, it just gets easier to see (not a pretty sight, btw). Shine a light on a dilemma...well, I'm not sure. Unless it's in the night or in a dark room, or something. Then I'd know, but maybe it's a cloudy day and the light couldn't hurt, right? So, shine one on your dilemma and let me know how that turns out. Use a flashlight, not a match or a torch, especially if your dilemma is in the Ammo room or if is has something to do with gas cans. Maybe you should just drag the gas can out in the yard and see what the problem is with the damn thing. Like maybe someone put diesel fuel in it, or maybe a rat drowned in it. Just dump it out, flush it with water and THEN maybe strike a match, but I'd still go with the flashlight, if I were you. Avoid needless third degree burns whenever possible. You know, that reminds me...avoid needles, in general, too. Nothing but goddamn trouble there.
Any other dilemmas? Glad to help.
MBee
When I ponder raising cattle--and I never do, really--I had not thought that one would encounter this problem. We've seen so many cows, walked among them, etc, I just hadn't considered the problem.
I remember Floddy telling about the time maybe Jay waved a garbage bag in front of some of his dad's milk cows years ago. It fucked them up for weeks, according to CF. But, you don't milk.
I'm no help, that's for sure. You got experts all over whose opinions matter. Hope you get this sorted out.
Yes, conundrum and condom are the same thing. Also condiments, condominiums, and condoleeza. The Eskimos have 32 words for 'snow.' We have five for 'rubbers.' This is one of the many Mysteries of Our English Tongue. I'm glad you asked me this question.
Now, 'dilemma' is another word altogether. That is what you have here, a dilemma. Not a rubber. Shine a light on a rubber, it just gets easier to see (not a pretty sight, btw). Shine a light on a dilemma...well, I'm not sure. Unless it's in the night or in a dark room, or something. Then I'd know, but maybe it's a cloudy day and the light couldn't hurt, right? So, shine one on your dilemma and let me know how that turns out. Use a flashlight, not a match or a torch, especially if your dilemma is in the Ammo room or if is has something to do with gas cans. Maybe you should just drag the gas can out in the yard and see what the problem is with the damn thing. Like maybe someone put diesel fuel in it, or maybe a rat drowned in it. Just dump it out, flush it with water and THEN maybe strike a match, but I'd still go with the flashlight, if I were you. Avoid needless third degree burns whenever possible. You know, that reminds me...avoid needles, in general, too. Nothing but goddamn trouble there.
Any other dilemmas? Glad to help.
MBee
Subject: Re: Cows
Date: March 15, 2010 6:44:04 AM CDT
To: rondolyn@arvig.net
When I ponder raising cattle--and I never do, really--I had not thought that one would encounter this problem. We've seen so many cows, walked among them, etc, I just hadn't considered the problem.
I remember Floddy telling about the time maybe Jay waved a garbage bag in front of some of his dad's milk cows years ago. It f..ked them up for weeks, according to CF. But, you don't milk.
I'm no help, that's for sure. You got experts all over whose opinions matter. Hope you get this sorted out.
Yes, conundrum and condom are the same thing. Also condiments, condominiums, and condoleeza. The Eskimos have 32 words for 'snow.' We have five for 'rubbers.' This is one of the many Mysteries of Our English Tongue. I'm glad you asked me this question.
Now, 'dilemma' is another word altogether. That is what you have here, a dilemma. Not a rubber. Shine a light on a rubber, it just gets easier to see (not a pretty sight, btw). Shine a light on a dilemma...well, I'm not sure. Unless it's in the night or in a dark room, or something. Then I'd know, but maybe it's a cloudy day and the light couldn't hurt, right? So, shine one on your dilemma and let me know how that turns out. Use a flashlight, not a match or a torch, especially if your dilemma is in the Ammo room or if is has something to do with gas cans. Maybe you should just drag the gas can out in the yard and see what the problem is with the damn thing. Like maybe someone put diesel fuel in it, or maybe a rat drowned in it. Just dump it out, flush it with water and THEN maybe strike a match, but I'd still go with the flashlight, if I were you. Avoid needless third degree burns whenever possible. You know, that reminds me...avoid needles, in general, too. Nothing but goddamn trouble there.
Any other dilemmas? Glad to help.
MBee
When I ponder raising cattle--and I never do, really--I had not thought that one would encounter this problem. We've seen so many cows, walked among them, etc, I just hadn't considered the problem.
I remember Floddy telling about the time maybe Jay waved a garbage bag in front of some of his dad's milk cows years ago. It fucked them up for weeks, according to CF. But, you don't milk.
I'm no help, that's for sure. You got experts all over whose opinions matter. Hope you get this sorted out.
Yes, conundrum and condom are the same thing. Also condiments, condominiums, and condoleeza. The Eskimos have 32 words for 'snow.' We have five for 'rubbers.' This is one of the many Mysteries of Our English Tongue. I'm glad you asked me this question.
Now, 'dilemma' is another word altogether. That is what you have here, a dilemma. Not a rubber. Shine a light on a rubber, it just gets easier to see (not a pretty sight, btw). Shine a light on a dilemma...well, I'm not sure. Unless it's in the night or in a dark room, or something. Then I'd know, but maybe it's a cloudy day and the light couldn't hurt, right? So, shine one on your dilemma and let me know how that turns out. Use a flashlight, not a match or a torch, especially if your dilemma is in the Ammo room or if is has something to do with gas cans. Maybe you should just drag the gas can out in the yard and see what the problem is with the damn thing. Like maybe someone put diesel fuel in it, or maybe a rat drowned in it. Just dump it out, flush it with water and THEN maybe strike a match, but I'd still go with the flashlight, if I were you. Avoid needless third degree burns whenever possible. You know, that reminds me...avoid needles, in general, too. Nothing but goddamn trouble there.
Any other dilemmas? Glad to help.
MBee
Thursday, March 11, 2010
Saturday, March 6, 2010
Mouse Prayer
I am the mouse you watch for
Great White Owl posted above
Snow filled plain against dulled blue sky.
I am the image of your search
As you are the purpose of my senses.
Your radial burst eye disks
Can you see me here in sweetgrass snow-covered?
I cannot see you pepper-flecked
White stillness perched.
Yet, you seek me as I avoid you.
Shall I spoil my position,
Run my tunnels out of this cover
Appearing on your sky-grayed
Table? Should I appeal to your
Audio sensors off-spaced to detect
My lightest sounds here below?
As I am your quest
You are my watchman. We compliment
You and I, like a musician's tuning fork.
One harmonious sound when stroked.
We make championships of our being.
In a moment we are one time
In your silent grappled grasp.
And if you were made to roar
You would bring down the clouds
Upon our table and smother the earth
In the triumph of ageless whittling.
The Earth's coalesced matter
Fired by the combustion of the sun
Has made us time beings. Our song
Is one with all melodies;
Made strong by the great chorus.
I am here for your being
As you exist for my I-ness.
If you take me I am completed.
When I let myself go you are entire.
Together we ripple Energy’s form
Not changing matter.
Don’t move while I reposition
From being long still in this cold
Winter's discontent.
Is that your tattooed breast
Above the merciful talons for my taking?
There, I am intent again
Living on beneath your unsettling.
Mis-take! Your repositioning
Opposed my blink. Comfort
Has given you away and I am taunt again.
Today it is a draw.
Not my success.
Not your failure.
I will not stray far.
The cover is good here and I have no wings.
You have miles to go
On Sun's angled rise.
The snow that covers me
Goes with you to your tundra plain.
Do not look for me next year.
I will leave others
To dodge your aim for their being.
I will be made sacred by the weasel,
Horned owl or rough-legged hawk.
I am many.
My generations have honed tooth and talon
And come from one or another.
You will die of old age or accidents of man.
Or careless;
Your white spirit takes you from the brood.
We are more for meeting today,
In the loop now, if you will.
Be.
Sense.
Respond.
Great White Owl posted above
Snow filled plain against dulled blue sky.
I am the image of your search
As you are the purpose of my senses.
Your radial burst eye disks
Can you see me here in sweetgrass snow-covered?
I cannot see you pepper-flecked
White stillness perched.
Yet, you seek me as I avoid you.
Shall I spoil my position,
Run my tunnels out of this cover
Appearing on your sky-grayed
Table? Should I appeal to your
Audio sensors off-spaced to detect
My lightest sounds here below?
As I am your quest
You are my watchman. We compliment
You and I, like a musician's tuning fork.
One harmonious sound when stroked.
We make championships of our being.
In a moment we are one time
In your silent grappled grasp.
And if you were made to roar
You would bring down the clouds
Upon our table and smother the earth
In the triumph of ageless whittling.
The Earth's coalesced matter
Fired by the combustion of the sun
Has made us time beings. Our song
Is one with all melodies;
Made strong by the great chorus.
I am here for your being
As you exist for my I-ness.
If you take me I am completed.
When I let myself go you are entire.
Together we ripple Energy’s form
Not changing matter.
Don’t move while I reposition
From being long still in this cold
Winter's discontent.
Is that your tattooed breast
Above the merciful talons for my taking?
There, I am intent again
Living on beneath your unsettling.
Mis-take! Your repositioning
Opposed my blink. Comfort
Has given you away and I am taunt again.
Today it is a draw.
Not my success.
Not your failure.
I will not stray far.
The cover is good here and I have no wings.
You have miles to go
On Sun's angled rise.
The snow that covers me
Goes with you to your tundra plain.
Do not look for me next year.
I will leave others
To dodge your aim for their being.
I will be made sacred by the weasel,
Horned owl or rough-legged hawk.
I am many.
My generations have honed tooth and talon
And come from one or another.
You will die of old age or accidents of man.
Or careless;
Your white spirit takes you from the brood.
We are more for meeting today,
In the loop now, if you will.
Be.
Sense.
Respond.
Monday, March 1, 2010
The White Owl by Richard Chapman
I'm posting this work by my poet pal Richard Chapman of Butte, Montana. To me he is the poet Butte has always wanted to give us. I hope you enjoy the medicine of his owl, "The White Owl" and like Lyn and I are moved and brought wellness by it's mystic powers.
_______________________________
Subject: The White Owl
Date: February 15, 2010 3:22:21 PM CST
To: rondolyn@arvig.net
Hello Ron,
I told you I have something for you. You may use this for Lyn or yourself. It is like magic, it came like magic. In a medicine bag which I have never had it may have said to me you need one. Or a friend needs one. Pass this on. The meeting was mine, but the power from its source is for distributing. Here have some, and grab hold. For it is moving.
In Friendship
RdeCC
White Owl
I made coffee and dumped the garbage.
On a chemistry acid spill proof top
I laid out my laptop and began editing
Programs and screens to an interface.
It was simple to fall behind key strokes
Into the walls as time glided silent,
Lifting at last to roost on a post
As I mended color and seconds together.
That afternoon we set up electric drives
And were waiting on generators
To cycle and I thought to go home
It would be a long drive from Gilford.
Six hours if it didn't snow over
Or fate found cause to strand me,
On a solitary ice polished road.
I was just beginning my floe south
The seats were warming behind my back
And the sun caught in thick
Layers of clouds was a brightish form,
Diffused its beam through cotton wool,
But here ahead on a power pole
With the wires worried in frost
And the cross arm layered in snow
Sat a white owl, perfectly set
The snowy plains drifted over
Were unbroken white like its breast.
Its eyes, huge with a spline of feathers
In sunflower circumference round centers of black
And its head squat followed me,
But it was those iconoclastic eyes
Which penetrated my Christian spirit and put me nearer
To a sweet grass omen, for it waited,
Where our crosses would pass.
"Which side of darkness did you come?"
I didn't slow down for its answer.
It's pure profile used to the limbs of night
It's bearing formed by the soft star light
And wings so soft they don't express flight.
I wouldn't stop and open my door
If I did, he'd of flown breaking our spell.
No I kept to the road, watching him
I drove beyond his deliberate look.
He is a primal flash a frozen lightning bolt
Perched above a pure white plain,
No gold or silver to break our communication.
Our visitation was good luck- I knew it to be
For I felt a stride open in my thoughts
I felt like my hand found a running brace
And I grabbed the slipping strand for position
I reached out for our human race.
We are familiar with two sides from now
There are as many truths in the future
As we've drug along from our past.
The old man's wisdom slung homeward
On travois, rutting soils over time
With lengthy long lasting reminders.
And my land ahead spread out like the sea
White and frozen waves unmarked
Where I look at the distant horizon no key
On wings if we could only fly
To what is there pulling like a magnet
Our human desires?
Which side of the present do you come?
He needn't speak. I asked with my mind.
American Natives chanted scripture for its wings
Imitated his body by dance and loosened head
How they could be moved during a hunt
For tribes' sake used it's spellbind as guidance
A white branch, a snowy limb, an arctic air
A vision staked their path, it doesn't happen often
Creates belief as a staff capped in bronze,
As sure as rubies pressed in layers of gold
And held high before us to bow to its presence.
He's a courier behind or beyond my present
One white owl and me a passer-by
If you could believe like I have felt
It meant for the whole of us to try.
_______________________________
Subject: The White Owl
Date: February 15, 2010 3:22:21 PM CST
To: rondolyn@arvig.net
Hello Ron,
I told you I have something for you. You may use this for Lyn or yourself. It is like magic, it came like magic. In a medicine bag which I have never had it may have said to me you need one. Or a friend needs one. Pass this on. The meeting was mine, but the power from its source is for distributing. Here have some, and grab hold. For it is moving.
In Friendship
RdeCC
White Owl
I made coffee and dumped the garbage.
On a chemistry acid spill proof top
I laid out my laptop and began editing
Programs and screens to an interface.
It was simple to fall behind key strokes
Into the walls as time glided silent,
Lifting at last to roost on a post
As I mended color and seconds together.
That afternoon we set up electric drives
And were waiting on generators
To cycle and I thought to go home
It would be a long drive from Gilford.
Six hours if it didn't snow over
Or fate found cause to strand me,
On a solitary ice polished road.
I was just beginning my floe south
The seats were warming behind my back
And the sun caught in thick
Layers of clouds was a brightish form,
Diffused its beam through cotton wool,
But here ahead on a power pole
With the wires worried in frost
And the cross arm layered in snow
Sat a white owl, perfectly set
The snowy plains drifted over
Were unbroken white like its breast.
Its eyes, huge with a spline of feathers
In sunflower circumference round centers of black
And its head squat followed me,
But it was those iconoclastic eyes
Which penetrated my Christian spirit and put me nearer
To a sweet grass omen, for it waited,
Where our crosses would pass.
"Which side of darkness did you come?"
I didn't slow down for its answer.
It's pure profile used to the limbs of night
It's bearing formed by the soft star light
And wings so soft they don't express flight.
I wouldn't stop and open my door
If I did, he'd of flown breaking our spell.
No I kept to the road, watching him
I drove beyond his deliberate look.
He is a primal flash a frozen lightning bolt
Perched above a pure white plain,
No gold or silver to break our communication.
Our visitation was good luck- I knew it to be
For I felt a stride open in my thoughts
I felt like my hand found a running brace
And I grabbed the slipping strand for position
I reached out for our human race.
We are familiar with two sides from now
There are as many truths in the future
As we've drug along from our past.
The old man's wisdom slung homeward
On travois, rutting soils over time
With lengthy long lasting reminders.
And my land ahead spread out like the sea
White and frozen waves unmarked
Where I look at the distant horizon no key
On wings if we could only fly
To what is there pulling like a magnet
Our human desires?
Which side of the present do you come?
He needn't speak. I asked with my mind.
American Natives chanted scripture for its wings
Imitated his body by dance and loosened head
How they could be moved during a hunt
For tribes' sake used it's spellbind as guidance
A white branch, a snowy limb, an arctic air
A vision staked their path, it doesn't happen often
Creates belief as a staff capped in bronze,
As sure as rubies pressed in layers of gold
And held high before us to bow to its presence.
He's a courier behind or beyond my present
One white owl and me a passer-by
If you could believe like I have felt
It meant for the whole of us to try.
Futility: Slowing Down The Cycles
March 1st is coming in like a lamb here on the farm. It'll probably check out like Rambo. Sunny, warming trend right now though and the cows don't want the shelter at night lately. Seems the full moon might be entertaining them. I have a thermometer in the shelter I can read from the house. With the clear nights and warming days it seems to be colder in the three-sided shelter than it is outside. So, maybe the cows would rather be exposed to the silver of the full moon than the darker, chilly and humid luxuries of the shelter. They adjust quickly to the cycle change. I don't.
I'm trying to adjust though too. It seems to me this springy-ness is happening too fast after a rather slow but slow winter. Right now I want to slow the cycle down and enjoy the transition, but it doesn't seem to be waiting for me. It's like I'm not in charge or something. My friend since grade school, Mike, is turning 62 this week. He's contemplating his Social Security Benefit I'm sure. I'm next in line and I don't have my clock tuned into the considerations that go into the math of knowing when to start my own SSB. It seems to me it's about the money, but it's also a line in the sand of admission too. Admission into the senior of seniors set minus, at least currently, assisted care or hospice and the like of the seniorist of the seniors.
Chickadees don't know how to slow down. They are coming to the feeder this morning like tiny rockets with empty fuel tanks. They are always in a hurry. Don't they know to chew their food for crying out loud. The red squirrels aren't much better, but at least they sit in the bird bath feeder and break sunflower seeds at the rate of about 100 per minute and until the next larger sized squirrels, the fox squirrels, arrive and take over the breakfast nook. Flit, flit, flit, everything is moving too fast. Well, except the cows. Maybe I should be sitting in a lawn chair on the snow pack and watching the cows while in this controlling mood.
Lyn found a dead screech owl by the deck yesterday. We think it starved to death. It's tiny breast was as pointed as my cousin Abby Sunderland's sail mast (http://soloround.blogspot.com/). I suspect the deep winter snow had forced this little owl to come closer to the feeders at night in search of seed-searching mice. But, what do I know about the challenges facing a 10 inch long, six ounce owl in a winter like we're having?
I'm ice fishing every chance I get. My luck at catching has been poor so why do I go? I love the scenes I find myself in on the frozen lakes. Last night I stayed out on the ice until sunset. It was a totally different experience visually than daytime ice fishing. As the sun goes to yellow-orange at sunset and the shoreline shadows race across the lake carrying the evening chill, I have to pull my hood up and put on my gloves to enjoy the lake world being repainted before darkness' cold grip takes the earth. And to feel the air turn toward night made me realize how quickly our evening temperatures drop off in open country around here. In our windbreak sheltered area around the farm house our spruces and oaks suck up the sunshine all day and are slower to cool down than the prairies and open lakes nearby. Two worlds right next to each other. DO NOT CUT DOWN YOUR WINDBREAKS IF YOU LIVE IN NORTWESTERN MINNESOTA!!!
I have about four chord of tree boles stacked under snow right now. We thin our woodlots for our firewood and stack the limbed trunks to be blocked and split later in spring. The snow is melting off the pile rather quickly. This means I'll soon be starting up the chainsaw again and blocking 16-20 inch lengths of those trunks and making a second pile. Then, before the muddy season of spring, Lyn and I will split the blocks and stack them for next winters heat. I'm not in a hurry for this work, I have a stack of books to read yet, garden seeds to order and a winter attitude to shake off. Still, the sun rises a bit higher in the sky each day now and we're turning more and more toward the sun each day. And soon enough, I'll be hustling to get the winter wood chores done more hastily than I like. I should have known when the first sharp-shinned hawk of the year whizzed through the yard on Saturday it was time to get off my winter butt and get stacking...
We've been on this farm for over two years and I'm still not in charge. What gives? I'm just trying to make this winter wonderland fairy tale last, but it's like a Dairy Queen in summer; before you can lick the swirl down to the cone it's dripping in your hand whether you want it to or not.
Oh, my God, there's a sparrow on the deck with a short length of straw in it's bill. What next, nests and eggs and peeping chicks. I'm slamming down this keyboard and getting outside. Won't be long and I'll have to wash the long johns and put them up for three months of summer. "Good Golly Miss Molly" I thought I was in charge of this farm.
Green side comin' up.
I'm trying to adjust though too. It seems to me this springy-ness is happening too fast after a rather slow but slow winter. Right now I want to slow the cycle down and enjoy the transition, but it doesn't seem to be waiting for me. It's like I'm not in charge or something. My friend since grade school, Mike, is turning 62 this week. He's contemplating his Social Security Benefit I'm sure. I'm next in line and I don't have my clock tuned into the considerations that go into the math of knowing when to start my own SSB. It seems to me it's about the money, but it's also a line in the sand of admission too. Admission into the senior of seniors set minus, at least currently, assisted care or hospice and the like of the seniorist of the seniors.
Chickadees don't know how to slow down. They are coming to the feeder this morning like tiny rockets with empty fuel tanks. They are always in a hurry. Don't they know to chew their food for crying out loud. The red squirrels aren't much better, but at least they sit in the bird bath feeder and break sunflower seeds at the rate of about 100 per minute and until the next larger sized squirrels, the fox squirrels, arrive and take over the breakfast nook. Flit, flit, flit, everything is moving too fast. Well, except the cows. Maybe I should be sitting in a lawn chair on the snow pack and watching the cows while in this controlling mood.
Lyn found a dead screech owl by the deck yesterday. We think it starved to death. It's tiny breast was as pointed as my cousin Abby Sunderland's sail mast (http://soloround.blogspot.com/). I suspect the deep winter snow had forced this little owl to come closer to the feeders at night in search of seed-searching mice. But, what do I know about the challenges facing a 10 inch long, six ounce owl in a winter like we're having?
I'm ice fishing every chance I get. My luck at catching has been poor so why do I go? I love the scenes I find myself in on the frozen lakes. Last night I stayed out on the ice until sunset. It was a totally different experience visually than daytime ice fishing. As the sun goes to yellow-orange at sunset and the shoreline shadows race across the lake carrying the evening chill, I have to pull my hood up and put on my gloves to enjoy the lake world being repainted before darkness' cold grip takes the earth. And to feel the air turn toward night made me realize how quickly our evening temperatures drop off in open country around here. In our windbreak sheltered area around the farm house our spruces and oaks suck up the sunshine all day and are slower to cool down than the prairies and open lakes nearby. Two worlds right next to each other. DO NOT CUT DOWN YOUR WINDBREAKS IF YOU LIVE IN NORTWESTERN MINNESOTA!!!
I have about four chord of tree boles stacked under snow right now. We thin our woodlots for our firewood and stack the limbed trunks to be blocked and split later in spring. The snow is melting off the pile rather quickly. This means I'll soon be starting up the chainsaw again and blocking 16-20 inch lengths of those trunks and making a second pile. Then, before the muddy season of spring, Lyn and I will split the blocks and stack them for next winters heat. I'm not in a hurry for this work, I have a stack of books to read yet, garden seeds to order and a winter attitude to shake off. Still, the sun rises a bit higher in the sky each day now and we're turning more and more toward the sun each day. And soon enough, I'll be hustling to get the winter wood chores done more hastily than I like. I should have known when the first sharp-shinned hawk of the year whizzed through the yard on Saturday it was time to get off my winter butt and get stacking...
We've been on this farm for over two years and I'm still not in charge. What gives? I'm just trying to make this winter wonderland fairy tale last, but it's like a Dairy Queen in summer; before you can lick the swirl down to the cone it's dripping in your hand whether you want it to or not.
Oh, my God, there's a sparrow on the deck with a short length of straw in it's bill. What next, nests and eggs and peeping chicks. I'm slamming down this keyboard and getting outside. Won't be long and I'll have to wash the long johns and put them up for three months of summer. "Good Golly Miss Molly" I thought I was in charge of this farm.
Green side comin' up.
Saturday, February 27, 2010
NOAA Weather Forecasting on the Farm
Here's an email I sent to my pal, MikeB in Great Falls. A great way to start the day here on the farm.
______________________
Mike:
I fooled Lyn this morning, it was funny. Funnier cuz I was fooled too.
I woke up the computer and had saved my webpages last night to come up automatically this morning. You know so the emails and the weather home page would load up and be ready when Lyn and I sat with our breakfast at the window to watch the cows move out of the shelter to the hay and we could chat about the day ahead. Sure enough all the expected web pages came up ready for our morning reading and comments.
A list of a few emails popped up and NOAA Local Weather is our homepage, so that was up. When we sat down to look; weather is always first for Lyn, we were so surprised to see temps rising into the 40s for a couple of days and even the 50s next week. Lyn was going crazy projecting her day and tomorrow with chores all the way from digging a walkway out into the garden to immediately dressing up a little and running outside to let the chickens out of the coop into that early morning sun that must be blazing away already. I was eating a little faster than usual too. With the melting snow we could see being projected for the next few days, I was sensing a need to start the tractor and spear a round bale to be moved on our ice road across a strip of marsh to the heifers favorite winter feeding area' This, before the marsh crossing thawed later this morning in the forecasted heat wave. The narrow lane across the marsh is too slippery for the tractor to make the crossing with a bale hanging on the front loader bale fork.
As we were cleaning up our plates, (good old farm fresh eggs and locally cured bacon, hashbrowns from our potato stash in the cellar and a piece of Great Harvest Bread from Fargo), my head was grinding away at those temperature forecasts and something wasn't computing right. So, I sat down and looked at the weather site again and sure enough, I had saved the Great Falls, MT site instead of my Callaway, MN NOAA homepage last night when I put the computer into sleep mode. Ha, ha on us. Bad, bad, bad for me when I pointed this out to Lyn. I got smacked, harassed and nearly beaten for the "trick" I had played on her. "Crapola man", I had to readjust too, "what the hell, over". Anyway, we had a great laugh, Lyn completely abandoned me to the housework and headed outside recommitted to a couple more weeks in the 20s, but shaking her head in disgust that she had not double checked my math to see what city those NOAA forecasts affected.
You folks in Great Falls are going to have a nice week as far as we are concerned, even though MikeB will be off to maybe warmer weather yet in lovely Rocks Springs, Wyo. to be with the grandboys. We Callawegians will stay below but near freezing and that ain't so bad. We hardly ever get real pumped up for the weeks of mud we get here as the snow load melts and riffles though the yard and driveway and walkways bringing all our of our clay-loam soils to sticky, gooey life again. We'll be sunny and in the 20's above zero though. For us winter hardy farmers that kind of day is a really happy day in any February "up north" on the Blue Moon Farm and Ranch.
The green side is almost up, again.....
Ron and Lyn and the Critters
______________________
Mike:
I fooled Lyn this morning, it was funny. Funnier cuz I was fooled too.
I woke up the computer and had saved my webpages last night to come up automatically this morning. You know so the emails and the weather home page would load up and be ready when Lyn and I sat with our breakfast at the window to watch the cows move out of the shelter to the hay and we could chat about the day ahead. Sure enough all the expected web pages came up ready for our morning reading and comments.
A list of a few emails popped up and NOAA Local Weather is our homepage, so that was up. When we sat down to look; weather is always first for Lyn, we were so surprised to see temps rising into the 40s for a couple of days and even the 50s next week. Lyn was going crazy projecting her day and tomorrow with chores all the way from digging a walkway out into the garden to immediately dressing up a little and running outside to let the chickens out of the coop into that early morning sun that must be blazing away already. I was eating a little faster than usual too. With the melting snow we could see being projected for the next few days, I was sensing a need to start the tractor and spear a round bale to be moved on our ice road across a strip of marsh to the heifers favorite winter feeding area' This, before the marsh crossing thawed later this morning in the forecasted heat wave. The narrow lane across the marsh is too slippery for the tractor to make the crossing with a bale hanging on the front loader bale fork.
As we were cleaning up our plates, (good old farm fresh eggs and locally cured bacon, hashbrowns from our potato stash in the cellar and a piece of Great Harvest Bread from Fargo), my head was grinding away at those temperature forecasts and something wasn't computing right. So, I sat down and looked at the weather site again and sure enough, I had saved the Great Falls, MT site instead of my Callaway, MN NOAA homepage last night when I put the computer into sleep mode. Ha, ha on us. Bad, bad, bad for me when I pointed this out to Lyn. I got smacked, harassed and nearly beaten for the "trick" I had played on her. "Crapola man", I had to readjust too, "what the hell, over". Anyway, we had a great laugh, Lyn completely abandoned me to the housework and headed outside recommitted to a couple more weeks in the 20s, but shaking her head in disgust that she had not double checked my math to see what city those NOAA forecasts affected.
You folks in Great Falls are going to have a nice week as far as we are concerned, even though MikeB will be off to maybe warmer weather yet in lovely Rocks Springs, Wyo. to be with the grandboys. We Callawegians will stay below but near freezing and that ain't so bad. We hardly ever get real pumped up for the weeks of mud we get here as the snow load melts and riffles though the yard and driveway and walkways bringing all our of our clay-loam soils to sticky, gooey life again. We'll be sunny and in the 20's above zero though. For us winter hardy farmers that kind of day is a really happy day in any February "up north" on the Blue Moon Farm and Ranch.
The green side is almost up, again.....
Ron and Lyn and the Critters
Monday, February 22, 2010
Grandpa and the chickens: Not a Christmas story
This post from my cousin, Bill Quick is some history worth passing on. He writes to his siblings born after Bill's mother died and his father moved to St. Paul, MN and married their mother circa 1943-44. He responded to my request to post it by telling a little more of the story involving my mom, Rita (his aunt), our aunts Roseanne and Josephine (all sisters of his mother) and our uncles (Jim and Gene, both rather squeamish fellows) and their gender opposite interests in their brother-in-law's chicken escapades.
Thanks Bill.
Cousin Ron.
Bill Quick, Olympia WA, February 21, 2010, at 8:24 PM
(Ron:) Please feel free to post it, even on the fence post at the next farm. I wrote this shortly after my father died in 1995. Reading it again brought back more memories. When we butchered chickens Rita an/or Roseanne might walk down the road and help scald, pluck, and gut chickens. When Josephine and jack lived across the road aunt Joe would sometimes help. I can't remember Gene or Jim ever volunteering. Clear evidence of superior male intelligence.
Those nail clippers that are made for dogs work great on chickens, but, you know, my Dad felt that those game cocks should be authentic.
Let me tell you, a four pound hen or an uppity rooster on a light fly rod is a real experience, but that is a different story.
Bill
Bill Quick, Olympia, WA Feb 20, 2010, at 1:53 AM
(Ron:) Reading your Blog reminded me of something I wrote when a set of caponizing tools was found in my father's things. The younger kids in the family never experienced W(hite) B(ear) L(ake) (,MN) and had no idea of Dad's one time fascination with chickens.
It follows,
Grandpa and the chickens: Not a Christmas story
Don, Janice, et al.
Finding the old caponizing tools in the house brought back all kinds of memories. We lived at White Bear Lake from 1939 to 1943. Dad worked at 3M, but raised chickens on the side. Any of you old enough to remember the gladiola and dahlia periods can imagine the chicken episode. Dad didn’t go into hobbies halfway. I’m sure it was done to make a bit more money, but it was also a hobby. We had hundreds of chickens.
Most of our chickens were Leghorns or White Giants. A Leghorn can go from chick to a pretty good fryer in ten weeks or less. They are a great meat chicken for market and I think most of the “fryers” in the market today may still be Leghorns. They used to go to market between three and four pounds. The White Giants were chunkier chickens with heavier breasts and were pretty good layers. They would reach five or six pounds, but took longer to reach weight and more feed.
Both of these varieties could be good layers and Dad kept as many as he needed to produce all the eggs he could sell. Every morning Dad would take a stack of egg cartons to 3M (Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing) and sell eggs on the side. During the war any kind of supplemental food production was encouraged. Eggs were hard to find in the market. I think all of you have heard the story of me getting in trouble with Dad for feeding the chickens fresh cut grass. Anyway, it turned the whites of the eggs a delicate green and customers really complained. The chickens loved fresh cut grass, but I didn’t enjoy the consequences. I don’t remember any of you kids getting seriously spanked-I think Dad softened with years and more experience. As for me, he spanked and used a switch. Of course, I may have provided somewhat more reason.
At that time raising chickens wasn’t nearly as controlled and mechanized as it is now. Our chickens roamed free and had a shed where there were laying boxes and rows of perches for at night. In really cold winter weather the chickens might be shut into the hen house. A lot of chickens produce enough heat that they can cluster up and survive if they have water and adequate feed. The hen house was totally unheated-poor chickens! Eggs had to be collected several times a day in winter or they would freeze. Occasionally a hen would get “broody” and decide she wanted to sit on her eggs. They could really develop an attitude. They would fight tooth and nail to resist being removed from the laying box and showed no hesitation about attacking 5-9 yr. old little boys-or anyone else for that matter. If one were really slow and sneaky you could sometimes slip a hand under a hen and slide out a nice warm egg without risking loss of your arm.
Dad candled all of our eggs. We are talking about dozens a day, or at most a couple of hundred, not thousands. If held in front of a strong light one can see double yolks or other defects. A box of double yolks could bring a premium as a novelty. They were few enough that we usually ate them. I always thought it was a treat to get a double yolk egg fried sunny side up.
It was during this period that Dad began to develop his talent as the only guy around who could make a flawless twelve egg omelet. He used a big cast iron skillet that was fairly deep. I cannot remember when he stopped doing that. He would occasionally do a big omelet even after we moved to Lake Phalen. Keep in mind that with hundreds of eggs there are always some with cracked shells, distorted shells, or odd markings that made them unmarketable. We ate our failures. We ate a lot of eggs. Dad experimented a lot. We made our own mayonnaise. There are a lot of ways to use eggs!
A hen may begin laying eggs at just a few months of age. After a few weeks of laying “pullet eggs”, a good hen would lay almost an egg a day for two or three years. The size of the eggs depends upon the breed of chicken, the maturity of the hen (they get a bit looser with wear), quality of feed and relative tranquility of their life. When their productivity begins to wane the faithful servant is rewarded by becoming a stewing hen or pet food. In modern egg production facilities each hen has it’s own pretty sterile cage and every egg is counted automatically. Dad had his own technique for checking a hen’s productivity. If the oviduct would admit only one or no fingers, the hen wasn’t laying eggs. If the oviduct would admit two fingers she was producing pullet eggs. Three fingers indicated a productive hen. I really don’t know if this technique had any validity, but Dad seemed to prize it and it fascinated our neighbors.
Now, mind you, we butchered our own chickens. I still don’t like cleaning birds or contact with a lot of wet feathers. We would have a big bucket full of boiling water by the chopping block. Dad would catch and chop. My mother and I and whoever else in the extended family who could be persuaded would pluck and clean. After a few minutes in a bucket of boiling water the wet feathers would strip off pretty well. Once naked a chicken could be gutted pretty quickly. Visitors would sometimes inquire about the white stake stuck in the ground somewhere in the vicinity of the chopping block. One of us would casually say that was the distance record. Then, in response to their puzzlement we would explain that Dad turned each of the chickens loose after cutting off it’s head. You know the expression “like a chicken with it’s head cut off”? Well, if you kind of threw the headless chicken onto it’s feet it would run wildly off; bouncing off things, changing directions, and flopping wildly. The stake marked the farthest any chicken had reached.
A ghastly sight, but to a young boy, and apparently to his father, it added amusement to a pretty unpleasant task. We butchered fryers regularly and they, too, went to 3M for informal sale.
We raised chickens, the people to our southeast raised chickens, and my great uncle Henry, my maternal grandfather’s brother, lived directly behind us, shared a fence line with us, and also raised chickens commercially. There were always loose chickens around. Part of this time we owned a Springer Spaniel named Ginger. She hunted and killed loose chickens with a passion- never penned chickens and never our chickens. That was the rub. She somehow could tell our chickens from Uncle Henry’s and the neighbors. The adult chickens were all banded and their owners could be identified. Protocol was that stray chickens were returned to their owners. They preferred the return of live chickens and took exception to Ginger. She had to go. We gave her to a farmer who thought he needed a dog and raised chickens. Really, there was no malice in this.
Now, back to Dad’s hobby habits. Since we raised chickens we had to enter the chicken world. We hung out around hatcheries to see how they functioned and to see what kind of chickens they were brooding. Even in those ancient days there were commercial hatcheries and most commercial farmers bought young hatchlings and raised them. Dad, of course had to try brooding his own eggs and a bit of cross breeding. We found that chickens were apparently more discriminating than we gave them credit for in selecting their roosters and they did a much more successful job of hatching eggs then any makeshift contraption we developed.
Everyone knows there are dog and cat shows, but did you know there are chicken shows? Not just the displays of chickens at fairs (yes, we had to carefully tour all of those as well), but honest to goodness chicken shows. Dad was fascinated by all the varieties of chickens. Not surprisingly, we ended up with a rooster and a few hens of lord only knows how many varieties of chickens. There were tall chickens with long necks, little Banties, white giants, black giants, Plymouth Rocks, Barred Rocks, Cochins… There were chickens with big crowns of feathers on their heads and chickens that looked like snow shoe hares with all the feathers on their feet. Some of these varieties produced weird eggs that couldn’t be sold-so we ate those too. Did I mention that new layers begin with little, so called pullet eggs which also aren’t very saleable so we ate those too. Some breeds, like Banties, naturally lay small eggs and we ate those too.
You know, I may finally be getting to the point of this story!
Remember the white giants? Well, if a male chicken is deprived of his gonads he becomes fat, lazy, indifferent to chasing hens and kind of a chow hound. They will grow to 10-12 pounds in a fairly short time and are notoriously tender. For a long time capons seemed to disappear from the market, but I am seeing them again. I’ll be darned if they don’t look just like our White Giant carcasses. Now, roosters don’t take kindly to this process so Dad devised a “surgery board” that secured a chicken’s legs and wings and pretty well immobilized him for any necessary procedures. Dad became quite skilled at this and we had a very low mortality rate- or so we tried to persuade the roosters. Surgery was done without benefit of anesthesia and none of the chickens really volunteered. It was amazing, I can’t recall a single chicken squawking during surgery. They might fight tooth and nail against being restrained, but they were quiet on the board. Their combs might flush from white to bright red and back, but nary a squawk. Thriving on success and repressed latent skills, Dad branched out into other types of surgery. We repaired broken legs, lanced abscesses, removed growths…. And then there was the Cornish Game Cock. We had a few gamecocks, of course. The roosters grew these wicked horns on the back of their feet. I suspect that they are just a modified back toe, but the spur might be an inch and a half long and taper to a razor sharp point. They fight with them and can inflict nasty wounds. Fortunately, Cornish Game Cocks are usually pretty laid back, but roosters are roosters. One of the game cocks developed an infection in a leg. Dad lanced and drained the leg at least a couple of times trying to save the rooster. The last time he tried to lance the leg the rooster got one leg loose and took a swipe at Dad. Dad was wearing a shirt, but the rooster created a razor type slice that started near the top of Dad’s breastbone, curved over to his left ribs, and back to near his belly button. It was a nearly perfect half circle and bled like the devil. It looked like someone had gone after Dad with a box knife. Dad carried that scar as long as I can remember. It grew fainter with age and was very thin, but I think the scar lasted all his life. Incidentally, the rooster survived the surgery and lived for some time. That the rooster survived Dad’s wrath was even more surprising.
So, kind of roundabout, that is the story of the caponizing tools.
Thanks Bill.
Cousin Ron.
Bill Quick, Olympia WA, February 21, 2010, at 8:24 PM
(Ron:) Please feel free to post it, even on the fence post at the next farm. I wrote this shortly after my father died in 1995. Reading it again brought back more memories. When we butchered chickens Rita an/or Roseanne might walk down the road and help scald, pluck, and gut chickens. When Josephine and jack lived across the road aunt Joe would sometimes help. I can't remember Gene or Jim ever volunteering. Clear evidence of superior male intelligence.
Those nail clippers that are made for dogs work great on chickens, but, you know, my Dad felt that those game cocks should be authentic.
Let me tell you, a four pound hen or an uppity rooster on a light fly rod is a real experience, but that is a different story.
Bill
Bill Quick, Olympia, WA Feb 20, 2010, at 1:53 AM
(Ron:) Reading your Blog reminded me of something I wrote when a set of caponizing tools was found in my father's things. The younger kids in the family never experienced W(hite) B(ear) L(ake) (,MN) and had no idea of Dad's one time fascination with chickens.
It follows,
Grandpa and the chickens: Not a Christmas story
Don, Janice, et al.
Finding the old caponizing tools in the house brought back all kinds of memories. We lived at White Bear Lake from 1939 to 1943. Dad worked at 3M, but raised chickens on the side. Any of you old enough to remember the gladiola and dahlia periods can imagine the chicken episode. Dad didn’t go into hobbies halfway. I’m sure it was done to make a bit more money, but it was also a hobby. We had hundreds of chickens.
Most of our chickens were Leghorns or White Giants. A Leghorn can go from chick to a pretty good fryer in ten weeks or less. They are a great meat chicken for market and I think most of the “fryers” in the market today may still be Leghorns. They used to go to market between three and four pounds. The White Giants were chunkier chickens with heavier breasts and were pretty good layers. They would reach five or six pounds, but took longer to reach weight and more feed.
Both of these varieties could be good layers and Dad kept as many as he needed to produce all the eggs he could sell. Every morning Dad would take a stack of egg cartons to 3M (Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing) and sell eggs on the side. During the war any kind of supplemental food production was encouraged. Eggs were hard to find in the market. I think all of you have heard the story of me getting in trouble with Dad for feeding the chickens fresh cut grass. Anyway, it turned the whites of the eggs a delicate green and customers really complained. The chickens loved fresh cut grass, but I didn’t enjoy the consequences. I don’t remember any of you kids getting seriously spanked-I think Dad softened with years and more experience. As for me, he spanked and used a switch. Of course, I may have provided somewhat more reason.
At that time raising chickens wasn’t nearly as controlled and mechanized as it is now. Our chickens roamed free and had a shed where there were laying boxes and rows of perches for at night. In really cold winter weather the chickens might be shut into the hen house. A lot of chickens produce enough heat that they can cluster up and survive if they have water and adequate feed. The hen house was totally unheated-poor chickens! Eggs had to be collected several times a day in winter or they would freeze. Occasionally a hen would get “broody” and decide she wanted to sit on her eggs. They could really develop an attitude. They would fight tooth and nail to resist being removed from the laying box and showed no hesitation about attacking 5-9 yr. old little boys-or anyone else for that matter. If one were really slow and sneaky you could sometimes slip a hand under a hen and slide out a nice warm egg without risking loss of your arm.
Dad candled all of our eggs. We are talking about dozens a day, or at most a couple of hundred, not thousands. If held in front of a strong light one can see double yolks or other defects. A box of double yolks could bring a premium as a novelty. They were few enough that we usually ate them. I always thought it was a treat to get a double yolk egg fried sunny side up.
It was during this period that Dad began to develop his talent as the only guy around who could make a flawless twelve egg omelet. He used a big cast iron skillet that was fairly deep. I cannot remember when he stopped doing that. He would occasionally do a big omelet even after we moved to Lake Phalen. Keep in mind that with hundreds of eggs there are always some with cracked shells, distorted shells, or odd markings that made them unmarketable. We ate our failures. We ate a lot of eggs. Dad experimented a lot. We made our own mayonnaise. There are a lot of ways to use eggs!
A hen may begin laying eggs at just a few months of age. After a few weeks of laying “pullet eggs”, a good hen would lay almost an egg a day for two or three years. The size of the eggs depends upon the breed of chicken, the maturity of the hen (they get a bit looser with wear), quality of feed and relative tranquility of their life. When their productivity begins to wane the faithful servant is rewarded by becoming a stewing hen or pet food. In modern egg production facilities each hen has it’s own pretty sterile cage and every egg is counted automatically. Dad had his own technique for checking a hen’s productivity. If the oviduct would admit only one or no fingers, the hen wasn’t laying eggs. If the oviduct would admit two fingers she was producing pullet eggs. Three fingers indicated a productive hen. I really don’t know if this technique had any validity, but Dad seemed to prize it and it fascinated our neighbors.
Now, mind you, we butchered our own chickens. I still don’t like cleaning birds or contact with a lot of wet feathers. We would have a big bucket full of boiling water by the chopping block. Dad would catch and chop. My mother and I and whoever else in the extended family who could be persuaded would pluck and clean. After a few minutes in a bucket of boiling water the wet feathers would strip off pretty well. Once naked a chicken could be gutted pretty quickly. Visitors would sometimes inquire about the white stake stuck in the ground somewhere in the vicinity of the chopping block. One of us would casually say that was the distance record. Then, in response to their puzzlement we would explain that Dad turned each of the chickens loose after cutting off it’s head. You know the expression “like a chicken with it’s head cut off”? Well, if you kind of threw the headless chicken onto it’s feet it would run wildly off; bouncing off things, changing directions, and flopping wildly. The stake marked the farthest any chicken had reached.
A ghastly sight, but to a young boy, and apparently to his father, it added amusement to a pretty unpleasant task. We butchered fryers regularly and they, too, went to 3M for informal sale.
We raised chickens, the people to our southeast raised chickens, and my great uncle Henry, my maternal grandfather’s brother, lived directly behind us, shared a fence line with us, and also raised chickens commercially. There were always loose chickens around. Part of this time we owned a Springer Spaniel named Ginger. She hunted and killed loose chickens with a passion- never penned chickens and never our chickens. That was the rub. She somehow could tell our chickens from Uncle Henry’s and the neighbors. The adult chickens were all banded and their owners could be identified. Protocol was that stray chickens were returned to their owners. They preferred the return of live chickens and took exception to Ginger. She had to go. We gave her to a farmer who thought he needed a dog and raised chickens. Really, there was no malice in this.
Now, back to Dad’s hobby habits. Since we raised chickens we had to enter the chicken world. We hung out around hatcheries to see how they functioned and to see what kind of chickens they were brooding. Even in those ancient days there were commercial hatcheries and most commercial farmers bought young hatchlings and raised them. Dad, of course had to try brooding his own eggs and a bit of cross breeding. We found that chickens were apparently more discriminating than we gave them credit for in selecting their roosters and they did a much more successful job of hatching eggs then any makeshift contraption we developed.
Everyone knows there are dog and cat shows, but did you know there are chicken shows? Not just the displays of chickens at fairs (yes, we had to carefully tour all of those as well), but honest to goodness chicken shows. Dad was fascinated by all the varieties of chickens. Not surprisingly, we ended up with a rooster and a few hens of lord only knows how many varieties of chickens. There were tall chickens with long necks, little Banties, white giants, black giants, Plymouth Rocks, Barred Rocks, Cochins… There were chickens with big crowns of feathers on their heads and chickens that looked like snow shoe hares with all the feathers on their feet. Some of these varieties produced weird eggs that couldn’t be sold-so we ate those too. Did I mention that new layers begin with little, so called pullet eggs which also aren’t very saleable so we ate those too. Some breeds, like Banties, naturally lay small eggs and we ate those too.
You know, I may finally be getting to the point of this story!
Remember the white giants? Well, if a male chicken is deprived of his gonads he becomes fat, lazy, indifferent to chasing hens and kind of a chow hound. They will grow to 10-12 pounds in a fairly short time and are notoriously tender. For a long time capons seemed to disappear from the market, but I am seeing them again. I’ll be darned if they don’t look just like our White Giant carcasses. Now, roosters don’t take kindly to this process so Dad devised a “surgery board” that secured a chicken’s legs and wings and pretty well immobilized him for any necessary procedures. Dad became quite skilled at this and we had a very low mortality rate- or so we tried to persuade the roosters. Surgery was done without benefit of anesthesia and none of the chickens really volunteered. It was amazing, I can’t recall a single chicken squawking during surgery. They might fight tooth and nail against being restrained, but they were quiet on the board. Their combs might flush from white to bright red and back, but nary a squawk. Thriving on success and repressed latent skills, Dad branched out into other types of surgery. We repaired broken legs, lanced abscesses, removed growths…. And then there was the Cornish Game Cock. We had a few gamecocks, of course. The roosters grew these wicked horns on the back of their feet. I suspect that they are just a modified back toe, but the spur might be an inch and a half long and taper to a razor sharp point. They fight with them and can inflict nasty wounds. Fortunately, Cornish Game Cocks are usually pretty laid back, but roosters are roosters. One of the game cocks developed an infection in a leg. Dad lanced and drained the leg at least a couple of times trying to save the rooster. The last time he tried to lance the leg the rooster got one leg loose and took a swipe at Dad. Dad was wearing a shirt, but the rooster created a razor type slice that started near the top of Dad’s breastbone, curved over to his left ribs, and back to near his belly button. It was a nearly perfect half circle and bled like the devil. It looked like someone had gone after Dad with a box knife. Dad carried that scar as long as I can remember. It grew fainter with age and was very thin, but I think the scar lasted all his life. Incidentally, the rooster survived the surgery and lived for some time. That the rooster survived Dad’s wrath was even more surprising.
So, kind of roundabout, that is the story of the caponizing tools.
Friday, February 19, 2010
Homo domesticus, Dah!
Farmers are supposed to be husbands of their flocks and herds and whatever you call a pile of pigs or a barn full of turkeys and the like. Yes, something amazing happened about 10,000 or so years ago when the first chicken walked in from out of the jungle and laid herself at the feet of some hairball human. I'm sure the first couple of these events ended up with chicken-on-a-stick over the open fire. Eventually, those hunter-gatherer types hesitated a moment before chuckin' the spear, looked at one another and considered Option B. You know, the one that contains the possibility of taking that old hen into the cave, throwing some grass on a ledge and seeing if she would lay an egg in exchange for some shelter from the storm and the 72,932 predators that like chicken as well as today's generation of McNuggetheads. Wow, what a time that must have been for those Asian nomads that figured that out. Can you imagine what the neighbors thought when they came over for a tug of charred saber-toothed tiger flank and saw a chicken on that ledge peering down toward the newcomers anticipating a spear-chuck any instant. Of course we have no idea how all the domestication of wild things happened, but we have proof today that it did happen and we get the benefits today of some long eons of the taming of the shrews and other beasts that feed, nourish and entertain us today.
The domestication of wildlife for our use came with a cost though. We had to give something in return or those first chickens and sacred cows and dog-like beasts would have stayed on the fringe of our fires and waited for their tidbits after night-night time don't you think? Hey, there's no doubt that Paleolithic Man did some serious exterminating before he figured out he was going to run completely out of big things to eat. There are bone piles all over the place suggesting we really didn't have much trouble spear chuckin' things to death. Remember there was no Endangered Species Act in 9999 B.C. We certainly put the fear into some beasts though back then, didn't we? We are still having a hard time killing some wildlife that figured us out. Once we had all the cuddly little mastodons wiped out things became pretty "gamey" and I suspect my great...great...uncles got pretty hungry and decided it was time to invent the sport of hunting or counting coupe or catch and release, etc. So now we end up firing laser guided 99 - 06 bullets with explosive tips from tri-poded rifles at a zillion yards to have a meal or two of warthog or three-toed sloth.
So, anyway, when we domesticated all those critters over the last 10,000 or so years we also in a very interesting way domesticated ourselves. Maybe that's what the women wanted. Maybe they had been scheming for the previous 5,000 years about getting some real houses, some appliances and some time off from chewing leather and making pots and stuff while the "boys" were out rolling their own out of jackpine needles, getting high and sick to their stomachs and complaining about the scarcity of mastodons that used to let them poke them in the ribs 440 times before they bled to death to feed the clan until the meat was so rotten or the coyotes had to run away with the offal.
Yes, we too are domesticated now. About 10 or 20 years ago the women got sick of being domesticated and took over our jobs so we could be stay at home dads. Remember when that happened? I'm getting off track here. What I really want to say about the symbiotic relationship we have with our farm animals now is that the trend is pretty clear. The guys on the farm miss their wives who are off to town making real money. The money that goes to paying for the big tractors and front loaders and all the other contraptions it takes for one guy to handle a gazillion farm animals and be able to send the kids to Stanford or Yale or Harvard Medical School so they can make a living. They sure as hell can't stay on the farm since the farm will only support the elders and one brother (hopefully the smartest one, but usually not...remember the smartest one went to Yale or Duke to be a Doctor)
So now we are Homo domesticus and we grow food for the even more domesticuses of the big cities where most of the humans now live. And they are so domestic they can't grow anything and don't want us farmers to grow "it" either cuz we might be cruel to "it" or package "it" so there's blood showing through the cellophane and styrofoam unit in the showcase unrepresentative of any animal ever evolved from anything . Geez, this post is starting to look pretty dim, don't you think? I mean, can you feel the leash here? Who's on the other end of my leash here, anyway?
I gotta go to bed, it's late and I don't want to have bad dreams tonight. I have to get up in the morning and feed the cows while Lyn feeds the chickens and the rabbits and we plan for our vegetable garden in May, well maybe June at the rate this winter is going here in Northwestern Minnesota.
Think Greenside Up. Solar. Windpower... something wild before they put us in a pen and feed us cultured algae or some such. Whoever "they" are. Heck with it, I'm thinking Doritos here as I hit the "Publish Post" button.
The domestication of wildlife for our use came with a cost though. We had to give something in return or those first chickens and sacred cows and dog-like beasts would have stayed on the fringe of our fires and waited for their tidbits after night-night time don't you think? Hey, there's no doubt that Paleolithic Man did some serious exterminating before he figured out he was going to run completely out of big things to eat. There are bone piles all over the place suggesting we really didn't have much trouble spear chuckin' things to death. Remember there was no Endangered Species Act in 9999 B.C. We certainly put the fear into some beasts though back then, didn't we? We are still having a hard time killing some wildlife that figured us out. Once we had all the cuddly little mastodons wiped out things became pretty "gamey" and I suspect my great...great...uncles got pretty hungry and decided it was time to invent the sport of hunting or counting coupe or catch and release, etc. So now we end up firing laser guided 99 - 06 bullets with explosive tips from tri-poded rifles at a zillion yards to have a meal or two of warthog or three-toed sloth.
So, anyway, when we domesticated all those critters over the last 10,000 or so years we also in a very interesting way domesticated ourselves. Maybe that's what the women wanted. Maybe they had been scheming for the previous 5,000 years about getting some real houses, some appliances and some time off from chewing leather and making pots and stuff while the "boys" were out rolling their own out of jackpine needles, getting high and sick to their stomachs and complaining about the scarcity of mastodons that used to let them poke them in the ribs 440 times before they bled to death to feed the clan until the meat was so rotten or the coyotes had to run away with the offal.
Yes, we too are domesticated now. About 10 or 20 years ago the women got sick of being domesticated and took over our jobs so we could be stay at home dads. Remember when that happened? I'm getting off track here. What I really want to say about the symbiotic relationship we have with our farm animals now is that the trend is pretty clear. The guys on the farm miss their wives who are off to town making real money. The money that goes to paying for the big tractors and front loaders and all the other contraptions it takes for one guy to handle a gazillion farm animals and be able to send the kids to Stanford or Yale or Harvard Medical School so they can make a living. They sure as hell can't stay on the farm since the farm will only support the elders and one brother (hopefully the smartest one, but usually not...remember the smartest one went to Yale or Duke to be a Doctor)
So now we are Homo domesticus and we grow food for the even more domesticuses of the big cities where most of the humans now live. And they are so domestic they can't grow anything and don't want us farmers to grow "it" either cuz we might be cruel to "it" or package "it" so there's blood showing through the cellophane and styrofoam unit in the showcase unrepresentative of any animal ever evolved from anything . Geez, this post is starting to look pretty dim, don't you think? I mean, can you feel the leash here? Who's on the other end of my leash here, anyway?
I gotta go to bed, it's late and I don't want to have bad dreams tonight. I have to get up in the morning and feed the cows while Lyn feeds the chickens and the rabbits and we plan for our vegetable garden in May, well maybe June at the rate this winter is going here in Northwestern Minnesota.
Think Greenside Up. Solar. Windpower... something wild before they put us in a pen and feed us cultured algae or some such. Whoever "they" are. Heck with it, I'm thinking Doritos here as I hit the "Publish Post" button.
Monday, February 15, 2010
Poop Scoopin' the Chicken Coop
Lyn's chickens are great pals on the farm. They are a documentary on farming all by themselves. And like all free-ranging producers on this farm they have little time to pick up after themselves. Chores define themselves by the inability of o
ur captive farmlings to clean up after themselves.
Chickens were our first farm critters. We've enjoyed their company on this farm for two years. Lyn is the "Chicken Mama" and I help where I can without being in the way. We started our flock in Spring 2008 with 25 day old chicks ordered from
L & M Supply in Detroit Lakes. "Chicken days" each spring is a local ritual. a time to order new and replacement chicks. Going to town to see many kinds of the chicks at L&M Supply is fun. Watching the little kids squeal and jabber about the chicks and ducklings is worth the 32 miles drive.
We have culled numerous roosters and so
me hens since our start in Spring 2008. We wanted a mixed flock of about a dozen hens and one rooster and have that sized flock now. We were gifted some adult birds from my cousin Cookie that first year and worked to incorporate them into the flock. We kept some of each type of chicks we first brought home. Today we have Australorpes (2), two goldstars, five buff orpingtons, one California white, a barred rock, a rooster of unknown decent, probably a California white, but who really knows. Sophie is a mix of types from my cousins gift flock. She lays a pretty blue-green egg and loves to hatch eggs. She recently incubated four eggs and kept them warm this winter for five weeks old before she wanted back into the main flock.
There have been several coops for the chickens. An ice fishing shack used by our friends the Volt's for many years of ice fishing on Lake Bemidji worked well for a year of so. The Summer of 2008 we housed our future laying hens and our first 'meat' chickens or "broilers" in homemade 'tractors' that we skidded around the farmstead yard. This was 'free range' enough for us with our first flock of chickens. This approach all ensured they had plenty of greens and insects as grew and matured.
The layers have graduated from the Ice Fishing Coop to a stall in our garag
e. The 12 foot by 6 foot coop we \erected in the garage is a perfect place to keep chickens in the winter. I cut a little door for them in the garage wall so they can go outside anytime they see fit during daylight hours. The Ice Fishing Coop is insulated but our winters are nasty here in Becker County, Minnesota (latitude 37 degrees, longitude 98 degrees). We didn't feel comfortable leaving the chickens to occasional minus 30 degree weather. We stacked straw bales around the Ice Fishing Coop last winter and skidded the coop to the south side of our garage, but it still frosted their combs a little even with a heat lamp going all night near their roost. The decision to move them inside is better for them and makes clean-up and feeding/watering chores much easier for "Chicken Mama" Lyn.
The current housing for the hens and Swede the rooster involved building an enclosure in the southeast corner of the south stall our of our three car garage/tool shed/nursery/rabbit h
utch/coop. The rabbits and chickens get sunlight through the south windows and we use some multi-spectrum lighting to enhance that light in winter. We store chick starter or layer/grower feed in a metal rack. We found some "recycle" plastic bins that work perfectly for 50 pound sacks of feed and other sacked nutrients, such as diatomaceous earth. Lyn manages to keep straw bales and wood chip bedding dry in this stall area as well. Rabbit pellets are kept in 30 gallon metal garbage cans. We've made places for miscellaneous tools and supplies on shelves, a work bench and a movable cart.
So far everything is working quite well. Instead of occasional temperatures way below zero, the rabbits and chickens live in 20 to 40 degre
e above zero temperatures in the garage-barn stall space. The rabbits are more comfortable even though they weathered outside quite well last winter in the hutch I made and surrounded with stacked straw bales on the south facing side of the garage.
Chickens are amazing in their ability to go scratching about the farmstead in the dead of winter. Usually it takes temperatures of about 20 above to get them fired up, but if the wind is not blowing up their 'skirts' they will take a
stroll almost any sunny day that presents itself. Throw a little scratch outside their coop door and wait for them to stick their heads out, test the air and file out to roam about. Normally, they head right toward the house where bird feeders are located to scratch up seeds the birds drop. If the temperature drops a bit or the wind picks up, they line up and make their way back to the 'barn', always surveying for one last morsel to stash in their crop before entering the coop.
I hope this gives you a look into the learning process we are going though managing chickens on Blue Moo(n) Farm. I'll post more on these wonderful farm critters in the days ahead. Be willing to raise chickens if you get the chance. Our farm would be fairly lackluster and humorless many days if it weren't for the antics of our paranoid flock of chickens. Oh, did I forget to tell you about cleaning out the coop poop.
Well, I'm sure this picture
of Lyn on cleanup day is graphic enough to imagine that chore. It really doesn't take that long and the manure makes great compost. More on that in future posts too. Until then, Keep looking for the green as spring approaches.
ur captive farmlings to clean up after themselves.Chickens were our first farm critters. We've enjoyed their company on this farm for two years. Lyn is the "Chicken Mama" and I help where I can without being in the way. We started our flock in Spring 2008 with 25 day old chicks ordered from
L & M Supply in Detroit Lakes. "Chicken days" each spring is a local ritual. a time to order new and replacement chicks. Going to town to see many kinds of the chicks at L&M Supply is fun. Watching the little kids squeal and jabber about the chicks and ducklings is worth the 32 miles drive.We have culled numerous roosters and so
me hens since our start in Spring 2008. We wanted a mixed flock of about a dozen hens and one rooster and have that sized flock now. We were gifted some adult birds from my cousin Cookie that first year and worked to incorporate them into the flock. We kept some of each type of chicks we first brought home. Today we have Australorpes (2), two goldstars, five buff orpingtons, one California white, a barred rock, a rooster of unknown decent, probably a California white, but who really knows. Sophie is a mix of types from my cousins gift flock. She lays a pretty blue-green egg and loves to hatch eggs. She recently incubated four eggs and kept them warm this winter for five weeks old before she wanted back into the main flock.
There have been several coops for the chickens. An ice fishing shack used by our friends the Volt's for many years of ice fishing on Lake Bemidji worked well for a year of so. The Summer of 2008 we housed our future laying hens and our first 'meat' chickens or "broilers" in homemade 'tractors' that we skidded around the farmstead yard. This was 'free range' enough for us with our first flock of chickens. This approach all ensured they had plenty of greens and insects as grew and matured.
The layers have graduated from the Ice Fishing Coop to a stall in our garag
e. The 12 foot by 6 foot coop we \erected in the garage is a perfect place to keep chickens in the winter. I cut a little door for them in the garage wall so they can go outside anytime they see fit during daylight hours. The Ice Fishing Coop is insulated but our winters are nasty here in Becker County, Minnesota (latitude 37 degrees, longitude 98 degrees). We didn't feel comfortable leaving the chickens to occasional minus 30 degree weather. We stacked straw bales around the Ice Fishing Coop last winter and skidded the coop to the south side of our garage, but it still frosted their combs a little even with a heat lamp going all night near their roost. The decision to move them inside is better for them and makes clean-up and feeding/watering chores much easier for "Chicken Mama" Lyn.The current housing for the hens and Swede the rooster involved building an enclosure in the southeast corner of the south stall our of our three car garage/tool shed/nursery/rabbit h
utch/coop. The rabbits and chickens get sunlight through the south windows and we use some multi-spectrum lighting to enhance that light in winter. We store chick starter or layer/grower feed in a metal rack. We found some "recycle" plastic bins that work perfectly for 50 pound sacks of feed and other sacked nutrients, such as diatomaceous earth. Lyn manages to keep straw bales and wood chip bedding dry in this stall area as well. Rabbit pellets are kept in 30 gallon metal garbage cans. We've made places for miscellaneous tools and supplies on shelves, a work bench and a movable cart.So far everything is working quite well. Instead of occasional temperatures way below zero, the rabbits and chickens live in 20 to 40 degre
e above zero temperatures in the garage-barn stall space. The rabbits are more comfortable even though they weathered outside quite well last winter in the hutch I made and surrounded with stacked straw bales on the south facing side of the garage.Chickens are amazing in their ability to go scratching about the farmstead in the dead of winter. Usually it takes temperatures of about 20 above to get them fired up, but if the wind is not blowing up their 'skirts' they will take a
stroll almost any sunny day that presents itself. Throw a little scratch outside their coop door and wait for them to stick their heads out, test the air and file out to roam about. Normally, they head right toward the house where bird feeders are located to scratch up seeds the birds drop. If the temperature drops a bit or the wind picks up, they line up and make their way back to the 'barn', always surveying for one last morsel to stash in their crop before entering the coop.I hope this gives you a look into the learning process we are going though managing chickens on Blue Moo(n) Farm. I'll post more on these wonderful farm critters in the days ahead. Be willing to raise chickens if you get the chance. Our farm would be fairly lackluster and humorless many days if it weren't for the antics of our paranoid flock of chickens. Oh, did I forget to tell you about cleaning out the coop poop.
Well, I'm sure this picture
of Lyn on cleanup day is graphic enough to imagine that chore. It really doesn't take that long and the manure makes great compost. More on that in future posts too. Until then, Keep looking for the green as spring approaches.
Friday, February 12, 2010
Ice Fishing the Buffalo River Headwaters
When the snow gets more than a foot deep on Tamarac Lake snowshoes and a sled are the only way out. No vehicles are allowed on Tamarac as it is part of the National Wildlife Refuge System. I can take a power auger out there, but even that takes a notch out of the Wilderness Applause Meter when it's cranked up.
So here's the plan. First, don't take too much stuff. From the farm it's about a 10 mile drive to Tamarac and 15 minutes will get you there with time to spare. A decent pair of these new fange-dangled lightweight snowshoes are nice. Mine are made in Canada (www.gvsnowshoes.com) and weigh abouut two pounds and clip on like a dream with standard ski type bindings. I have a ten-foot long pull rope on a medium sized Otter@ sled to haul gear to my fishing spots. I also hook a deer hauling double-shoulder sling harness to the rope so the pull is from my shoulders and not from my hands and arms. I have an old pair of Moon@ bamboo cross-country ski poles so my arms get to help pull. The poles do provide some stability as well. That is the hauling get-up.
For fishing gear I use an Aqua-Vu "VPG"@ graph (www.naturevisioninc.com) to locate fish. The"Vertical Picto-Graph" is a Nature Vision Inc. tool. A black and white readout, sonar type unit that tells me where in the vertical water column objects (fish I hope) are stationed when I drill a hole in the right place. As fish move in and out of the cone of the sonar signal they show up as narrow to wide bands on the depth labelled graph. Wide is nice if you want to catch and clean less fish for dinner. Get it?
My ice auger is a fourstroke lightweight machine made by StrikeMaster@ (http://www.strikemaster.com/power.html) of Big Lake, Minnesota. It runs best on non-oxygenated regular gas and is easy to handle and nice for drilling a bundle of search holes when fish have not been previously located. A tank of gas can last me all season. I carry a collapsible snow shovel (like the avalanche guys use) to clear snow/ice/slush around the hole and for creating a nice level place for my bucket and other gear. Makes a nice snow berm to deflect the wind from your hole and keeps some of the snow from blowing in it as well. I carry a cell phone and a compass with me too, just in case the blizzard hits and I'm sleeping on the bucket. If it gets too windy, I go home. Don't need to be an idiot. This kind of trek-fishing is full monte-outdoors and this is supposed to be fun, kinda.
Two small 24-28" long fairly flexible ice rods and open-faced ice fishing sized reels are all I take on a trip. When fish are biting one rig is all I can handle. I have a medium sized plastic lure box and it's too big. It only takes a few sizes and colors of lures for sunfish or perch if they are biting. It they are not biting I go home and call my friends Gale and Mike and talk about the weather. A container of live bait goes too. I prefer maggots, but in Northwestern Minnesota golden grubs seem the rule, so that's what I can find and what I use. I like to take some small minnow along for jigging for walleyes, but on Tamarac Lake the northern pike are pests and I leave the minnows home for other lakes in this headwaters region.
I use a five-gallon plastic bucket to hold stuff and a small backpack to take extra gear along, like gloves, a facemask for wind protection, a small thermos of tea, an ice scoop to clean out the ice chips from the augered hole, and a couple of lightweight rod holders to keep my rods off the ice and out of my hands all the time. Other stuff is up to you, but it's all weight in the sled. If you're pulling a half mile or so out onto a lake you don't want more stuff unless you want more work out. OK, throw in a bag to hold your fish if you want. If you like to go to lakes where you can use a snow machine or four-wheeler or your car to haul your stuff, bring an easy chair and the kitchen sink if you like.
Oh there's one more item. A stick about one inch in diameter and about six feet long. This is the official GPS of any Minnesota ice fisherman worth his salt. You'll need this stick to erect in the ice hole that produces the daily catch. You place the stick in the whole pointing to the stars and out of the hole about four feet. You'll need plenty of stick showing just in case you don't get out for a while again.
This is your 'marker'. It will freeze in the hole overnight pointing to the Milky Way. It is your so called "GPS" locator for next time. Snow is the culprit. If it snows more than four feet before you get back, don't get back. Stay home. That's too much snow to trek through on snow shoes for ice fishing. Wait until spring thaw in late February or early March takes the snow down to the ice again and your stick will point the way to where you left off.
Tamarac is my ice fishing wilderness experience in Minnesota. There are no cabins on this lake and in winter there is no noise except an occasional raven or round of ice cracking to keep me company. Now and then there is another friend of the silence of it all out there too, but you can count on him or her being quite too. It's used in summer by boaters with outboard motors, but in winter it's all mine and the shushhh of my snowshoes. Sometimes I get to hear a fish flopping in my plastic bag to go home for dinner. Like a good boy scout I go prepared. But, who really cares about catching fish in a place like this.
So here's the plan. First, don't take too much stuff. From the farm it's about a 10 mile drive to Tamarac and 15 minutes will get you there with time to spare. A decent pair of these new fange-dangled lightweight snowshoes are nice. Mine are made in Canada (www.gvsnowshoes.com) and weigh abouut two pounds and clip on like a dream with standard ski type bindings. I have a ten-foot long pull rope on a medium sized Otter@ sled to haul gear to my fishing spots. I also hook a deer hauling double-shoulder sling harness to the rope so the pull is from my shoulders and not from my hands and arms. I have an old pair of Moon@ bamboo cross-country ski poles so my arms get to help pull. The poles do provide some stability as well. That is the hauling get-up.
For fishing gear I use an Aqua-Vu "VPG"@ graph (www.naturevisioninc.com) to locate fish. The"Vertical Picto-Graph" is a Nature Vision Inc. tool. A black and white readout, sonar type unit that tells me where in the vertical water column objects (fish I hope) are stationed when I drill a hole in the right place. As fish move in and out of the cone of the sonar signal they show up as narrow to wide bands on the depth labelled graph. Wide is nice if you want to catch and clean less fish for dinner. Get it?
My ice auger is a fourstroke lightweight machine made by StrikeMaster@ (http://www.strikemaster.com/power.html) of Big Lake, Minnesota. It runs best on non-oxygenated regular gas and is easy to handle and nice for drilling a bundle of search holes when fish have not been previously located. A tank of gas can last me all season. I carry a collapsible snow shovel (like the avalanche guys use) to clear snow/ice/slush around the hole and for creating a nice level place for my bucket and other gear. Makes a nice snow berm to deflect the wind from your hole and keeps some of the snow from blowing in it as well. I carry a cell phone and a compass with me too, just in case the blizzard hits and I'm sleeping on the bucket. If it gets too windy, I go home. Don't need to be an idiot. This kind of trek-fishing is full monte-outdoors and this is supposed to be fun, kinda.
Two small 24-28" long fairly flexible ice rods and open-faced ice fishing sized reels are all I take on a trip. When fish are biting one rig is all I can handle. I have a medium sized plastic lure box and it's too big. It only takes a few sizes and colors of lures for sunfish or perch if they are biting. It they are not biting I go home and call my friends Gale and Mike and talk about the weather. A container of live bait goes too. I prefer maggots, but in Northwestern Minnesota golden grubs seem the rule, so that's what I can find and what I use. I like to take some small minnow along for jigging for walleyes, but on Tamarac Lake the northern pike are pests and I leave the minnows home for other lakes in this headwaters region.
I use a five-gallon plastic bucket to hold stuff and a small backpack to take extra gear along, like gloves, a facemask for wind protection, a small thermos of tea, an ice scoop to clean out the ice chips from the augered hole, and a couple of lightweight rod holders to keep my rods off the ice and out of my hands all the time. Other stuff is up to you, but it's all weight in the sled. If you're pulling a half mile or so out onto a lake you don't want more stuff unless you want more work out. OK, throw in a bag to hold your fish if you want. If you like to go to lakes where you can use a snow machine or four-wheeler or your car to haul your stuff, bring an easy chair and the kitchen sink if you like.
Oh there's one more item. A stick about one inch in diameter and about six feet long. This is the official GPS of any Minnesota ice fisherman worth his salt. You'll need this stick to erect in the ice hole that produces the daily catch. You place the stick in the whole pointing to the stars and out of the hole about four feet. You'll need plenty of stick showing just in case you don't get out for a while again.
This is your 'marker'. It will freeze in the hole overnight pointing to the Milky Way. It is your so called "GPS" locator for next time. Snow is the culprit. If it snows more than four feet before you get back, don't get back. Stay home. That's too much snow to trek through on snow shoes for ice fishing. Wait until spring thaw in late February or early March takes the snow down to the ice again and your stick will point the way to where you left off.Tamarac is my ice fishing wilderness experience in Minnesota. There are no cabins on this lake and in winter there is no noise except an occasional raven or round of ice cracking to keep me company. Now and then there is another friend of the silence of it all out there too, but you can count on him or her being quite too. It's used in summer by boaters with outboard motors, but in winter it's all mine and the shushhh of my snowshoes. Sometimes I get to hear a fish flopping in my plastic bag to go home for dinner. Like a good boy scout I go prepared. But, who really cares about catching fish in a place like this.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)