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.