"Mowing"

Working hard at the farm.

Friday

Friday was farm day this week, as the boys were too sick to go on Wednesday. There were record-high 85 degree temperatures yesterday, so we had to stop on the way out for sunscreen. Next week there will be a knapsack for water in addition to the baby carrier, which did well in a pinch to hold sunscreen, cell phone and discarded sunglasses.

We walked over the dam and up the hill and went down the path past the old dairy barn into the woods. Wildflowers were everywhere. Several different kinds of violets, including one that was the palest lavender with a hot pink stamen for each of the five melon-shaped petals. Also buttercups and dandelions (usually I write about buttercups in May!), but the jack-in-the-pulpit hasn't yet bloomed. (I think I also need to bring my camera in the knapsack, although I'm worried I won't be as in the moment if I do...)

Down through the woods and over two little brooks and through to the banks of the Goose. That sweet baby grass is popping up all over, and when we emerged from the woods there were two mama cows and their calves nibbling near the path by the first pole vertical jump. G was delighted, clapping his hands (a relatively new trick) in the carrier and pointing with glee, "Caaa, caaah!" (H: "Yes, Georgie, cows! You're right Georgie!")

We walked down the bank (H all by himself) and out on to the sandbar and H used his walking stick to be an elephant, splashing us with his trunk. He had asked to shed his pants on the walk up the hill so he was free and happy in his underwear and muck boots. G was a little more hesitant, but couldn't resist getting in on the act when H started throwing rocks into the creek. Ker-plunk! I turned around and looked back and both boys were sitting in the creek, March or not.

It was hot walking back through the field to the house. You can see from the photos that G was not so happy about the heat, nor about being required to wear his hat. Picnic on the porch and then the added treat of meeting our new 8-day-old cousin William (-with-more-hair-than-George). Boys slept all the way home. Such a nice farm day.

Flying horses

In November, I had to put my horse Joshua down. I'll probably write more here about him later, as he was dignified and loving and just a super horse for me for a decade of my life. He also made me very proud in the end; in his final moments he was still giving.

My little Henry is dealing with Josh's death also, and we talk often about Josh's body versus Josh's soul and where exactly he is, especially when we pass the un-miss-able dirt mound in the field on our weekly walks at the farm. Here's a conversation we had last week.

H: How do you get to the big barn in the sky, Mama?

Me: Well...

H: Because maybe Joshua could come back to visit.

Me: Honey, Joshua's gone. Joshua died.

H: Like the bird who fell off the roof?

Me: Yes, exactly like that. And we buried his body, but his soul went up...

H: To the big barn in the sky?

Me: Yes.

H: Did he fly there?

Me: Well...

H: Because that's silly. If horses have wings then you'd have to hitch them down to ride on their backs.

Me: That *would* be silly.

H: So you have to get a new horse... and I want a pony!

So maybe this just-three-year-old doesn't exactly understand the concept of death, and how do you even explain? Just when you think it's about to get too real, the practical toddler mind takes over. And at least he's focusing on the positive: we remember those we've lost, life is to be celebrated and can be silly and fun, and "I want a pony". Noble thoughts all. I'm enjoying watching him grow so much.

Cross-country skis

So, getting back in the swing of things... This winter our area has gotten more snow than it has since the 1890's. This is all old news by now, but I thought I'd share a couple of photos of one of the activities we enjoyed during the snow.

We've had our cross-country skis for a few years, but only managed to use them a couple of times at the farm since our town is pretty good about plowing the roads. All that changed during this series of snows. The top photo shows my set-up with the baby. We are on our street during the initial snowfall-- this was before things got really bad and deep. Skiing on the street was pretty easy; the roads are relatively flat and I think the falling snow was distracting Baby H enough that he wasn't doing too much wiggling. A nice leisurely ski with Brian and only a few minor hiccups (like the house where they got a little snowblower-happy).
Fast-forward a week. With the same set-up, I took Baby H out into the "wilds" of Loudoun County, skiing with my friends Karen and Helen at a farm near Karen's house. This was probably more fun, but definitely much harder. First off, there were hills. When I would settle into chair pose to navigate down a slight incline, the baby would throw himself forward (see below--this was during one of our re-mounting adventures) or to the side, asserting his independence, and it was really hard to stay balanced. I think we fell three or four times. It was hard to get back up because without the skis, my legs sunk through the snow, sometimes up to the hip where snow had drifted. But Helen and Karen were troupers and pulled me out of more than one drift. The baby was a sport too, really, and only cried once. I think he was just taking it all in.

All in all, I'm really glad we got out there despite our limitations (small child, less-than-usually-coordinated mama). And it makes a great story to tell Henry someday about the Great Snow of 2010.

Happy New Year

Listen to your life. See it for the fathomless mystery that it is. In the boredom and pain of it no less than in the excitement and gladness: touch, taste, smell your way to the holy and hidden heart of it because in the last analysis all moments are key moments, and life itself is grace. -- Frederick Buechner, from Now and Then (Oh how I love Frederick Buechner!)

Happy New Year. The photos are from a trip to the farm just before Christmas. I love them. It is still very cold here, and the remnants of this storm still cover our lawn. The wind is bitter. But the expanses of white feel very apt for the fresh start that is the new year. Clean and uncluttered. Ready for more moments of fathomless mystery.

Bald eagle day

I was going to call this post "Bluebird Day", but I think it's early yet for those brilliant little ones. Birds we did see yesterday at the farm:

• A juvenile bald eagle on the "eagle tree" in the hill field
• Full-grown bald eagle on the same tree earlier in the morning
• A pair of loons. The male stood on the dock with his wings held up as if to give his mate some privacy while she took her morning dip in the pond
• Many many jenny wrens with their cheerful upward tails (many many jennies!)
  
• The ubiquitous Canada geese
• A hawk (probably a broad-winged hawk?) carrying bits of lunch
• A skittish robin
  
• A pair of rock pigeons nesting in the machine shed

Unfortunately, I didn't get photos of any of the birds, but it was a storybook day with a wide blue sky and green green fields of pretty babies washed clean by yesterday's rain bath. Cattle are much easier to photograph than birds.
And although no photograph can capture the all 'round huge spinning beauty of the great wide open on such a beautiful spring day, the photo above does a poor job of trying. My baby was awake and alert for our entire walk yesterday, his eyes wide and searching from his stroller. I think maybe he'll be a country mouse like his mama. I hope so.

Back to the farm

Yesterday. It was a little cold and windy.

It was windy today

And a cold blue-grey. Gusts up to fifty miles per hour knocked over fences and flower pots. Branches littered the dirt roads. Almost like God was sweeping the earth clean of dead wood in preparation for the new year. Ready for a new start.

Hazy lazy days

So summer's almost over, and I can tell partly because the pastures have been burned to a crisp by the August sun. We did get some rain this week, the remnants of a tropical storm, so hopefully everything will green up again for a bit.

Also signalling the end of summer: A couple of months ago all the weed-flowers in the fields were yellow and white and then last month, some were orange. Now almost all of them are blue and purple. Fall is coming. Hopefully I'll have some more crafty content soon, when I'm spending more time indoors. Happy Labor Day!

Rainy summer afternoon

Beautiful, really. Look how saturated those colors are. The rain was still coming down when I took this.

The fifth of July

Today was a quiet day at the farm, no explosions in the sky (even though the stands in town yelled, "HALF OFF TODAY!"). Today the beauty was in the details. On land:
And "at sea":

I would show you a photo of the 82 mosquito bites on my left calf, which bites were also a detail of my day, but I don't think they're a particularly beautiful detail! I hope everyone enjoyed a great fourth.

Up in the tree

Friday the thirteenth is probably not the best day to be climbing a ladder, but it's time to pick the sour cherries so up the ladder I went. The cherries are another beautiful thing about summer on the farm. The sour cherry tree seems tiny when you look at it from the ground, and indeed much of it was cut away last fall because it was rotting. But once you climb up between the limbs, there are cherries upon cherries. Too many to pick, and most of the reddest and juiciest ones too high for anyone but the birds to reach.

In fact, the birds squawked and fought while I picked, eager for me to go inside to the pitting machine so they could continue their feast. This pitcher represents about 25 minutes of picking, enough for two sour cherry pies. My grandmother thinks that this might be one of the last years for this tree, as cherry trees only live so long before they give out. I told her she'd better plant another tree right quick! The pies she makes from these cherries have been a part of my summer equation for almost as long as I can remember. Her recipe is simple (and probably originally came from the back of some long-ago box of tapioca), but oh-so-delicious with fruit you've picked yourself.

Granna's Sour Cherry Pie

• 4 cups sour cherries
• 2 2/3 Tablespoons quick-cooking tapioca
• 1 1/3 cups sugar
• 2 Tablespoons kirsch
• Double pie crust
• 1 egg white, beaten
• 1 - 2 Tablespoons cold butter

Preheat oven to 450 degrees.

• Mix cherries, tapioca, sugar and kirsch together in a large bowl. Let stand 15 minutes.
• Pierce bottom pie crust and brush with beaten egg white. Bake for five minutes to set.
• Pour cherry mixture into pie crust and dot with butter.
• Affix top crust; vent.

Bake 10 minutes at 450 degrees and then turn heat back to 350; bake 40 minutes more. This is a very juicy pie. It bakes best on a jelly roll pan covered in foil. For best results, let stand until almost room temperature before serving with vanilla ice cream. Yum!

The berries are coming, the berries are coming! And finally, hay.

Blueberries. This is the third year that these bushes have been at the farm, and each year they make me so excited, even though the three bushes will probably only yield a couple of pints of berries that will all end up on my grandfather's morning cereal. They're just so stunning, and the few berries that will make it into my mouth will be warm from the sun and so sweet.
And raspberries. These bushes produce even fewer berries over the season, and most of these are eaten without a thought by the barn manager. In fact, I had to call my grandmother this afternoon to remind her to go and pick the ripe ones early in the morning tomorrow before the barn manager arrives. I ate one of these today (shh!), and its flavor was tart and bright.

There are also strawberry plants at the farm, left over from a long-gone strawberry pot (imagine!) that I planted five years ago. They spilled out of the pot and took up permanent residence on the south side of the little house. These have been producing ripe fruit for about a month, but they have to be harvested a little before they're ripe or the bunnies and other rodents take little nibbles out of the sides of each berry and the ants polish the wounded berries off. I did get a good-sized handful of very sweet berries earlier this week. The taste of summer.
And finally, we have hay! So exciting to see those big golden rolls dotting the landscape (and to ride on the green lawn-like fields they leave behind).

Coyote and the Tall Grass Buffet*

We've been watching for coyotes for several weeks now, ever since a rainy ride with my mom was cut short by a mama coyote barking and howling and following us down the mountain. Then last week as I was leaving, a huge specimen cut across the driveway right in front of me all catch-me-if-you-can. This isn't my photo (in fact it's a photo of a coyote in California), but this is how they look when they're slinking around, bouncy with little shocks in their feet. Taller than the dog, and faster. I'm not sure what they would do to me and the horse, but I know what they'd try to do to the dog, so I'm trying to stay clear.

The grass at the farm is very high now, so high that the pup is lost in a field, only visible as that rustling up ahead. Coyotes can get lost in this grass, too, invisible until you spot them and can't look away. Yesterday I rode alone in the only field where cows aren't allowed. We call it the hay field for obvious reasons. Josh and I made a little river in the grass-scape, parting the stalks, and Grady wove a smaller creek beside and around us. Josh loves this season, of the grass buffet, when he can bend over every few strides and strip the grasses of their crunchy heads in the middle of his workout. My friend Gillian always says it would be like walking into a field of french fries, growing wild. Taking all that pollen head on, the dog kept sneezing and scaring the horse, but we were making our way.

In the far corner of the field I saw something soft and brown rustle and stand up stock-still, looking our way. The whole ride I was thinking "coyote, coyote, coyote?" in time with my posting trot, but no, this was a fresh baby deer (what we call a "Bambi"), looking at us with huge ears and wet eyes. No bigger than a coyote. In a moment the deer turned and leap, leap, leapt over the coop at the end of the field and into the next one (the "hill field"), trailing her white tail behind her.

I think all three of us smiled. Grady ran and Joshua picked up on the dog's energy and I let him go, a steady gallop around the end and down the other long side of the field. Happy. Not a coyote but a baby deer.

On the walk back to the barn I saw my first red-winged blackbird of the year. And those are the two crystalline moments from yesterday. Today it's raining, but I hope to get outside this afternoon. I also promise there'll be some crafty content soon!


*Is it just me or does that title sound like it should be a Tony Hillerman novel? Hi, Mom.

What do May showers bring?

This was the scene at the farm yesterday, all bluster and wet.
Down by the water, all of the docks were submerged, along with these plants that are usually at least four feet up the bank. Of course the dog went swimming anyway.
The bottomland behind the house flooded, too. The cows moved upland. And finally, some Mother's Day pillowcases that I sent to my mom via my dad, who was up visiting for the weekend. There's lots of time to sew with so much rain outside. These are made from the softest off-white cotton with tiny red randomly-scattered dots. I got the fabric from superbuzzy sometime late last year. The edging was machine-executed but hand-guided (ie: my machine doesn't do scallops so there was a lot of needle-down fabric turning).

We're spending today drying out and warming up. It'll be 70 degrees here this afternoon. That feels more like May!

Rainy day birds

First things first: Happy Birthday to my brother Alex! I can't believe you're 25--hope you have a great day.

It's rainy rainy here today, which can make for some beautiful photos of flowers with the macro lens. This is an iris that my cousin Sara gave me for transplant early this spring. It seems content in my front yard, and we should have seven or eight blooms by early next week.

This morning's ride was wet and not without a certain amount of "wind up my tail" bluster on the horse's part. A group of birds has decided to call the riding ring home, and they kept flying up in Joshua's face just as we'd canter around a circle, causing much distress. Between calls of "go git 'im" to the dog, who dutifully zigged and zagged across the bluestone, rushing the birds away, we managed to get some pretty good ring work in.

At first I thought the birds were much-displaced sandpipers, since their bodies were shaped that way, but after some research on the excellent whatbird.com, I've determined that they were killdeers. A "season" of killdeers (be sure to listen to the recorded call). I love naturalist terminology, especially the names for groups of animals or babies. The "interesting facts" on the killdeer were what really made me sure that's what these birds were. To wit:

Interesting Facts
(Subtitled: I'm such a geek)
--Killdeer exhibit a clever “broken wing display” in which they appear to be struggling with a broken wing while all the while leading the predator away from their babies. Once their young are out of danger they “recover’ and fly off. (This season of killdeers was doing this like crazy. They'd bend down and extend a wing and their tails, all fluffed out, showing their rust-colored underfeathers, and then they'd explode upwards and away when challenged.)

--Although technically shorebirds, they are unusual in this group because they often nest and live far from water.

--They are ground-nesting birds that are famous for hiding their nests right out in the open. They really use no nesting materials and rely on distraction displays to protect their offspring. (When I first got up to the ring I stepped carefully, looking for any obvious nesting going on, but after I finished riding I found the nest in the crook of the big black coop jump that Brian made me for my 25th birthday). And so we come full circle. Here's hoping that the weekend will be a little less rainy.

Build me up, Buttercup

It's buttercup season! I love this part of the spring, generally between the first and second mowings (or the second and third), when the buttercups spring up everywhere. They grow much taller in the country than they do in the city, and there are thousands and thousands in each field.

In the fields where the cows overwintered but where there isn't any livestock now, there are also hundreds of small clumps of darker green grass in amongst the regular field grass. These clumps are taller and lusher than the rest of the grass, and tend to occur in spots where cows left their piles of "fertilizer" during the winter. Joshua the horse doesn't like to step on these clumps of grass. When he was a younger horse, I could get him to jump them as sure as if they were little mini jumps left there in the field. Now that he's an old man, he usually just sidesteps them at the last moment, making for a very bumpy and exciting ride through fields in the spring.

Beautiful day today, and a beautiful ride through the field on the left at the end of the driveway. The one with the huge rock that serves as quite a nice mounting block should you fall off galloping around the turn.

Weekend photo update

Birthday cake: coconut with lemon curd filling, coconut cream cheese frosting. Happy Birthday Brian! The easement: A long hike up. I love the contrast between the black tree trunks and telephone poles and the new spring green leaves and grass. We end up galloping up and down this cleared-out space, back and forth sometimes, when we foxhunt in this territory.

... And Spring and the electric company

Last week Shari wrote about her scattered thoughts being like a grassy field scattered with cows. This week I feel the same way. Only my field of cow-thoughts feels stalked by the turkey vultures that always hang around during the spring calving season. Too much on my mind. Including this beautiful dark and wet spring and yes, the electric company. Sigh. I hope to be back later today with a big crafting update, as I have been busy, just not blogging.

Until then, I love how the forsythia above actually do coordinate with the electric company's yellow ID numbers on the springy-wet grey pole. Don't forsythia always seem to just explode in the spring from nothing? They get cut down so low and twiggy and then surprise! One day they're back full-force. So suddenly that this pair of plants always surprises the horses terribly, even though they go by this spot at least once a day. Just walking along, and then spook! What is that new thing?

And below, the view from atop.
Oh, and remember the new speed limit sign from last week? Looks like that may have been stolen from another location and put on the dirt road by a neighbor. What did that last, a week and a half? I guess people will go back to going at least 35. Again, le sigh.

25 mph

There's a new speed limit sign on the dirt road. I just noticed it last Friday. I think it's the first speed limit sign on this road at all. It will definitely make things easier if people actually obey it. One of the worst offenders is the man who delivers the mail. He zips along this road trailed by a huge cloud of dust each afternoon. Repeated calls to the county are ineffective.

This little sign might make our trot sets easier, too. A speeding pickup truck can be a powerful distraction to a fresh horse. Years ago, our friend George would yell and make wild hand motions trying to get motorists to slow down on this stretch of road. Usually the drivers would just wave back and smile, misunderstanding, thinking that we were wishing them a pleasant day. But one day a man got the gist of George's not-so-subtle message and gave him the finger, started to speed up. George was so angry he raced that man's car on horseback, whipping his little thoroughbred down the verge as the man sped down the road. Kept up with him, too. But it didn't make any difference, and boy was his wife (the little thoroughbred's other trainer) angry when he trotted back to our little group.

Maybe this sign will make a difference, but probably not. Too bad most of the worst offenders are driving in the opposite direction and won't see the sign. My guess is that the county is just getting tired of re-grading this stretch of road, and they're hoping that slower driving will mean less braking and therefore less washboarding. We'll see.