Did you feel it?

Out the window at the O'Hara Corner Farm is not very exciting this morning:

Though it does help when you take a glance at the thermometer, and realize that it is above freezing for the first time in weeks:

Did you feel what though? The earthquake, a 3.8 which occurred at 7:55 AM this morning according to the U.S. Geological Survey with an epicenter in th central Indiana. I evidentally had dozed off while watching the news this morning . . . the next thing I know Checkers the dog is going crazy, and the it feels like there was a really loud crash of vibrating thunder or a big tree fell down nearby, or a car went off the road and hit then house. After a quick check out the window, I concluded that none of the above had occurred. Maybe I was imagining things, but that would mean that Checkers and I were imagining things together. Not highly likely . . .


So as I'm puttering around this morning, with the news still on, the guy on the news is talking about how they've gotten all these phone calls about an earthquake. Now I know that Checkers and I are not crazy. I'm surprised our cats weren't yowling too. Pumpkin, our large, elderly calico cat is known for her prediction of the weather, i.e. if a a big storm is coming she will sit halfways down the stairs and yowl. We think she can feel the change in barometric pressure. I would have thought an earthquake was enough to bring out her inner craziness,  but evidentally she was in the throes of her hours long morning nap.


So now after a bit of morning craziness, we are back into a wet, warmer winter day. Grocery shopping, putting a new zipper in my outdoor work coat, and general household chores. Or if you're the chickens, a good day to get outside, an scrounge around for grass, weeds, and undigested corn out of cow patties (I know ... EWWW!!!).

Frosty Pines

Another beautiful morning on the farm. Cool and frosty, with little crystals all over everything. All of our conifers really seemed to catch my eye, from the spruce in the side yard, to our big stand of pines in the back, and the little volunteer cedar beside the house. I never quit being amazed at the beauty and structure in this wonderful world.

And how lucky are we as humans that we are given the ability to appreciate it all. I can't say the same about the calves, who were a lot more interested in their breakfast this morning.

Waiting . . .

We're through the major holidays now. Thanksgiving and Christmas have come and gone; now just waiting on the new year. Everything outside is cold and still, as if all is waiting for the turn of the calendar:

I look out the window and see our maple trees, bare, stark against the gray winter sky. And suddenly I'm thinking that the end of Februrary, sugarin' season, is only a few short weeks away. Just a few short weeks until there will be white buckets in this view:

Until then, we'll wait and enjoy the quiet of early winter, when evening to-do lists are short, and there's a good chance that there's some soup or broth  simmering on the stove.

And maintain all of our critters, taking care that the cats don't fall in to the stock tank when they're getting their morning drink:

Drizzle, Drizzle

We woke today to a freezing drizzle and cold gray skies. The outdoor critters are none too interested in being outside. The calves peer out from the doorway of the shed when I come out to feed them breakfast, but can only be coaxed out for the 30 seconds it takes to greet me at the gate and hop, skip, jump to the feed trough. The chickens have spent no more than a few minutes in the last few days outside, but the turkeys are a bit more intrepid. Or else Thomas and Essie feel required to make sure that drama queen Ginny doesn't get lost outside in the snow by herself.

Sparkles, Critters, and other nonsense

This is actually yesterday's post. I was having trouble getting photos to upload, so here goes.


One of the few cool things about it being this cold out (1 degree at 8 AM), is that it makes for a really beautiful frost that covers everything in fine sparkly crystals that look like diamonds in the sunlight.

If you can't tell, I'm a little obsessed with up close nature photos. Especially stuff that holds still. And ice crystals are so cool!


I finally remembered to take my camera out when I fed the cats in the morning. Here's your opportunity to meet Henry and the new kitten, (who now has a name because she has stayed almost a week), Sally. As they seem to have an aversion to looking directly at me when I have a camera in hand . . . all I got was a picture of them eating:

Henry on the left and Sally on the right (this photo does not do justice to the size difference, Henry is at least twice as big as Sally).


And lastly, the nonsense . . . on Saturday, we thought our indoor cat Kiddo was just really enjoying posing so nicely with the nativity scene under the Christmas tree:

But then we noticed that Checkers was also completely obessed with the Christmas tree as well, i.e. constantly circling it, trying to climb up in it etc. It took us a while to draw the line between the mouse chasing that had obviously went on in the kitchen the night before and all this attention bestowed upon the Christmas tree. So evidentally a mouse had at one time been in the tree, though with the lights on and using a flashlight, Ryan couldn't locate the critter.


Later on, we were sitting on the couch eating a snack, and Ryan says look! There at the end of one of the Christmas tree branches, a few feet above the ground, a mouse, sniff, sniff, sniffing . . . trying to figure out how to get from this tree to a nice safe place under the couch, while avoiding the crazy meat hungry predators that inhabit this territory. It gets some help from Ryan, who runs over and knocks the critter and a couple of bulbs off the tree . . . but lucky for the mouse, none of the "fierce" critters were fast enough to catch it. So the mouse lives to see another piece of cheese. And all of our pets are obessed with the fact that there is still an edible rodent somewhere in our living space.

If you feed them . . . part 2

As you can see, outdoor conditions have not changed much. Still snowy. Still 10 degrees below normal December temperatures. It has been winter now for a lot longer than the calendar would indicate.


If you feed them . . . they will stay. So the new outdoor kitten is still here. She was curled up with Henry on the old blanket in the hay shed when I went out to do chores this morning. I think the kitten thinks Henry is her mom, and so will do anything he does.

I have never seen this with cats before, but if Henry wasn't around, she would have nothing to do with us. As soon as Henry was there with her, and she saw Henry being petted and purring, she started purring and wanting to be petted. Same thing this morning. She tried to run away when I first went into the shed, but as soon as she saw Henry being petted while he was eating, she came over and pushed Henry out of the way to eat and be petted. So cute and hilarious! So I picked her up and petted her, and she was purring. Hopefully it will be easy to tame her, with such a good kitty mentor hanging around!

If you feed them . . .

They will come! Kinda of like "If you build it, they will come." from that old baseball movie. Around the farm we somewhat intentionally provide feed for our local wild critters with our trees, bushes, and bird feeding station. Of course when I want to take a photo of the lively group of critters using the bird feeder, and surrounding plants they magically vanish as if they actually noticed that the curtain was pulled back from the window. So instead I got a photo of these two lovelys in our spruce tree (look hard at the middle of the photo, 2 dark spots at end of branches near fence):

But birds are not the only thing that has showed up, and really we should have known that given enough time this would happen. If you remember from past postings, a lovely tiger tom cat adopted us in September, and we have been feeding him, and letting him eat all of our rodents. Now that it is winter, it is his habit to meet me at the front door in the morning as I go to do chores, and remind me that he needs fed.


Well this morning, he met Ryan as he was leaving for work. So Ryan bent down to pet him, which quieted his meowing. The only thing is something was still meowing. So in comes Ryan for a flashlight, and follows the plaintive little voice. He ends up finding a little black and white runt of a half grown kitten on the kitchen porch. Which he brings around to show me, its cute little face looking all disgruntled and in need of love. Ryan loosens his grip, and the little one jumps down. I'm hoping he doesn't run and get up in the warm truck engine, eek!

Later I go out to do chores, and there isn't just one cat waiting for me to bring food out to it in the hay barn. So I bring an extra bowl, because I am the biggest softie there is. Trying not to think about how outdoor, feral cats are the bane of song birds everywhere, even those at my bird feeder.

Always the constant internal conflict between animal lover, conservationist, and farmer.

Hope is the thing with feathers . . .

If I weighed just a couple of ounces . . . I'm not sure I'd be able to handle this weather as gracefully as these little guys hanging out in the bushes do. But then I remember what it's like to pluck a chicken for dinner, and realize that if I had that much warmth protection per square inch, I would probably be ok too.


And amusingly enough, the day after the I whine about no birds at the bird feeder . . . look what shows up:

A friendly neighborhood downy woodpecker. Frozen suet must not be too bad.

Just Another Day

Not much exciting going on around here. Just another day on the farm. T-Bone is participating in one of his favorite sports . . . chewing on the wood that the stock tank box and his shed are made out of:

We put out birdseed and suet at our bird feeding station over a week ago, but I have yet to see the birds flocking about it like they usually do. Maybe we need some fresh bird seed; I think ours is a couple of years old. But how do birds find out about a bird feeding station anyways? Do they smell it? Or does one just stumble upon it and then tell all of their friends? As long as the seed isn't moldy or rotten, why would it matter if it's fresh? Nutritional value?


Waiting for lovely feathered friends to brighten our window scene:

Still Frightful!

Winter is still here with a vengeance. Cold, snow, wind. We came home from church yesterday, and it looked like this outside the window:

Out our west kitchen window, you should be able to see our neighbor's farm, but instead it looked like this:

So we stayed inside, made ham & beans with corn bread for supper, and took a nap. Though Checkers looked a whole lot cuter that we did taking her nap:

Shadow Play

With the sun shining so brightly it makes for some neat shadows on the snow this afternoon. One of my favorite things about snow is seeing all the shades of blue, gray, and purple that the shadows make on it.

And while hackberry trees don't really rank super high on the list of being stately trees with graceful silhouettes, I think that they do make a pretty neat picture in the afternoon sun on the snow.

And their overabundance of wildlife attracting berries every other year(2010 being one of those years), make O'Hara's Corner Farm the place to hit up this winter if you're a berry eating bird, or squirrel, and I hate to say raccoon and opossum. 

A Certain Kind of Light

The other day, I realized that part of the variety I could add to my photos out the window is to take them at different times of day. I'm remembering to grab my camera more and more, instead of just thinking, "Oh, that would make a pretty picture."

One of my favorite lights to try to capture is that of late afternoon, when on a sunny day things seem to glow and shine a little bit:

Whether at home or some place a little farther away:

At at that certain slant of light, things seem a little bit more than ordinary. Like time could stand still for a little while, and one could get lost in it; then suddenly the light changes, and it's moved to sunset. The view isn't golden anymore.

While things at the farm aren't particularly golden this morning, it is at least a bit warmer than yesterday. I think it was more like 13 or 14 instead of 3 this morning. The calves were outside waiting for their breakfast, and Henry the tomcat was anxiously, loudly waiting at the garage door for his daily bowl of cat food.


Maybe if it stays sunny, a walk to the woods is order. Gotta enjoy the sun while I can. Happy Thursday!

Brought to you courtesy of . . .

Another beautiful sunrise courtesy of our Wondrous Creator, via my humble, humble camera.


Makes up for what my thermometer said this morning (ignore the clock, I can't get it set to the correct time. It was actually about 7:08 AM when I took the photo this morning):

Winter is here with vengeance today. The snow has cleared out, but without the clouds it is just plain cold!

Happy Wednesday!

Variety

It has been suggested that I not limit myself to the view from just one window in our house, when we have thirteen options! So here is one, more towards the east, out our laundry room window (will have to work on the screen situation, sorry!):

A view of our building in a box hay shed, 6' x 6' poultry shed, O'Hara garden shed, and our various junk. Imagine that, a farm that has junk . . .

Out this way, you can see the other part of our property:

A sleeping garden, the clothesline, empty meat turkey pen (occupants now in the freezer), grape arbor, compost pile, straw-covered strawberry bed . . . this part of the property feels pretty neglected this time of year. We don't spend a lot of time with our plants in the winter, and through experimentation, I found that clothes don't dry very well outside below about 45 degrees, so the clothesline just hangs out with itself until spring.

Mostly this time of year, its just making sure that all our outside critters have enough food, water, and dry bedding to stay warm and maintain enough energy to grow or lay eggs as is their job. Much to my chagrin, we found out that the calves drink more water when its cold, in order to process more food to help stay warm . . . more watering hauling for us . . . just part of the bargain huh?

And inside, we eat warm food, wrap up in blankets and wear fleece and flannel.  Craft, work on house projects, play games, and cuddle.  Enjoying down time that doesn't exist during the busy spring, summer, and fall.

So even if the calendar says its still 14 days until winter, I'm going to go ahead and welcome in the season a little early. Happy winter!

When the weather outside if frightful . . .

As you can see, the lake effect snow fairy has visited our house. It's snowing, and blowing, and cold, cold, cold. 11 degrees when I checked the thermometer about 7:30 AM this morning. When I went out to do chores, the calves could barely be convinced to come outside to see if it was me bringing them breakfast that was making all the noise.

So here on the farm, it will be a day to get down the Christmas decorations, get the tree ready that we  got this weekend:

And do some bread baking, online Christmas shopping, and staying inside!

Never a dull day

Quite frankly, a lot of these "picture window" views will probably look boringly (is that a word?) the same, at least during the winter when there's no snow. Our yard can be rather dismal place in the dark, cold days of winter. That is until you start observing the little things.

Some how the snow has managed to disappate; it doesn't really seem like it has been warm enough for it to melt. Anyways, its gone now. The critters evidentally developed cabin fever after 2 days inside, because today they are all over the pasture foraging and just hanging out.

 

If you look closely, you can see the 2 large black spots in the far background of the photo. That is Hamburger and T-Bone on their way out to the North end of the pasture. My camera is kinda old school, and leaves much to desire in the zoom department, so black dots instead of actual cow butts is what you get. 

Everybody else was being less than photogenic, hiding behind the chicken house. The new trick for the day, both Ginny, the drama queen turkey, and our fabulous outdoor cat Henry have discovered that they can jump up on the stock tank box and get themselves a drink. Which is good for Henry because we don't have a heated water pan for him, but with Ginny, makes me a little nervous. It is way too easy for her to see how she could just flap her wings a little and be over that fence. Didn't have my camera with me when Ginny was on the box, but here's Henry:

Though I didn't catch him drinking (need to be quicker with my camera). And had attracted the attention of Herschel who was wondering, as usual, why I have any right to be near his barnyard. But that's a story for another day.

Happy Friday!!!!

"The ground's still white, kids."

While I know that our livestock don't actually speak English, and communicate only in their animal speak way, I often wonder if their minds actually framed words in the way we understand what they would say.

When I took this first photo this morning, the three turkeys were the only ones intrepid enough to brave the outdoors this morning. I can imagine their report back inside the chicken house: " The ground's still white, kids. And forget about checking out the fresh straw next door, you'll just get your feet wet and poopy." After a short walk around the barnyard, the two older turkeys, Thomas and Essy, went back inside; they've done this rodeo before.

Leaving Ginny, who apparently suffers separation anxiety, to wander the cold, white fluff by herself, which leads to frantic, ear-splitting shrieks as she discovers that everybody went back inside without her. I used to think that she did this because she was shook up from being separated from her brothers. But its been almost 3 weeks since she was separated which is a long time in poultry understanding; I'm beginning to think she's just a bit of a drama queen. Lucky for you I don't have a good way to record her "song", but listening to her on your computer wouldn't do her justice. So anyways.

All the other first timers don't seem real excited to get out and cavort around in the stuff. Hamburger and T-Bone are pretty well snuggled down. When they hear me out taking pictures, Hamburger peers around the edge of the door way as if to say "Are you serious?"

And then moseys his way out to get a drink out of the super-insulated stock tank (Just had to slip a photo of Ryan's fine handiwork in here.)

And while it's not his first rodeo either, Herschel the rooster decides he'd much rather rule the barnyard from the turkey roost looking out the window. "Somebody's got to keep an eye on the action while all these hooligans are sitting around laying eggs and eating corn!"

And then there's me in my snow boots, for the first time this year. Noting the quiet, the cold, and the still gray sky.

I think Checkers has it best of all in her throne on the couch . . . though I think she asks God on a regular basis in the wintertime why He didn't have her adopted by doggie parents that live in Florida. Snow is not her idea of a good time. Though I guess I wouldn't like it either if my belly almost touched the ground like hers does.

Hello December!

As you can see, December around here has started appropriately enough with a cold, snowy day. And if you drove past our house this morning during a short few minutes period, you might have seen a grown woman standing in the yard, mouth open to sky . . . eating snow. What is it about the first few snows of the season that inspires child-like wonder? I cannot help but stop, breathe, and be amazed by the uniqueness of each snowflake as it falls on the ground, my coat, or the animals. Feeling like cold fluffy pin feathers on cheeks and eyelashes. Forgetting for just a couple of seconds that the snow will make the roads slick and the chores more difficult this evening.