Robin City

Ryan said that they would come . . . the robins that is. 2010 was a mast year for hackberry trees in our yard, meaning that they produced a lot of them! A few birds had found them, but nothing in mass quantities. Until this weekend. When a huge group of robins and their familiars, starlings, showed up to eat hackberries, take shelter in our trees, and poop wierd dark orange hackberry poop all over our new ivory metal roof. Ryan thinks that the light color of our new metal roof makes for a bird poop magnet. At least it washes off in the rain :)


Maybe they can tell the weather, and knew a practical hackberry farm would be a good place to wait out a winter storm. If they're lucky the hackberries won't get iced over. 


For now we just enjoy the sight of flocks of robin red breasts hanging out in our trees!

Right Now

Right now on the Corner Farm:

Vegetable-Beef soup is simmering on the stove, made from an arm roast from a locally grown dairy beef steer. Sorry I can't share the smell via the Internet:

I have the sewing machine out, making a 2nd turkey hen apron for Ginny the turkey before turkey breeding season starts in mid-February. Have to save the girls backs from Thomas's heavy claws. We found that when Essie wears an apron she is a lot less likely to get nasty scratches and cuts . . . turkey love is a little rough sometimes. Will try to get a picture of them wearing them, maybe that will explain them a little better.

Outside the window . . .  it's snowing again. What's new?

Just chillin'

You want to know what the farm animals are doing today?

Hamburger & T-Bone: eating hay, as well as not very good/too old for human consumption corn casserole, and head butting in the knees any human that enters their enclosure (the reason why there are no up close photos, afraid I would drop camera).

Henry & Sally: Taking advantage of warmer weather to check their territory. Sally is just along for the ride, and is more interested in chasing Henry's tail than actual territory checking or mouse hunting. Finally got a face picture of her not eating . . .

Thomas, Essie, Ginny, Herschel & The Girls: They're mostly just hanging out today. Thomas is randomly strutting getting ready for turkey breeding season (he has so much competition [eye roll]). Everybody else just laying eggs, clucking/screeching, or crowing as their natures require. No picture cause my battery died when I was in the chicken house.

Inside we have the lazy bums.

Pumpkin & Kiddo doing what they do best. Napping . . . 18 hours a day, don't bother me to catch a mouse, I'm too busy sunning myself.

Checkers is just hanging out in her bed, napping, barking, or staring off in to space as she so desires. Waiting for Ryan to get home. He is so much more exciting than me evidentally.

My favorite new living thing in the house right now, my fast growing freesia. Look how much they've grown in 2 days. One of the few things in the plant world that is great for instant gratification . . . fast growing young sprouts.  Happy Wednesday!

Fluff

That's what is going on outside . . . fluff. Snow that is. I beg to disagree with the weatherforcaster who predicted only an inch for the day. I would think we already have that much, and it's still coming down pretty good.

And the temperature is rising a little bit. It was a balmy 17 when I went out to do chores this morning. That's warmer than it got all weekend! Maybe that's why the calves were out frolicing in the snow, even though they were starting to look like abominable snow steers, the way the snow was sticking to their fir.


I haven't taken a from the road photo in a while, and thought it was about time. So here is:

White, white, and more white. With occasional punctuation of color from the buildings, house, and trees.



And in the case you're tired of snow . . . I have a little bit spring going on in my windowsill. I had some freesia bulbs leftover from an Easter gift from my sister last year. Everywhere I read on the internet said that it was highly unlikely that they would come up again after being a forced bloom. Well a couple of weeks ago when I went to throw them out I noticed a a little, very pale green nub on the ends of several of the bulbs. So instead of throwing them away, I took them out of their old dirt, planted them about an 1 1/2" deep in new dirt, watered them and put them in the windowsill.

Two weeks later this is what I get. Which I didn't notice until on Saturday Ryan brought my attention to the fact that we had green. Woo hoo!

Siberian

Don't let the lovely sunshine in this photo fool you . . . it is positively Siberian outside. As in "like Siberia".  I present the thermometer photo as proof:

According to the thesaurus other words to describe today: bitter, icy, frosty, glacial, wintry, subzero, hypothermic, raw, biting, piercing, bone-chilling, penetrating, cutting, numbing, arctic, polar, Siberian, nippy, etc. . . I underlined the ones I liked best.


Yes, I am one of those crazy freaks who could sit and read the thesaurus like a novel. Reveling in all the new words to learn . . . totally boring the rest of society. I took the History of English Language class, and was the only non-major in it.


But less about me and back to the farm. So far everyone, I mean the critters, seem to be handling the cold OK. The calves shook their heads a couple of times over the indignity of touching their tongues to the freezing plastic feed troughs as they were eating their breakfasts. Inside, everyone is searching for blankets, or a spot in the sun like Kiddo.

Good luck staying warm. Happy weekend :)

Hibernal

Looking for new words for snow and winter, I went to my trusty writer's thesaurus. I learned a new word today . . . hibernal = relating to winter. So my pictures today are hibernal. From the Latin hibernalis, related to the Greek hiem . . . snow. Which is funny because you think of hibernating as meaning to sleep, burrow away; when it has more to do with winter. Oh, the twists and turns, the word roots, meanings, and connotations of the English language. Maybe tomorrow I'll do some more thesaurus diving. To find some new words for cold and freezing. Because according to the weather forecasters, that is what we will be expecting on the farm tomorrow.

Farm Originals

Meet what are fondly called "the black hens" on the farm. I call them farm originals because they are the only domesticated animals born on the property since we've owned it. The result of a cross between a Barred Rock hen and a Silver Laced Wyandotte rooster. The eggs were hatched by Essie the turkey after she broke all of her own eggs the spring of 2009. To this day they seem to have special relationship with her, and will be hanging out with the turkeys when none of the other chickens are.


While they look like neither of their parents, these two hens definitely inherited some of their father's personality. How can we tell? The Silver Laced Wyandotte rooster that was their father, Sparky II, was one of the meanest, most obnoxiuous roosters you could ever hope not to meet.  When he was alive, it took 2 people to gather eggs . . . one to catch the rooster and hold him upside down, while the other person gathered the eggs. While these hens are not mean per se, they lack the docility of most of our other hens. I don't bother trying to take the eggs from the nest when they're near it, unless I want to have beak marks on my hand. And heaven forbid you should do anything to disturb them . . . they will walk around squawking and clucking loudly for a 1/2 hour for no good reason (I timed them once!). Their redeeming features: they are a beautiful irridescent black, and when in lay they regularly lay beautiful, well-shaped dark brown eggs. Besides, how could we ever get rid of the first critters born on our farm.