Playing Camera

When I was right out of college working as a naturalist, one of the activities I learned to do with kids on a nature hike was called "Camera". I would have the group split into pairs, and then out of each pair, one kid would be the "photographer", and one kid would be the "camera". The job of the "photographer" was to carefully lead the "camera," who had their eyes closed, to a spot where there was something that the "photographer" thought was neat. The "photographer" then tapped the "camera" on the shoulder, and the "camera" opened their eyes until the "photographer" tapped them again to shut their eyes. The "photograper" got to take 3 or 4 "pictures" doing this, and then the kids would trade roles and take 3 or 4 more "pictures". Then everybody came back together as a group, and told about the pictures they took. It was a cool activity to get kids using their observation skills, and sometimes it ended up being funny if the camera didn't take the picture the photographer thought it was taking. Sometimes we discovered something really neat and unexpected on these "photography" expeditions.

Today, I went on a walk along our road looking for signs of spring. My pictures don't really tell a story, they're just what I saw today. I'm going to play camera with you, and show you what I saw that I thought was kinda neat. I'm not going to label or describe . . . just enjoy the views.

Drip ... drip ...drip

It's that time of year again:

This past Sunday, we tapped trees; on a cold, overcast day when the sap was most definitely not dripping. But the past few days, it has warmed up, and lo and behold, buckets are filling. Over the last two days we've gathered about 15 gallons of sap. I emptied the buckets early this afternoon, in hopes of preventing bucket overflow. With the nice 40s temps and sunshine; it's sure to be a drip, drop, fill the bucket kind of day. Soon the sap kettle will be boiling, and the air will be filled with its warm, moist sweetness. Happy Sugar Season!

It's not time for this yet . . .

My calendar and the current weather are not coinciding. My calendar says its February 5, which from looking at past farm journals for the first part of February tends to be a cold, snowy time of year. Not so much this year.

Today, during our afternoon walk we saw this:

Skunk cabbage spikes coming up in the local wetland. If you look close you can see the dark purple flowers buds.

This is one of our sugar maple trees, which had a road facing limb cut off by the highway dept. this past fall. Notice the sap drops in the middle of the picture. We tasted it; the sugar's there. Three weeks earlier that we usually tap trees.


We have no idea when we're going to tap trees. This winter has been a constant shuffle of sugaring weather. We had a nice frosty freeze last night, with a nice warm sunny day today. Days like that are perfect sugaring weather; but you never know that winter could show up any day now.

Oh, Just Count Out About 200 . . .

"Oh, just count out about 200," suggests my husband as I stare at this pile on the kitchen table, on the very snowy, stay home day that was last Saturday morning:

We have entered a new phase of gardening. With this pile of sunflower seeds, I think we've officially become seed savers. Which means that instead of buying seed from the store, catalog, whatever . . . we just save some of the seed from last year's crops to plant the coming year. I know this is not a new idea at all; in fact I think that people a hundred years ago would find it odd that you wouldn't do this. But for us crazy people, its a new adventure.

It all started last summer when one of the mammoth sunflowers we grew from seed turned out to be truly mammoth. I'm talking a seed head that was 18 to 24 inches across. I looked at that flower, and then looked at my husband and said that "that one is not going for turkey food. With those kind of genetics, we ought to try some of those seeds out." So when it dried out, we raked all the seeds out it and a couple of other nice looking sunflower seed heads, and put them in vented ziplocs, in our chilly upstairs bedroom.

With all the snow that has showed up over the past couple of days, we were feeling kinda bad that we didn't have any seed to put out in the bird feeders. Oh wait, we have bags of sunflower seeds upstairs, and we surely are not going to need 1000's of seeds for planting; let's just count out a couple of hundred of the best looking ones and feed the rest to the birds. This is how I ended up with the pile of sunflower seeds on my kitchen table.


I was literally counting them out ten at a time into a container to get 200. Up close they look like this:

Going for solid seeds, no borer holes, and little to no mildew on the outside. The bigger the better, as long as they are solid and not hollow feeling or cracked.

Turns out 200 in the container looks like this:

Which according to Ryan didn't seem like enough, so then he joined in the sorting, and we just sorted until we filled up the container. Not that we will plant even half of those, but you know, we'd rather have too many than not enough.

The rest went into the bird feeder, which our neighborhood cardinals and juncos seemed to enjoy; judging by the amount of sunflower seed hulls on the snow.

Winter Wonderland

It snowed!

And for a couple of days at least, we're blanketed in white. It is lovely. As it was falling while we were out doing chores last evening, it was like cold, fine sand. It made an eerie rushing sound as it blew against the dried, dormant late blooming clematis . . .

Overnight the wind blew even more, and settled the snow in to drifts here and there. Which meant that Ryan got to use the snowblower to move this snow:

And now the driveway is cleared, and there are nice paths out to the barnyard and the chicken house. And the mail person didn't have to worry about getting stuck delivering mail to our house. Yay for a husband that likes to use the snowblower. It helps that it was a Saturday morning, and there was nowhere to go and the sun was shining.


A view out the upstairs window looked like this . . .

And tonight there was that lovely golden quality to the sun on the snow. I kept seeing it while we were doing chores, but it went away before I got a chance to get my camera. And also a picture I didn't get taken today, the wind marks on the snow, which looks like the little tiny waves on the edge of a lake, frozen in place.  Beautiful and wonderous!

Checking In From Siberia

So . . . winter has finally decided to show up. With a vengeance. But's that's ok. It is January after all. High of 19 today . . . snow . . . wind. Lots of fun little drifts all over the yard. I have no clue how much snow we actually have gotten. It is light and fluffy and the wind has tossed it hither and yon.


It is the first day all winter that I think the chickens have stayed inside the whole time, except to deposit eggs in the hay feeder. Which they did an amazing job of, all eight of them put one out today. This only happens maybe once every 2 weeks.


If you really want to know the general consensus of the weather here on the farm, I think Shadow's yowl from the porch bench might have expressed it best:

If only I had thought to video record him, you could have had the sound to go with it. If you notice, he is pathetically holding up his front paw, which he has been limping on all week, even though we can't find anything wrong with him. I told Ryan I think he's faking it, and is just trying to get extra attention.

Making Peace with a Mild Winter . . . so far

The past month or two, we've really been struggling here on the farm, to make our peace with winter being mild this year. I'll explain why.

Instead of the lovely inches of snow, solid ground underfoot, and sparkling clear mornings . . . we've got a mud hole for a barnyard, squishy molehills on the path to the barn, and gray, rainy mornings.

We're really big fans of 4 distinct seasons, and when you get one that starts to look a lot like another . . . well it's just not fun. And don't just ask us . . . if I were to share a picture of our steers in all their muddiness, you'd understand that they agree.

With that preface . . . you will understand why I was overjoyed to be able to spend several minutes staring out the window at this:

Yay for snow falling! And for this:

Below freezing temperatures during the day, that allowed the barnyard to freeze up for a couple of days.

And no matter what, a five alarm winter sunset to fall back on isn't too shabby.

On the day the snow was falling, if I had feathers like a bird, I would have probably been out reveling as it seems this cardinal was:

I watched him for a couple of minutes, and he was never sitting on a branch. It was almost as if he was dust bathing in snow. Or maybe he was just happy that the mud was covered too!

For now we just take what we get, and pray that all our critters continue to stay healthy through the crazy up and down temperatures, and hope that come the end of February when its time to haul the steers out, that we can have a good hard freeze to allow easy maneuvering of truck and trailer.