It's a NYSHA day

On this beautiful day in the neighborhood, we took a tour of the Farmer's Museum and Fenimore Art Museum, both a part of the New York State Historical Association where we are members. 

The golf course is between the 2 museums. This photo is for Brian (hope you're feeling better!).

The Farmer's Museum is usually a great place to learn about raising pigs and chickens and goats and such, although today there were not the usual number of helpful employees.

The 2 employees we did find however, were very helpful. The Husband's cousin, young Emma, was dressed in period costume and working in the farm kitchen and the print shop for the day.

We also saw Karen, from Swamp Hill Farm where we got Lucille, Helen, and Jack, our goats. The Husband was discussing with Karen the possible future breeding of Lucille and Helen with one of her bucks. He is a farm animal addict, with no cure in sight!

Wants some cows too, doesn't he...

The final photo is of the porch brackets that I should have designed for our house. I am still disappointed in the ones that I copied from our wooden screen door that was transplanted from the NJ house. The design might be OK, but they need to be more substantial, like these. Maybe some day I will get around to replacing, or reworking the ones that are there. This will be my inspiration.

http://lestersflat.blogspot.com/2010/01/progress-on-porch-design-ordering-paint.html

Bloody Woody or Vincent van Dogh

It was a typical Woody Wednesday, where I take both dogs up for a run at Don on the Hill's. The WoodMan has been very much improved as far as staying with me while I am walking with Sophie on the leash. As soon as I sit down with Don to have a beer however, he takes off into the woods, while Sophie just hangs out with us enjoying the view and begging for cookies.

Woody came back once before covered in blood, and it turned out to be the tiniest little cut on his ear. Yesterday, he came back covered in blood with the tiniest little cut on his ear, but it would not stop bleeding. He bled all over himself, Don, Don's house, Sophie, me, the car... I kept putting pressure on the end of his ear, and he would shake his head as soon as I let go, and then we'd start all over again.

I put Sophie in the house and hosed down my big red dog, but soon realized pressure was not stopping the gushing ear, so I called the local vet, Pam Lea (not Woody's vet, mind you) and she was kind enough to take us in even though it was after hours and she was still busy with other patients.

She sedated him, wrapped him up tight, unsedated him and sent us home. Thank you Pam! He was very well behaved about not picking at the bandages, but I couldn't stand seeing him look so pathetic so I just took them off a few minutes ago. He started bleeding a bit again, but it stopped pretty quickly.

It was The Husband's idea to create the "Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog". Poor Woody was already horrified that I wanted to take his photo (can you tell?)...good thing he doesn't know everybody can see him as Vincent van Dogh with the bandaged ear.

Visitors from NJ welcomed by the howling hound

We had our yearly August visit from some family members in NJ, sadly minus The Husband's mother, brother, and his wife. Brian is hopefully recovering soon from a painful sciatica attack. We miss you all and hope you're feeling better, Brian!

Sarah, Brian's daughter, did make the trip with Jason and Claire and Ella. The girls are old enough to not find us as amusing as previous years, when they stayed with us for a few days, but at least they had time to visit with us and the goats, chickens, chicks and ducks. Sarah took these goat photos with her iPhone. The phone didn't work so well out here in the sticks, but the pictures it takes are amazing! Of course it helps that she is an amazing photographer.

Woody and Sophie happily welcomed their girlfriends from last year, but Woody decided that it was his job to bark almost the entire time they were here in the house. I guess that's his idea of a party. Hard to believe we have had him a full year already! We had gotten him just a few days before the NJ visit last year. He was much better behaved for that party...I guess he didn't know he could get away with being so bad...

It's also been a year that I have been working at the Freeman's Journal/Hometown Oneonta newspaper. I design ads for them 3 days a week. The pay is not great (really not great!) but it's steady work and good people and it helps to pay those darn bills. I didn't realize how difficult it would be owning 2 homes. We are planning to put the house back on the market next summer. Losing the rental income will hurt, but losing the high taxes and crazy new fees imposed on landlords in Palmyra will definitely make up for it.

Now we just have to hope that someone can love our NJ house as much as we did.

Anybody wanna buy a house?

The final four chicks and five and three ducks

Well, probably not the last chicks we'll ever get, but these are the four out of five remaining chicks that we bought about a month ago. They were difficult to capture and close up for the night, which is how we lost one of them to some unknown predator. And they are difficult to capture on film as well, which is why I didn't get any pictures of them until today. These are the best of 32 photos. The boys and girls (we don't know what they are yet) don't stay in one place long enough to be seen.

They are still what I call peepers—meaning they still have that adorable chick peep rather than clucks or cock-a-doodle-doos. I hope to determine sometime soon if there is more than one rooster, because the lady who sold them to us said should would replace any extra roos with hens. So far they all look the same to me.

We finally have a verdict on the ducks—they are not Cayugas, not even a Cayuga cross, they are plain old mallards. But these plain old mallards are still really beautiful and fun to watch as they claim their right to be first in the pool (water buckets). Unlike the chicks, these ducks are sporting their adult feathers and I can see we have 5 males and 3 females. The males not only have those pretty green heads, but their tail feathers have little black curls that identify them as males.

And because they are now almost fully adults, well let's just say those 3 little girls are being very much bothered by the 5 big boys. We have seen them fly, just a bit, so I'm hoping that 1 or 2 of the drakes will find the creek and take a fancy to a little neighbor girl. In a perfect world...maybe...

I feel perfectly awful

That would be Mr. Roo speaking...not me. Since he was attacked by the mystery critter over a month ago, he has good days and bad. Above was a bad day...face plant on the driveway with the girls all gathered around.

He is recovering, but very slowly. Although he can hold up his head much better than before, as his feathers are coming back in, they are looking pretty ratty...poor guy...

Otherwise things are going pretty well here at Lester's Flat. After an unusually rainy start to summer, followed by an unusually hot and humid couple of weeks, we are now having almost perfect weather.

I have not had a chance to photograph the latest additions to "the farm". We bought 5 new chicks from a local farmer. The rooster was a Black Australorp, the hen that hatched them was a Speckled Sussex, and a few other hens must have snuck their eggs in there because one looks like half Golden Laced Wyandotte, and another is all blue/black like the roo.

We kept the chicks locked up for a few days, but after a week or so started letting them roam. One Tuesday when I was working late, the 5 of them just would not let The Husband capture them and put them back in their crate for the night. By the time I got home at 10:30, 4 of them were huddled on the front porch steps and the 5th was nowhere to be found. I had searched everywhere and was just giving up and coming in the house when I saw them. They were eager to be captured after losing their little companion probably minutes before that.

They have been free-ranging ever since, and are now much better about getting tucked in at night. Very cute to watch them playing with the ducks—although the ducks don't think they're very cute at all. Mostly they chase the little ones away if they get too close to their water buckets and food.

The heat, the hound, the deer, the ducks

Why did we ever let them talk us out of air conditioning? This past week has been unusually hot and humid—typical for south Jersey, but not in upstate NY.

Woody, Virginia hound boy that he is, seems to enjoy spending the hottest of days out on the back porch in the sun. When he gets too hot, he digs himself a nice big hole in the dirt and takes a nap. After a few hours out there, it's difficult to get him to come in, even when I have to go to work.

He is getting much better about not barking at every critter he sees outside. He is really good with the ducks and chickens, but the bajillion groundhogs, rabbits and deer we have here still excite that hound boy howl. His deer friend spends almost every morning just outside the windows in the living room. All the barking and howling he can muster at 4:30 am will not get a reaction from her. Turns out she is a recent momma, and maybe that's why she won't leave. The first fawn I saw was so tiny it kept tripping through the weeds trying to keep up with her. A few weeks later we saw 3 fawns out there romping around, but we're not sure if they're all related.

The ducks also do not seem to mind the heat. As long as they have a big bucket of water to play in, they are happy. They still haven't found their way down to the creek, but the creek is still running wild from all the rain so maybe that's a good thing. They stay close to home, and close together.

We thought we bought Cayuga ducks, a really pretty black and beetle green combination, but I am beginning to think that they are going to stay mostly brown, possibly more like a mallard than Cayuga. You can see in the photos that some of them are losing their adolescent feathers and their heads are turning green. These appear to be the males. The females have a different kind of brown feathering that doesn't seem to be changing much at all.

All guessing at this point to know what color they will be. No matter how they turn out, I think they are beautiful, and fun to watch!

Today the weather is improving. Turns out we don't really need that AC after all.

Lots of activity, none of it good!

Poor Roo was attacked by something a few weeks ago. When The Husband found him, he was barely breathing. He has been in and out of "Chicken Hospital" (the garage) ever since. He looked pretty good a few days after, but then went back to standing with his head hanging down, or lying face down on the ground. The vet said that it could take a few months before he gets back to normal.

All three of the chickens in the top photo have been attacked by the Jack Russell across the street. Possibly he is the culprit again, or maybe the eagles nesting across the street, or the hawks, or the foxes... This was a few days after the Roo attack, and you can see he still has some blood on his neck. Red Meanie, top right, has a little humpback instead of a proper tail after her battle about a year ago.

Thursday, June 27, we had some serious rain. We woke up to a totally flooded back 40 and an inch of water in the basement as well! Our favorite builder promised us our basement would never leak, but I guess he couldn't predict the 10" of rain we had in June—about 3" of that was on Thursday night.

The bad news is that there were lots of cardboard boxes on the basement floor—all the stuff that we never unpacked after the move. The good news is that most of it was not valuable, and this has forced me to sort through and get rid of a lot.

The other good news is that it is so hot and humid outside, that it is actually pleasant to be working in the cool muddy basement.

The water is gone, but it will take a long time to clean out all the mud, especially because our wet vac is still in NJ, and my mop handle is broken.

And, speaking of NJ, we had a "water in the basement" issue there about 2 weeks ago. Good thing I left the wet vac there for the renters...

A bevy of ducks weather the storm

There is some difference of opinion as to what a group of ducks is called—a raft, paddling, flush, team, or flock—but the one I like best is a bevy. A few days into their freedom, the bevy still won't travel further than a foot or 2 outside the fence. It is pretty amusing how they all stay so close together, and they do go back inside the crate altogether at night. I have to wait until it is almost dark before I lock them up in there, or else they run out in a frenzy trying to escape the big monster—me.

We had a storm blow through just before I took these photos. They were warning of tornadoes and hail, but all we got were some black clouds and a lot of rain. I went out with the camera because we usually also get a rainbow after these fast-moving storms, but I couldn't find one tonight.

The Husband bought a new rototiller today. Farmer that he is now, he's got to get that garden going soon...

Setting free the big ducks

We've had the ducks for about a month now, and we still have all 8. At first we kept them in the dog crate, then moved them to larger quarters in last year's fenced garden, and then yesterday we started leaving the fence open for them to wander freely. Of course they haven't really taken advantage of their freedom yet—they spend most of the day in the fence.

The last photo is from May 2. You can see they still had their downy baby feathers. The other 2 photos are from today. I think these are called their juvenile feathers, meaning that they aren't the right color yet. That would explain why they don't have the "beetle-green" heads and black bodies that are typical for Cayuga ducks. The only other explanation I can think of is that they are not actually Cayugas, the price you pay for buying on Craig's List.

Now that they seem to have their flight feathers, I am hoping that they will learn to fly, as that will be their best defense against predators. Eventually we will introduce them to the creek, but we are not quite sure how to do that. For now we still lock them up in the dog crate at night.

I have been reading the duck books that were a gift from Little Sister (Thanks, Little Sis!) I hope to learn as much as I can before we send the little cuties out into the real world that is Lester's Flat.

The miracle of life

Spring is all about birth, and we have evidence of spring here at Lester's Flat.

First, the eagle in the last post is probably one of the parents in the eagle's nest across the street on the horse farm property. I have yet to wander through the field, which has at least 3 new foals in it, to go take a photo.

The chickens are reveling in the warmer weather and have been all over the property exploring. Exploring and laying eggs. We were just back to getting 8 or 9 eggs a day, when we suddenly dipped down to 2 or 3. A lengthy search finally revealed the newest hiding places: in the pig shed (photo) and in the hay bales. None of the girls are sitting on their eggs yet, but I expect  one or 2 of them will try again, like last year.

Finally, yesterday, the WoodMan uncovered a mouse nest on the back porch. He and Sophie promptly scared the mouse half to death before we rescued her and sent her on her way over the fence. In cleaning out the nest, we found a living newborn mouse, obviously born too soon.

On a happier note, thus rating the larger photo, we went to Madison County today to pick up what we intended to be 4 Cayuga ducklings. The Husband has been wanting to get some ducks, and I have been wanting them to be Cayugas, a very pretty black and blue-green breed that is native to NY state (I think...have to do some more research on them...)

After driving around lost and finding Stockbridge Hill Road instead of Stockbridge Falls Road, and then being offered all 8 for a discounted rate of only $20, well, I think you know the result.

More to follow.

What are the chances?

Monday morning as I was getting ready for work, I got a phone call from Cousin Chris saying how pleased he was with Frank the Pig. While I was talking to him on the phone, something huge flew right past my dining room windows. I looked off to the side to see that it was a bald eagle, who conveniently landed in a tree just outside. We've seen him (or her) several times before, but never this close to the house. He stayed on that branch long enough for me to run around the house to find the best window from which to take a photo. I took about 20 shots from inside, but it turned out the best shot was from outside when I was leaving for work. In the pouring rain I got the best photo, and thoroughly soaked.

So what are the chances that Don on the Hill's dog would be running around just behind the eagle in the photo? Bandit is a white dog, which made him pretty easy to spot, although I had no idea until I downloaded the photos that he was in there. Of course with me trying to get closer for a better shot, the eagle flew off...but I also just barely caught him in the photo as he was flying off.

Altogether a pretty lucky photo shoot for a not-so-great little camera!

I took a short trip back to visit with Little Sister in NJ for Easter. Sophie came along for the ride, and Woody stayed home with The Husband to keep him company. Much fun was had by all.