History lesson

We knew when we bought our Schuyler Lake property that it has a long history, one that is in many ways related to the history of where we lived in New Jersey. Not the least of those similarities is that William Cooper, of Cooperstown fame, father of James Fenimore Cooper, is equally famous for his actions in Burlington County NJ and Philadelphia PA.

I met Darryl Grubner on Facebook, of all places. We both agreed that Facebook is good for something! He is a relative of the Herkimers and Tunnicliffs, and his grandmother lived in the house at the end (or is that the entrance?) of our driveway. Turns out the current owner of that house is also a relative of those families.

So we had a meet and greet with Darryl (on the right) and a few of his cousins, and Edward Heinrich (left), director of the other Herkimer Home, a State historic site along the Erie Canal in Little Falls.

We met at the Polly House in Schuyler Lake which houses the collection of the Exeter Historical Society. I was happy to go through the papers looking for anything to do with our property. Aside from the house next door (sort of) the Herkimer family cemetery is almost at the border of our property on the far side. We succeeded in climbing the hill and viewing the remaining gravestones. The ones for Hendrick and Abraham are apparently missing.

A shout out to Erin Hugick for her caretaking of the cemetery property. When Hub and I were up there years ago, you couldn't even see the gravestones for all of the weeds.

 

Duke in the new old coop

We spent some cash money fixing up the yellow shed/big coop out front. A mink got in there over a year ago and killed off most of the chickens.

I have 5 hens in the Omlet coop, and 6 real Legbars in the garage. 

Tonight we picked up a handsome gentleman named Duke to be the new caretaker of our ladies. He’s not sure what’s going on, but we hope he will be happy with his new harem. 

We didn’t tell him he is the test of the new security system. If he can make it through to Sunday evening, he will be introduced to 5 new beautiful ladies. 

The Garage Legbars will move to the Omlet and hopefully follow shortly after. 

Little Falls, legbars, cat wars

We took a ride up to Herkimer to donate some dog goodies to the shelter. Because they wouldn't let us go back and rile up all the dogs (lucky for us they said no) we continued our ride to Little Falls. We wandered a bit, did some antique perusing, and had some lunch.

The little chicks are now big chicks even though they still peep like the littles. It is a bit odd that all 6 of them look like Cream Legbars, one of my favorite chicken breeds, when they were supposed to be Easter Eggers. EEs are a mixed breed and they would normally all look different. AND real legbars would be a lot more expensive. Nice mistake if that's what it was!

We hope to have a newly restored big coop by the end of the week so that we can move these teenagers to a bigger home than the dog crate they are in now.

Martin and MonkeyCat get along just fine most of the time, but the youngster still likes a good wrastle now and then. This is the staredown before the big match.

Farm and farmer

Just some pretty pics of Lester's Flat.

1) Our empty (for now) pig shed with wildflowers planted by The Hub. When we first got here, I did not love seeing the silos and falling down barn(s) next door, but now that the neighbor is taking it all down, I will definitely miss them. (photo: TP)

2) One of Hub's 2 cornfields with wildflowers planted by Mother Nature. Lots of good sweet corn is ready right now! (photo: TP)

3) Foggy sunset. Weather here has been up and down temperatures—the colder creek is complaining about the hotter and humid air. Sour cherry tree in the front, ripening elderberries further back, goldenrod just starting to turn golden. (photo: KP)

4) Farmer Tim (The Hub) taking a break at the "bus stop". He loves his metal bench in the back 40. Momma deer and the 2 fawns hang out there as well. We have not yet had a bus come by. (photo: obviously KP)

Music, Shakespeare, and AI gets it wrong again

Fast Friends bravely played at the Northway Hop House with a giant canoe hanging over their heads. 

The Ying Quartet were the final performers in the Cooperstown Summer Music concert series.

Our good friend Mark Murphy, frequent star of the local Coffee House, played a comically sad Jaques in a performance of The Bard of Avon's As You Like It.

The Google AI version of the story: 

As You Like It is a pastoral comedy by William Shakespeare written around 1959–1600. It follows heroine Rosalind as she flees persecution into the Forest of Arden, disguising herself as a man named Ganymede, where she reunites with her banished father and tests her lover Orlando.

Rosalind (Ganymede) and Jaques

 

A harpsichord, chickens, and a hummingbird

We attended another of the Cooperstown Music Festival concerts on Wednesday night. The Sebastians is a quartet with 2 violins, a cello and a harpsichord. (How does one travel with a harpsichord?) Christ Episcopal Church was the perfect setting for baroque and classical music.

We are spending some cash to get the big chicken coop fixed to prevent more midnight raids by the mink. Then we can move the 5 older hens that we have in the plastic Omlet coop to their new home, and we can replace them with the 6 new chicks from the dog crate in the garage. 

I always intended for the Omlet to be a grow-out pen, but I am thankful that we had a safe place for these adult girls when we were losing all the others.

I set up the trail camera to keep an eye on those girls. So far we have caught Zelda, Otis, deer, a skunk, and this harmless little hummingbird. He used to come with his girlfriend to the cuphea plants we buy for them every year in the backyard, but this year she showed up without him. Now I see why.

Clouds and sun(flowers)

 

When the only sun you can find is in the sunflowers…that’s good too. We needed the rain. 

When the weather is changing, like now, the mountain disappears in the background. The creek water is almost always a different temperature than the air, so we get a lot of fog back there. 

And the 2 fawns were back again for a quick bath from mom (or aunty). I am convinced, but maybe wrong, that she only had one fawn. Then a doe was killed on the road out front and a second larger one appeared.

In my perfect world, Aunty rescued the other fawn.

XI in the sky, summer music, and macroinvertebrates

There's a title I don't have to worry about repeating!

The skywriters are back mucking up the sky again just after all the smoke from Canada went away. Momma deer is unconcerned, and just finished cleaning off 2 little ones who refused to wait for their picture to be taken.

We went to the second concert in the Cooperstown Summer Music Festival—Caroga Arts Ensemble. Eddie Barbash on saxophone, Kasa Quartet on strings, plus a guitarist, drummer and bass player.

Your first question would probably be "why am I doing this?"

And then there was the training for macroinvertebrate monitoring. As if the water testing I am doing in the creek with Charlie and Pam wasn't enough, now we are learning how to capture and identify macroinvertebrates as a further test of the health of our stream(s). Let's just say it is quite the challenge to learn the difference between a net-spinning caddisfly and a midge larva when they are both about the size of a fruit fly. The easy ones were the crayfish and scuds...

Where there's smoke

Canadian wildfires are sending their smoke to us just like they did in June 2023, only this time it's supposed to be so much worse, with numbers at the very top of the scale. The large photo is from 10:45 this morning when we were still in the ugly dried-blood-colored hazard zone at 500!

Where is the hazy orange sky that you can see if you click on the link from 2023? Where is the hazy gray sky with no sun to be seen that we had yesterday when it was only at 280 on the scale?

I do prefer the blue sky, but I am staying mostly inside today to avoid any nasty stuff in the air. How can it be so bad and look so good? At least the numbers came back down to around 200 this afternoon.

We escaped the house last night and went to the first of the Cooperstown Summer Music Festival concerts—a woodwind quintet called WindSync. It was a great performance in spite of the fact that those poor musicians had to breathe in our smoky air all day.

Expressions

Cool

Silly and scared silly

It's kind of odd that 92° is considered extreme heat up here—that was average summer heat in New Jersey. Zelda found a cool spot in my bug-eaten hostas to take a nap.

We had the heat for 2 or 3 days, and then we had some wicked thunderstorms and heavy rain to wash it all away. It's still hot, but not awful.

Jessie has not been appreciating the stormy weather, and Old Man Cyrus does not understand why she doesn't want to play his silly games. (Storms? We had storms?) At least he is still silly at age 13.

And the final photo is Layla wishing you all a Happy 4th. She was not impressed with the big celebration in DC. Our little hometown fireworks are just enough fun, thank you very much.

Super silly

Clouds and elderberries

Magnificent clouds mean stormy weather that makes the nervous dog more nervous than ever. (Gabapentin is our friend.) But they do make for great photos! 

And behind that fence to the right in the top photo, is our baby forest of (mostly, or maybe all) native trees and shrubs (smaller photo). The white blooms will all soon be beautiful elderberries which are nearly impossible to make into anything useful. I might try elderflower and elderberry liqueur this year, and possibly a dye from the berries. Maybe...