News and blog

I am sure you have noticed, I am sloppy when it comes to proofreading my own writing.  For the longest time I could not find the spell check in my website program and I am way too dependant on it, not to mention those nice little lines that show up on Microsoft Word to question one's grammar.   But... I finally found the spell checker.  Thank goodness.  Even though I had resolved to re-read everything with a tab open to Merriman-Webster, I rarely have patience or time to do it.  I really don't know how I graduated high school using a typewriter.  At least by the time college and grad school rolled around, my inattention to detail could be concealed with the touch of a button, or at least in part. 

We have a bear about.  Last week a pick-up truck pulled in the driveway and a man dressed entirely in camouflage stepped out.   No, he was not seeking enlistments; he was a hunter seeking permission to hunt deer in our woods.   He stood and talked for a long while about deer trails and local hunt clubs etc. etc.  and then, with a quick glance at the girls he said, "oh and there is a b-e-a-r about."   Frances and Riley immediately turned their open-mouthed, astonished faces towards Roy and I.  (At least someone in the family can spell.)  Mr. camo-hunter had seen very recent evidence while he was scouting for deer sign and then on Tuesday, while getting firewood, Roy saw it lumbering along the power line above our woodland.  We've always known there are bear in our area but we so rarely see them.  While black bears don't really scare me, I must admit I am a little hesitant about going on my walk/runs along the power line with Mac just now.  This time of year bears are supposedly fat and happy and preparing for hibernation, but what I if happen upon one when it is PMS-ing?  Death by bear sounds awfully painful and messy.  I think I will stick to the road for the time being and leave Mac in the garage.

Autumn is certainly on its way.  It is as humid and warm as August but the goldenrods and wild asters are in bloom and the sugar maples are beginning to blush.  The crickets and other buzzing, droning insects have crept below my open window and their sounds are incessant.  I like their sounds but I can't say that it is singing or chirping like I've heard it described.  I think I may have smashed a wooly bear caterpillar on the road too.  I hate when I do that.  I return to remove squirrels that dash out and surprise me only to meet sudden death, but the catapillars... I just drive on feeling badly about my speeding colliding with their very focused and confident procession across the highway.  Autumn.  It's kind of like nature saying 'death happens -- Let's dress up and have a wine and cheese party.'  I love this season -- everything is so lovely and subdued.
Harry, our bottle lamb from the earlier this spring, has relapsed into his pre-return-to-flock behavior.  I guess he just wearied of pretending to be a normal sheep.   He has drifted away from the other lambs, grazing alone by the edge of the fence.  Mac accepts this about him.  When we ask him to move the lambs, he nods a familiar "Hey there Harry" to his oddball friend then dashes off the round up the "real" lambs.  Roy and I are trying to encourage Harry to go with the crowd and just do what the other sheep are doing, but it is not working very well.  Last Sunday we moved the lambs to a fresh paddock, all except Harry.  On Monday morning I saw him lying out on hillside paddock to the west of our house.  Mac and I went out to bring him over.  Of course Mac was useless as a herding dog on this outing.  He and Harry sniffed at each other like old buddies.  I put a leash around Harry's neck but halfway to the next paddock he lay down and wouldn't budge.  So I picked him up and carried him the rest of the way.  He is only about 30 - 35 pounds, but I smelled like a sheep for the rest of the day.  Now he is with the other lambs but not part of them. That's okay.  He is our hermit Harry living out his solitary existence within the bleating crowd.  It could be worse; he could be a wooly bear caterpillar in early Autumn.

While health care debates storm the country, here in this corner of Shade Valley folks are following a different story; the disappearance of nine beef cattle from a farm nearly ten miles north.  It isn't as exciting as cattle rustlers or anything, the steers apparently just escaped through the single-strand of electric fence and wandered off.  Last week they were spotted by Mrs. Vawn as they fraternized with her herd of cows.  Earlier this week someone saw them wandering through the woods around Cross Keys.  The steer's owner, "Goony" Yohn just laughs as he drives from farm to farm asking if anyone has seen his steers.  "I don't know what I'll do if we spot them anyway.  Them boys are wild."  Every morning, Jimmy, our retired neighbor and his wife Susie, hop on their Gator and patrol the power lines searching for them.  "Gives them somthing to do" says Tammy K of her friends' morning mountrain rides.  We've been too busy to help in the search, but I guarentee if they are spotted nearby Roy will volunteer to put Mac to the task of rounding them up.  However according Goony, his steers are headed south and "who knows, they may make it Florida." 

The weather this week is perfect for making hay.  There is not a farmer in our stretch of valley who is not cutting, raking, bailing, or putting away hay this week, except us.  We do not make our own hay although we do hope to in the future.  We suspect our neighbors think we are a little nuts for rotating our animals over pastures, which by this time are puntucated with tufts of tough and mature grass.   Knocking that grass back at the right time and bailing it up would give us both hay for the winter and allow for new growth throughout the stand.  So why not make hay?  Well here is our dilemma.  If we make hay and then are hit with a couple weeks of little rain, we might just have to turn right around and feed that hay during the summer anyway, so why not just let the cows and sheep do the harvesting.  In the shade of the mature tufts of grass, there is a lot of young new growth that in the glare of the hot sun would not grow as quickly.   Also, our haying equipment tends to break down and cause more stress than we already have -- who needs that?  We could pay someone to make hay, but why not just buy their hay and ensure that there is grass available for our animals to eat.  The sheep actually show a preference for eating off the mature seed-heads on the grasses and we've noticed since we stopped making hay, our pastures seem to come in a lot thicker in the spring.  I wonder if there is a connection -- do sheep digest those seeds or pass them?  I've not checked.   

Anyway, even though we are not making hay while the world around us is focused on it, we are quite involved with the process.  Since Roy returned from Africa to Juniata County at age 12, he has been in great demand for ranking, or stacking, hay.   It is a hot, dusty, back-breaking job, but there is also something satisfying about creating order in one's barn out of the chaos of a jumbled hay wagon and there are few aromas better than fresh cut and bailed hay.   Ranking hay with Charles, Tammy, and Stephanie, our dairy-farming neighbors, has become a summer ritual for Roy.  His strong back and banter are valued and in exchange he uses their manure spreader.  Some evenings the girls and I go along and they play in the stacked hay or with the goopy-eyed kittens that are inevidabley in the barn somewhere, and occassionally I help put the bails on the elevator too.  (But I must be honest, they never ask for my help -- it is Roy they want.  He is better at it and for so many years it was impossible for both of us to help.  I'm just waiting for the day we can send our girls down for a good workout!) The hay we buy from another neighbor is being delivered this week in big round bales.  They've become the standard for many farmers, and while they smell good too, they just aren't as satisfying to me as a bale I can acually pick up with my own two arms.  We hope that by the time the rain comes this weekend, both our barn and Charlie's will have the sweet aroma of new hay and we will be well on our way to being prepared for winter

We are lucky to have a large Black Walnut tree shading our house on the south side.  The tree and the constant breeze that seems to blow through our valley keeps our home very comfortable in the summer.  We took out the window air conditioner when we moved in ten years ago because we hated the way it blocked our view to the west.  We've never replaced it and so far we've stayed comforatably cool with an attic and window fans running at night.  I dug a window fan out of the attic the other night to put in the girls room for the first time this summer.  When the girls were babies the rythmic humming kept them sleeping longer through the night; it drowned out the sounds of logging trucks racing by at 4:00 am or cats fighting in the back yard or occassionally yelping coyotes running on the mountain.  I was surprised then to hear footsteps in the hallway long after we tucked the girls in.  I went to the stairway to find out what the problem was.  Frances looked disheveled and grumpy; the fan was keeping her awake she told me.  "It is loud and it drowns out all the nice night sounds like the peepers and tree frogs," she reported.   It was a simple problem to solve.  She turned it off, climbed back in her bunk, and slept soundly till 7:30 am. 

Once again, the few machines we depend on are giving us headaches.  The BCS rototiller/scickle-bar mower that we use to cut back the grass under the fences has been at the repair shop for over a week.  We cut the grass under our high-tensil fences instead of herbiciding it.  This time of year the grass load is heavy and on dewy mornings, it shorts out the fences and the animals begin to push their limits.  Last Friday,before leaving for work, Roy and Mac rounded up a cow and two calves that were wandering around on the mountain and just yesterday our neighbor called to tell us our sheep were in his alphalfa.  Thanks to Mac, they were rounded up pretty easily, but had the BCS been working, the grass cut, the fences shocking, it is very likely they would not have escaped in the first place.   The repair shop called this morning to tell us it was working again and soon after Roy's dad stopped by to look at our ailing tractor.  But that is another story.

This morning Roy got to play with a cool new farmer-toy that UPS delivered the other day.  One of the difficulties of raising animals on pasture is that when they need medical attention, it’s very difficult to get them rounded up without causing more harm.   We rarely have to give antibiotics, but occasionally we do and it is always very frustrating and time consuming to work the entire herd back to the barn to attend to one animal.  Roy has often talked about getting some capture equipment to give medication on pasture.  This is essentially a gun that projects a syringe into the muscle of animal from a short distance, like they did on Wild Kingdom with tigers and wolves they wanted to move to another location.  For a boy raised in a pacifist home, Roy admits to a persistent fascination with guns.  So this spring when one of our little heifer calves began showing signs of pneumonia after being left out on pasture, Roy decided he had a legitimate reason to purchase a short-range projector pistol.  After all, it would be awful to loose a heifer calf when we are trying to build the herd and then we’d have the dilemma of whether or not we keep her mom for a whole year without a calf on her. 

After the girls went to bed last night, Roy set two or three boxes on the table and began putting together his new toy, I mean tool.   Just before dark he sent Mac to the laundry and stepped outside to take a few practice shots.  Minutes later he came in grinning, “This is really cool” he said with the gun raised to his shoulder like 007. 

Early this morning he took the pistol down to the pasture and successfully got a dose of antibiotics into the month-old calf.  I know Roy is hoping she recovers quickly, but… if he has to give her another dose, it wouldn’t be so bad.

About two miles north of our village of Cross Keys is the village of Peru Mills.  It is even less inhabited than our little nearby village, but it appears to have the history of a genteel little mill village.  There are two grand houses that are well kept by the descendents of a family that at one time held title to most of the land in Lack Township.  The family has since moved to Carlisle but they hire locals to maintain the property and occasionally weekend in the large brick house.   Besides the two homes and outbuildings, there is a beautiful stone mill that is leased to a hunting club and across the road from the mill is the ramshackle home of the happy horseman.   We gave him this title several years back when suddenly a horse was tied to the front porch of the house and with the horse came the regular appearance of the bearded, thin man who lived in the house.   Every time we drove past his home, he was out brushing or tending to his horse, with a smile not unlike that of a kid with a pony or a bike or a Wii.  As we zoomed back and forth to work or play in Mifflintown or elsewhere, we waved to this man who clearly had little of what most Americans strive for but seemed so delighted with his present situation, we couldn’t help but be delighted right along with him.  On the back roads of Lack Township you will find many horses living in small, muddy paddocks with a shed and I won’t lie to you, it seems many of these horse are in very unfortunate circumstances.   But what has made the happy horseman different in our minds was that his horse was clearly and literally front and center in his life.  The house he lives in may one day fall down but it won’t matter because he’ll be outside with his horse tied to the porch post, a little fire in pit and probably a pot of beans cooking over it, a beer in one hand and curry comb in the other, just taking care of his good fortune.

Finally last summer we learned his name.  It’s Barry.  Cross Keys has a community picnic at the township building, the same one where we go to vote.  We’ve been to the picnic a few times over the years and now that the girls are getting to know the neighbor kids at school, they like to go to play with their friends so last summer we went for the evening.  A Bluegrass Gospel band played while neighbors ate hot dogs, chicken noodle soup, and homemade ice cream and swarms of kids raced around in a typical unfocused kid-play…that is until Barry showed up with his horses, he now has two.  Everybody appeared to know him and the village kids were especially glad to see him.  Within minutes and without parents signing permission slips or insurance clearances there was a line formed for pony rides with Barry.  While our girls took their turns Roy walked along and chatted with Barry.  Barry has since purchased an old Amish buggy but unlike the Amish who clop along at rhythmic pace, Barry’s not in a hurry.  He hitches his horse to the buggy and they lope up the road to Cross Keys or back Pumping Station Road to the homes of his friends and neighbors.  I don’t know if Barry is as content as he appears.  I have to remind myself that in reality I know very little about him.  However I do know how his presence in our community affects me.  It makes me want to slow down and be more content, thumb my nose at those impulses to have more, own more, be more articulate and influential.  Barry doesn’t try to be any of those things. He just tends to his horse, next to his ramshackle house, challenging the rushed, over-consumptive world-as-we-know-it with his Amish buggy and easy grin.

This morning after the girls got on the bus I went out to the barn to feed our bottle lamb and push hay forward for the heifers and rams.  I recognized the sound of cow in labor almost immediately.  As though they are trying to coax out their calf, they begin to give a low and gentle moo as they pace around looking for a place to lie down.   Thankfully Roy decided to take the day off work to recover from the flu.    We separated the heifer into a larger, cleaner pen and then left her alone.  After an hour Roy went to check on her and she hadn’t made any progress.   So like most of the farmers in our valley who are having trouble with a cow, he called Charles and asked him to bring his calf puller just in case.   When Charles arrived twenty minutes later the calf’s head was out and its tongue was beginning to swell, which is an indication that it needed to be pulled immediately.  The heifer was lying down at the time and Charles was able to get the chains of the calf - puller around it's legs and pull calf onto the dust and straw covered barn floor as the heifer stood up.  By the time I arrived on the scene, the heifer was gently licking the calf’s navel, instinctively cleaning the part of her calf that is most susceptible to infection.  So now we watch and wait for it to get up and drink.  A difficult birth can impact the first hours of its life.  It looks promising though since by the time I came back to the house it was lifting its head and beginning to kick its legs. 

I’ve written many times of the invaluable help we get from our neighbors, especially Charles and Tammy, who milk cows on the same dairy farm where Charles was born.  They are generous with their skills, knowledge, and humorous stories.  While we watched the young cow attending to her newborn, Charles told us about his previous day’s adventure learning the skill of artificial insemination.   It is hard not to have some misadventures when one hand is holding up the tail of a cow while the other is inserted in a cow’s vagina up to your shoulder, but few people retell that particular quest with the same self-deprecating humor as Charles.  Can’t ask for a better way to spend a rainy morning than in dry barn with the mothering sounds of cow and calf, laughing at the stories told by a good friend and neighbor.

We woke to several inches of snow we were not expecting this morning.  It must be a Wednesday.  Karen Sapia correctly pointed out last week that this winter we seem to be in a pattern of Wednesday snow or ice storms.  This week however our schools opened on time. 

Last Wednesday’s snow day was pretty eventful for the girls and me.  We got bundled up and went out to check and feed the sheep. Our barn is an old Pennsylvania bank barn with a large new loafing area attached to the east end.  From the haymow on the top of the bank barn we can look into the loafing shed and watch the sheep that have wandered away from the others gathered around the hayracks.  This year many of our ewes have lambed in that area and last Wednesday I noticed a ewe was in late labor while we were feeding the others.   We stood quietly and watched for almost an hour.  She would lie down and strain and push then stand up and paw at the ground.  Every now and then she looked up at us, clearly nervous that she was being watched.  Finally, chilled to the bone, we went in the house for some lunch.  When we went back out she was cleaning a set of twins.  The brown ram lamb had a big, fuzzy head – we blamed him for her difficult labor even though it was most likely our presence that kept this ewe from delivering quickly – his sister was a tiny, but vocal white lamb.  Both are growing well.  

That night it got very cold and before going to bed I suggested one of us go out to check the sheep just in case some lambs were born and separated from their moms.   I should know better by this time.  A quiet, dark, cold barn is much preferred by flighty herd animals; open a door and turn on a light and chaos breaks out. Unfortunately when Roy went out there were several newborns whose moms ran away from them.  Rather than cause more chaos Roy left them to sort out the babies.  We fully expected my ill-conceived plan might end in a couple dead lambs in the morning, but thankfully the next day all the lambs were alive and accounted for.  Whether it was our disturbing them or just bad mothering, over the course of the next day, we noticed two lambs appeared hungry and uncared for.  We brought in the two ram lambs and began bottle-feeding them a mixture of cow’s milk and raw eggs.  So once again we have lambs to raise.  This year, with Harry Potter books fresh on their minds, the girls have named them Albus (Dumbledore) and James (Potter).   They live in the barn with the flock and come running to us every time we go out feed them.  Even though after a couple weeks the novelty wears off a bit, it really is fun to raise bottle lambs.  Curiously enough, nearly every time we are feeding this year’s bottle lambs, last year’s bottle lamb, “Sweetie pie” comes nosing around as though she remember when it was her turn.  (Last year I wrote about her – she was lame in her front leg and we put a cardboard splint on it – this year she runs with the other sheep and doesn’t even show signs of a limp!)