Sandhill Trek

Spring at last...

An Old Farmer's Advice

Dad passed these on...  I've deleted the ones I think are too dorky:

* Your fences need to be horse-high, pig-tight and bull-strong.
* Keep skunks and bankers and lawyers at a distance.
* Life is simpler when you plow around the stump.
* A bumble bee is considerably faster than a John Deere tractor.
* It don't take a very big person to carry a grudge.
* You cannot unsay a cruel word.
* When you wallow with pigs, expect to get dirty.
* The best sermons are lived, not preached.
* Most of the stuff people worry about ain't never gonna happen anyway.
* Don't judge folks by their relatives.
* Remember that silence is sometimes the best answer.
* Don't interfere with somethin' that ain't botherin' you none.
* Timing has a lot to do with the outcome of a rain dance.
* If you find yourself in a hole, the first thing to do is stop diggin'.
* Always drink upstream from the herd.
* Good judgment comes from experience, and a lotta that comes from bad judgment.
* If you get to thinkin' you're a person of some influence, try orderin' somebody else's dog around.
* Live simply. Love generously. Care deeply. Speak kindly. Leave the rest to God.

Of Dog and God and Thunder

Molly Bloom, approaching her second birthday, is smart.  She has a growing vocabulary, moods, and an interest in people and other animals.  She is afraid of thunder storms.

This is an irrational fear.  She hides, she trembles, she pushes up beside me and pants anxiously.  She's smart but she's primitive.  I think she believes in god.  What else could cause those tremendous flashes and rumblings?  Poor little beastie.

Spring Morning

Most of the snow is gone.  Yesterday was the hottest March 11 on record.  This is the season when we are greatful for global warming. 

Battle Cattle Terrorism

Our first few years on the farm we baled alfalfa using a "kick baler."  I used to look at the neighbor's six foot rolled up bales of alfalfa and wonder, "How's a cow gonna get a square meal?"  But things have gotten worse, worse for the cows ...

[Thanx to Doug Alder for the cow abduction link!]

Oh yeah?

What about cuteness?

That was short-lived...

Beth says she doesn't care how many times I post that cute picture of Molly Bloom in the snow, we are not getting a puppy.

One for the Molly, two for the Snow...

This dog will be two on the seventeenth and she still gets me up at 4:30.  I think it's time to get her a little friend.  I'm getting too much sleep. 

"Dog erosion"... that peculiar crud line that builds up on the door frames at about 18 inches from the floor.  Distinct from cat erosion which includes grime lower on the door frame, scratches on the furniture and drifts of tiny hairs pretty much everywhere. 

If we had another dog the blankets would be much tighter on the bed, the dog erosion would build up twice as fast, and the quality of yard would be altered.  Today the yard is much like a minefield of dog turds, you have to watch your step.   A second dog would give the place that feedlot quality.  Watching your step would be useless.  And yet, and yet... we haven't had two dogs in the house since Sutro died fifteen years ago.  And we've never had two YOUNG house dogs.  This sounds like a major life challenge and I'm a coward if I don't face it squarely.

Post-its

It's come to this.  Lacking funds to engage a team of archaeologists to excavate my desk, I've plunged ahead to do it myself.  Among the layers of phone bills and yellowing Network World issues, the most interesting artifacts to surface are aging post-it notes.  Most are too far gone to read, intelligibility lost in the coffee stains of years gone by.  None retain any semblance of their original stickyness.  Some I recognize, bits of prior projects...  here, from my guilt-ridden Dervala interview period, a list of web sites - Paul Ford, Michael Barrish, Dooce, The Morning News... 

"posh-totty"... 

And here, a self improvement guide of some kind, perhaps: 

"Path to participation...  advisory boards, project assignments, pyramid org, networked org..."  what was THAT about?

"theme WUHAN"...

And here is the business card of Rev. Donald Sensing of the Franklin, Tennessee Trinity United Methodist Church...

Here is Leah Thompson's business card.  That be about IPv6 I think.  Troy Duster's card...  a post-it that says NGOs AFSC Mennonite Central Committee [a phone number] Rom 411 Oxfam... a lot of cat hair in the adhesive on the back...

I hate to throw these out.  Who knows when I'll need them?

Okay.  I blogrolled the Dervala links, saved the business cards, and pitched the post-its and all the Network Worlds.  I think I'll take a break.

First crane flew by today...

Along about sunset I took Molly for a walk across the field, which has a little bit of a roll to it.  The rolling terrain and the long shadows cast by the windbreak make for a real pretty walking out.  Near the house, heading north, all is in shade, but a few hundred yards ahead the sun lights up the field with a dusky yellow light that gladdens you just to look at it.

The dog always starts out with a leaping gait, bounding high all four feet off the ground, springing ahead like deer bouncing away.  Then she settles into a gallop and circles back around me before heading out at a more business-like trot, soaking up the local sniffage.  She'll pause at the brush pile for the scent of bunnies.  She'll spring off into the weeds at the rustle of a field mouse.  Today, when she settled down, she enjoyed walking on the crusted snow.

I lumbered along, breaking through with every step, looking for the easier passage on the shallow side of the drifts.  Molly has a lighter step and she's learned to walk out across the surface without breaking the crust and dropping shoulder deep into the snow.

We walked out into the light of the setting sun and saw a couple of car loads of bunny hunters calling it a day up by the public hunting ground.  I doubt they had much luck.  They've scared all the bunnies down to our place.   Maybe they were out attorney hunting, or looking for crows. 

I heard the washboard scrawking sound of a Sandhill Crane from the west.  It took me a minute to locate him.  There were a couple of small flocks of Canada geese up there too.  The crane flew west to east just south of us, calling over and over, his call echoing off the lake.  He dropped out of sight behind the trees east of the barn, on a long glide path toward his nest somewhere out in the marsh.  It was twenty degrees or so, but with the light breeze it felt more like zero.  Since the crane had turned me around towards home, we headed back.  Coming out of the field around the end of the windbreak, Molly paused to be leashed.  I snapped the lead on her and we ran up the yard into the house where we made our report regarding the first crane of 2006.