Hibernating

Things on the farm have been mellow and relaxed in the new year. We had a very busy holiday season with lots of family visits and food and we used the cold month of January to gather our thoughts and plan out what we hope to accomplish in 2013.

We've had a few sunny days and used that time to catch up on yard work. We've cleared the land where we hope to plant our garden, gathered up lots of branches we trimmed off trees and created burn piles and chipper piles. Brian has made trips to the dump with all sorts of random "farm junk" we've discovered in our cleaning. Once we get everything cleaned up it's going to be amazing, but I am really sick of clearing land. The last major cleaning project is cleaning the brush out of the irrigation canal before the water starts flowing again.

Brian has been busy playing with his new pottery wheel and planning where we hope to put our new (used) gas fired kiln. We've created a studio out in the shop and spend quite a bit of time playing out there. There has to be a fire running for a good 2 hours before I'm willing to go out there and work, but Brian seems a bit heartier than I and he goes out there almost daily.

The winter here has been incredibly strange. One day we'll have inches of snow, the next it will be sunny and 45 degrees out. We keep alternating between winter boots and rain boots. Bomber has been thoroughly enjoying his time outside, often wandering around by himself, and he seems to be thoroughly entertained by eating snow.
Bomber on December 8, 2012
I have been enjoying some alone time on the farm this January and have a stack of books about farming that I'm trying to get through. Every few weeks I have a new theme. Currently it's chickens. But I can't help but look up from my reading and being in awe of what is going on around me. The neighbors cows are calving, babies are running around everywhere, the sunsets and sunrises have been spectacular, and the birds continue to visit the feeders. Domino the owl appears to have a girlfriend (whom we've named Pepper) as we have a new owl that is very spooky and rarely leaves her nest. All night long the two of them call to each other. I'm not sure I'm going to be able to fall asleep without the hooting of owls if the ever leave.

Our first Robin visitor to the feeders

Day to Day Life on the Farm

So..... the to do list didn't really go as planned. Brian went hunting and I just didn't feel like tackling it myself. Brian is now on a work trip and the list has been left nearly untouched.

I've been chipping away at our box of apples, slowly but surely. Lately I've had a couple of batches of jelly that didn't gel, so I read an article on Fixing Canning Mistakes and I'm trying them again.

The other night I made Roasted Garlic and Butternut Squash Cassoulet and it was really incredible. The leftovers are lasting us quite a while too. I used the whole head of roasted garlic instead of half. You can never have to much garlic, right?

The other day this large bird flew into our window (the sun catchers don't seem to be working). I've seen them around the farm before but they never stop long enough for me to get a picture. Does anyone know what it is? When it flew away it caught Bomber's attention. He kept running around looking for it- is that a good sign of his future bird hunting abilities?

Those Darn Birds

We have several big windows that look out over our backyard and on most days I love them. Yesterday was not one of those days.

As I mentioned a little while ago, the birds have found our bird feeders. They are right by one of the big windows and I love sitting and watching all the birds chirping and eating and flying around.

There must have been something in the air yesterday because the birds and the window kept having issues. A lovely large black bird flew into the window early in the morning. I was so sad for it. it seemed ok, but I remembered something that my Uncle recently told me- Most birds that are alive after hitting the window are just stunned and if you pick them up and keep them warm they will be fine. Getting cold makes them more likely to die. Whether or not this is true I have no idea, but it stuck with the animal loving side of me and seeing that black bird stunned on the snow made it impossible for me to leave it alone. It was only 36 degrees outside.

I got a towel, wrapped up the bird, and propped him up on the picnic table. I looked out the window at him periodically and after about 10 minutes he flew away, good as new. I was so happy.

I was still beaming with pride at helping save this bird when lunch time rolled around. The large flock of birds, that we now think are purple finches, were still happily eating as the snow was melting and sun was shining when something spooked the flock. All of a sudden I heard a BOOM, BOOM, BOOM, BOOM, BOOM!!!! against the window. "What the hell just happened!" I yelled to the dogs. At least 10 birds must have hit the window at once. Nothing like this has EVER happened before.

I rushed over to the window to see a few stunned birds flying away, but 3 birds looked really hurt. One was flapping around on it's back, one looked like it hurt it's wing, and another wasn't moving at all. The towel just wasn't going to do it. I needed a box now.

So I went out to the shop and got a box, lined it with a towel, and went back to the house to collect the birds. I picked them up one by one and put them in the box and covered half the box with a towel since it was now starting to snow. Within a few minutes one of the birds flew away. I was worried about the other two so I went and filled 2 sandwich bags with warm water (this is the part of the story where Brian started to roll his eyes at me when I told him about it later) and put a warm bag of water next to each bird. Within 10 more minutes one of the other birds flew away.

I waited, and waited, and waited for the third bird to fly away but he just wouldn't. He was sitting up, looking around and seemed ok but he just wouldn't fly. I put some seed in the box with him just in case he was going to be around for a while, made sure the towel wasn't preventing him from flying away and I left him alone. I checked on him every few minutes and finally, after an hour, he had flown away.

It felt good to save the birds, but it felt bad to not have done anything to prevent this from happening in the first place. So many things used to prevent birds from flying into windows are so ugly- and I really like looking out the window.

Then I remembered that my friend Ashley makes beautiful suncatchers out of Angelina and wool (I get my Angelina from GrittyKnits). I haven't made mine yet, but here is Ashley's tutorial. If you don't want to make your own, sometimes she has some in her shop too, so be sure to check out her website. Wish me luck!

Bird Feeders

3 months after moving in and putting out bird feeders the birds finally found my feeders! I'm so happy. They are so pretty and fun to watch. They are around our crabapple tree almost all day now, going through a lot of seed. Anyone know what these are? Click the picture to make it bigger.