Saturday, March 1, 2014

The past few days have been fairly quiet at the farm.  Geo has been on site each day, and has done some excellent work clearing undergrowth and fallen limbs in the wooded area along Rt. 250 at the front of the property.  On Friday, after his work day was over, he brought his children to see where he works, and to let them go with him to feed the horses and cows, which he had arranged with Stephen.  They enjoyed a short ride in the Gator and loved having a closer view of the animals.

Sherry put the finishing touches on all the housework on Friday.  Donny was here several days moving round bales from the northwest pasture and from the pasture to the north of the main house, and also brought another load of the rectangular bales for feeding to the Ramsay livestock. Stephen finished the farm accounts for February by close of business on Friday, as well as having run some errands for the farm on Thursday and Friday.

Almost all of the snow from several weeks ago is now gone, just in time for another storm, which is predicted to roll through our area on Monday.  Here are the remaining piles of snow as of today--they are where the snow was pushed to clear the parking area in front of the workshop, and have been slower melting because of being in the shade all day.  Today's high was in the upper 40s after a very cold day yesterday, remaining in the 20s most of the day.

We've been maintaining several bird feeders at the farmhouse, and our normal bird population consists of (by order of magnitude):  goldfinches, purple finches, juncos, doves, titmice, chickadees, wrens, sparrows, cardinals, nuthatches, downy woodpeckers, and red-bellied woodpeckers.  There are also mockingbirds and bluebirds in residence and they're often seen and heard, but they don't eat at the feeders.  In addition to these regulars, however, there was a flock of red-winged blackbirds on the farm earlier this week, all in their winter plumage, so we could see the yellow bars at the tops of their wings, but not the red patches which give them their name. They fed on the ground underneath the feeders, and after two days, were gone, possibly migrating.

Red-winged blackbirds

The farm has resident and visiting non-songbirds as well, including a heron and Canada geese that visit the pond, a band of crows that frequent the trees along Stockton Creek and patrol the air space above the fields, a pair of hawks (red-tailed, I think), screech owls, great horned owls, and apparently a bald eagle, which others have seen, but we have not as of yet.  It's great to have all these feathered neighbors--we're glad they've survived the winter so well, and look forward to hearing springtime songs before too long.