Hail

Pic 1.  Stormy sky to west

We had a couple of days of stormy weather recently.  At right is a picture of a storm that rolled in on August 4th, in the afternoon.

On August 5, we had a very similar afternoon storm, but with the addition of hail.   The hail lasted less than a minute, and was not particularly large.  But, it did an amazing amount of damage to the kitchen vegetable gardens.

Pic 2.  Part of Bed #2, before the hail

Picture #2 is of part of Bed #2, a few days ago before the storms.  Three rows of onions are on the right edge, all standing up nice and straight. 

Pic. 3.  Onions, after the hail

The last picture is of some onions after the hail storm on August 5.      We normally put enough onions in the cellar to last us well into the spring, so it would be unfortunate to lose all of these.

Almost everything in the kitchen gardens is affected to some degree by the hail storm.   

On the bright side, today there are three or four big heads of broccoli ready to pick and blanch for the freezer, zucchini bread with walnuts and chocolate cooling on the kitchen counter, and someone dropping by to buy a bit of hay.

Follow up on last entry about my dad

I'm working on an inventory of boxes and boxes full of miscellaneous things that weren't consider of monetary value by folks who helped break up my parents' last apartment.  Some of it is so lovely, in terms of letters, articles, and family photographs.  I have a lot of scanning to do.

I mentioned my father, John Richardson, in the last post.   I never talked about him with people I know because he was a modest man.  

I came across this material buried in an old box, and I know it was just the start.

The following excerpt is from an editorial in Life Magazine (November 24, 1958).

The events occurred during the height of the Cold War.   Here are links to some contextual history on the 1956 protests in Poland and the Polish October from Wikipedia.

Excerpt:

"Soon after the bloodless Polish revolution of October 1956, a self-starting young Wall Streeter named John Richardson Jr. began to hear about the crying shortage of modern medicines in Poland's grossly mismanaged economy.  He got up a committee of private citizens who saw both the humanitarian and the political point of helping to sustain Polish morale in a tough time.  With help from other private organizations who had contacts in Poland, notably CARE, Richardson made three trips to Poland and finally won the agreement of the Polish government to accept and distribute American medicine as a gift, clearly labeled as such, from the American people.  The American people in this case, also prodded by Richardson's committee, are chiefly some 20 pharmaceutical manufacturers who have contributed more than $2 million worth of drugs, including 900,000 polio vaccine shots.

The impact of this common sense generosity on the Polish people has been terrific.  To the accompaniment of grateful newspaper headlines, more than two million Polish schoolchildren are getting polio shots this fall.  For the free vaccine stimulated the Polish government to buy five million additional shots from U.S. sources.  As a result more Polish kids are getting vaccinated than Russian kids.  (There is practically no vaccine in the other satellite countries.)

Other individuals besides Richardson deserve credit for this project, too many to list here.  It was no easy job to raise the contributions, arrange for their delivery and get the Communist government to concede safeguards for their nonpolitical use.  The men did it, however, and on their own, with the approval but not the assistance of the U.S. government.  We hear a lot these days about "people-to-people" diplomacy.  This Polish Medical Aid project (address:  25 Broad St., New York) shows what it consists of."

Just wanted to say "Miss you Dad" to my father on father's day.   He passed away the day after Christmas, 2014.

Image:  John Richardson, Jr. as a young man.

Counting signs of spring (3)

Pic 1.  Elderly house cat trying to make a break for the outside world.

He may have known that the swallows who nest in the barn arrived back this morning.  I might have let that slip.

Pic 2.  Finally!!  The hay tedder has gotten its head out of the snow bank where it has been held captive all winter.  You can just see it to the left of the hay wagon.

Pic 3.  The first crocus of spring is up, and it didn't get squashed by the bear (or very big raccoon?) who walked off with our bird feeder last night.

Bird feeder still on the missing list.

Counting the signs, continued

 1. Banded woollybear catepillar has been on the front porch for a couple of days.  Most of that time he/she was on the welcome mat.   He/she could be older than most of the kids who have stayed with us.  We are treading carefully.

2. Summer sparrows were at the feeder yesterday.

3. The two raised beds in the front yard poked out of the snow yesterday, and are easily seen today.

4. The wild turkeys are now making semi-routine visits.

5. A big flock of something filled up the trees across the road this morning, but we don't know what they are yet.

6. Seedlings are coming along in the basement.  Germination was slow and uneven this year, possibly due to the unusually dry basement.  I don't think the problem was the seed.

7. First ladybug sighted indoors last night, in the bathroom, on the cap of my mouthwash.   Spunky lady. 

Oh, it just started snowing.   Kind of pretty, in that pretty kind of way when it is special because it won't last long.

Monday update:

On Sunday, when George and I were coming up the drive, a small group of robins arrived in a snow squall.  Seeing those spring bits of red swirling in all that white was exciting for us, but we worried about them finding food that day.   I haven't seen them since, although there is some bare ground now.

Checked around mid-day, and the tedder is still completely hidden under deep snow.   A tedder is a piece of haying equipment that spreads and fluffs cut hay, and looks like a large spider. 

I emailed George about the tedder, and he joked that maybe "it has tedded itself into hibernation and is buried ten feet below ground level."   Would hate to be around when it crawls up!

Counting the signs

We snow blow rather than plow, so we don't have

those big mounds thrown up by plows.  Pretty good

depth anyway though.

I didn't used to get the whole "cabin fever" issue.   When I looked after a flock of sheep, the ram went in with the ewes around Thanksgiving.

After that point, it felt like spring was driving in fast.  Every day, dark and intense eyes looked at me, triggering a sense of responsibility for the bellies getting gradually bigger.   The lambs were coming!   I had to get ready!

Without the sheep here, spring can seem a long way away.   So, I have to count the signs.

George thinks that the dull gray/brown gold finches at the feeders are starting to show some yellow.    I am planting the onions seed (inside) this weekend.   George is going to do a bit of catnip seed.   

On the other hand, IF&W relocated a hungry bobcat, who was munching on house cats.

Spring.  Coming.   Must be. 

Wind and waves

We've had a lot of wind this week, but the last couple of days were calm.   There are beautiful patterns like in the first two photos below, but highly variable, all over the hay field.    The last photo was from before the last storm.   It is like a big snow wave hit the hay barn.

 

Goodbyes

My parents were married for almost seventy years.

My mother died on the day after Thanksgiving, soon after I visited her.  She'd had Alzheimers for some time, and I felt like I'd already said goodbye.  I sang her a song my dad used to sing to her, but I don't think she heard it.   When my dad sang to her, she used to blush and smile.

I was on a train, on the way to visit my dad for Christmas, when I got an email saying my dad had experienced a significant stroke.   When I got there, he could barely speak.  I told my dad I loved him, and he said he loved me.  I kept saying it, and he kept saying it, as long as he could.   I told him we all loved him.

I sat with my dad for three days, and was with him when he died, a little after 7 pm, on the day after Christmas.

I miss my dad's voice, his sparkling eyes, and his hugs. 

Obituary

George's and my bright and brave foster daughters (ages 6 and 7) went home to their mom last week, after a year with us.   It is good that their family is back together again, but it is very quiet around here.  The girls went home with heads full of my mom's lullabies, and my dad's sea chanties and cowboy songs. 

Looking for dry ground

Haying

Due to the heavy clay soils here, we didn't hay in the first weather window in June.   The fields were not dry enough.   We had a short window a few days ago, with a bit of rain in the forecast in the middle, and used that to get in some mulch hay and tinker with the equipment.   It never did rain during that window.

After a couple of days of rains this week, we waited out yesterday's sunshine, because the fields were too wet to cut hay.   We cut some today but...fields were borderline.   We didn't get stuck, but were not thrilled with the ground conditions.   Will just have to wait and see how this batch goes.

Such is haying.

Garden

Conditions have been better in the vegetable gardens.   We got a new bed going in the old pasture, and have planted and mulched a lot of the existing beds.   Serious weed hoeing is now underway.   We are using more insect netting this year, and are still getting used to the extra steps involved in weeding.   The trade off that is we avoid running around putting wood stove soot on all the squash plants to discourage cucumber beetles.   Also, with the netting, we may avoid a problem with pests in the broccoli, which we had last year for the first time.

George built a new little raised bed in front of the house, and it is planted to lettuce mix, rainbow chard, and donkey spinach.   It is clean (no weeds), so will supply the kitchen nicely.

It is that time of summer before the weeds get ahead of me, and it is a race to see who wins!

Winter to spring

Raccoon at the suet feeder

Woodpeckers regularly visited the suet feeder, until the visitor at left cleaned us out while ignoring tremendous protests from a house cat at the nearest window.

New children came to stay with us.  This farm is fairly flat, but we now know there are ways to slide, if one has a saucer and is determined.

A new small raised bed is going in.  George's small garlic bed is doing well. Equipment maintenance and mowing have begun.

We always seem to start putting seedlings and seed in the big kitchen garden beds later than we should, but are usually lucky to get plenty of what we need in the end.

Squash seedlings