Friday, February 25, 2011

Jenna Woginrich on the Resurgence of Knitting . . .



Author and blogger Jenna Woginrich shares a peek at her flock at Cold Antler Farm. On February 15 Jenna joined several guests to discuss the resurgence of knitting on NPR's program On Point (click here to listen). You can also hear a February 13th interview with Jenna on The Renegade Farmer.

Thursday, February 24, 2011

Carol J. Sorsdahl: The Madrona Fiber Arts Retreat


The Marketplace at Madrona Fiber Arts Retreat


I arrived at the Madrona Fiber Arts Retreat at the Hotel Murano in Tacoma, Washington, Wednesday afternoon in eager anticipation of another great event. There was a wide array of well-known teachers again this year: Sally Melville, Vivian Hoxbro, Margaret Radcliffe, and Stephanie Pearl-McPhee, to name a few. I decided to go with a couple of teachers who were new to me, Jared Flood and Franklin Habit.

Jared was billed as a teacher of traditional hand-knitting techniques and garment construction, so I signed up for his 6-hour “Seamless Sweater Workshop.” I love knitting seamless sweaters, and I was eager to learn more. Jared got my attention when he talked about swatching “in the round.” I confess I've never thought about that, but now I know how to do it. Using Elizabeth Zimmerman’s percentage system, Jared took us through the process of constructing a seamless sweater from start to finish. I was intrigued by the idea of using short rows on the back of the sweater to create neck shaping, and I got a new perspective on “ease” as we considered the difference between the inside and outside measurements of a sweater, which are affected by the thickness of the fabric. We finished by discussing various yokes, raglan and round. I came away from the class with enough information to confidently create an original garment without a purchased pattern.



The “Advanced Cabling” class with Jared was the perfect follow-up to the workshop. I’ve never tried knitting cables without a cable needle, but I can do it now! From there we went on to learn how to plan out our own cable sweater, something that definitely takes planning. Did you know that a cable sweater takes about 130 percent more yarn than a plain sweater? With that information under our belts, Jared showed us how to plot the cables, filler, and gutter stitches. He talked about swatching for cable work and blocking the swatch. Then came the moment for using the cable swatches we had knit as he talked — STEEKS!! Then I knew why he had us bring feltable wool to work with: you can only do the crochet steek with feltable wool. I had done steeking in a Madrona class several years ago, but Jared’s technique was way easier, and when it came time to cut, I did so without fear or trepidation. With the information from these two classes, I was eager to design.



While I had seen Jared’s name recently, I knew nothing about Franklin Habit except what I read in his blog, “The Panopticon.” He certainly sounded as though he would be an entertaining teacher, but it was his class title that hooked me: “Elizabeth Zimmermann’s Tomten Jacket and Garter Jacquard.” Yeah, I was right there for that one! During the 6-hour class, he walked us through the process of knitting a doll-size jacket. We learned how to do garter jacquard and incorporated a simple pattern into the jacket. I was only able to get started on the hood in the allotted time, as seen here.

The view from the hotel window

No trip to Madrona would be complete without several visits to the Marketplace. There were 36 vendors from eight states and Canada offering a variety of things, including unique yarns and fibers from around the world, all kinds of equipment, accessories, books, patterns, and kits. We won’t talk about how many goodies followed me home. The anticipation I felt at the beginning of the retreat was most definitely realized. What could be more fun than 4 days in a luxury hotel with hundreds of other fiber artists? I eagerly await Madrona 2012.

Carol J. Sorsdahl lives in the country outside Gig Harbor, Washington. She sold her first sweater to a local department store while living in Ketchikan, Alaska, in the early ’70s. Over the years she has sold hundreds of children’s sweaters in area boutiques and gift shops. Her patterns have appeared in Machine Knitter’s Source, Creative Knitting, Luxury Yarn One-Skein Wonders, and Sock Yarn One-Skein Wonders. These days Carol knits mostly for friends and family, as well as for such charities as her local Caring for Kids and Afghans for Afghanistan.

Wednesday, February 23, 2011

Heather Smith Thomas — Notes from Sky Range Ranch: Brownie, Part One

On our ranch in the Idaho mountains, my husband and I have always raised a few horses. Our cattle work requires good horses. When our children were very young, we wanted to raise a horse for each of them to ride as they grew up. In the spring of 1972, we bred my good half-Arab mare Khamette and Lynn’s quarter horse mare Bambi, to an Arabian stallion we’d leased for that summer, in hopes of producing foals for our kids. We also bred my good Anglo-Arab mare, Nikki (my best cow horse), to raise another good cow horse. Nikki was more high-strung than the other two mares, and we didn’t feel that a foal from her would be quite placid enough for a young child. The other two mares, however, might be perfect to raise some “kid” horses.

Lynn's mare Bambi and my old mare Khamette
were the ones we chose to breed to raise foals for our two children.

Khamette was thirteen years old — a very dependable half-Arabian ranch horse that I’d raised and trained as my first 4-H foal project when I was a teenager. Bambi was a nice quarter horse mare my husband bought as a five-year-old in 1966, the first year we were married. Both mares had wonderful dispositions, and we thought they would raise nice foals that would be perfect for our children. The kids had already been taken on short rides on those two gentle mares.

Our kids had already ridden Bambi and Khamette
when they were very small; those two mares
had good dispositions and patience with children.

But the best-laid plans do not always come to fruition. Nikki had a good colt named Nikkolis. Khamette had a nice filly, named Khamir, destined to become our daughter’s first horse. Bambi didn’t do so well. About a month before she was due to foal, I noticed one day that her udder was a tiny bit larger than usual. I didn’t think she would foal for a while, however, because our other mares in the past had always “bagged up” for several days or even weeks before foaling. Mares are notorious for foaling a few weeks early or late; they are not as predictable as cattle. They usually make some sign that they are about to foal, but not always, as Bambi demonstrated.

In the spring of 1973, Nikki had a nice foal named Nikkolis . . .

. . . and Khamette had a filly named Khamir.

The very next day, when I went outside in the early morning to do my feeding chores, I noticed Bambi wandering around her pen and acting uncomfortable. I looked more closely and saw two tiny feet protruding from her vulva. She was foaling! But the feet were upside down — which meant the foal was coming backward.

I rushed back into the house and told Lynn, and we quickly went into action. I caught the mare and held her, with obstetrical chains ready, as Lynn carefully felt inside her. A backward delivery generally needs assistance; otherwise the foal is not born quickly enough to survive. Its head is still inside the mare when the umbilical cord pinches off during the birth.

What Lynn discovered was much more serious than just the backward presentation. The foal’s front legs were also coming into the birth canal, which meant the foal was doubled up, with all four feet trying to come out at once. It could never be born in this position. He tried to push the foal back into the uterus where there was more room to straighten it out but could not.

I ran to call the vet. Our regular vet was busy with another case and sent his young assistant to our ranch. The young vet had never dealt with a situation like this, and he could not straighten the foal. It was dead by that time, and the vet opted to do a fetotomy — cutting it up so he could bring the pieces out through the birth canal. He finally got that accomplished, then discovered that Bambi had a rip in her uterus. This is very serious but can sometimes be corrected; one of our local vets had recently saved a mare with this condition, sewing the torn membrane back together. The young vet was not willing to try this difficult procedure, however, and since the mare had no other chance to survive, he put her to sleep. Thus in one tragic morning we lost not only our dream for young Michael’s first horse but also lost Lynn’s good mare.

Later that year, however, we were able to acquire a substitute horse for our son. We met a young couple, new to our valley, living on a small acreage the other side of town and raising Appaloosa horses. They had a young daughter about Michael’s age and often came out to the ranch to visit. That fall we had a big yearling steer we planned to butcher, and since this young family needed some meat, we decided to give them half of this beef. They offered to make us a trade — half a beef for a yearling colt.

The colt they wanted to give us was from their registered Appaloosa herd, but he had no “color.” He was just plain brown, with no spots, and therefore wasn’t worth much as an Appaloosa. If he’d been a filly, they might have kept him as a broodmare, in hopes of producing foals with spots, but in their eyes he would be worthless as a gelding.

So we went to their place to take a look at the colt, and though he was very plain looking and skinny (with big feet and a big head), he seemed very gentle. He was in a grazed-down pasture with some other horses and was very placid, letting us catch and pet him. We decided he might make a good first horse for our son and made the trade. We couldn’t afford to buy a horse, so trading half a beef for a young horse seemed like a logical solution. Our son named him Brownie.

We brought Brownie home to the ranch, and he lived in a pen by our old barn, where we could feed him separately from the other horses, so he would be sure to get enough food. We gelded him and dewormed him. After the deworming and adequate feed, he quickly gained weight and attitude! We discovered that he was not as “gentle” as we thought; he was just so run down from being wormy and malnourished that he didn’t have the strength or desire to show his sassy, independent nature. After a few months at our place, he was a totally different horse. Even after we gelded him, he continued to “blossom” in spunk and spirit and stubborn independence, and his true colors began to show.

Literally. When he shed his winter coat the next spring at the beginning of his two-year-old year, he was no longer solid dull brown but had flecks of white in his coat. Over the next few years, he sported more and more white hairs. He never had a spectacular Appaloosa “blanket” with spots, but he developed an interesting mottling of white hairs on parts of his body and finally showed his Appaloosa heritage.

By the time he grew up and our kids were riding him,
Brownie had more white hairs in his coat than brown . . .

I started riding him a little that summer of his two-year-old year, wanting to train him as thoroughly as possible and have him dependable and trustworthy for our young son to ride. Brownie was hardheaded but smart, and by the time he was three years old, I was able to ride him out on the range to check cattle.

. . . and some white showed through,
even in his long winter coat.

I started riding Brownie when he was two years old
and gave him thorough training when he was three.

He was a small horse and the perfect size for our kids.
Here, Michael sits on him bareback as he grazes in our backyard.

He became a good ranch horse and carried our kids many miles.
Here, Andrea is riding him up the ridge from our house,
to go ride range and check cattle.

He never grew very big, which made him a perfect horse for the kids when they started riding him later, and he wasn’t built like a typical modern Appaloosa (highly influenced by quarter horse breeding, with large muscles, wide chest, and small feet). Brownie was more like the old Indian horses — rather plain and homely, with a narrow chest and body and big feet. Like the old-style Indian ponies, however, he was also surefooted and had a lot of endurance. He became a good ranch horse and carried both of our kids many, many miles. He was good at chasing cows in rugged terrain and never tripped or fell down. Our kids have good memories of many wild rides and heroic cow chases on Brownie, but that’s another chapter [to be continued].

Heather Smith Thomas raises horses and cattle on her family ranch in Salmon, Idaho. She writes for numerous horse magazines and is the author of several books on horses and cattle farming, including Storey’s Guide to Raising Horses, Storey's Guide to Training Horses, Stable Smarts, The Horse Conformation Handbook, Your Calf, Getting Started with Beef and Dairy Cattle, Storey's Guide to Raising Beef Cattle, Essential Guide to Calving, and The Cattle Health Handbook. You can read all her Notes from Sky Range Ranch posts here.

Friday, February 18, 2011

From Jenna Woginrich's Blog: Jacci and her Chicks



This wonderful photo was sent in by Cold Antler Farm reader, Jacci. Her companions in the photo are her first-ever chicks! Meet Apple, panini, basil, clover, nutmeg and pepper. Looks like the beginning of a beautiful friendship...

Jenna Woginrich is a Pennsylvania native who's made her home in the smoky mountains of Tennessee, northern Idaho, rural Vermont, and most recently, upstate New York.  She is the author of the memoir Made from Scratch and Chick Days.  She is on the blogging staff of the Huffington Post, in addition to keeping her own blog, Cold Antler Farm. Jenna shares a home and garden with her gregarious sled dogs, chickens, a hive of bees, and some amicable rabbits.

Sue Weaver: Gratitude

“Find the good and praise it.” — Alex Haley

I’m grateful for this view from our ridge.

We read a lot about gratitude these days; how cultivating an attitude of gratitude helps de-stress us and draw more abundance into our lives. But do you do it? Do you keep a gratitude journal to refer to when things aren’t going right and you need a reminder to get you through the day? I do.

Coming from a family where depression is the norm, I had to learn, early on, how to chase the blues. I began journaling in my thirties, keeping a running list of “happy things” at the back of each journal to reread when I was feeling sad. A few years ago, when life was in a downward spiral, I copied the lists into their own fat, hardback book. It was a revelation — so much to be grateful for! Now I keep track of my daily thoughts and blessings in my regular journal, then pull my gratitude journal off the shelf and update it on a monthly basis. Keeping a gratitude journal makes a profound difference in my life. It could yours, too.

A long-time helpmate

My journal is not a thing of external beauty, just a thick, plain-covered, large-format blank book of the sort you can buy at any stationery store. If you like pretty things, buy a fancier blank book or any of dozens of ready-made gratitude journals on the market. Or try Patricia M. Poole’s free, 44-page gratitude journal; it’s a 3.38 MB download, but very nice. Investigate online gratitude journals (google “online gratitude journal”) or create your own Word document and keep a daily file like mine.

Set a goal of adding X number of items to your list every day (my minimum is six), but go with as many additional entries as you can think of. At first it may seem hard, but keep trying. Feel free to repeat items from previous days’ lists if you want to; the object isn’t to amass an impressive list but to help focus on what you have.

Beautiful goats

I like to begin each item with “I’m grateful for” or “I’m thankful for,” but plain numbered lists are fine. They can be big things (“I’m grateful for the nice, fat check that came in today’s mail”) or very small ones indeed (“I’m grateful duct tape worked when I temporarily fixed the sole on one of my barn shoes this morning”).

If you like, decorate your gratitude journal with photos, newspaper clippings, cartoons, inspiring quotes, or anything else that’s likely to make you smile. I still miss life in Minnesota, so I copy and paste uplifting posts to the St. Paul Pioneer Press’s Bulletin Board feature in my journals.

Then, when you’re feeling utterly, horribly rotten and you think nothing is right in your life, you can haul out your gratitude journal and reread it. This is an eye-opening exercise that can change your life.

And you can share the joy with family or friends by creating personalized gratitude journals as gifts. Buy or make a blank journal with a beautiful cover and a personalized cover page. List the ways you’re grateful for having the recipient in your life, adding photos and memories of your time together if you like.

Another great way to focus on the good things in your life is to recount them as you drift off to sleep. This is a great exercise for semi-insomniacs (like me), and it definitely beats counting sheep.

And winsome lambs

So try it! Commit to journaling for a 6-week period. Then review your journal, and reflect how your life has changed for the better. You’ll find you’re focusing more on positive experiences and blessings than lack and problems. It worked for me. It’ll work for you, too.

“He is a wise man who does not grieve for the things which he has not, but rejoices for those which he has.” — Epictetus

“We can only be said to be alive in those moments when our hearts are conscious of our treasures.” — Thornton Wilder

“There is a calmness to a life lived in gratitude, a quiet joy.” — Ralph H. Blum

“Let us rise up and be thankful, for if we didn’t learn a lot today, at least we learned a little, and if we didn’t learn a little, at least we didn’t get sick, and if we got sick, at least we didn’t die; so, let us all be thankful.” — Buddha


Even thistles are good if you have the right attitude.

Sue Weaver sold her first freelance article in 1969. Since then her work has appeared in major horse periodicals, including the Western Horseman, Horse Illustrated, Chronicle of the Horse, Flying Changes, Horseman’s Market, Arabian Horse Times, the Appaloosa News, the Quarter Horse Journal, Horse’N Around, and the Brayer. She has written, among other books, Storey’s Guide to Raising Miniature Livestock, The Donkey Companion, and The Backyard Goat, to be published in 2011. Sue is based in the southern Ozark Mountains in Arkansas.

Visit my Dreamgoat Annie Web and The Mopple Chronicles

Monday, February 14, 2011

A World of Cake: King Cake for Mardi Gras

King Cake

Christians around the world boast their own version of king cake, which is named for the three kings who came to honor the baby Jesus. The New Orleans king cake is a round or oval coffee cake–like pastry, rolled or braided into a ring. It is traditionally topped with icing and sugars in Mardi Gras colors, with purple representing justice, gold representing power, and green representing faith. The cake may be filled with a variety of fillings, from apple or cherry preserves to cream cheese or almond paste.
Krystina Castella, author of A World of Cake, has posted this delicious recipe on her web site.

Tuesday, February 8, 2011

Heather Smith Thomas: Notes from Sky Range Ranch: A Cow Named Norman

During the past 45 years of raising cattle, we’ve found that certain animals in our herd stood out in some unique way and will always be remembered. One cow that actually became part of our family began life as an unusual, tiny little heifer that very nearly didn’t survive her birth.

We were calving out 33 heifers that January (1994), and half of them had calved by January 10, with no problems. Then Bohemian Barby went into labor. She was a daughter of Yugoslavian Yentl and a granddaughter of German Ginger and great-granddaughter of Swiss Miss—and niece to French Francis, African Annie, Mexican Muchacha, Danish Duchess, Kenyan Kizzie, and a bunch of other "country girls." Yes, all our cows have names!

We put Barby in the barn about noon that day, when we noticed that she was calving, and by 1:30 the amnion sac was emerging, along with part of the placenta. This signaled a problem; if the placenta was already detaching, the calf was in trouble. So we put a halter on Barby and tied her to the side of the stall to restrain her so we could check her.

My husband Lynn reached into the birth canal and uterus and felt two very tiny feet, very limp and unmoving. This seemed to be a premature calf being aborted, except that Barby was on schedule according to her breeding date. The calf was so tiny it was easy to pull out, and when it plopped out onto the straw we thought it was dead. The placenta immediately came out, right after the calf, and half of it was rotten. Perhaps there were originally twins; Lynn felt an odd mass in the uterus when he first reached in to check Barby—maybe there’d been a twin that died early on and mummified. That might be a clue to why part of the placenta was no longer viable.

One cow that became part of our family began life as a tiny heifer
that lived in our house. Here she is, shivering on the rug by the couch,
right after we carried her into the house after she was born.
Anyway, we thought this calf was dead, until it wiggled its head. The tiny critter was alive! So we quickly helped it start breathing, and our daughter Andrea ran to the house to get some towels to dry the calf. The temperature was cold that day, even in the barn. Barby started licking her baby and would have mothered it nicely, but the calf was so tiny and frail we were afraid it would have trouble getting up to nurse. And the longer it stayed in the cold barn, the more chance it would soon have pneumonia. So Lynn carried the calf into the house, and we continued drying her by the woodstove in the kitchen. Out of curiosity, we also weighed her. She weighed only 34 pounds—compared with 70 to 80 pounds for a normal heifer calf at birth.

Lynn carrying Norman into the house
soon after she was born

The heifer was tiny, but she had a big attitude. She was soon on her feet and trying to walk around the house. I thawed some frozen colostrum—we always milked some every year from a few gentle cows, to freeze for emergencies—and fed the calf with a bottle, then fixed a place for her in a cardboard box. She was so small she was able to live in a toilet paper box that was 14 by 24 inches. She stayed in that for a few days until someone was able to take the time to drive to town and bring home a big freezer box. The calf lived in that cut-down freezer box for 4 weeks.

We used towels for bedding and changed them a couple of times a day. She peed them regularly but only pooped once every 24 hours, usually during the early night shift, when our daughter Andrea and son-in-law Jim were checking the cows and giving the tiny calf her midnight bottle. She was so small we were giving her a pint bottle every 4 hours. Andrea would clean up the mess (guys seem to have a weak stomach for these sorts of things) and feed her, then Jim would let the calf out of the box to gallop around the back room for exercise.

The calf was full of energy and loved her racing time. Lynn and I were supposedly asleep at that time of night, so I could get up at 2 or 3 a.m. to take over the early morning calving shift, but I could often hear the clatter of little hoofs as Smidgeon (the first name we gave her) raced around the back room. She always wanted to charge out into the main dining room area, but Jim kept her in the back room. He was usually sitting in the doorway on a stool, reading a book between cow checks, and would stick out his leg to stop her—and the calf would try to jump over his leg. They had fun together and were soon best friends. Her first name just didn't fit, so Jim named her Norman—like the calf in the Western movie comedy City Slickers.

We were very busy during the rest of calving season, and Norman didn't get out of her box very much except during Jim's shift. But she entertained herself by chewing on her towels and shaking them, like a dog would. Even after she was living outside, she loved to chew on cloth—and would grab a person’s sleeve or pants leg in her mouth.

Norman was finally able to live outside after she was a month old (and had grown from 34 pounds to 70). Another first-calf heifer, Margot, had lost her three-week-old calf to an acute gut infection; he was in deep in shock and unconscious by the time we found him, and though we treated him in the house for several hours and tried to give him IVs, we could not save him. Margot needed a calf, so this was a chance to give Norman a real mother.

Norman was finally able to live outside after she was
a month old. Here, our three-year-old granddaughter,
little Heather, is getting acquainted with Norman.

Adoptive mama Margot looks on as Norman socializes
with Jim and young Heather.
Margot wasn't happy with the idea, but she didn't protest much. We put hobbles on her hind legs to keep her from kicking Norman, and let them be together in a small pen. Norman was so excited to have room to run. She was more interested in zooming around the pen than in her new mother; we had to teach her to nurse the cow. Margot finally accepted the substitute child, but Norman was always independent. She never did consider herself a bovine. She'd rather associate with people. She was so independent that Margot had trouble keeping track of her, so we didn't turn them out on the range that summer. They lived in a pasture at home, with two old cows and their calves.
Norman grew, but her legs didn't. She was a deep, long, big-bodied heifer with short legs, and we called her our dachshund cow. Everyone who came to visit us, including our son’s two small children, liked to pet Norman.

Everyone who came to visit, including
our son's small children, liked to pet Norman.

Our daughter Andrea with Norman—
our "dachshund" cow with short legs

We usually gave Jim and Andrea a "bonus" heifer every year for all their good help, to add to their growing herd of cows, and Andrea always selected one of the best heifers in the herd. But when we offered Jim his pick, he wanted Norman. We teased him about it at first, because she was such an odd heifer with her short legs. We would never have chosen her to keep as a cow.

But Jim was serious; he liked the feisty little heifer and had faith in her potential. So Norman stayed on the ranch and lived with the replacement heifers that winter—and went to the range the next spring. We weren't sure how she'd do on the range (being a spoiled pasture baby), and we weren't even sure she'd been bred. We have breeding dates on most of our heifers, but we hadn't seen Norman bred. She did fine on the range, however, though she always expected us to get off our horses and scratch her under the chin whenever we saw her during our range rides.

Jim worried about Norman when her time came to calve (yes, she was pregnant), and though she calved on my shift (7 a.m., January 16, six days after her second birthday), we had to get Jim up to be present at the birth (he'd made us promise!) because he was so concerned about her. But she had her calf okay—a nice little black bull calf that Jim named Harley—and Norman mothered the baby just fine. Her experience as a "people cow" had not dulled her motherly instincts.
Norman and her first calf, named Harley

Harley grew to be a big calf, nearly as tall as his short-legged mama by the time he was sold with the other calves in the fall. Norman had vindicated Jim's faith in her as a good cow. Her second calf—an even bigger steer named Chief—was as tall as his mama at weaning time. She had many more bull calves (and only two heifers) and stayed in the herd until she was eleven years old.

She was everyone's pet—and loved to have her ears scratched. She tolerated the grandkids fussing over her and even riding her! Though she was a sassy clown, she was gentle with the kids. Her final summer on the ranch, she babysat a young bull we bought and helped gentle him. After the breeding season he was not happy living by himself in a corral and was too nervous and grumpy. We didn't want him to have to compete with the older bulls, so he lived at pasture with Norman as a companion and was quite content.

Norman was a sassy clown . . .
 

Norman was special even though she was a funny-looking cow. We all loved her, and she expected us to. If there were any people around, she wanted to be scratched, especially on her neck and behind her ears, and she'd wiggle her ears with delight. She didn't mind having children—or even big people—sit on her back.
. . . but she was always gentle with the kids.
Here, our son Michael helps his
1 1/2-year-old niece Emily ride Norman.

All of our grandkids "rode" her one fall day in 1999 when the family was up on our high pasture cutting firewood. Norman came sauntering up to the pickup to socialize, and the kids took turns riding her. In the years after that, some of the grandkids climbed onto her back on other occasions.

Our grandkids all took turns riding Norman,
one fall day in 1999.


She demanded our attention and enjoyed being fussed over, but she always loved Jim the best. I guess she knew she belonged to him, or maybe it was the other way around.

Jim and Norman always had
a very special relationship.

Heather Smith Thomas raises horses and cattle on her family ranch in Salmon, Idaho. She writes for numerous horse magazines and is the author of several books on horses and cattle farming, including Storey’s Guide to Raising Horses, Storey's Guide to Training Horses, Stable Smarts, The Horse Conformation Handbook, Your Calf, Getting Started with Beef and Dairy Cattle, Storey's Guide to Raising Beef Cattle, Essential Guide to Calving, and The Cattle Health Handbook. You can read all her Notes from Sky Range Ranch posts here.

Monday, February 7, 2011

Tim Herd: Real on Tap


No, kid, it’s imaginary!

When I used to do nature programs in elementary schools, the most common question I received from the eager upturned faces was: “Is it real?”

(What? You thought I brought fake nature?)

Despite how I may have liked to respond, the kids’ interest — and their question — was real, which reveals two important things.

First: there’s an innate need to connect to our beautiful, resourceful, sustaining, real world.

Here in February, despite its seemingly lifeless state, there’s something magical in connecting with a stately old maple just as it revives for another growing season. The crows’ cries herald the coming of spring — though the calendar may yet deny it — as frosty nights and mild days signal the start of the sugaring season. Rising external temperatures increase internal pressures in the tree, drawing the sap upward to jump-start new growth at the twigs’ ends until this season’s leaves begin food production. Riding that flow is a reserve of last year’s leftover — yet still potent — sugar food. Although less than 5 percent of the sap, it is the trees’ only internal link to a sustainable future.

And yet, despite that seemingly tenuous link, there’s life enough to share.


Tapping a hearty maple, hanging a bucket, and collecting its clear sap this time of year not only uniquely bonds us to nature in all its realness but also romances and refreshes our spirits, especially as we distill its inner sweetness over a crackling fire into genuine maple syrup.

Now that’s real.

And real good!

Whenever I introduce the history, lore, and how-to behind this sweet treat to others, the result is always a better connection to our real world and its life-sustaining resources. And that’s good for us.

Because here is the second important thing: that connection is increasingly strained, ignored, and broken.

Perhaps it’s to be expected from a generation that has always known a “virtual reality.” Or maybe it’s surprising in a society that boasts a digital “app” connecting nearly everyone to everything else. But that such a doubting question as “Is it real?” is asked in the first place may well be the gasping canary of our societal coal mine.

According to accumulating research, time spent in green outdoor spaces by children fosters creative play and relieves attention deficit disorders. Among adults the rejuvenation derived from such outdoor pursuits as trailing a tiny ball through the byways of a golf course — or the hours teasing trout with an artificial fly — are well known. Aerobic activities of jogging, walking, and swimming contribute directly to our physical health. But perhaps surprisingly, studies show that the amazing therapeutic benefit of the outdoors extends even to those with a mere view of green plants and vistas — they experience less frustration and stress.

No virtual world is truly a substitute for first-person knowledge and experience in our real world. Our food doesn’t come from a supermarket. Our water originates from other than the faucet. Our wildlife depends on clean resources and habitats, just as we do. The man-made — or made up — can never replace the real thing.

Get out! Go see!

There’s reality on tap.

Naturalist Tim Herd is the executive director of a regional parks and open space commission in the Pocono Mountains. He blogs at Scene & Herd, is the creator of Nature Newswatch, and is the author of Kaleidoscope Sky, Discover Nature in the Weather, and Maple Sugar. He lives in Pennsylvania.

Wednesday, February 2, 2011

Gwen Steege: Battle with Blue Jays

We love birds — really we do. We have several feeders around our house in the Berkshires in northwestern Massachusetts. We keep them filled all winter, undaunted until spring, when inevitably the bears turn up and remind us that it’s time to stow them away until next fall. Last March a bear bent down a 3” diameter steel pole to reach our big, new wooden feeder, which it lifted off its perch and carried away into the woods. We found it several weeks later, undamaged except for a few claw marks, several hundred yards away from where it originally stood.



As I said, we love birds, with one big exception: blue jays. The gang of a dozen or so first shows up, quite reliably, Thanksgiving weekend, and they continue to appear daily, always just after the crack of dawn. Lately, that’s been at 7:14 a.m., very promptly and predictably. Not only do they damage the house, but their surprisingly loud pecking and tapping destroys any thought of sleeping in. All research we’ve been able to find suggests that the birds are interested in the calcium in our paint and that this behavior is especially common on south-facing homes in the Northeast — unfortunately, that’s us!



This year we declared war. According to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, jays prefer eggshells to paint, so we began offering them a pile of shells (washed). They do like the shells — we’ve watched them fly away with them. But we can never provide enough to satisfy them. Further, if we put them out at the end of the day, overnight snows cover them up, and the birds turn to the alternative: our house.



Our next strategy was to tie CDs to posts, on the theory that the light flashing off the CDs would scare the jays away. That actually seemed to work for a week or so, until a series of blizzards hit New England. As the snow piled up, the birds ignored the CDs and hit the house once again.


Our next idea was to decorate the house with Mylar garlands, the gold ones with a “Happy Birthday” message, along with strings of shiny, bright red valentine hearts. Those looked quite festive but were a total failure as bird repellents: the birds perched right on them.


Our most recent weapons are helium-filled balloons. I hesitate to test our luck by swearing that we’ve finally won, but the first morning all was quiet — well, at least, almost quiet. At 7:14 I heard some scrabbling on the trellis under the bedroom window that signaled a jay was trying to get a foothold, but there was not a single peck. A few minutes later I heard more scratching, sounding even closer, and there was the jay, standing on the sill looking in at me with what I imagined was a combination of puzzlement and indignation. He waved no white flag, but I think we won a skirmish, if not the war itself.

We’re gracious in victory, however; we just ask, “Take our suet and our seed (and our shells), but leave our paint alone!” We’d welcome any comments from readers who’ve been plagued by this problem!


Directions for how to make the bird feeder pictured above are in Storey's The Vegetable Gardener's Book of Building Projects. Information and advice for dealing with blue jays is in Laura Erikson’s The Bird Watching Answer Book.

— Gwen Steege, author and editor of Garden and Crafts at Storey for over 20 years

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