It's Almost Here!

 

Eric Harrold and his Red-tailed Hawk "Whiskey"

Had a fun experience yesterday afternoon here on the acreage - Eric Harrold and his dog Daisy and Red-tailed Hawk Whiskey came for a rabbit hunt. Whiskey caught a really large (buck? Forgot to check) Cottontail! Was fun to watch the hunt!

"Whiskety" the male Red-tailed Hawk up close

"Whiskey" on the hunt!

I confess I was so enamored with Whiskey that I completely forgot to get shots of Daisy! (Sorry!!!) Daisy would run through the tall grass here and flush the rabbits out for Whiskey to stoop on. The first bunnies ran to our now giant wood pile - remember the huge tree falling here in October?

A great catch - Cottontail rabbit!

But we got lucky and a large rabbit flushed out of the south pasture, un-nerved by the dog and the hawk. It was caught and quickly dispatched by Whiskey...both Georgie and I got to see this in action!

Eric will clean and butcher the rabbit for Whiskey - birds of prey all need wild meat - Whiskey caught it - he gets it...just like in nature.

Hope Eric comes back as we still have tons of Cottontails!

The first Day of Winter is officially tomorrow!  Then the big day we always waited for as kids - Christmas!!!

I have an announcement of sorts to make for friends that have been on our Christmas Card list for years. I decided this year that I was going to stop creating and printing my own Christmas cards…I’ve been doing our own since 1966 when I did my first cards for my Mom…been doing it every year since!  I decided to finally “retire”!  Ha!!!  

It was actually a hard decision for me but my time and resources are much more limited than it used to be and I need to slow down in certain areas...so I will be posting our Christmas greetings on this blog and through my Face Book pages instead.

That's about 57 years of card designs and printing!  I remember back in the day doing them as linoleum block prints and then silkscreen prints...some cards took 3-4 weeks to print!!!  That's just crazy, but I was a lot younger then!  

Anyway here goes - (Still with our heart felt feelings!)

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to everyone out there!

Be good to one another - we are all we've got!

Catching Up...

 

Chinese Praying Mantis in the Garden

 

I can't seem to stem the march of time...so much has happened in our family's life as well as here on the acreage.  We still have the constant of nature here surprising us, and having us scratch our heads.  An example would be the Chinese Praying Mantis that showed up in September on a Sedum plant in our Kitchen Garden.  We have never seen Mantis this far north, and sorry it wasn't a NA native.  These are big enough to catch Hummingbirds!  Kind of cool up close but still a bit daunting!  I'll be watching for these next year - not really thinking I want them hunting around the pasture or acreage to tell the truth.

 Have you ever heard of "Blue Tongue"?  It's actually a disease that affects Deer -

"Bluetongue is a noncontagious, infectious, arthropod-borne viral disease primarily of domestic and wild ruminants. Bluetongue (the disease caused by BTV) is usually considered to be a disease of improved breeds of sheep, although it has also been recorded in cattle and some wild ruminant species, including white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus), pronghorn antelope (Antilocapra americana), and desert bighorn sheep (Ovis canadensis) in North America."

 

White-tailed Deer are experiencing a harsh Fall from BTV

 

I may be the last on the block here to learn about Blue Tongue Virus (BTV), we're hearing more this Fall for sure...we'd been wondering why we just are not seeing the "normal" numbers of deer out here; not really complaining mind-you, but pretty noticeable.  Just had a neighbor mention he found 5 deer along the creek to our north laying dead along the water or banks of the creek.  A characteristic (from what I was told and have since read) is the dying animal seeks water.  I was told just yesterday by another individual, that farms about 30 miles NE of us, of friends with a small acreage of timber having found over 30 dead Deer just in the past few weeks.  Since this is an insect vectored virus from midges and other small biting insects, the infestation and disease has abated from the frigid weather change now.

 

At first I thought the neighbor was talking about CWD (Chronic Wasting Disease)...It is primarily in the eastern half of Iowa now, but there are now reports of it in Plymouth and Woodbury counties, much closer by.  CWD is not insect borne but neurological and has a longer incubation period.  Always something!

 

Green Ash succumbed to Emerald Ash Bore

Yes, always something...we have a small handful of Ash trees left on the acreage...the one in the photo was completely dead from incursions of the Emerald Ash Bore, and threatening to fall on our internet service  receiver/pole!  We can't have that!!!  And no, we didn't chop it down with the Axe in the photo!  I love my Echo chain saw!

Unfortunately there are 2 or 3 Ashes that do threaten the house and our parking shed...the trees behind our shed are on the neighbor's ground so I am at their mercy I guess.

 

But it doesn't always have to be a disease or pathogen...I nearly met my own demise when walking back to the house one afternoon in October - an extremely windy day.  I was just entering the sidewalk arbor and there was a loud "explosion".  I've worked this scenario over and over in my mind through the years when walking under or near our old Silver Maples.   I've always thought to myself that when under these trees, if there's ever a loud "crack" or "bang" - do not look up - RUN!!!

Well there wasn't a crack or a bang - it was a virtual BOOM!!!  I instantly knew what was going on and turned and ran as fast as a 74 year old can run and CRASH!!!  I turned and saw just how close it was.  It missed the house but crushed the fences and our beautiful old arbor that we build 20 years ago.  But it didn't crush the house or me...so fortunate I'd say!

Again - grateful for my Echo chainsaw...even had to buy a larger one...my old 20" bar saw was fine for the high branches but too short for this monster's trunks!

 

20 Truck loads to haul this "half" a tree to the north pasture burn pile!!!

A 28" bar saw takes these thick trunks bit by bit (too heavy to move otherwise)!

I'm 5' 10" (used to be taller - honest) - see how thick this puppy was!

OK, that last part was easy!!!

After 4 weeks work...Georgie and I are not super human - the local harvesting was finished and the neighbor came by with his huge end-loader and plucked the last 15 feet off the ground and drove it away!  Thanks Mark!!!

Northern Lights above the Little Sioux River Valley

October was good for other things as well (not that the last "thing" was actually "good")...we had 3 days of Northern Lights...well, nights...these even put those last May to shame...just magnificent.

On the 3rd night Georgie and I ran down to the Prairie Heritage Center (where I thought I'd have to fight a crowd - but was the only one there!), and I climbed up to the small tower platform and waited...it was worth it!  The shot above was actually about 4 pictures stitched together for a panoramic view of the lights.  (You need to click on this image to really see how cool it was!)

 

Comet-Tsuchinshan-ATLAS-10-15-2024 - from the acreage lane.

Comet-Tsuchinshan-ATLAS-10-15-2024 - with a 500mm telephoto lens

But we haven't finished the great wonders in the sky for this Fall - Comet-Tsuchinshan-ATLAS was making it's last pass at Earth for, well now I don't remember how many thousand years, but the last time it visited Earth was when the Neanderthals were here to watch!

November burn to the south pasture bottom

It had been incredibly dry since late June's floods here...its nuts how this climate seems to be acting.  We've been under a burn ban since August or September.  But come early November we got lucky and it rained a couple days - a good soaking, and the ban was lifted.

We decided to burn the "bottom" of the south pasture...it's nearly solid brome, always has been.  I'd been collecting seed in the north pasture since September and used it in the bottom area after more rain knocked all the burnt debris down over the next couple weeks.

 

Mixing everything with wet sand to scarify the seed hulls and break off parachutes, and to easily broadcast by hand, randomly around the base of the hill.  This was all done just ahead of a wet front that promised great rain amounts...we got 3 inches over that next couple days...good downpours helping tamp down the seed for good contact with the ground.  

I still did not have enough seed to completely cover the bottom half of the south pasture but I knew that going in...it would take about 3 - 4 times as much seed as we'd been able to collect...but progress is progress, and we'll take what we can get.

 Now the temps are down into the single digits and teens, a fresh snow cover and more cold weather ahead into this month of December.  I think the only winter chore I have yet to perform is to attach the plow to the truck...I'll watch the forecasts and try and beat old man winter when he decides to test us!

Have a good winter, and please remember to be good to one another! 

Into August

"Prairie Bale - No.1" - Oil Painting - ©Bruce A. Morrison

 

Although this month has half expired, I still think of it as new.  I probably exhaust people with my lamentations of time slipping through our figurative fingers, but in my mind - August just arrived!

I just recently finished a small oil painting of a hay bale in a nearby county area planted to prairie.  It brings about many thoughts to mind.

About 25 years ago I met a farmer down in Larabee, Iowa who had hayed the prairie ground on Steele prairie (Northern Cherokee County) every summer during his youth and younger years. He talked of the amazing flowers and grasses, the Prairie Skinks, and the grassland birds...the ground had never been plowed.

 

It must have been just like the early settlers trying to make due with life on this virgin earth...imagine the smell of the fresh cut prairie vegetation, the sight and sounds of bounty back then!

 

A small plot of county land a couple miles north of us holds nothing quite as dramatic, but when I discovered the prairie planting there had been mowed and baled, I couldn't resist taking some photos and trying an oil painting of one. (SE O'Brien County)

 

Although the haying of prairie 100+ years back would not resemble the round bales of modern farming by any stretch of the imagination - I cannot resist the temptation of images of hay bales in the landscape. The Black-eyed Susans (Rudbeckia hirta) flowering around in the recovering native grasses give that hint of those days hearkening back to the pioneer beginnings on the tallgrass.

 

As the painting sits on my easel drying, I contemplate another perhaps...time will tell.

I have been posting fairly regularly on my You Tube Account the past few weeks...one from this week featured Cup Plants while another this week featured Swamp Milkweed.

Feel free to check them out! 

 

Consider subscribing to my You Tube Channel as well!

We seem to go from feast to famine here.  The rain shut off in early July...little over an inch of rain through some very hot and windy weeks.  Georgie has been having to hand water her two gardens, which never works as well as rain.  She has now gone through all 8 rain barrels.  We have no well here.

The pre-Christmas seeding I did on the south pasture has mostly dried up.  I don't know if the heavy spring rain here brought them on too quickly?  But they sprouted upward and had quite an impressive canopy of leaves - really surprised me.  Then the sky turned off and the heat and high winds turned on...now most of the new growth is shriveled and dried up looking.  But that pasture is mostly gravel slope...just drains too well.  I'm of the thought that the early abundance of moisture may have handicapped new plants...hope I'm wrong.

A wet Red-headed Woodpecker appreciates any rain showers as well!

 

We are getting some light showers right now - about time!  So appreciate any rain what-so-ever...

I hope everyone out there is doing well and having had a decent summer so far.  We still have about 5 weeks of it left to enjoy out there - please do!

Be good to one another, we are all in this together!

Very Rough Row to Hoe

Our Road when we awakened June 22

 

June was a surreal month here.  We had been getting a great deal of rain, and were so happy to have it that I guess we forgot to turn off the faucet!  That can happen to a person when they couldn't buy a drop to save themselves for the past 4 years.

But it was too much rain...way too much, and it kept falling - especially to our north and in southern  Minnesota.  We are downstream of course.

We lost our bridge up on the highway; it was washed out underneath on the east end.  The water you see in the photo above was much, much higher before we were awake and aware that there was trouble during the night.  All that you see in the photo and far behind me was under a "rushing" current, for at least an eighth of a mile.  I estimate the water level had dropped at least 18" before this photo was taken.

 

About 45 minutes later I took this photo of the neighbor's pasture across the road.

Things weren't nearly as bad here as the communities had up along the border and south along the Little and Big Sioux Rivers.  Most notably Spencer, and Rock Valley, but Spencer, being a much larger community, suffered a much greater loss of homes and businesses.  It's been a week now since the flooding occurred and all communities and people affected are still dealing with it and will be for a long time to come...to put it mildly I am afraid.

With all the rain we've had since May (June alone has recorded over 10 inches at our place) all of the pastures in the region look like they're on steroids.  Our north pasture is TALL and filled with plants.  The south pasture seeding just before Christmas is showing a lot of seedlings popping up here and there.  I had spent some time back in late April knocking brome back, but should have continued as its getting tall enough again to shade the new growth out.  Never a finished job around here. 

We've had a good bird population again, but as you can see in the flooded pasture photo, it looks like our Bobolink broods did not survive.  Unlike the other grassland nesters, the Bobolinks do not re-nest, just another casualty of this weather.  Even some roadside nesters like the Red-wing Blackbirds and Dickcissels were set back, yet those will retry with the summer still ahead.  Bobolinks, however are summer nomads and after the first week or so of July, flock together and spend their remaining summer wandering about.

 

The Bobolink nests were flooded out this year; we hope next year is kinder to all of us!

In trying to keep up with photographing/documenting all the prairie plants this year, I decided to try something different.  I began recording a very short video of each forb, grass, invertebrate, critter, whatever, to give a glimpse into what is sharing this place with us.  I'm calling these very brief glimpses "Prairie Moments".  I've been posting these 1-3 times a week on my Face Book pages, and sharing to other pages for the Iowa Prairie Network, the Flora of Iowa page, the Iowa Wildflower Enthusiasts page and the Iowa Wildflower Report pages.  I have not gone to other social media sites like Instagram and seriously doubt I will...I have enough trouble just doing this blog most months!  And the Face Book entries keep me pretty busy anyway.

If you are not a Face Book user (I do not blame you if you aren't!) then you can visit my You Tube Channel, which I have a couple that I've used since the early 2000's.  The channel the "Prairie Moments" videos (and many others) can be found on are at this link - 

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCgvYJOX68HwKFLdPZqkm6Qw

I'll insert one of the "Prairie Moments" here too so you can have a quick look!

 (If the video preview above does not work on your device - just click on this link directly to You Tube - https://youtu.be/BCVb7kipies?si=RhmUqZNSHuo4RfXU )

 

Rain storms the new "Norm"...photograph - ©Bruce A. Morrison

 

I was just reading an article on our planet's warming trend.  It seems that for every degree rise (I assume Fahrenheit but maybe they were referring to Centigrade?), the atmosphere takes on an additional 4% of water vapor...the atmosphere so far has had to take on an additional 10+% of water vapor and it cannot hold it.  We end up with more rain and larger rain events.  I guess our current condition  (in our region) is also due to a large heat dome over New England; this moisture cannot pass through that heat dome and it all visits us instead.

So it appears we are still stuck in a storm/rain pattern here for the foreseeable future...hunkering down for a heavy rain even as I type this entry.  We'll all do our best to adjust...what else can we do?  

We truly need to be more in tune to this planet we all share.  We are responsible in the end!

Stay safe out there and be good to one another

 

 

 

It Is Over...

5/28/24 Showers Across the Valley - image ©Bruce A. Morrison

It's official now...the Drought in Iowa has finally ended.  No exclamation point punctuating the end of that opening statement yet, but I am happy none-the-less.

It's been a bit of a mixed bag of course, nothing is ever straight forward or simple.  The weather systems in the middle of the country have come with a cost...flooding and damaging storms in many areas.  Iowa lost the best part of two small communities in the SW/Central part of the state from tornadoes.  Its been bad elsewhere too.  

Its been a bit of a race with area farmers trying to get crops in during the melee...the neighbor just got his beans in behind us yesterday afternoon.  I was kidding him a bit and said he still had a couple hours before the next rain comes and he said he didn't think he could disk and plant another 300 acres before then!  He'll be looking for another hole in the storms like so many others I guess.

5/28/24 Showers in the "Neighborhood" - image ©Bruce A. Morrison

 

Its been a real joy "here" to see everything as it "used to be"...the pastures were mostly burned late last winter and early this spring.  We left the NW quarter unburned to help the invertebrates out...had a bonus surprise there just two days ago - our 3rd Prairie Skink in 22 years!!!  We had our 2nd Prairie Skink outside the sheep barn in the south pasture late last summer...that really gave me hope that maybe they could make a come-back.  Now I'm optimistic!  Yes, even this pessimist is now optimistic!  What a little rain can do for a person, right?  Our first Prairie Skink here came the first or second week we moved here in the Fall of 2002...we discovered it in the mouth of the farm cat that came with the place!  Ouch!  Was so sad to see that.  

Red-headed Woodpecker on the acreage - image ©Bruce A. Morrison

 

We do not allow cats out side here unless supervised anymore...we are just down to one now and she is my studio kitty...I'm afraid that little rescued lady is indoors bound.  Don't get me wrong...I have had cats since I was a little kid, but I've witnessed first hand what they do outdoors.  I revisited a report I read many years ago on birds...it was reinstated recently due to the precipitous fall in the world bird population.  Cats are the LARGEST documented cause in the drop in the population of birds.  Larger than habitat loss even - very significant!  And I will be witness to the significance of that here - we have lots of birds...more than we used to before bringing all the cats inside...lots more!  And they are more successful in raising their broods than I have witnessed in past years.

Anticrepuscular Rainbow - 5-8-2024 - image ©Bruce A. Morrison

 

This last day of May marks an interesting month here, its been quite eventful really.  We get rainbows here fairly often each year...except during the drought when it's not raining of course!  We had a rainbow on the 8th of May that was kind of special in it's own way - a rainbow accompanied by ANTICREPUSCULAR RAYS. I have only witnessed Crepuscular and Anticrepuscular rays 6 or 7 times in my life - and ALL of them Out Here. Most people have either never seen them before or just didn't realize what they were witnessing.

 

Here's a WIKIPEDIA Quote for a brief explanation - "Anticrepuscular rays, or antisolar rays, are meteorological optical phenomena similar to crepuscular rays, but appear opposite the Sun in the sky. Anticrepuscular rays are essentially parallel, but appear to converge toward the antisolar point, the vanishing point, due to a visual illusion from linear perspective."

 

Fun huh!

 

Northern Lights from the North Pasture - 5-10-2024 - image ©Bruce A. Morrison

 

 

But the Crème de la crème was the Aurora Borealis on May 10!  A solar storm so active that the Aurora was visible into Mexico and the South Pacific!!!

 

I was so fortunate I got photographs from the north pasture here...even luckier I went out and set up when I did.  It was still daylight; that civil twilight when you can still make things out but the darkness is closing in.  And there they were!  Spiking high and moving around.  I had to be quick and probably got the best of the evening - the shot above shows the foreground still discernible and the moon off to the west as the Aurora danced on the horizon!  The next 45 minutes was great fun but I still prefer this image, as the rest had the foreground only as a blank black canvas.

 

Well May was great for us...here's to June being better!

 

Have a great rest of your Spring out there and always - be good to one another...we are not all the same, yet we are all from the same Maker and Loved Equally.  Again - Be Good To One Another.

 

Until next time...

 

 

A Rant or Hope?

 

Great Blue Herons - Waterman Rookery - 2023

This might be a wordy post...the image is from last year, yet this morning we have 2 Great Blue Herons on the Waterman Creek Great Blue Heron Rookery across the valley this morning.

I'm hopeful, but a backstory follows.

Last year the rookery failed...for the first time since it was colonized back in the 80's and 90's. It failed last year largely (my speculation) because of the drought we've fought since 2020. Their local fishery/food source failed...the Waterman quit flowing in the late summer of 2022. With remaining small stagnant pools freezing to the bottom during the 2022-23 winter, there was a system fish die-off. Although the Waterman began a small flow in 2023, it once again stopped flowing shortly before Labor Day in 2023. Then in October we received an amazing 6.5" 2 day rainfall and the Waterman once again began to flow. The fishery had some months to experience resurgence but just how long will a self sustaining condition actually take?

The rookery "tried" last year...in June it was abandoned...when around 30 pairs of birds give up - something is wrong. That can't be argued.

Water is much too taken for granted in Iowa. A fairly significant stream stops flowing two years in a row, yet no one seems to notice? Well maybe nitpickers like myself...

In December of 2022 the Des Moines Register ran an article on the Ocheyedan River...a 2 mile stretch of the river ran dry for the first time in recorded history. This event was apparently man made and technically illegal. But who noticed? Apparently someone needs to notice for any story to surface. Thankfully someone did notice and it was reported. But has the situation changed? Maybe, or its going to be glossed over and forgotten because yesterday it started raining - Finally.

https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/2022/12/21/section-of-iowa-river-goes-dry-as-water-pumped-to-minnesota-customers/69745918007/

"IF" things return to a "historic norm", maybe we won't see degenerative siphoning of our stream's water tables. But our resources are not finite...hear how much the proposed Carbon Pipelines will require to take from our water tables and aquifers? It is staggering!

The Waterman never had the type of struggle it now has with water usage from it's existing water table. When the upstream Ethanol plant was built back around 16-17 years ago, not a noticeable "visible" change in the creek was apparent. But the Geological Survey no longer measured stream flow of the Waterman, so who would notice?

Once the drought began in 2020 here, things started slowly changing...by 2022 it was obvious the Waterman system was in trouble. When a stream - for the first time in memory - quits flowing...it's mouth at the Little Sioux completely bone dry; there is a problem.

Could a new drain on a water resource, like the Valero plant in Hartley exacerbate the issue? The Valero web site states it produces 140 million gallon of ethanol per year, and it takes 3 gallons of water to make 1 gallon of ethanol. 420 million gallons of water per year from the water table along Waterman Creek. How much of an impact on a drought stricken stream and it's ecosystem would taking away 450 million gallons a year make??? I'm not a hydrologist nor a scientist but when a stream goes dry like this, all stresses have to have a cumulative causal affect.

While the Ocheyedan River drying up in that localized section of it's stream was attributed to the siphoning off "for sale" to another state, it may not have been noticed had the drought not have happened.

But the drought did happen and while we are "Maybe" climbing out of that drought - that doesn't mean we can just go back to business as usual and not protect our natural water resources. It has proven to us to not be finite!

So much of our natural heritage is hidden from view...what is in that stream? We see water and assume all is well with the world. But we are being assaulted by nitrogen and herbicide runoff, the loss of invertebrates and viable fisheries, as well as amphibians and turtles - so its very likely "all isn't as it seems".

Case-in-point - the 50 mile fish kill in the East Nishnabotna River south of Red Oak just last week, due to a huge fertilizer spill, apparently an untended valve just gave it all to the river......all man made destruction.

https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/tech/science/environment/2024/03/18/iowa-fertilizer-spill-results-in-miles-long-fish-kill-east-nishnabotna-river-red-oak/72995246007/ 

Everything in nature is connected...how many times has that got to be said? Are we all so far removed from the natural world now that we don't give it a passing thought any more???

If there are no longer invertebrates, micro-organisms, fish, amphibians, OR WATER in the streams - then we lose everything else above ground and the Waterman Rookery is now serving it's own sad purpose as being the proverbial "Canary in the Mine".

Two Great Blue Herons showed up this morning...they were sitting together on one of the few abandoned nests from last year.

I have hope. Is there still time for them? It all starts somewhere. There has to be some skin in the game or we are all going to lose something, piece by piece...

(Great Blue Heron and Nest photograph - ©Bruce A. Morrison)

 

A Most Uncommon Year it Was...

 

Winter Blue Jay - photograph ©Bruce A. Morrison

 

A New Year has been with us for a bit over a week and I'm still pondering what just happened...for one, last year was over before it began...for another thing, it was good and not so good at the same time.  Confusing huh.

We had entered our 4th straight year of drought here; the spring and summer weren't what we needed to change that, but still there was some moisture at opportune times...it helped the garden, and helped the farmers "just" enough to quell our tendency to dwell on our circumstances.

The Herons returned to the rookery here, the neighbor's fields were prepared and planted, and the pastures started greening up - things seemed "normal".  How we've grown to expect things to move along as we are so accustomed!  

Then drought repeated...the Herons abandoned their rookery for the first time since the nesting colony was established well over 20 years ago. (The Waterman dried for the first time in memory in 2022, and went into winter with a vulnerable fishery pooled up in small isolated pools - which froze to the bottom in the 22-23 winter temps.)  The Waterman quit flowing once again this past summer after Labor Day.

The small birds of the yard and pasture were still a joy; we had Bluebirds nesting again for the first time since the drought began in 2021.  However it was the first year we've witnessed Tree Swallows failing to nest here.  We arrived here over 20 years ago and became accustomed to 20-30 Barn Swallows patrolling the acreage; this year we had 6 pairs, down from 7-8 last year.

Some notable plants in our pasture, having gone dormant 3-4 years past, still did not reappear.  However our gravel esker hillside still offered up amazing color, albeit shorter stature and blooming time.

"Another" year saw historical warm global temperatures.

The world once again roiled in turmoil. 

As summer progressed, our family suffered joy and great loss. 

As fall came into it's time, we saw warmer temps and an unusual gift of 6.5" of rain in 2 days...it was appreciated and celebrated by everyone here!  It got the Waterman flowing once more, however small the flow may be - its a good thing.

Then the warmest November and December I've ever remembered myself.  The ground stayed receptive (unfrozen) and we got an inch and a half of rain here on Christmas Eve day and Christmas day!

We did manage a south pasture burn in November; I had been picking seed all fall and had finally decided to broadcast it over the top of the south pasture on the 23rd of December.  Hopefully this planting will see fruition!

And now we start this second week of the New Year with a return to what we are always accustomed to here - frigid temperatures and snow.  Lets keep that sowed seed covered!

Yes it was an uncommon year - at least for us.  We are thankful for the Blessings from it, and pray for all those around us who have loved and lost, toiled, reaped and harvested.  May this New Year be kind to you and may you be kind to others.  We are all of one family and this world is our only home.