Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas

  

I hope you and yours have the best Christmas! 

Hannah is doing much better since her spay a couple weeks back, she has her "Cone of Shame" off now, and has had a bath! Hannah our drool queen with her slobber.

 Here she is trying to eat with her cone on, nobody is getting to her food!

The family is doing well, the dogs on the other hand are passing something back and forth, even Zeb is off his feed this week.

Merry Christmas to All and Happy New Year!

 

SNOW!

Our first real Winter Storm is headed our way, a cool 21 degrees this morning, smells like snow out. Up to a foot of snow is predicted, timing is good Sunday into Monday. We're ready for it, Sand barrels are out along the walks, shovels are all out, and the scrapers are ready in both cars.  Now with any luck we won't lose power and have to fire up the generator. We're ready for it though!

Pic via the Weather Channel

Thanksgiving was great, Turkey Soup will get made today, we couple of saved turkey leg quarters in the fridge to make a pot of soup for this winter.
 
Black Friday was a bust, no craziness for us... we went out with the grand kids to Ollie's for the best Loaded Nachos (James thought the Jalapeno he ate was a little on the hot side) and a Pizza, then over to Hobby Lobby to pick out their traditional Christmas ornament.


Frosty Morning Does

I Love You!  Every morning Zeb talks to Rosie

 That's all for now!

The Deer in August

The Does this year are looking good.  A little on the thin side.

Pups on the fence

Pups on the fence


The two Pups are getting big, Hannah is now 15 months old,  this picture is Zebulon two weeks ago just before he went on the Petsafe fence.  He's trained to the fence now, we still watch him but he has free reign of the yard now.

Rose helped train Zeb on the new fence, Rose pointing out the "BAD" flags that designate the borders of his wireless fenced area.

Nostalgia

Nostalgia

This is the equipment I started my NC Programming career on. It was used to program 3 Axis NC (Numerical Controlled) Drilling and routing equipment at a now-defunct company in Groton, MA.

Teletype ASR model 33

A Teletype ASR model 33 terminal with Paper tape output.  As you typed on the keyboard the teletype would punch characters one row per character on the 1" paper tape punch on the left side of the machine, you can see the series of holes that were punched in the paper tape. If you made a mistake you could back up a character and punch all the holes in a row or if you found out too late you needed to manually read the paper tape splice out the bad code and repair the break in the tape.  Want to see one in action?

 

The paper tape would then be used to run high-speed NC Drilling and Routing equipment like this used to manufacturing printed circuit boards.  These Teletype ASR model 33s are museum pieces today.

 

Wikipedia Article on Punched Tape

 

Even older...  My dad used to program back in the day on Punch Cards. I remember seeing them in shoe boxes in the back seat when he would sometime bring work home.

 

 

Dog Days!

It's the Dog Days of Summer

Sad to say summer's winding down, it's been hot enough.  The yard is beginning to brown up, our pond is still at a good level so thankfully no dry well fears this year.

The dogs for one will be glad once the summer is over,  we have a half dozen big holes in the yard to fill in this fall from the dogs trying to cool off.

Zebulon (Zeb) Nope, I wasn't digging...

We've been out in the Boat a few times, we hit a couple lakes and ponds in the area we scouted this spring. Nice time boating, not a lot of fish were caught. Rose wants to take Zeb out this week, we'll see how he does.

Fishing  Lake Massasecum

 Near as we can tell we have a single fawn this year.

Fawn feeding

Doe and Fawn

We had a single Dragonfly last week, they haven't been back since, provided some fun for the dogs trying desperately to catch 'em!

 James was out with my camera last week he took some nice shots.

 Stay Cool!

IT'S  HOT!

Humidity is crazy and so are the temps... A/Cs are struggling to keep up with the heat.

But we had our 1st local corn of the year yesterday and it was amazing! Butter and Sugar from Hollis NH! Ears were small but tasty! Now if I could just get my hands on some local heirloom tomatoes, soon I know...

Boat issue with the trailer lights, I got a tester that ruled ou the Car wiring, definitely a trailer side issue.  I spent 30 minutes messing with them last weekend, it's too hot to be clamoring on the lawn rewiring the trailer, next week I hope, we're dying to try out some new water we found. It's too hot to be on the lake this weekend. 



Filling the dog pools is becoming a twice daily routine they enjoy them in the shade but are smart enough to know the water heats up in the sun.

Zebulon, (Zeb, Zebber, for short)  is getting big, he's 4 months old now.  We took him to Ace Hardware on Saturday he loved it, the cutest 1 1/2 year old girl asked to pat him, he was loving it, and was a perfect gentlemen, he was hoovering the hardware store floor of all the dropped popcorn (is there a better reason to go?). Everyone that walked by had to pat him, he picked out a toy to take back to the car, got a drink from the dog bowl the leave out for dogs daily. We spent a few minutes under the misters rigged to an instant up tarp in the parking lot. Zeb quickly got the hang of getting in and out of the car too, he's in training trip for his vet visit next week for more puppy shots. Shh...

"Zebulon"

Hanna our Lab is a bird dog, notice the feather stuck to her nose, she has caught a couple birds in the past week alone.  Rose is not happy.

Hannah Belle has taken to Zeb, making sure he's being good, rounding him up when asked to, barking at him when he's misbehaving.
 
 This little Silver Spotted Skipper landed on Roses finger.

Stay cool folks!

The Dog Days are here!

It's official, the Dog Days of summer have arrived, we're in the 90s every afternoon now.

Bring on the dog days...

Summer at Last!

It's been cool, cloudy, and raining here, seems like forever since we had some nice weather, a couple days in the 80s but that's about it.  That all changed this weekend, Friday was nice, Saturday was great, and Sunday (today) it's supposed to get HOT!

Yesterday was a yard cleanup day, mowing, clipping, cutting, car washing, etc. 

Hannah @ 13 months, and Zeb @ 11 weeks old.

The dogs Hanna and Zebulon (Zeb) are getting along great, Hannah is taking Zeb under her wing showing him the ropes, she really is trying to be a good little Mom to little Zeb.  We may get to take Hannah swimming at Glen Lake today if it gets warm enough, Zeb's not a big fan of the lake, we took him down last weekend.

"Zebulon"

We tried them out in the newly erected kennel this weekend, they did just fine.  We don't need to worry about a dog getting wrapped up in a cable as with the overhead run where the two dogs are inseparable.

Hannah giving her best "please let me out" face...

The Bugs, mostly Gnats and Black Flies are out in force, seeing bunches of mosquitoes now.  Quite the swarm of gnats this morning.

 

Our newest Pup arrived this weekend...

We picked up "Zebulon "Zeb" for short, this weekend, he's pretty smart already at 9 weeks, he's a purebred German Shepherd we got from our favorite Vet over in Hillsborough at Fox Bend Kennels, quite the fur-ball, he loves playing with his older sister Hannah... oh and hoses too.

If we both stare at it long enough it'll turn on...       Hannah & Zeb

 

 

 

Looks like we have some great weather to get the grill going, and maybe even do some fishing on Monday!

Busy time on the farm, Spring is upon us...



Happy Easter!

Spring always seems endless to me, Rose on the other hand is always saying we have 3 weeks till we need to mow, and two weeks before the bugs come out... Perspective...
 


This is weekend four of yard cleanup, with Poop patrol, bed cleanup, planting new Rose bushes, and phlox, fixing mud season reminders, (places we sunk in the mud when driving on the lawn) raking, filling holes that appeared in the lawn, mowing overgrown field areas, pruning dead apple tree branches, raking up the gravel the plow pushed 30 feet up onto the lawn, seeding the lawn bare spots (really, grass seed is now $68 per bag, WTH?). We still have to mulch 6 or so of the smaller beds, we need to get the mulch down before the grass and weeds come up!  Hurry, Hurry...

We've been tested...
We nearly lost the entire workshop roof several weeks back doe to some 50-70 mph winds that came through. It was wicked dangerous up on the roof with the panels catching every wind gust and folding the panels back on themselves and slamming them onto the roof.  We got 'er done though.  We saved the roofing panels but there will be more work to do to repair all the damage done.

Yeah, it's an old building, we did not expect to lose the roof though.
Dogs...
We've been working with the dogs, Hannah is just on the radio fence for the past two weeks, she's a smart one, she's doing great on the radio fence.  She's also out of the crate at night now.  We still have her on two collars one for the radio fence the other is a training collar vibration only as a reminder to cool it when she sometimes gets rambunctious with Gordon who's 9 now, or jumping up on people.  Gordon's been sick, he's starting to feel better and is eating once again.

Hannah 11 months

Hannah,  Hunting Robins in the back yard

 

Gordon "Gordo"

 Puppies...

Our Vet had a litter of German Shepherd puppies, these are the Sables, when we brought the dogs in for their yearly shots and boosters, lime, we found out they had a litter of Nine little fur-balls, four weeks old.  These in the video were just the five boys from the litter, we decided on a male pup.

Guess how many we're taking home...   Nope just one ;-)


This guy is coming home with us in four weeks... he's the only bi-color in the litter of nine pups.

No name yet, we're listing out potential names now, got a good one?  Let me know.

Mulching, Mulching, and then Mulching some more...
We're bark mulching all the beds, we recalculated the amount needed, and ended up with 12 yards instead of the 20+ we thought we'd need.  Whew!  Still 12 yards is a bunch of bark mulch!  We're probably half done mulching,  Rose has been weeding and trenching the edges of the beds, I help with the mulch deployments on the weekends, our 3 largest main beds are covered in 3-4" of nice brown mulch now.  The Pile of Mulch finally appears to be diminishing. 

The mulched bed...   two weeks ago look at that brown grass...

We picked up James and Jason Friday evening to spend the weekend.  The boys at 13 now and are an unbelievable help when doing chores on the weekend.  They helped with the birdhouses, scratching up the areas for seeding, the seeding and mulching on the big bed down at the driveway.  They're making money for Mothers Day coming up...

Crocuses and Daffodils are blooming, the Forsythia just started blooming.

The fields are greening up to fast. We'll be mowing before you know it.  I just ordered the tune up kit for the DR Field and brush mower, I threw a belt in the fall running down some 2" saplings that were in the way.

The Birds
Jarrod gave Rose this beautiful Martin house for Christmas, the ground is finally thawed enough that we were able to dig a 3 foot deep hole to set the post into. Phoebe arrived on Thursday, twenty two years using the same shelf on the barn for her nest. Bluebirds showed up Saturday, and then the Swallows on Friday this week, the swallows spent the day fighting the sparrows for the birdhouses...

BUGS are a coming
Yeah, the Ticks are here... found one crawling on the couch last night, most likely came in on one of the dogs .  Rosie's been warning me for several weeks, "the ticks are coming", due any day, we always do a tick check when showering and in the evening before bed too.  I'll probably put the Ortho MAX down this morning, this stuff really seems to work well for us, within a couple weeks, we don't see any more ticks after application.


Black Flies were out Saturday evening at Dimitri's in Weare when we picked up the subs for dinner...  they looked hungry bouncing off the windows on the car.


Opening Day of Fishing Season 2019  next Saturday 4/27 the 4th Saturday in April!  

Boys, Get your rods ready!

Spring? The Snow Moon

I'm hoping Winter is almost done with us, it'll be spring in 3 weeks.  The buds are swelling on a lot of the Maples and poplars in the area.  Spring officially begins on Wednesday, March 20, 5:58 P.M. EDT.  I'm so ready!




I managed to get a couple pics of the Snow Moon this month.  

 

Our owl has apparently decided this is a great place, he is generally were now several days a week, especially before a storm.  He enjoys the birdhouses, (Not sure the swallows and sparrows will be happy about that this spring) generally flying between 3-4 different houses during the day while hunting for mice, moles, voles, (he does not seem to be interested in the squirrels, sparrows or mourning doves that frequent the area.)

January 2019 Storm, the Deer, our Owl, and the Hawk

January 2019 Storm, the Deer, our Owl, and the Hawk

 So far the winter here occurred mostly in November 2018, we had several good storms in November the snow still lingers from those here.  

 Sunday night January 19th (Hope we don't lose power for the Pats game tonight...) we're going to get hit with a Nor'easter Saturday evening into Sunday they're already calling it "Snowmageddon". I'm still hearing 18" to 2 feet of snow from what they are calling Winter Storm Harper, when did we start naming every snow storm that comes through?  At least it's hitting on the weekend.

We had some interesting critters show up this past week.

 The Deer herd is expanding again, we see three to four deer most evenings stopping by the deer yard, we had a group of 12 show up at 4:30pm this week after being away during the coldest days in January.

 A couple of larger birds stopped by looking for an easy meal no doubt with the morning doves out at the feeders and some overly portly squirrels too.

First was a young Barred Owl who stopped by for a nap, and a quick attempt at a vole on the ground below.

Then this beautiful Red Tailed Hawk hawk showed up on our Martin house hunting the local mouse/vole population.  Funny the birdhouses in winter seem to see more use as Hunting stands than as bird houses.

Good luck in the storm.