The scurs and the Weather Eye kept it relatively dry once again. Never mind the snow on Tuesday. This too shall pass. Will it slow harvest or bring it to a screeching halt? Starting Wednesday, mostly cloudy with highs in the low 30’s and lows in the low teens. Thursday, sunny with highs in the mid-20’s and lows in the low double digits. Partly sunny on Friday with highs in the low 30’s and lows in the mid-20’s. Saturday, partly sunny with a slight chance for evening snow. Highs in the upper 30’s with lows in the upper teens. Partly sunny Sunday with a slight chance of snow. Highs in the mid-20’s with lows in the upper double digits. Monday, mostly sunny with a slight chance of snow. Highs in the low 20’s with lows near 10. Cloudy for Tuesday with highs in the low 20’s and lows near 10. There is good news and bad news since we switched back to Central Standard Time. The bad news is the sun started to set before 5 p.m. on the 5th and, as of the 7th, we’ll be below 10 hours of daylight. The good news is that the sun will rise at 7 a.m. on the 9th. The Full Moon arrives on the 12th. The normal high for November 12th is 44 and the normal low is 26. Looks like the scurs will be getting out their long winter gadgets early this season.
Harvest continues as we continue on our colder-than-normal trend in November. Looking at this week’s forecast, we’re down about 10 degrees on both the high and the lows from last week. While we’re fortunate we haven’t seen a lot of precipitation, we certainly aren’t dropping much moisture on the corn. Evidence of yield losses from brittle snap continues to mount, although as farmers have started picking later planted corn, there tends to be fewer issues with it. In fact in some cases those late May and early June planted fields have yielded remarkably well, certainly better than some of the horror stories from the brittle snap and down corn fields.
The Full Moon is on the 12th and generally goes by the Full Beaver Moon, named for the large part-time water-dwelling rodents trapped for their fur before the waters froze. Their pelts were a driving force behind the fur trade becoming very popular for the manufacture of hats in Europe. The Ojibwe knew this moon as The Freezing Moon and the Lakota Sioux called it The Moon when Winter Begins. That sounds pretty accurate right about now. At the ranch, it is the Moon when Barns are Cleaned, we hope.
At the ranch we continue our transition into winter. The first large pile of screenings was scooped up, deposited in the gravity box and brought home from the kindly neighbors. The sheep are fond of them and the kindly neighbors too for that matter. As the pastures begin to dwindle, and they have done so rapidly with the cold weather, it’s important that the bred ewes start to receive a little better nutrition. Not so much however that you kill them with kindness. Overly fat ewes are notorious for going down before lambing. Treatments when it happens are often unrewarding. Frequently it means dead lambs, a dead ewe or both. Screenings offer a convenient source of nutrition that allows one a little leeway. The sheep seem to like the bees wings almost as much as they like the small pieces of cracked corn. There could be a whole new market there for farmers wanting to clean up around their bin sites. A few sheep to clean up the bees wings and problem solved.
The birds haven’t been as active as some years, although with the cold weather, the suet feeding woodpeckers have staked a claim to the horizontal feeders. So did the house sparrows on the feeder not equipped with a deterrent. More problem solving. In the past, I’d used the same trick that some use to keep house sparrows out of bluebird houses, fishing weights suspended with fishing line on either side of the entrance on the blue bird house or in this case on at least two corners of the suet feeder. Since they’re not very adept at flying vertically or upside down sparrows and starlings don’t like being thrown off course running into the line and will avoid it. However, I discovered a woodpecker entangled in the fishing line last winter and after setting it free decided there had to be something with less injury potential. There was.
I swiped a few pieces of florist wire from Mrs. Cheviot and affixed it with the fishing weights to a couple of the feeders. It worked beautifully to keep both sparrows and starlings away. Initially last winter I’d tried putting a spacer between the suet and the screen on the bottom of the feeder, so the sparrows, with their stubby beaks, couldn’t access it easily. That worked except when it was windy (When wasn’t it windy last winter?), the spacers would shift, allowing the suet to get closer to the screen on one side. The spacers also had limited effects on the starlings with their longer beaks and once the sparrows figured it out, it was back to square one. That’s when I tried the florist wire and found it to be not only effective, but safe as well. Last week I noticed the sparrows were already back at the remaining feeder without it, so I wired up a couple of fishing weights as I had on the other suet feeders and voila! No more sparrows, only woodpeckers eating to their little hearts’ content.
Time continues to take its toll on our aging bodies at the ranch including Ruby’s. She’s always done a patented Border Collie triple spin move when we come out the door for chores. About a month ago she must’ve tweaked her hind foot doing that and has been favoring it ever since. Mrs. Cheviot has a foot that’s been bothering for going on a year now and can’t wait to get off it at night. Standing at work on it 6-7 days a week doesn’t help. Something in my left shoulder snapped many moons ago. I frequently wake up at night in pain. My left knee lost a battle with a ram’s head a few years back. It sorta locks up sometimes and I hobble around like Chester on Gunsmoke. Both joints make snapping, crackling, and popping noises. Pretty sure it’s not Rice Krispies related. Bottom line is, we’ve all become gimps at the ranch and we’d better buck up, buttercup. When the going gets tough, it’s time to take a nap. See you next week…real good then.