The Curious Incident Of The Machete

In which our hero learns the importance of good gloves.

 

You know those people who say a dull knife is more dangerous?

 

They're wrong.

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So a lot has happened since I wrote last and I am sorry to anyone who is still checking this blog. I am not very good at writing, and writing regularly is even harder for me.

I am now working in a new industry, aquaculture. I am raising largemouth bass and brown trout. The family farm, formerly devoted to sod is diversifying. We are looking at different grains to grow as cover crops, different long term crops to put on the land as well as fish. I am helping out with the fish and it is a challenge but a lot of fun as well.

Let me describe my farm, my parents own the land and run the business. We grow sod, barley wheat, hops and fish on some of the best farmland east of the Mississippi. We are on the Connecticut River flood plain. There is about 8ft of loam here and every inch of it is beautiful silty sandy loam. For the most part drainage is good and flooding has been an occasional problem. So much for the facts, I love this land. I grew up in the woods here, playing in the streams and in the fields. I know where the grouse nest, the deer yard and the coyotes den. I can a couple of different kinds of hawk nests in the trees. There is usually one oriel’s nest here and the bald eagles are common visitors. In the fall the cedar waxwings flock in the berry bushes and the ornamental fruit trees and in the summer the killdeer raise their young in the fields The farm is 250 acres of turf with 280 acres overall.

This land is where my soul is , where ever I am a little piece of me is still here.

The Anger Phase

I live on a reasonably busy street with a speed limit of 25mph. The average speed on my street is probably close to 40mph. This has been a sore point with my wife for some time. She delights in driving the speed limit and watching people slow down behind her. I always thought she was being a little silly and more than a little irritating. I figured just go with it, what is going to happen?

Well last Thursday I got a call from my wife saying Puck had gotten hit and I should meet them at the vet ASAP. By the time I got there, 4 miles, maybe 8 minutes, he was dead. He was my first dog and a little piece of the best of me went with him. Some ass hole with a case of beer in his front seat couldn't wait the extra 2 minutes it would take to go the speed limit and now my dog is dead.

It is almost exactly one mile from my house to the highway. My wife and I walk the dogs there and back, her more often than I. Usually I can count 10 or 12 empty alcoholic vessels on each side of the road, beer or cheep vodka. I work with 2 alcoholics, one who regularly brags about how drunk he was the other night when he drove home. Almost every street around me is narrow, hilly and windy, ie short sight lines. The posted speed limits are 25 to 35. The average speed is 40 – 50mph. Everyone I know has lost multiple pets to the road, thankfully no one I know has lost one of their children, but I am sure if I was here a little longer I could add that as well.

I hate this state. It is populated by drunks who have never been outside their county, never mind ever leaving this godforsaken state. Their entire world view encompasses at most a 20 mile radius. This doesn't even touch on the political or economic dysfunction of this state. I am moving to a new job in January and as soon as my wife finishes school we are moving away from here. This decision was made before Thursday but now I am even happier to get out of here.

Sorry for ranting, I try to be more positive here but I needed to get this off my chest. I am working on a little write up for him which I will try to post soon.

Family and Business

One of the hardest things about working with your family is, well they are your family. You can get angry with your boss and think they are the stupidest, most ungrateful wretch you have ever had the misfortune to meet, but that takes on a whole new meaning when the business is owned by someone you are having dinner with that evening, discussing who's bringing the turkey for thanksgiving. You can have a loud heated verbal altercation with your family and (at least in my family) calm down, forgive each other and work through what ever set you off. Try that with your coworkers and you will shortly find yourself looking for new ones. When you combine work and family it seems that all of the coping mechanisms we develop suddenly become inappropriate. The segmentation breaks down. Leaving the house at home and the job at work becomes nigh on impossible. This would not be a problem if we could all talk freely and openly, without baggage, but lets face it, how many of us can be angry with our family without thinking of that awful irritating thing they do, and they know it irritates you and yet continue to do it. There they are doing it now, don't they know how it sets you off. And suddenly you aren't discussing where to irrigate but something else entirely. This has been on my mind a lot lately as I contemplate the next phase in my life.

A Prayer For Rain, Answered

I farm in a little micro climate in Southern RI and today we got our first rain in almost 4 weeks. Now when I say rain, I don't mean fog or drizzle, I mean water, in droplet form falling from the sky. Every storm that has passed through our general area for the past month has passed us by. This area has some of the nicest non farming weather I know of. Even the “storm” we are having now is mostly passing us by. Yesterday we got .6 inches in the afternoon. Two miles north one of my coworkers got 2 inches. Today we got the rest of our inch and I have the afternoon off. I know I have not been posting very often, 13 hour days at work takes a little out of you. It is hard to keep 500 acres of grass green in the middle of summer. Bluegrass aka poa pratensis likes the cooler weather and tends to want to go brown in the summer. When it is not raining it is even harder.
I am happy to say I have seem to have fixed my sparrow problems. I have not had a die off in a month now. Two feeding stations and a new water bowl seemed to do the trick. I have 7 sparrows in it now, Once trapping season gets a little closer I will start keeping more at a time. I have given up trying to tie my own dho gaza for the time being and will be ordering one. The hood making is going well though.
Is anyone reading this? I know a couple of people who are, but I wonder if anyone else is. Drop a note in the comments section. Call me out for my spelling, or let me know if something I said made you think.

A Merlin For Me

Falconry is a funny thing. Today I am filing the paperwork to release the best bird I have ever had. I have not trained many red tails, only 3 of them. The first one was a typical beginners bird, well maned and mannered (her first year anyway), very responsive to the glove and lure, but never seemed to put it together on game. We killed a share of squirrels, but not what we should have. This was my fault, the combination of flying to high and to much recall while hunting shifted her focus to me rather than game. She was released in the fall of her second year. She had grabbed my face one week before my wedding. We left the scabs in the wedding photos. My second bird was released after a couple of weeks without hunting due to time constraints. Along comes my third bird, and what a beauty. She trained well and killed the first wild squirrel she saw. Through no skill of my own I stumbled onto her correct flight weight and got to see what a fit and motivated red tail is capable of. I poured my heart and soul into that bird and she repaid it tenfold. It was incredible. After a brief introductory period where she was learning what my role in the field was she would reliably kill ever time I brought her out. I hunted her for 2 very successful seasons. We had our ups and downs but over all she was a bird I would proudly fly with any falconer you cared to name. She taught me what a bird in the proper condition should look like. There is a fire in them that words cannot express, it must be seen to be understood.

So I let her go.

Why?

Not only did I let her go I don't plan on getting another red tail, this season anyway. I am looking to get a merlin. A bird as different as possible from a red tail. Different husbandry, different flight style, different quarry, different hunting fields. The easy answer is I have plenty of starlings in large turf fields, what I hope will be a passable if not perfect place to fly a merlin. I could say I have always wanted to fly small birds, both small hawks and small feathered quarry and that would be true.

Sometimes I wonder though.

As soon as I realized I could count on her catching I wanted to go out less and less. It wasn't as exciting. I am not saying I didn't need to work, some times it was a LOT of work to get the squirrel. And I still enjoyed it very much, but it was almost a foregone conclusion though that we would eventually succeed. Why bother to try when there is no doubt of your success? What does that success mean if it was reasonably predictable? I am beginning to fear that it is a “proof of concept” that I am seeking. I want to prove to myself that I can do something, and it is the proof I am seeking, not the thing itself. I hope this is not the case as I love falconry as I have never loved another hobby. I want to master it and enjoy the success of it. I want to hunt challenging quarry with a bird in the peak of physical condition. Through my hawks I want to learn everything I can about my environment and the animals in it. And that requires much more than proof that I can do it.

My wife and I went to the Massachusetts farm this weekend for Kenya's going away party. While we were there we checked on my truffles and found this killdeer family. When we first saw them the babies were still wet. My brother went back several hours later and took these two pictures:



















Killdeer love farms. Every summer we have at least a dozen pairs on a nest at any given time. They lay eggs throughout the late spring and early summer. One of the nice things about working on a farm is the opportunity to observe wildlife at a fairly close range. Because I spend so much time out of doors I see many rare animals and birds, and because they don't seem to recognise a person in a tractor as a person I can watch them for surprisingly long times.