Autumn comes

It’s officially autumn and back and forth weather and wildlife have been the theme leading us into the equinox. Over the past week we’ve had temperatures ranging from 30 to 79 and we’ve seen moose, bear, a blue heron with a wing span a terydactyl would’ve been proud, and signs of a rather large coyote. Just an hour ago I was trotting back down our road a mile or so away (because I hadn’t timed my dusk walk quite right and was hurrying home in order to batten down all the chicks and chickens and geese before real dark) when a truck coming the opposite way stopped at a crest on the road and the family inside cheerily asked “Do you see what’s behind you?” I turned to greet 2 moose calves silhouetted and still, watching us, less than a quarter mile away. They HAD been following me and I wonder now for how long. They were gorgeous and soon they skittered off into the woods. Similar to the way the bear did yesterday that I met driving into town yesterday, right where the dirt road turns paved at the old meeting house. Again, he or she was about a quarter mile away and galumphed across the road from the woods into a tree line along a field that was in the process of being hayed, the big round bales. It’s a combination wonderful and taking it in stride these wildlife sightings. We expect it and it surprises us at the same time. Wonderful, wonderful.

And along with the wonder comes the realization that with the change of season (Yay Autumn!) we’re also moving into predator season who would find it wonderful to be full of one of our feathered flock. This is when fox and coyote and fisher cats and other sharp toothed creatures like weasels and mink tend to feast on birds as the food sources of summer dwindle and disappear. We haven’t gone through a winter yet with this many birds under our care. Richard seems confident and I’m trying my best to defer all dominion over to him. But you see – and maybe this is why I didn’t want birds in the first place – now I care for them. It would destroy me if anything were to happen to Ginger or Mary Ann. The chickens too, I suppose, though Richard has a closer intimacy with them, a bigger stake. And Richard’s chicks keep coming. Taffy, a Buff Orpington gifted to us by our friends Valerie and Keith that has blossomed from a scrub muffin into a beauty, is now broody and sitting on 6 eggs. Grace, a sex-link Barred Rock, hatched 5 chicks a couple weeks back and spends the days parading her brood about and teaching them how to scratch and fend for themselves. She’s a tough mother, a task master. It cracks me up watching her scratch the earth firmly with one of her legs inevitably losing track of one of the grey chicks in proximity and suddenly there’s a tiny shriek squawk as one of them goes flying caught up in the force of one of Grace’s backkicks. This is a daily occurrence. As Frieda, Richard’s mom, would say: “Toughen up, big baby!”

Speaking of toughening up, there’s a whole list of chores to do for the coming cold that we’re clipping off in good measure. It reminds me of the Aesop fable (I think it’s Aesop) “The Grasshopper and the Ants.” I think we’re hovering somewhere in between those 2 insects, but things are getting done and we’re enjoying it. An added occurrence is our pond draining. We haven’t had a substantial rain for a while, so there for a couple weeks as the level went down, we thought it was due to the dryness. But then we recalled that we had had dry spells before and the level of the pond had not varied. After all, it is spring fed. So one day Royce, our neighbor who grew up in our house, came by to inform us that 40 years ago when his dad built the pond, he had gone to the bottom of it to cover the pvc pipe with a piece of wood and cover the wood with a big rock. “I wondered when that board was going to rot through,” Royce intoned in his inimitable fashion. I was in NYC when this disclosure came and Richard told me that he and Royce spent a day trying unsuccessfully to find the end of the pipe that was in the pond. They found the pipe end that was draining on the other side of the pond’s dam, but though they dove (in COLD water!) in search of the other end, fed a hose through, and made tapping noises in an attempt to locate it by ear - silt, rocks, and gunk impeded any progress. At first, it was depressing watching our pond slowly sink from view, but now we’re heartened, seeing it as an opportunity to clean it up. We’ve already been moving branches and submerged trunks and an old beaver dam, once below the surface, awaits our disassembly above. The pond has never been cleaned in 40 years and it’s big. We asked a local excavator to come over and price the job of cleaning out the muck and he estimated $10,000!!! And this is without having to transport any of it by truck; we’d be able to use it all on parts of our land. I think we’ll pass. Now we’re conjuring up creative alternatives to demuck the pond. We understand it’s much like topsoil so we plan to beef up sunken places near the pond’s and in our yard and on our hill, tilling it into the present soil. We’ll either let it dry out and stay empty for the winter’s duration and once the bottom’s dry, scoop out the lion’s share of dried much OR simply put another board on top of the pipe opening once we locate it and try and get the pond back to a fine level before the winter’s freeze. After all, the counter argument goes, it’s been fine for 40 years without cleaning.

Tomorrow we rent a muck pump which should help drain this puppy in pretty short order and we hope get rid of some of the muck in the process. The draining means our trout need to be transported to a neighbor’s pond AND our geese are going to be disappointed. (And how do I know they have an emotion like disappointment? Search me.) It’s really a completely selfish regret on my part. I love watching them swim on our pond. That image should be beside the word “serenity” in the dictionary. They are gorgeous, effortlessly paddling about the water, the simple grey and white of their feathers set perfectly against the hues of the pond and the surrounding woods. But they have enjoyed the exposure of new shoreline. They’ve squished around in the black gunk, nibbling away at twigs and submerged what nots. And whenever Richard and I have gone over to spruce up the swamp and pond’s edge, Ginger and Mary Ann are right there to lend a curious eye, a sideways discernment.

And so it goes, so it goes, so it goes.

The night it dropped to 30, Richard and I were out in our gardens by flashlight, snipping chard, lopping off pumpkins and butternut squash from their soon to be mottled vines, harvesting cabbage, and covering up spices with sacks and discarded cabbage leaves. Oh what a clear, starlit night looked down on our scramblings. It was fantastic really. A rush, a charge, a bracing embrace of how much we love this place. Then upstairs to swaddle ourselves underneath blankets and wake to make one of our first fires in our wood stove.

Happy Autumn, everyone. (Sorry I’ve been away from the blog for awhile.)