A Tool of the Trade: or Smoke Gets in their Eyes...

It's formal name is "Smoke Engine" but to those of us in the bee business this invaluable tool is

referred to as "our smoker."

Defensively territorial and fiercely protective, each female honeybee is armed with a "sting in its tail,"a strong deterrent for those who would steal her honey or harm her coworkers or queen mother. Beekeepers need a diversionary tool to calm the bees during an inspection or routine maintenance of their hives. Since time immemorial they have used smoke to mollify their charges. Primitive peoples used smoldering chunks of wood to assist them in honey theft. Then there were those old school European beekeepers who wafted cigar or pipe smoke over their bees to calm them.

Back in my halcyon days of beekeeping (I've "messed" with bees since my mid-teens), I read somewhere that when bees are confronted with smoke, they immediately head for their honey stores, begin gorging themselves on their honey stash in order to save it should their home be on fire. An interesting theory to entertain, but I suspect bees react to smoke in much the same way we humans do when campfire smoke drifts in our faces: we immediately shift our positions to clear our eyes and nose of the distracting fumes. Distraction...that's the effect I believe smoke has on bees. Beekeepers employ it to divert attention from their intrusion and send the bees scurrying in the other direction. And here's where the smoker comes into play.

A smoker is little more than a small firebox with a bellows attached to supply more oxygen to the smoldering fuel within. Each compression of the bellows sends a puff of smoke from the smoker's spout. The more expensive smokers come with a heat guard to protect the beekeeper from accidental burns as the firebox heats up in the same fashion as your woodstove (see photo 1). The vent hole at the bottom of the device allows the firebox to draw well and keeps the fuel within smoldering.

When I tend my bees, I always announce my arrival by issuing a few puffs of smoke at the entrance of each colony. Next I pry up the lid and direct a cloud or two of cool smoke across the top bars. This approach sends the bees scurrying down the face of the combs and allows for less interruption when the lid is fully removed. Pop the lid without the smoke and the bees issue an alarm pheromone that the inspector readily smells. A billow or two of cool smoke precludes such a response.

When the bees align their heads between the top bars in a "ready to launch" configuration, a gentle puff or two across the frames neutralizes their launch mechanisms. (A word of caution: the smoker is a tool of combustion and will become a flame thrower if the fuel is superheated; the last thing beekeepers want is to create a blast furnace that will scorch their bees.) I use canvas gloves when inspecting and sometimes give my gloves a good smoking to discourage the bees from taking too great an interest in them.

If you ever see a t-shirt that reads "I smoke burlap," rest assured it's worn by a beekeeper. Burlap is the go-to fuel for a smoke engine: coffee sacks, potato sacks, seed sacks--all work well, burn slowly and provide a nice, cool smoke. Some beekeepers use other fuels to supplement the burlap. I use dry cow "flops," or as I call them, "meadow muffins." This "alternate" fuel must be dry and well-aged.

I gather the bovine by-products in Eastern Washington range land after the cattle patties have sunbaked and lain in the fields for a year or two. Other fuels are wood pellets such as those used for animal bedding or pellet stoves. Forest duff, leaf matter, and evergreen needles are also fuel sources. In the carcinogenically unenlightened days when paper filters were used as vehicle oil filters and folks changed the oil in their own cars and trucks, some beekeepers set the old filters aside to drain and dry and later used them for smoker fuel.

A bee smoker can at times be a cantankerous assistant. Your bees are getting restless. You reach for your smoker to calm them and ah, shucks, it's gone out. Stone cold. And just when it would have come in mighty handy, too. I can think of no better affirmation of Murphy's Law than a snuffed smoker. I've learned to take along extra fuel and matches to the out yard because where the smoker's concerned, if it can go out, it will. And much to the bees' delight and the beekeeper's dismay.

Allow me to introduce my smoke engine. For years it has served me well to the point I've had to replace the bellows recently. It is dented and covered in creosote. I periodically have to scrape the rim and the spout cap to rid the firebox from excess buildup or the lid will seize up and have to be pried open before the next ignition. I've learned never to let it cool with the lid on lest it freeze up and become a frustration.

The smoker is a useful tool that is certain.

However, if used incorrectly it can cause a serious burn or singe the wings of your bees. Use caution afield when igniting your smoker, especially during dry weather when you're working an arid out yard. The tool is easily snuffed by stuffing a wad of grass in its snout. Always leave it outside until it's stone cold to the touch. Structure fires have happened because an unwitting beekeeper set a smoldering smoker on the back porch, in the shed or barn. All smoldering, unburned fuel should be doused with water like the campground fire or shoveled under dirt lest a wayward spark ignite something by accident.

The smoke engine, perhaps the most valuable, frequently used tool in the beekeeper's arsenal: whether you're new to the trade or a sting seasoned veteran, don't leave home without it.

The Valley Shorn...

A brief interlude of Indian Summer has brought out the silage trucks in full voice. The road shoulders between here and town are a' flutter with corn chips, the litter of fall, if you will. In their defense, the "corn flakes" are organic and by the end of the month the landscape will absorb them.

Stilled as well is the stentorian growl of field 
tractors after turning over the corn stubble and seeding the fields for an early crop of pasture grass.

Gladys and I glide past cornfields barren now of the waving corn that has kept us company all summer. The sight of fields naked but for row upon row of nubby stalks elicits a strange twinge of loss either from the barrenness of the landscape or the sense that one season is about to give way to another. The starkness of the fields puts me in mind of a couplet from the English poet Alexander Pope: "Time hovers o'er, impatient to destroy/And shuts up all the passages of joy." 

The farming business is at the mercy of Mother Nature and I take some comfort in the fact the weather gods have granted the Werkhoven dairy operation a short window of dry weather in which to harvest their corn and pasture grass. 

The corn crop of seven hundred plus acres is now a mountain of tractor-packed silage in the silage bunkers. As we pedal by the huge mound, the Werkhoven crew, family mostly, spread huge tarps over the pile and secure them with tire-like weights. The silage will cure and ferment for a few short weeks and then become a daily staple of the herd's diet (locally grown in the cows' backyard) to supplement the alfalfa hay trucked in (with voices, I might add, equally grating) from the hayfields in the center of the state.

Though I've several times been witness to this Valley ritual, I remain amazed at how 1000 acres of corn and grass, the work of spring and summer, can be compacted into an area less than  half an acre, a feat that seems to fly full force in the face of physics....

The laborers seemed only too happy to pause a moment from their work to grant The Ripple a photo or two. But not without a quid pro quo, the surety that their enthusiastic waving will be imprinted on the Valley history in The Ripple's pages. I was only too happy to oblige.... 

  

The Procession of the Equinoxes...

I saw a cartoon the other day--"The Family Circle," I believe--where the little girl shares with her brother that the remaining months of the year all end with "brrrrr," a strange, but apt coincidence--at least for us in the northlands. Just days away from the autumnal equinox, The Farmer's Almanac, that beacon of weather prognostication, has published its 2019 winter prediction. TFA has added a new phrase to the lexicon of ominous wintry weather. Whereas we northern folk have become all too familiar with "polar vortex,"The Farmer's Almanac has forewarned that winter 2019 will be a "polar coaster." But if you live west of the Rockies, rest easy: the "coaster" will target the mid-west and the east coast. The Almanac appears to have smiled favorably on us westerners, predicting a mild winter with near normal temperatures and precipitation.

There are those who scoff at the prescient Almanac. If you are one of the doubters, there are other predictors of bad winters to come. I came across a list of twenty of these old saws the other day and thought I'd comment on some with the Valley in mind.

Number one: "Thicker than normal Corn Husks." Considerable amount of corn in the Valley, fields of which I cycle by often. Normal looking ears of corn to me as I pass. Sweet corn is coming on, too, and the ears I've shucked seem to be no huskier than normal.

Number four: "Early departure of geese and ducks." The Valley's migratory water fowl just commute anymore, don't they?

Number five: "Early migration of the Monarch butterfly." Sightings of these iconic butterflies are rare in the Valley. I've only seen two in the forty plus years we've lived here. And those two, I doubt, were migrating.

Number six: "Thick hair on the nape of a cow's neck." I'll leave that diagnostic to the Werkhovens.

Number seven: "Heavy and numerous fogs during August." No worries on that one. Just a few the last of the month--and light ones, too, gone before mid-morning. Hey, my tomatoes have yet to show signs of late blight.

Number 10: "Early arrival of crickets on the hearth." Crickets? In the Valley? Have you ever seen or heard one? Pantry moths, however: we've had a blizzard of 'em all summer. I'll endure a hard winter just to rid the house of them.

Number eleven: "Spiders spinning larger than usual webs and entering the house in greater numbers." Not this year. Usually I have to bushwhack my way out the front door and into the garden. If I thought they'd set snares for the pantry moths, I'd leave the doors open night and day.

Number seventeen: "See how high the hornets nest, 'twill tell how high the snow will rest." Hornets here nest in the ground. Disregard that one....

Number eighteen: "The size of the orange band on the wooly bear (or wooly worm) caterpillar." I have yet to see one this year. (By the way, after the woolies go through the change, they become an attractive bug, the Isabella tiger moth.)

My favorite is number twelve: "Pigs gathering sticks." If I happen to see Grammy and Charlie heading to the barn with mouthfuls of sticks, all bets are off. I'm heading to Lowe's for their biggest snow shovel....

And to Think that I Saw it on Mulberry Street...

I offloaded Gladys in the Swiss Hall lot around 9:00 a.m. just in time to exchange greetings with Andy Werkhoven. "Good morning, Mr. Werkhoven." "Good morning," Mr. Johnson as Andy flagged down a big Massey Ferguson tractor chopping grass, trailing the conflicting odors of diesel exhaust and new mown hay.

On down the road we ting-a-ling a woman slapping blue paint on the east side of Sam Werkhoven's old place. In full sun, too. Summer painting advice: "Follow the shade, Ms."

A quarter mile later we see Kelly Bolles tractoring a brush hog over his strawberry field. Easier to find those lost strawberry plants?

Off to the south a helix of buzzards soaring higher and higher in a Valley thermal. A good omen for Brother Tim who has a hand launch glider contest today in Carnation. (Buzzards achieve maximum results from a minimum of effort.)

I pass Bill Boyce returning from his early morning reconnoiter in the Valley wilderness area.

On over Riley Slough ("Tualco Slough," the sign reads). The resident blue heron apparently gone fishin' elsewhere.

Bridge construction site was silent this morning. The weekend, perhaps? But then this is a County engineering affair. Nine 103' long pilings for deck support left to drive. Are the other forty-three already resting on bedrock fifty feet below?

On the return leg below Decks' hayfield I come upon a man and his dog out for a stroll. As the dog turns to wait for his master, I discover the four-legged companion is in fact a coyote pup. We startle it from behind and it quickly bolts into the corn. "A young coyote," the walker smiles as we pass. "I just saved your life," I joke.

Andy Werkhoven again, this time piloting the big Massey Ferguson limo, chauffeuring a small boy (grandson, perhaps?) I wave. Andy tries to coax a return wave from the lad but he wasn't having any of it.

Just not much going on in the Valley this morning....

On the Loose in the Valley...

Usually it's midday when Gladys and I take our morning exercise. Midsummer now, the days hotter, so today I decided to take advantage of the cool morning and still air (Gladys hates a headwind). Backing into the Swiss Hall parking lot, I was surprised to see the environmentally sensitive Nancy L chatting with a woman on the Hall's back porch. Out for her walk, I thought, ever vigilant the Valley isn't filling up with trash. As I was offloading Gladys, Nancy L wandered over to share news that four of Werkhovens' calves had escaped and were out and about somewhere in the Valley. "They found one," she said, " but three are still on the loose." I looked across the field to where a band of green stood out above the pasture grass. This summer's corn crop. As I pedaled off, I told Nancy I hoped the calves weren't out there somewhere in the corn.

The corn stalks are chest high or taller and put in me in mind of our trip to the mid-west ten years ago. We had left the main drag to visit South Dakota's Badlands National Park. At one of the "scenic viewpoints" we looked out over what looked like miles and miles of humongous inverted egg cartons. Mountains of mounds and hillocks as far as the eye could see. A sightseer who shared the view with us remarked: "Helluva place to lose a cow." I'm sure those words had been spoken at that site countless times, but they were original to me, and I thought about them again, this time in the context of acres of corn and three stray calves.

On down the road a ways I was glad to see a fellow and three girls insinuating themselves between three spotted calves and the verdant cornstalks. The lost had been found and were now being chaperoned back to the calf pens. "Ah, the escapees," I told the cowherds as I pedaled by. "Just glad they weren't in the corn," the man replied.

As we pedaled by the stands of corn along the river I wondered what course of action Werkhovens might take in the future should more wayward stock wander into the corn. Aerial surveillance? A drone perhaps? It seems like those high tech whirlybirds are everywhere these days. (A couple Saturdays ago a drone was flitting back and forth over the heads of a wedding party at the event venue south of our slim acre; a wedding photographer had taken his art airborne.)

On the return leg I came upon Steve Werkhoven and the three young lady cowherds by the dairy milk house and stopped to fill in the rest of the story. There are many a head of calves at the dairy, and I was curious how they knew some of the herd were missing. One of the girls said someone had seen them running along the road and then out in Decks' hayfield. They were able to corral one but the other three escaped and disappeared. It was then I learned my thoughts had dovetailed into calf recovery. Steve said Decks had a drone, did a flyover of the area, and located the calves sauntering along the riverbank. All that remained was to herd the prodigal bovines back to the calf stalls. Werkhoven told me the dairy had seven hundred acres planted in corn. " A drone might be a good investment,"I told him. "Yeah," he replied, "They usually just hang around the calf barns though," and went on to say they'd have wandered home sometime anyway.

Maybe so, I thought, yet the dairy folks had had to leave their morning routines to retrieve them, hadn't they? Without the aerial reconnaissance they might still be searching. And that seven hundred acres is one helluva big corn maze....

Grammy...Or Charlie?...

It's hard to believe Kelly Bolles' great horticultural experiment, trifling with truffles, (Trifling for Truffles or there's a Fungus Among us in the Valley), is now in its eighth year. I think about his project and those exotic 'shrooms every time Gladys and I huff and puff our way past the oak and hazelnut grove especially planted to foster a crop of the gourmet fungi. Five years, Kelly told me, the earliest he could expect any sort of crop. "If I could just find a truffle like this, " Kelly grinned, configuring his fingers in the shape of a softball, "I'd have it made." Or something to that effect, in other words a gourmet gold nugget....

Whenever I see Kelly these days, I ask for an update. As of this post the Valley's sometime truffle king has yet to unearth a single gnarly corm. I'm no expert on truffle horticulture, certainly haven't done the research Kelly has on the crop, which he geared to the Pacific Northwest truffle industry that's well established in Oregon. My knowledge of the elusive fungi is limited to European truffles, a subject that crops up every so often in the news. For centuries in truffle country, especially France, truffle foragers have used the keen olfactory ability of pigs to locate and root out the treasured mushrooms. In keeping with Old Country tradition, come potential harvest time, Bolles purchased a pair of porcine truffle seekers, but I wonder if Kelly's new help might have put his fungal venture in jeopardy.

Here's where the Valley truffle adventure becomes more interesting. Pigs love truffles just as much as the French gourmand. Once a truffle hog roots up a prize, the pig's handler must pounce on the find immediately before his assistant can scarf it down. I'm sure Kelly was aware a truffle sniffer could and would down the crop if the handler didn't quickly intervene. Perhaps Kelly's research focused on the growing of truffles more than the harvesting of them. Not sure about that, but after the fact, when the pigs were hired on, Bolles learned that a potential truffle hunter has to be trained in the art, training that should begin at the piglet age. Kelly's two pigs? Both mature hogs. And apparently you can't teach an old hog new tricks.

You might say the pocine pair are now a Valley fixture, and as you drive the Lower Loop Road south of Werkhoven corner and happen to see afield what appear to be two large dogs in the vicinity of Kelly's truffle grove, those'd be Grammy and Charlie. I caught them unaware the other day and thought I'd snap a photo, but when I approached, Grammy...or Charlie was having none of it, snorted and waddled briskly off, presenting only his or her porkly backside to the camera.

"How are Grammy and Charlie these days?" I asked Kelly last fall when our paths crossed.  It was flood season and he was worried about them. "They weigh nearly four hundred pounds apiece," he told me. "If we have a flood, I can't pick 'em up...they'll drown. I need to build a critter pad so they can escape should it flood." He has yet to build a higher ground refuge but as it's not flood season, I don't think mounding a pig escape is Kelly's priority.

When I mentioned bacon, pork chops, and cracklin's, Kelly laughed and shook his head. As we pet owners know, naming an animal elevates its status to that of pet, and it appears Grammy and Charlie are now part of the Bolles's household, not likely to become pulled pork or pan fried side meat. But Kelly's always looking for an angle: "Maybe I should train and sell truffle dogs," he chuckled,  "There's real money in that..." as a trained truffle dog has little interest in downing a pricey mushroom. While he's sharing this with me, I'm thinking about Grammy and Charlie, the way they've bulked up, and how I frequently see them rooting about in the truffle grove. Perhaps they're finding more there than cover and shade?

Meanwhile when fall rolls around, Kelly has hazelnuts for sale and even extends the courtesy of a stock tank in which one can dunk his hazelnuts to see which sink or float (the floaters contain no meat). I'll close this post by sharing a question I put to Kelly one day: "How can you tell which is Grammy and which is Charlie; their markings are the same?" "Charlie has tusks," he said,... good information to have the next time I get close enough to snap another photo.

The Glorious Fourth...

The Fourth of July was the memory of a new republic, a bloody babe of destiny, waiting to be filled with soul.

Ross Lockridge, Jr.                                           
Raintree County                                         
                                                                                             

To look at the sweet corn you wouldn't believe it. Independence Day, 2019, and the corn is yellow and stunted, barely ankle high. Looks like"Knee high by the Fourth of July" will have to wait for the next corn season. I tilled up the first planting which yielded a meagerly dozen sprouts out of two rows. The second planting, while well-sprouted, lacks the robust growth corn usually experiences this time of year. But please excuse the corniness. The subject of this post concerns the 243rd birthday of this our Grand Republic.

This Glorious Fourth, I'll spend like last year's: listening to Sousa marches and the patriotic songs rendered by the forceful chorus of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir from their "Spirit of America" CD. The pyrotechnics I'll leave to the younger, more adventuresome set; those days of crump, crackle, and boom I've left behind, thankfully with all fingers and limbs intact, hearing only slightly diminished. I'll miss, however, the homemade ice cream and butterscotch brownies.

In honor of the day perhaps I should revisit the Declaration of Independence, brush up on the Constitution of the United States, read some of the fine print. Or perhaps a bit of Thomas Paine.... (Seems to me the pamphleteer's messages are currently--and sadly--foreign to the powers that be.)

But no thanks. On this celebratory day I can't think of a more patriotic thing to do than pull my favorite novel from the bookshelf, the only novel this confirmed reader has read twice, flip through the pages to my favorite passages (my copy bristles with sticky notes), and revisit the grand panoply of our Great Republic in the latter half of the 19th Century.

Raintree County is a sprawling novel. And at times a brawling novel. (The manuscript Lockridge delivered to Scribner's publishing weighed twenty pounds.) It covers a tumultuous epoch of our country's history, the britches bustin' period spanning the Clay/Polk presidential election of 1844 to  1892, a half decade that saw the Westward movement and the closing of the frontier, the Civil War and the Emancipation Proclamation, and the transcontinental linking of our infant railroad system, "binding ocean to ocean in bands of steel." The fulcrum of the story line is July Fourth, 1892, and the slate of celebratory events scheduled for the day. The story begins with protagonist Johnny Shawnessy preparing to participate in the festivities. Events of the day trigger flashbacks that skip the story back and forth across five decades of history including seven memorable July Fourths. Though successive chapters might record events decades apart, the ending sentence, each incomplete, is skillfully linked to the beginning sentence of the next. This device, though delightful, makes the novel a challenge to read. Every Glorious Fourth I consider it a patriotic duty to revisit Lockridge's epic novel and thus once again...

happy birthday to our Grand Republic. May it thrive and prevail as a safer...and more to the point, saner beacon for the world.

HARD HAT AREA...

Are you familiar with the American folklore hero John Henry? A few days back I was reminded of that legendary steel drivin' man. A rhythmic "clang, clang, clang" from the Valley gave me a welcome pause from the hoe handle. Metal on metal it was. A persistent metallic echo you could almost feel through your feet, beating time as if it were the percussion section for a gandy dancer's chant. "Who or what is pounding away out there?" I wondered and almost immediately remembered an email I'd received from Matt Beebe, The Ripple's down Valley reporter with an update on the Bridge 155 replacement project which began in April (after a two week delay) and is slated for completion by January 13, 2020.

According to Reporter Beebe after the old bridge is demolished, the County's contractors will set fifty-two metal pilings across Riley Slough, deck support for the new bridge. Each piling will be driven fifty feet down to Valley bedrock (as per current County seismic code, I'm sure). The "clang, clang, clang?" A pile driver rending the peaceful Valley air with an irritating cacophony. The construction crew will set the pilings on the north and south banks of Riley but as the slough is a "salmon" fishway (according to Matt, the last salmon he saw in Riley Slough was in 1985 and that at his childhood residence back up Ben Howard Road) workers will defer setting pilings in the watercourse proper until sometime in July--after spawning season, so as to disturb for now, Matt shared, "only the frogs and salamanders."

More news. The environmentally sensitive Nancy L, out for a walk in the Valley, watched in amazement as a truck pulling "the longest trailer I ever saw" hauling four steel pilings slalomed its way to the construction site. We both wonder still how the truck, pilings in tow, was able to negotiate the right angle curves on the upper Loop road. Nancy L suggested I check out the construction site: "There's some mighty big equipment there," she said. So today Gladys--an amazing bit of equipment herself--and I ventured out to gather some news....

Our ride to the construction site was one of contending fragrances...olfactory ambivalence, if you will. As we rolled by Broers' berry fields, the midday sun brought forth the sweet, almost cloying, smell of ripe strawberries. But strawberry fields don't last forever and further down the road Gladys nearly balked as we happened upon Andy Werkoven, boot tops awash in verdant froth and foam gushing from one of the poo poo sprinkler valves. Strawberries and liquid poo, pungent enough to clear the clogged sinuses of an elephant.

We grind to a stop past the "road closed" sign and find ourselves in the presence of "some mighty big equipment." In the shade of a large crane a pair of hardhats were chokering up one of those huge pilings. The more diminutive of the two walked my way. From the look of his battered headgear, I could tell he'd been around the construction trade for some time. "How long are those pipes?" I asked. "Shorty" shot me a proud smile: "103 feet," as if to boast that size does make a difference. (I estimated the diameter of each about eighteen inches.) I shot a few photos and then crossed the lawn of the old Victorian two story to take more shots of the work in progress in and around the slough. A couple of the pilings protruded from their fifty foot bedrock pillows. I noticed workers had installed a miniature caisson to keep the sluggish slough waters at bay and thought: " Frogs, salamanders, and salmon, watch out."

My photo op concluded when Shorty, gesturing toward a tilted up, huge piling, shooed me away from the danger zone. "Wouldn't want you to be on the news," he explained, referencing, I'm sure, some of the crane accidents in the news of late. "I've seen it happen, and it's not pretty."

After Shorty herded me out of harm's way, I asked him if I could wait until the bridge was finished so Gladys and I could continue our ride. "You'd be pretty hungry by then," he chuckled.  I went on to ask about the project timeline, if the work was proceeding as scheduled. The answer? Shorty shrugged his shoulders. I followed up with, "How about cost overruns?" "You have a good day," he said, striding briskly toward the hard hat area. The interview was over.

 And for now that's the news from the Hard Hat area....

The GOOD Earth...

For a few minutes yesterday I watched a queen bumblebee nest questing. Like a small bomber she was flying at treetop level, coursing back and forth over the ground. She had overwintered in some protected place and her task at hand was to find a suitable nest site to raise a new generation of her kind. Flying low next to my feet, I watched her investigate two abandoned vole holes along the fenceline. She disappeared into each for a few seconds only to emerge a short time later, having decided, I surmised, the site lacked the specs necessary for a suitable home. She flew on into the neighbor's pasture, disappeared in the high grass and though I waited for her questing to resume, I never saw her again.

Today is Earth Day, the forty-ninth anniversary, if memory serves. I was around back then for the very first one, teaching at the time in a small high school in the northern part of the state. I remember the day was spent free of traditional instruction. Students instead attended short presentations by local naturalists and members of the U.S. Forest Service. It was a day well spent, raising, if not students' awareness, certainly their appreciation of the pristine wilderness and natural beauty that was so much a part of their daily lives.

Something is killing my bees. My bees used to thrive here on our slim acre. Now winter after winter I lose most of my hives and come spring have to replace them. Other beekeepers are suffering the same plight. Some lose all their hives. Others, most of them. I know for a fact certain species of butterflies, due to habitat destruction, are no longer found in their former haunts. These may seem minor issues to some, but to me they mean something is wrong out there, something is awry on the "Big Blue Marble," our planet Earth, the only one that keeps us--thanks to gravity--grounded. Not only "the times, they are a' changin'," but our planet is a'changin', too. And I believe we, as a species, are significant players in this change.

Whether you accept that Homo sapiens is complicit in climate change and global warming or assume the cavalier attitude that shifting weather patterns, the receding glaciers and polar ice caps are natural cycles, have occurred since the beginning of time, are to be expected, the natural course of things...something with which we as a fragile species have to deal, set aside a moment or two today away from the distraction of your technology and do one or more of the following:

Examine the architecture of a flower. Even a dandelion is a miracle. No need to hug a tree. Just look at one. And not just "look" at it, but "see"it as a living thing that shares this planet with you. Note the branches, how they grow, the leaves, the needles, its bark. A tree is a "territorial view" in and of itself. Consider a lake, a river, stream, creek, puddle or raindrop as more than just water, but as an essential component of life, your life and your children's, and that of all living things, a precious and irreplaceable commodity. Take note of the creatures of the air: birds, insects in flight...commune with a cloud. All are of this planet, all play a role in the grand scheme that is nature.

Or consider that bumblebee queen, her quest to propagate future generations of her kind, her offspring and the offspring of their offspring, insure the survival and perpetuation of her species. Her Earth is our one and only Earth. A healthy planet is a legacy for her children--and ours. An astronaut viewing Earth through his space capsule window covered the small, blue orb with his thumb and thought, "Everything I know from my life lies there under my thumb." Words to think about on this Earth Day, 2019.

Post script: Or as couched by a real poet:

                                    The World is too much with us; late and soon,
                                     Getting and spending we lay waste our powers;
                                     Little we see in nature that is ours;
                                     We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
                                     This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon,
                                     The winds that will be howling at all hours,
                                     And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers,
                                     For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
                                     It moves us not.--Great God! I'd rather be
                                     A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
                                     So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
                                     Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
                                     Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
                                     Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.

                                                                                   William Wordsworth, 1807

Gladys and I Say our Goodbyes...

The wheels of County Works grind slowly, but grind they do. One day Kevin Olson arrived home to find flagged survey stakes at the stoop of his rustic cabin on the banks of Riley Slough. Yes, it was four years ago Kevin learned that Bridge 155 over Riley Slough was scheduled to be replaced. A lot of water has passed under Bridge 155 since then. Kevin and his wife, not wanting a speedway nearly on their doorstep, moved somewhere up Woods Creek a year ago. The County has compensated owner Ginger Mullendore for the loss of her property. Then County Councilman Dave Sommers who met with Kevin, Ginger, and The Ripple (A Meeting at Bridge 155) about the project, (a meeting that accomplished nothing as far as mitigating the proposed shift west of the bridge approach), is now 5th County Executive. One of our stately Valley maple trees standing in the way of progress is now a heap of firewood rounds. In its stead a power pole now supports temporary power lines. The surveys are done, detour signage is posted and actual demolition of old Bridge 155 is scheduled to begin Monday, 4/15/2019 (tax day, note the irony?). Completion date: 1/30/2020 (wonder what Vegas odds are for that to happen?). In the interim, Valley commuters will detour via the Lower Loop Road. New scenery for that traffic, yes, but certainly an aggravation for the resident locals adjacent to the new route, especially the Werkhoven Dairy, making this coming winter one of discontent for their dairy cows. (Andy Werkhoven's sentiment: "I wish the County'd post 'local access only' signs.")

Yesterday Gladys and I pedaled out to the old bridge to say our farewells. A fleet of PUD rigs were on scene. A flagger motioned us around two bucket trucks, the work stations of both full of linemen working on the new power configuration. We stopped at the north bridge approach where I wandered among the spray painted hieroglyphics on the pavement to record the old bridge surface one last time. And for one last time Gladys and I pedaled across.

We pulled up alongside two PUD surveyors carrying their transits, levels, and grade rods. "I can't tell you how many times I've ridden across this bridge over the years," I share. One replied,"You should see what it looks like underneath--scary!" "Tell me about it," I said. "A few years back a pair of inspectors let me accompany them beneath for its biennial inspection" (Crossing over in the Valley: the Abridged Edition). At the south approach I stopped Gladys by the carcass of the newly felled maple tree and recorded the old bridge from that angle.

My photography session over, I mounted up and as we leisurely pedaled by the two surveyors, I told the one holding the grade rod," You know what was the scariest part about being under there? Seeing those trolls!" He grinned and shook his head....


"Trip, trap. Trip, trap. Trip, trap." Who's that trip trapping across my bridge!"

"Hush, you hairy headed thing. It's just the County. They've come to replace your roof."

Spring calves: from the Valley Archives...

                   

I'm going out to fetch the little calf
That's standing by the mother. It's so young
It totters when she licks it with her tongue.
I shan't be gone long.--You come too.

                                   The Pasture
                                    Robert Frost

A serious case of cabin fever due to an unusual snow event here in the Valley this month has kept the editor housebound for weeks. Except for a patchwork of white, plowed and shoveled piles and shaded areas, the snow is melting into memory. But it's a slow melting, a lingering longer than I can remember. An abnormal residual: a couple days of delight and then the rains usually wash the novelty away. I'm tired of snow, tired of shoveling snow, tired of scraping snow, tired of driving in snow, tired of tromping in the snow to and fro from house to chicken coop and back, tired of looking at a cold, white landscape of snow. Christmas, when we needed the white stuff, has long passed and with the vernal equinox just a scant three weeks away, a winter wonderland is the farthest thing from my mind.

Now that the roads are clear and dry, it's nice to get out in the Valley again, shake the kinks out of shanks' mare, and, as I've heard phrased somewhere, blow the stink off oneself... walk a furlong or two.

Today I turned at Sargent Road and strolled by Werkhovens' dairy barn where a regiment of black and whites, up to their noses in fresh hay, were stoking their cuds, a veritable milky way of contentment. At that moment an ATV towing a trailer rolled up, loaded to the sideboards with calf bottles.  "Lunch time?" I asked the bundled up young woman at the helm. "It's been a long time since breakfast,"she laughed. As she and another young lady prepared to stuff the bottles in the plastic sconces attached to the pens, I left them to their work and shuffled off. It was about my lunchtime, too.

I paused to watch the calves. From all appearances they seemed an aggregate of ears, noses and spindly legs, putting me in mind of the word "hobbledehoy" which Webster's gives as "an awkward, gawky youth." It's a miracle, I thought, that they ever grow into their bodies. As I thought about their innocence and vulnerability a dark memory surfaced. Years ago a troubled young man with a twisted spirit walked among the calf pens at night and bludgeoned several occupants to death with a baseball bat. Authorities apprehended the young man, and some small justice was served I believe, but as I watched the young woman and her assistant's careful tending of the calves, I thought of the heartache and pain the Werkhovens must have experienced at the sight of the dead innocents they were unable to shelter and protect.

As I trudged toward lunch, my thoughts turned to Pasado's Safe Haven, our local animal rescue organization established after a pet donkey named Pasado was bludgeoned to death in the manner of Werkhovens' calves. Some years back when I discovered a feral cat and her kittens were residing in our woodshed, I called Pasado's Safe haven, but because no one was using the kittens for batting practice, they said my cat problem was beyond their jurisdiction.

HOW RUDE!

Yes, you! You know who you are! You know what you did! Your mother never raised you that way! Plow down an eighty-seven year old widow's mailbox and just keep on going! And in broad daylight, too! At the risk of stereotyping I think I have you pegged. You're the one who doesn't return your shopping cart to the cart corral. You litter the roadside with your fast food wrappers. If you're a smoker, you use the whole wide world for your ashtray. And you're the one who lays on the horn when I slow down to turn into my own driveway. I'm just glad you're not my neighbor...sorry for those unfortunates who are....

Tire track evidence show you veered off a straight stretch of road, ran down the letterbox post, and continued on your merry way. At least two traffic offenses there: failure to keep a motor vehicle on the roadway and driving distracted (most likely a hand held device part of the mix). Possibly some federal offense, too, such as interfering with rural route mail delivery (U.S. Postal Service will not delivery mail to a downed mailbox). Since the incident occurred midday, it's doubtful a DUI infraction was the cause although there's certainly precedent for such.

I've lost track of how many mailbox posts I've had to replace because of irresponsible motorists. A consequence of living on a busy highway, I suppose. Most have occurred when someone uses the driveway to turn around, miscalculates and backs over the post. Many happen during the night, leaving you rushing around the next morning to repair the damage before the postman arrives. I'm so well practiced in the routine that I can reset a new post in the course of an hour, including a trip to the lumber yard to purchase a replacement. But that's an hour I've lost because of some inconsiderate driver.

Twice now I've been witness to the vandalism--for that's really what it is, isn't it? The first I was working in the garden and heard the  signature"snap," looked out just in time to see the tilting mailbox and a pickup truck leaving the scene. The truck drove up North High Rock Rd. I staked out the road for a half hour hoping to confront the culprit when he returned but with no success. The second involved my neighbor lady's mailbox (the same victim whose downed mailbox prompted this post). I had just gone out to check our mail when I saw a small, brown pickup with a canopy turn around and back over the box stanchion. The driver drove slowly by me flagrantly disregarding my waving and gesturing. He too turned and drove up North High Rock, leaving me to wonder just what caliber of folks live in that community anyway.

A few years back WSDOT replaced our mailbox stanchion during a turn lane project ("Send us a Letter: Better yet, Make that a Check," July 23, 2010). The "upgrade" featured a "breakaway" stanchion, a perforated metal post designed to break away and prevent injury should a wayward motorist collide with it. I told the engineers if a driver was careless enough to damage my property and then rudely drive off, I wanted his vehicle to sustain some damage, and he, perhaps, lose a little skin. A smidgen of justice seems only appropriate.

Chicken! Hawk!

I'd sooner, except the penalties, kill a man than a hawk;...
                                                         Hurt Hawks,

 Robinson Jeffers


In an earlier post I shared a bit of homespun wisdom from the environmentally sensitive Nancy L. "Ain't nothin' don't like a chicken," she said (the "homespun" grammar mine; the wisdom of the observation Nancy's). Our one slim acre is home to a four-flock, four hens (no 'roos). There are the two Brahmas, the elder girls Flo and Ida and the friskier Wyandottes, Penny and Agnes (pronounced Ag-uhn-ness--not egg-uhn-ness or Ahn-yes, in the French). The latter are replacement chickens: Penny the First went the way of Nancy L's saying (varmint of interest: a coyote); Agnes One was a bully and now belongs to Paula Thomas's flock which quickly reshuffled her status in the pecking order.

Every once in a while I like to give the girls some freedom for an hour or so, let 'em out to grub around in the dormant garden--a little proactive pest management, you might say. The other evening I opened their pen and watched them fall all over themselves exiting the enclosure. They had scarcely begun their scratch and peck routines when a large hawk glided over, did a double take, and quickly perched in a tall evergreen next door. Since "Ain't nuthin' don't like a chicken," I quickly aborted the hens' foraging session and herded the disappointed flock back into their covered run.

The next evening around 4:00 p.m. with about an hour of daylight left, I let them out again, returned to the house and some computer work I had going. I busied myself at the keyboard, was hard at work when out on the lawn there arose quite a ruckus. You've no doubt heard the phrase "squawk like a chicken?" Very likely have used it yourself a time or two, haven't you? Heeding the cry of a damsel in distress, I rushed out just in time to see a large hawk hunkered on the ground by the arborvitae. At my entrance, the bird quickly took flight and sailed off to the west. I'm fairly good at identifying birds of prey, can distinguish most raptors, but the larger ones I haven't quite nailed down yet. Any big hawk I lump into the general category of "chicken hawk." In past years a pair of rescue chickens, a hen and her 'roo, had dealings with a perp of that ilk; both ended up as piles of feathers. At the site of their demise it looked like a couple of pillows had exploded.

The eerie silence that followed the hawk's departure was deafening. I rushed to the epicenter of the commotion fully expecting to find carnage, blood, entrails, gore.... But nothing. Not a clump of down. Nary a pinfeather. Only silence. I stepped through the hedge in behind where I'd seen the hawk, parted the branches, and there was Agnes the Second doing her best to become one with the ground and the hedge duff. She didn't seem to be injured, but as a precaution, I gingerly scooped her up. Injured? Not Agnes. At my touch she began squawking like a chicken and struggling to escape. While her coop mates stood by curiously, I carried the squawking hen to the coop, dropped her inside, and shut the door.

I herded the "survivors" into the run and a half hour later released Agnes who began her chicken activities as if her recent trauma had never happened. The next day she laid an egg thus confirming my suspicion that chickens lack short term memory...if they have any memory at all. Not the case with this chicken rancher, though: the little flock's free range days are over--for a while, anyway--safe from aerial assault.

At Freddie's the other day I ran into the environmentally sensitive Nancy L and shared Agnes's adventure. She told me she'd recently seen a coyote loping across her property with a mouthful of chicken. "One of the neighbors' flock," she smiled.

Ain't nuthin' don't like a chicken....