Rural Scenery In Constable, New York

I'd just toured the hamlet of Constable, but the town had a lot of rural land, so I turned onto Miller Road to see what I could see. The first farm I came to was big and well maintained, with multiple barns, three silos, a sugar house, a couple of grain bins and neat rows of hay bales:

 The farm was too big to get in one photo so I drove on, catching it again from a different angle:

 Still the same farm, this one showing the farm house:

 I continued on Miller Road, which became woodsy and made a sharp turn, where I stopped to snap a picture of this house, shaded by the many pine trees. I never noticed the pile of old furniture until I got home and looked at the picture:

 I saw no more farms, so I turned back the way I'd come, photographing this collection of barns and children's swings. The bigger red barn was full of firewood. And if you are wondering, this is indeed part of the same farm I began with:

 I turned onto Dineen Road, where I photographed this sizeable sugar house and other outbuildings:

 Someone was drying laundry on the line, behind which a number of horses appeared. They looked to me like the Welsh pulling pony I once had:

 The house which went with the ponies and laundry led me to guess that this was an Amish farm:

 A dairy barn, milk room and silo, with a row of baleage out front:

 The above barn was too big and too close to the road to get in one photo, so here's the rest of it:

 I found myself again in the hamlet, with no more farms, so I ended my driving tour. But before I put my camera away, I had to get a shot of this amazing creation, made from an old stump in front of someone's house. Very creative!

October On The Farm

There's been a lot going on around here this autumn, but I still try to take time to notice the small, quiet beauties such as this new mushroom in the lawn:

My neighbors gave me some cornstalks to decorate the front of my house and I purchased two pumpkins to add to the look:

But something has been eating my pumpkins, gnawing right through to the core. I'm guessing it's that porcupine I saw a few weeks ago:

I see the dawn sky nearly every morning these days, but few are as beautiful as this one:

The same morning as the above photo. The odd thing was that all this color was in the southeastern sky instead of the northeastern sky, where I usually see it. I have no idea why:

I keep collecting apples (and pears) to feed to the cattle - one bucket each day in the afternoon. I collect them and then store them inside the barn, ready to use:

I cleaned out the chicken and pigeon rooms, nearly filling the tractor's six foot bucket with poop and feathers. I then dumped it on the cow manure pile:

The grass around the fence line of the north field couldn't be cut when they hayed it, so it went to seed, creating a wonderfully colorful picture:

Why do my chickens cross the road? To mess with local traffic, of course:

Right after I cleaned out the pigeon's room, they became bolder about going outside. There were seven this time:

And eight this time. Can you find them all? There's one above the electric entry, two just above the center eave, four on the milk room ridge (one of them at the very end), and one just about the milk house window:

The Eastern White Cedar just outside my door has produced billions of cones and they are beautiful, especially combined with the green and yellow foliage. They're not so lovely, however, when they're littering my porch:

A Walking Tour Around The Farm House

I'd arrived at the farm with all six of my dogs in the car. We had a walk about, then I put the dogs in my apartment and went exploring by myself. At the south end of the barn I turned back to capture this November farm scene:

The milk room is attached to the main barn. It still has functioning lights, but the running water is no longer connected. It sure would be luxurious for me to have both running water and lights when I'm keeping chickens in there. I'd like to put a fenced chicken run along the side of the barn, but snow sliding off the roof would make that a bad idea. Perhaps the chickens could exit out that window on the end of the former milk room. Hmmm. I'll have to give that some thought:

I parked my car on the northwest corner of the house and used the north entrance to come and go from my apartment. That worked quite well but won't be useful in the middle of winter. There will be too much snow then:

Standing in the county road, I got a good view of the farm house and barn:

The main barn would benefit greatly from new roofing and siding. But that will likely never happen. Nonetheless, it's fun to imagine:

Since the tenants' Pit Bull was occupying the fenced dog yard, I let my dogs out to run on the lawn to the north of the house. They liked that just fine and had a grand time sniffing, pooping and peeing:

Wally trotted through the fallen apples. The neighbors' farm lies directly across the road:

Winky and Clover investigated the goldfish pond. In fact, all the dogs seemed to find it fascinating. On our last trip, Clover fell in the water and I had to rescue her. She didn't, however, show any fear of it on this trip:

Arriving At The Farm And Inspecting The Barn

It'd been two months since I'd been up to the farm and it felt good to arrive there once again. The grounds were neat and the many pots of geraniums around the perimeter had been emptied for the winter. Harley, the tenants' Pit Bull, was inside the dog fence:

I let my dogs have yet another potty break and stretch their legs, then put them inside my apartment. I then toured the barn:

The tenants had tidied up the milk room. I plan to use this some day as a chicken house. And no, that toilet is not operational. It's just an old one being stored out there:

There's a screen at the top of the stairs to keep the hay loft pigeons from coming down and pooping all over everything downstairs. I have two rows of cow stanchions which I hope to use some day:

There's a couple of enclosed box stalls which were probably once used for horses:

The second row of stanchions. The automatic waterers are no longer working:

Looking at the barn from the south end you can see the row of decrepit sheds which are attached. It'd be terrific to rebuild them, but I fear they are too far gone and I'm too short of both time and money. I'll have to be happy with just the barn:

I Arrive At The Farm

The dogs and I arrived at the farm shortly after lunch time. It was a Monday, so the tenants were at work and I had the whole place to myself. I fed and watered the dogs, then let them out into their fenced yard to enjoy the beautiful weather while I explored. I found that the lawn was mowed, the gardens were weeded and everything was immaculate. The patch of Phlox I'd planted in the middle of the yard where a guy-wire was fastened was growing nicely:

The south side of the house looked just fine with its new siding and with the big old rotten Maples taken down. The historic Cedar still grows alongside the main entrance:

My tenants had even weeded the garden abutting the barn's milk room and spared the old Asiatic Lilies which had battled the weeds for the last few decades:

The ferns and Lilies-Of-The-Valley I'd planted were growing nicely in the shade of some smaller Maples:

On the north end of the house, one can see clearly the addition which is my apartment. The tenants had disassembled the old waterfall and turned it into a rock garden, sparing the old Bleeding Heart plant which grew there:

This is the view from the road as you would see my farm as you passed by. I've still got some plumbing problems in the house to take care of, but overall, the old homestead is looking good. This is intended to be my retirement home where I'll raise most of my own food. There's some rough winters in that part of the country, but the summers are like the Garden of Eden:

This is view from the small dirt road which bisects my property as many truck drivers saw it that day. The peaceful calm was frequently interrupted by large dump trucks roaring down that dirt road. I noticed that they were filled to the very top with chopped hay to become haylage. This is, after all, prime hay country. My own modest hay fields don't get cut until towards the end of the season:

The friendly view from the mailbox:

The apple and pear trees:

Do you remember the patch of mystery plants last year which I said looked like Blackberries or Raspberries but had neither thorns nor fruit? Well, this year that patch is loaded with berries, though they are still green and not yet identifiable:

And the hay field is looking good. I plan to pasture Red Poll Cattle there some day, alternating fields between pasture and haying:

And one final shot of the farm taken from the edge of the southern hay field. It's a friendly, welcoming, scenic, old fashioned kind of place. Just what I'd been hoping for: