2022 Is Almost Over!!

 Hallelujah! 2022 has been a tough year on the Fink Family Farm. It did not improve in December. A wicked ice storm was followed by  a vicious wind and rain storm that toppled the lawn llama. But llamas are tough and ours has come back to welcome in the new year.

In one break in the rain (there haven't been many), I went for a walk with Nightingale and her dog, Annie, who are inseparable. Well, Nightingale wants to be with Annie every second. I'm not so sure about Annie...

The wild weather kept Christmas packages from the kids from arriving until after Christmas. But they were well worth the wait. Here are the beautifully wrapped gifts from the Washington family... The contents were equally lovely... including a much needed warm sweater for Johnny and impossibly warm and wonderful socks for me. And, of course, already unwrapped and partly devoured before pictured, were delicious treats from Jessica.

I should have taken a photo of the amazing and creative box from the California family. But it was all food which we opened and began devouring immediately. Yum! Our kids and niece Faiza (whose treats arrived well before the wild weather... hurray!) spoil us with food gifts. We like being spoiled. 

And we loved the holiday card from Steve's family with a photo of all of them, including Jupiter, the newest member.

Our new year will start with a raptor survey on New Year's Day followed on the 2nd with a Christmas Bird Count. What a great way to start what we hope will be a great year... or at least way better than 2022. May everyone have a healthy, happy, crisis-free 2023!

Christmas Bird Count Season Has Arrived

 It's  been a tough year so I have not felt much like documenting the trials and tribulations. There have been good parts, though, like the November visit from the Seattle area kids and grandkids who cooked tons of delicious food for us, enough that I could freeze some to have on Christmas, too. Kevin and Jessica had not been here in a very long time. Kevin wanted to hike through the woods where he hiked as a kid. Jessica cooked amazing meals. She is a fabulous cook. Jessica has trained their son Ian well and he and his partner Kellin came back a month later and cooked between-Thanksgiving-and-Christmas meals that we will have again at Christmas.

And now we are preparing for this year's Christmas Bird Counts. For many years, we have participated in the Upper Nestucca count which takes place close to our farm. We also participate in the Yamhill Valley count that is also not far from us. Preparing, for us, means scouting our assigned sector of each count. This year, friend Rand who has always surveyed the Teton area of our sector, is unable to because of failing health, so we scouted his section today, mostly to find the beautiful but elusive Burton Creek Falls that we have only found one time before. That story is here:https://ourwaterfallproject.blogspot.com/2016/03/burton-creek-falls.html  That was back in 2016 and we have not found our way there since then. Until today.

With a plethora of maps, we headed up Wind River to the Tetons. (Yes, Oregon, as well as Wyoming, has Teton mountains... although ours are considerably smaller.) Unfortunately, the maps all disagreed and none, as it turned out, labeled the road correctly that actually gets a person to the unmarked falls, which is on tribal land of the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde. Their timber area roads are closed on weekends so that's probably why we came to closed gates in other attempts other years.

Today the gates were open and, although the road numbers had changed from our maps or from our trip in 2016, we remembered the site well enough to, eventually, find it today. I was hoping we would find a resident American Dipper dipping up and down on the rocks at the foot of the waterfall, to give us an excuse to come back on count day but no such luck. Birds, in fact, were few to be found anywhere.

However, before we found the falls we made several wrong turns and I hiked a long brushy distance up the wrong creek before accepting that I was in the wrong place. We regrouped and tried another road and suddenly recognized the abandoned road next to the real Burton Creek. The falls is a short distance up that old road, but way down at the bottom of the canyon so difficult to photograph. In 2016 we hiked down the steep cliff to the foot of the falls but that was 6 years ago when we were, well, 6 years younger and more agile and daring. I was just glad to be able to get photos from the old road through the trees.

Our first glimpse of the falls way down below was through trees

Farther along the path we could look back at the falls and zoom it up in the camera

The Upper Nestucca count is scheduled for December 20th. With luck, the predicted snow will not be deep enough to keep us out of our sector. It's always fun, although exhausting, to spend a day driving and hiking in the beautiful Northwest Oregon mountains. Finding birds is just an added bonus.

A Sad Farewell to Mr. Smith: born June 10, 1995; died July 31, 2022

 On July 31st, Mr. Smith, my 27 year old beloved Morgan gelding, died of apparent brain tumor. It has been hard to accept yet another loss in this year of losses. I really expected him to live at least as long as Pollianne, who died of colic at 33. But her daughter, Jessie Anne, died this spring of an intestinal tumor at 23. That is apparently not uncommon in middle-aged and older horses, and was probably what took Pollianne. But a brain tumor?? 

I have been trying to concentrate on all the wonderful years I had with Mr. Smith, having bought him as a 6 month old weanling on my 50th birthday. I had been without a horse for several years after losing my half-Morgan gelding, Impetuous, that I had raised from birth when I was a teenager. I was devastated when he died after being with me in high school, college, and marriage. He went with me from Illinois to Wyoming to Oregon. Imp lived a long and happy life, but never long enough. 

Years after Imp died, my grown son Kevin brought his girlfriend Jessica, a horse woman, here to visit and she insisted we go visit a Morgan farm nearby to see what they had for sale. They had weanlings and I fell in love with Rogue Hill's Skybird, who the breeder mistakenly thought had been registered as Rogue Hill's Senator. When the papers came back, he was Skybird, but I had already named Mr. Smith after my favorite senator: Jimmy Stewart in the movie Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.

Mr. Smith and I did everything together. In memory, here are the photos I have found of our years together... As I find them...  not in chronological order.   Farewell, dear friend...

Taking my dad for a drive on his 80th birthday in the cart he renovated for me from one Mom had bought for a lawn ornament

left to right: Nightingale, Jessie Anne, Mr. Smith

Mr. Smith drinking from the barn rain barrel

Mr. Smith and...

Nightingale and Jessie Anne in front of the machine shed

Mr. Smith giving Cedrus and Kestrel a ride... they are now teenagers! Polly in the background.

Mr. Smith pulling the surrey on a local road

Pulling out firewood

a comfortable bareback ride!

fly protection while pulling the surrey

pulling firewood logs

coming out of the woods faster than I wanted!

being a house guest when Aunt Frances, her daughter and grandkids visited. Mr. Smith loved coming inside the house when he was small enough to still get through the door.

jumping for fun in the arena. We also took jumping lessons elsewhere

from front to back: Jessie Anne, Mr. Smith, Polly

On the occasion of our combined 100th birthday in 2020...

Below is the last photo taken of Mr. Smith, shortly before his death on July 31st, 2022

...until we meet across the Rainbow Bridge...

Catching Up

 It has been a busy summer and start of fall. I guess the best way to summarize the best happenings is with photos.

The lawn llama continues to celebrate the independence of Ukraine. Here's hoping the illegal and immoral war by Russia ends soon.

 

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       Grandson Ian and his partner Kellin stopped by on their way to a grand adventure in California... two concerts, Universal Studios tours, and many miles from Seattle to Los Angeles and back!... all in one week. Ah the energy of youth!

 

 

 

                We bought a new buck to breed to the daughters of our older buck. Alas, Freddie is bonded to humans, not goats, and so far young Freddie is not interested no matter how flirtatious the girls are.

 

 

 

              Although Black Oystercatcher monitoring season ended in September when the one successful nest I monitored fledged one chick, as documented on my Black Oystercatcher blog, I still have monthly and quarterly surveys on beaches to give me reasons to escape to the coast. The above photo of a Western Gull with his bill full of Ochre Sea Star was taken on a survey for CoastWatch, a division of Oregon Shores. This gull was trying to keep the other gulls from stealing its prize, but in order to eat it the gull needed to dis-arm it and whenever it put it down, the other gulls mobbed. I watched and photographed for a long time and the gull was still wading out into the waves, trying to evade the other gulls, when I left.

 

 

 

          On that same survey, I photographed a pair of Black Oystercatchers that frequent the north side of Cape Kiwanda. This year they had no fledgling chick with them so their nest must not have succeeded.

 

September was also the month that friend Mary had surgery. Johnny and I hiked Cape Lookout, a hike Mary would love to take again some day. I took photos and have been sending her one a day since her surgery to keep her focused on the future as she heals. Here is one of the first photos I sent her.

 

      Next year, she and we hope and trust that she will be able to join us on this hike.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              

Cape Lookout

 Our good friend Mary loves the Cape Lookout hike but has been unable, physically, to hike it for some time. On Sept. 2nd, she was scheduled for surgery, so, in the weeks before, Johnny and I hiked the Cape for her... twice. I took many, many photos and have been sending her a photo a day to keep her spirits up. Here are some of the photos from our first hike, when we only went half way. A peregrine falcon caught Johnny's eye and he took me back to see it...

 Photos I did not send to Mary were of the plaque that hangs on the cliff along the first half of the trail. It commemorates the Army Air Corps plane that went down in the fog there in 1943. My dad, who was in the Army Air Corps (which later became the Air Force), knew the men on board. That was two years before I was born.

 Johnny and I have hiked this trail many times in the past, looking for Black Oystercatchers when we were doing BLOY abundance surveys. Many times, we found them foraging in this cove on the north side of the trail, which is about the end of the "easy" portion.

The trail after this point is considered "moderate" difficulty. Or was before the heavy rains earlier this year. Now it is a muddy mess with tree roots aplenty to climb over. I hiked it on our second trip but Johnny wisely waited at the point where he had seen the Peregrine the week before. The bird did not reappear, but Johnny enjoyed talking to the many hikers who passed him.

 

There were a few attempts at boardwalks... but they had been washed askew.

 

Of course, it is a scenic trail with frequent glances through the trees at the ocean... except when all you can see is fog...

 

In all fairness, once in a while, a boardwalk held firm...

 

...and there was always the view... of fog

Where the trail skirts the steep cliff down to the ocean, the ocean was occasionally visible... barely...

The tree roots kept my view focused on my feet anyway.

 

Near the point, the trail improved...

But the fog did not...

My recommendation to Mary? Pick a non-foggy day and just hike the first half. There are plenty of fine ocean/beach views looking south... when the fog clears.