The Barn Swallows gathered, filling the shimmering electric lines
They stayed there a good length of time.
Then lifted up as one
Then they were gone.
COME BACK NEXT YEAR, I called! THANK YOU FOR THIS YEAR!
Your friend on a western Colorado farm,
Linda
Where we are now…the pinto bean harvest is over. Although, Dad says he isn’t selling the pinto beans right now…he wants to wait for a spell.
There is still irrigation water to set and change. The corn is still in need of water and the alfalfa fields also.
Look at this! It’s a Foam Ball—pretty cool. This Foam Ball was made from the foam on the ditch water going around and round and round. As soon as Mom and Dad removed the dam it was gone.
Mom watches out for me lots now. She says she does NOT want me wandering off searching for news and stuff…
next month I will be 13 years old and she says my age will get in the way of me staying safe out there in the wilds of the farm.
I rode every day and every second of the whole pinto bean harvest with Mom. Even in the broiling sun! Then I rode in the back of the pick up to town and back to go to TRACTOR SUPPLY (that’s MY store) and went with Mom to get parts when the combine broke down.
I was really busy!
But I do stay close to Mom.
Especially out on the ditch bank.
I can still hear well and I can see better than some dogs at my age, but sometimes I wonder if she might be right.
For Instance—last night—way in the dark, when I went out to relieve myself…. I SAW SPACE SHIP LIGHTS!!!
That was scary!
I know about real SCARY things on the farm like, coyotes and stuff like that, but SPACE ALIENS I don’t know anything about and I don’t want to LEARN!!!
So that’s where we are now. Harvest of the pinto beans is over—the corn harvest is yet to come. The days are growing shorter and shorter.
And the nights colder.
The hummingbirds are fewer and fewer. Mom only sees them in the early morning or late in the evening at the feeder. This morning there were actually 4 drinking. Yesterday there was only 2.
The Barn Swallows have left; all the summer birds are gone now. Makes Mom sad…but I tell her there is no reason to be sad. SHE HAS ME!
WAIT! What was that?!? I think I had better so see!
BYE!
Boomer Brown
Autumn has arrived. You can see it in the fields—the pinto beans are either turning yellow or, as ours are, lying pulled and drying, waiting for the combine.
The land is glittering and bright…as we move closer and closer to winter the trees will turn colors announcing the move from warm into the silvered blanket of cold called winter.
The Canada Geese are back…in droves.
Very early —is this a sign of a hard winter to come?
The little hummingbirds’ numbers are thinning noticeably…I have gone from 2 gallons of sugar water a day to 1/2 gallon every other day.
I will miss these little jewels, but they must leave and hurry. For the air is thinning and cooling extremely noticeably now.
A large flock of Barn Swallows left our farm yesterday, but the little fledglings and their parents are still here. Until they are gone I’m holding onto the belief we still have small amounts of summer left. 🙂
Summer work still goes on. It isn’t time to stop watering the corn; the alfalfa fields must NOT go into winter dry.
Still, change is here, in how the air smells, how the sky feels, and how the earth looks.
Your friend on a western Colorado farm,
Linda
Well, here we are …Dad has pulled and bladed all the pinto beans and they are drying in the field. Now everything depends on the weather for how long it takes the pinto bean pods to dry.
So that is enough about that!
Now about the birds…. the little Barn Swallows are starting to try out their wings. Every day they fly just a little bit further than yesterday.
Still coming back to sleep in that very crowded nest at night. FOUR little ones in one nest! Beats me how they do it.
Sleep in the nest, I mean. When I look up there they look C.R.O.W.D.E.D!
They aren’t big enough to go out on their own…the mom and dad birds are still feeding them. 
Even when the kids are sitting on the rooftop.
The hummingbirds are becoming less and less here. Makes Mom sad, but she told me (while petting all over my belly); “They have to leave, Boomie or they could never make it through the winter. Winter is coming.”
While out doing the ‘stuff’ we always do on the farm
I ran into a couple of pheasants! Boy! Those birds sure can scare the heck out of me…if I run into them they squawk really loud, flap their wings and fly right up into the air. Sometimes it scares me so bad I lose my scent on the ground!!!!!
Oh.
That reminds me. I saw Quade the Quail yesterday!
Quade was checking out the neighborhood on top of one of Dad’s pieces of equipment. He didn’t run off or jump down or anything, so I stopped by and we had a wee chat.
Quade agrees with me…. Fall is here! Quade also predicts a hard winter. I asked him if that means lots of snow…he just shook his head and said Hard. Very hard. Then lifted his wings and flew way up into the nearby tree.
Well, I guess hard is hard. Either too dry or too much snow. I guess only time will tell.
Boomer Beaglie Brown
Well, it seems like I need to do some catching up. Well, not me, but you. Well not you catching me up, but me catching you up.
It’s still terribly dry here.
And the wind blows every day, —- still.
The deer are enjoying the corn.
They like corn just like Mom and Dad.
The coyotes eat the corn also. There isn’t anything a coyote won’t eat —-just say’n.
The Barn Swallows are doing a real good job of keeping the mosquitoes gone. They are on another batch of little kids so they eat lots of flying bugs. Mom and Dad and Mindy and I think that is a VERY GOOD THING!
The very busy raccoons are coming into the yard all the time. They robbed Mom’s tomato patch the other night and had a huge feast.
So, Mom covered up the watermelon hoping to protect the three which are left. (One was eaten and Mom said it wasn’t even ripe.)
Freddy Fox comes to see me every so often. He is shy and won’t come around if Mom is out on a walk with me…but I see him and give him tag wags.
The other night we almost ran into a skunk. Mom was extremely careful. She called me back to her and made me walk with her into the cornfield where we hid—and Mom took a photo.
That tail went up, up and more up, but nothing came out. Which was a very good thing. Mom and I were extremely nervous we were going to get sprayed.
But I guess the big news is Ethie and Dottie don’t live here anymore. Ethie’s real parents came and got her. They also took Dottie because Ethie and Dottie were BFF’s now and would have been sad without each other.
Then Mom was sad about not having Ethie and Dottie. She kept saying that the yard seems empty without chickens. This went on for several days.
My oldest sister (the one who has my cousin Etta) came up and gave mom TWO young hens.
Little Bit One and Two. They do everything together. If one turns left the other one does too. If one runs down the road the other one is right with them. Mom says they must have been twins. (Can chickens have twin eggs? It’s a wonder all eggs look the same to me.)
Anyway, Mom is happy again…two hens to scratch and run in her yard. I have two hens who like to take naps close to me…and Mindy has two hens who like to chase her.
Mindy is not very happy about that!!!!
Oh! Have to go!…………….
It’s UPS TRUCK TIME!
Boomer
Summer….one thing about hot summer days and warm summer evenings is:
BABIES
Lots of babies…the Barn Swallow nests on our house there are about 8 nests all full of various stages of ‘kids’
I still have not seen any little baby hummingbirds…although, I keep looking and watching. I would have thought there would have been something by now.
But…not yet.
I will keep watch. Surely I will get to see something soon!
Your friend on a western Colorado farm,
Linda
“The Great Spirit is in all things, he is in the air we breath. The Great Spirit is our Father, but the Earth is our Mother. She nourishes us, that which we put into the ground she returns to us….” — Big Thunder (Bedagi) Wabanaki Algonquin
HAPPY MOTHER’S DAY to each and everyone of you!
Love,
Linda
In the Glittering sunlight
High in the air
On a crisp, bright, warm September morning
The little Barn Swallows gathered in dense clusters in the sky, then
they filled the electric lines above the canal.
All early morning they came, swooping in, resting until they rose all as one, shimmering and glittering, into the autumn sky; dipping and rising in a choreographed dance taking them away from us.
Leaving the air around our yard empty of sound.
From my world to your heart.
Linda
Under the eve, on the back porch light we have a little family of Barn Swallows.
Although it’s fun to watch the goings on up there in the little nest of mud…it does make for coming and going and sitting an resting a tad dangerous. The swooping, screeching and other cries of alarm, not to mention the whir of the wings as they zip by your head….
And, of course, it is always worse when….ONE OF THE CATS sit in wait!
Yesterday afternoon, in the heat of the day…Sammy, Boomer, and myself sat under the awning in the unmoving cool of the shade.
I became interested when there was No attacking birds to bother us.
Looking around I saw one parent
Sitting on the arch watching us, unmoving but very aware of what we were doing.
Then I looked into the nest…sitting there motionless, shoulders humped, exhaustion evident on this parent’s face I saw the same look every new parent gets, whether human or otherwise: “Boy, am I ever tired”! This look seems to say.
“These kids are about to kill me.”
“I sure will be glad when they can take care of themselves.”
“If I could JUST get some sleep zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz!”
The other parents seemed to be saying—“You rest, Honey! I’ll keep watch zzzzzzzzzzzzz.”
July’s Full Moon shimmered through the rippling leaves of the tree last night. The light cast was so beautiful the earth and everything on it looked like it was covered in hammered sheets of silver!
From my heart to your world,
Linda
One of the pleasures of summer (to me) are watching the Swallows. I allow them to build on the house or barns or wherever they want to build.
They are a lot of fun swooping for insects over the yard and farm, chasing flies and moths and mosquitoes with high dives and sharp turns…truly eating on the fly!
These little birds arrive in spring…rather the middle of spring, their long forked tails and silvery wings and orange throats are unmistakable. Throughout the day we hear their jubilant twittering-warbling, bzzzz,click-click sounds as they court each other and care for their young.
I like to look out the windows as one nest that is, well, RIGHT there. If they could they would dive-boom me, but they can’t! I’m inside…tee hee!
Then comes the day I dread…the call that goes out to all of the swallows in our area….”It is time! Hurry! Gather together! Come quickly, in singles or pairs, come all ye families; the seasons are changing, winter, that time of woe, will soon fall upon the land.”
That is when we see the electric lines starting to fill with little birds, first just a few, then gradually more and more…they swoop down upon the pinto bean field, flying over the yard, then back to sit on the electric line.
Gradually, gradually over two or three days the line grows fuller and fuller as the swallows gather from near and far. Their sounds a deafening chorus. Then one day the longing for Spring and Summer becomes too much; they lift off in a loud swoosh heading toward Central and South America.
This year I missed the huge take off; I wanted to be home for the leaving! I wanted to wave GOOD-BYE! I wanted to holler loud and clear—
“You’ll Come Back NOW…You Hear?”
The song of the swallow has fallen into silence.
We will have a few flocks of Swallows arrive off and on for a little while—Swallows moving from areas further north of us. until those brief visits are over. I will enjoy their stops for rest and for food. Then wave them on with a Good-bye and welcome to return.
Your friend,
Linda
Life on a Colorado Farm 