RhinebeckFarm.com

Even though Sarah remained at Colgate rounding out her junior year, Jen received the traditional Mothers’ Day breakfast in bed. To commemorate the occasion, she performed eight hours of manual labor in field and garden.

According to the fox, goslings are like potato chips.

Canada Geese are never welcome in the pond, but it’s hard to be angry with the goslings when they are in their maximum tennis ball phase.

On Sunday, I looked out the kitchen window to see this fox stalking the goslings near the pond. If I hadn’t gone outside to take a photograph, the goslings would have been fox-food.

Jen stopped to smell the cherry blossoms on a crisp Easter Sunday afternoon.

In less happy tree news, we had to take down the big maple in front of the sun porch.

We’ll need to plant a replacement, perhaps a bit farther from the house.

We spent Saturday in Saratoga, where Sarah rowed in the New York State Collegiate Rowing Championships.

Sarah, rowing in the second varsity eight, was unable to defend her varsity four championship of last year. Her boat this year finished third. Overall, Colgate had a great regatta, with the varsity eight winning the championship.

Today was our annual sweeping of the barn, in which the droppings of a generation of barn swallows and pigeons are removed to make way for this year’s crop. The barn swallows should arrive any day. The pigeons never left.

A healthy complement of Ring-necked Ducks — maybe fifteen or twenty — has arrived on our pond, sharing space with the pioneer Canada Geese of last weekend. These ducks say it’s almost spring the same way the Salt Point Stewart’s says you’re almost in Rhinebeck.

Last weekend we had first-of-the-season Redwing Blackbirds, and today we had a pair of Canada Geese on the pond. Sadly for the geese, the pond retains its protective ice covering. They made a racket but they didn’t stay long.

Similarly uninterested in a human encounter was this deer we spied while looking for owls.

Jen, braving frigid conditions, introduced some phragmites to the scythe.

What could be better on a snowy Presidents’ Day Weekend than cassoulet and the U.S. v. Canada game in the Four Nations Face-Off tournement. The U.S. won 3-1 in a tight game. Daisy watched with interest.

Frigid weather without much snow creates the rare conditions necessary for skating on the pond. As you can, the rarity of these conditions leaves me without much practice.