Beside the Stream

Pickles and Ice Cream

Published by Alice on May 10, 2012 in dogs. 2 Comments

Bob and I both think that Gracie is definitely pregnant. She has lost her get-up-and-go. She regularly says no to walks, or turns back early. She’s sticking closer to home, and she’s clingy. Her coat is lustrous. Her narrow waistline has expanded–or so we thought. But I took her in today to use the scale at the vet’s office, and she hasn’t gained a single pound. She actually has lost three pounds, and is supposed to be due in 2 1/2 weeks.

I had met with the vet after Gracie was bred to discuss prenatal nutrition and home birth. The vet suggested that we continue using high-grade dry dog food, but after Gracie’s weigh-in today I got her a selection of canned food. Venison guts and pork liver, male chicks, sweet potato, and salmon skin… Gracie is officially in hog heaven.

Plump up, my dear, plump up.

Canyonlands at dawn

Published by Alice on May 10, 2012 in travel. 3 Comments

We went camping at Muley Point, a mesa that’s in the midst of Utah’s canyonlands. There’s a 1,200 foot drop off the edge.

Bob likes heights and Gracie is good with cliffs. I’m fine as long as I look into the distance, but I don’t like to get near the edge and look down. Gracie is three weeks pregnant for this adventure, so we brought along extra water and her giant water bowl.

Geologists call these rock spires hoodoos. Sometimes they are called fairy chimneys. I don’t think they are very friendly formations, but Bob likes them a lot. Maybe it’s a guy thing.

The mesa tops get more moisture than the surrounding area, and people lived here in prehistory but not now.

A doggy honeymoon

Published by Alice on March 27, 2012 in dogs. 5 Comments

Sam dropped Gracie off at Jane Stamp’s kennel seven hours north of here. He said that Gracie took no more than 30 seconds of wooing, and that he’d never heard sounds like that coming from a Bernese Mountain Dog. She apparently likes Montana a LOT.

I called for an update after 24 hours, and Jane said that she could see them through her window: they were romping and playing, rolling around and kissing, and having a fine time. She said that Montana usually got up to business at night–he likes his privacy–and they get a full six days together. Jane is taking a puppy as payment, and assures us that Bob will be picking up a tired girl on Saturday.

Gracie is going to be a Mom

Published by Alice on March 19, 2012 in dogs. 4 Comments

I found Gracie a boyfriend who lives in Johnstown, CO, seven hours north of here.

Montana is 95 pounds, and Gracie just weighed in at 100 pounds but looks smaller because she gets so much exercise. Male Berners are typically larger than the females, so Montana is a size smaller than Gracie (although Montana’s owner says he “throws big puppies”). I’m not a fan of ever-larger dogs, so I’m doing my part to slow the size race. Gracie had her hips x-rayed at 2, and her national OFA (Orthopedic Foundation for Animals) rating came back as “good”, which is terrific. (She’s on the offa.org database under “Gracie Lang”). I found Montana through the OFA database (I wanted a male with good hips, and there isn’t much choice–Gracie’s other option within 300 miles was a big boy in Utah).

Gracie started Day 1 of her third heat on Saturday. According to Montana’s owner, the magic happens on Day 12. Gracie was tested for Brucellosis today–she has to have test results within ten days of breeding–and if that test is clear she’ll leave Sunday to stay for nearly a week. We’re thinking that since she’s young and headstrong, she might need some wooing.

And I’ll have puppies ready to go on July 25.

Good luck, Gracie!

Appenzeller collars

Published by Alice on December 31, 2011 in dogs. 3 Comments

There is a whole family of dog breeds from Switzerland, including the Swiss Mountain dog, Greater Swiss Mountain dog, Bernese mountain dog and Saint Bernard.

Entlebucher Mountain Dog

Greater Swiss Mountain Dog

Jura type St. Hubert

Many of them are big and tri-colored, and they all are entitled to wear a traditional Appenzeller collar. It’s a stout leather collar studded with brasses of cows and hikers.

I never had a dog worthy of the collar before Gracie, and bless Ebay for removing the middleman: a Swiss man in Tennessee makes them to order for $43 including shipping.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Artisan-made-Appenzeller-leather-dog-collar-swiss-brasses-

Gracie is very particular about her neckwear–she tears off tags and licenses, and anything that dangles–but she likes this harness-weight collar just fine.

The collar is nearly always covered by her coat, but here you can see it. Black would have been more tasteful, but I’ve always had red collars on Berners and didn’t understand how flashy the brasses are.

Mostly you can’t see her bling,

at least, not under a winter coat

but sometimes there’s just a bright glimpse that’s very satisfactory.

And I’m wishing you and everyone a happy new year.

A murder of crows

Published by Alice on December 31, 2011 in birds. 1 Comment

A flock of crows ganged up on a hawk.

Here’s a close-up from the previous photograph–see how aggressive they look?

I think the crow is actually grabbing the hawk’s wing in this shot.

There was a lot of fancy flying, a lot of diving and evading,

and in the end the hawk survived.

But I think it’s fair to say that this is a game where the crows had a whole lot more fun than the hawk.

Happy Holidays

Published by Alice on November 29, 2011 in photography. 4 Comments

Our friend Dan took a family portrait on Thanksgiving. He’s a pro, so he stood on a rock to take the picture. He says it’s a little-known fact that if you simply change the point of view by either standing on a ladder or crouching, you get a better picture.

Sam is 20, and has 2 more semesters. We had him for eight days, and my mother too; we cooked non-stop for days

Hope you’re all well, and that you have happy holidays!!

Making Cider

Published by Alice on October 27, 2011 in Do It Yourself. 8 Comments

We made 55 gallons of cider on Sunday, with lots of help.

We had picked a truckload of apples; friends brought another truckload and a small wagon full.

We washed the apples,

and put them through the grinder–can you see the little bits of apple in the air, giving us all fancy facials?

Bob has our old press bolted to 4×6s he buried in the driveway.

We didn’t rinse our bottles with a bleach solution, though we have in the past.

And instead of leaving the pomace for the bears and deer, it went in the back of the pickup truck for pigs. Cecelia and Dan are planning to slaughter their pigs in a month, so they particularly appreciate the sweet truckload. There were four dogs: two medium, one large (that’s Gracie) and one extra-large. Everyone said that Gracie should be able to do some of the pressing next year, but we were pretty efficient without her: 55 gallons in 3 1/2 hours.

Gracie is Grown

Published by Alice on October 22, 2011 in dogs. 3 Comments

Gracie is about 94 pounds now, and I think she’s nearly done growing. She still gets a lot of exercise, and is very strong.

She’s a big bouncy youngster and a bit rambunctious, but she knows a lot of commands and a lot of words. We’ve started harness training again–she’ll start pulling this winter–and she’s working on the command “Go ahead”.

What a glorious season it has been.

Gracie just had her second heat, which was easy because there isn’t an intact male in a 2 mile radius. We’re planning on puppies next summer.

Mine remediation

Published by Alice on September 16, 2011 in water. 5 Comments

I spent the day up in Silverton touring mine remediation projects.

The mountains around Silverton were tunneled with mines starting around 1880.

There were mines everywhere–see how vibrant these rocks are? They’re permeated with metals. The last mine closed in 1991, and many piles of mine tailings lie directly on or beside the creeks, acidifying the water and dumping nearly a thousand pounds of metals into the river below each day.

We tour remediation sites from about 10,500 feet to nearly 12,000 feet. At this site, a great pile of tailings was moved off the stream; they put a french drain under it and a clay cap on top of it.

The boarding house for this mine is to the right, and there’s a 6-hole outhouse right over the creek. It’s a cold and rainy day.

Here’s an adit–an entrance to a mine–at 11,000 feet. This stream used to flow through a giant pile of tailings, since moved, capped, and revegetated, and it’s right next a mine that used to contribute nearly 80 pounds of zinc a day to the waterways below, the largest single source of zinc to the river. The shaft was plugged with cement a few years ago, and this year it was caulked/we talked with the engineers who were just finishing the job.

Here we’re at two remediation sites where tailings were moved off waterways, capped and revegetated, and a ditch diverting water to defunct mines across the mountain was filled in and revegetated. (This is a photo of a truck-loading site from the 1930s, though the mines are older.) It’s darned hard to revegetate up here. There’s almost no topsoil, there’s too many minerals, and the native vegetation is a complex mixture of about 60 species of grasses and forbs. If you use fertilizer, you encourage non-native species. There have been about $3.5 million in volunteer labor on these projects, and that includes transplanting actual plants up to these remote, high altitude sites.

It’s the first snow for me. Bon hiver!! Good winter to you!

Here we’re nearly at the top of the mountain, mining at 12,000 ft with the boarding house behind; the adit is to the right of the pile. Another giant pile of tailings was moved, capped and vegetated. The waterways had been made into a ditch, so that was recontoured.

This is the most recent mining operation, opened in 1940 (the earliest was from 1880) but you can see that these substantial industrial sites are astonishingly remote.