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Welcome to the Pine River Review. Our sight is dedicated to our little homestead located along the Pine River tucked inside the Chippewa Nature Center's 1400 Acres of wild in Michigan's lower penninsula. We love to share our pictures, video, comment, and our own homespun music. Step inside our world as we celebrate this beautiful nook!


Thursday, January 27, 2011

Silo Mania- The Middle River Region Part 2



Architect John Portman's Renaissance Center in Detroit.





Other than the barns and field stone homes of the Middle River Region of Michigan the most common and hard to miss structures that dot our landscape are the grain silos. They are an invention of the late 1880's when at the same time in Chicago and New York innovative steel frame structures also shot skyward in the form of skyscrapers. The skylines of the Metropolis and rural horizons were no longer dominated by the church steeple. You could make a pretty good argument that the silo was an even more important invention than the skyscraper though the structural part of its innovation has more in common with a pickle barrel than an erector set. Pictured above is the ruins of a ancient barn, its stone foundation giving way to nature, yet its silo, an interconnecting puzzle of curved precast tiles banded with wire, stands straight and tall raising a metaphorical finger to the passage of time. Indeed, the combination of these elements, structural steel frames clad in precast cement or glass panels, is architecture in these wonderful modern times. The similarity between silos and the skyscrapers to the right is hard to miss.

Before silos hay was stored in huge barns to feed cattle and horses through the winter. It was difficult to store enough hay to feed even a small herd of the thousand pound animals through the long cold months. Often a farmer would sell off much of his stock in the fall rather than trying to winter them over. Inexplicably, wonderously, this discovery was made. When unripened corn was stored in air tight cylinders it fermented the green stalks and ears into a supercharged animal feed called silage. In 1915 Hiram Smith, farmer/scientist, kept detailed records and found he could winter three cows on the silage produced from one acre of corn while he could winter only a single cow from two acres of hay. Simply put, using corn silage, he could feed six cows for the price of one! Cattle loved silage and because it was moist they also drank less water and yielded more milk. Silo Mania ensued and by 1924 the state of Wisconsin alone had 100,000 silos. Remember, man and woman of the new millennium, every bit of water and feed had to be toted by hand every single day and night to maintain farm animals. No days off ever. We won't even talk about removing the steaming manure from the barn stalls all winter long. It was back breaking work. Edna Meijers remembered her childhood days when her "progressive" farming father built an early silo and it fell to her to collect the silage from deep inside it, "I was always scared because you had to get into the bucket to go down and I was always afraid they wouldn't be able to hold the rope steady or let go of it or something and I would have a fast ride." These chores were what the old timers thought the Good Lord made kids for.
    Silo technology was a major productivity tipping point just like the assembly line and micro computer would be many decades down the road. Herds grew, people were fed, and milk was drunk. Silos shot upward like mushrooms in the warm spring sun and tractors soon out ran horses as the main source of pulling power. Farmers made more money, more efficiently, with less labor and their now obsolete kids (the cheap labor) left the family farm and went to the cities to work in skyscrapers and factories creating today's modern population. Consider, in 1900 60% of the population in the U.S. lived in a rural setting. Today that figure is 20%. World wide we reached the 50/50 mark about 2008.


Modern life is the grand illusion. We imagined into being a heaven on earth, a place where all our needs are met without turning the soil. Can everyone live in a mansion where all that is left for us to do is praise god and play harp or in this practicality grow fat on processed food and play video games? In today's American suburban neighborhoods poorly constructed five thousand square foot McMansions have become a study in despair as these cheap facades rot from the inside out just a decade or two from construction. The faux luxury and ease of 1990's suburban life, as it turned out, has more in common with purgatory than paradise.
     We are first and foremost children of the earth, sun, air and water even though that connection has lately been obscured. The hardships of farm life a hundred years ago left its mark on the soul of it's people and I think we're missing some of the integrity and purposefulness of those times.  Perhaps this observations grows more acute here in the Middle River Region where the old ways compete head on with the present and the relative merits and foibles of each lay not in the circus of our imagination but in the cold stone reality of these ancient walls.



Click photo to check out Barn Charm!

Tuesday, January 25, 2011

World Bird Wednesday X

Sibling Rivalry
To double click is to see the detail.




The temperature dropped to a wicked eight degrees below zero last night. Most of the water is frozen thick and solid on the lakes and rivers except for a little open area on the Eagle's pond that is crowded with the wintering ducks, geese, and swans who compete for the fish there. High above in the bland gray overcast two of the young Bald Eagles that visit here daily engage in a high stakes game of aerial dogfighting. My untrained eye tells me one of the birds, colored in mottled white and brown tones, is an immature Bald Eagle somewhere between one and three years old and the other is reaching maturity as its head and tail are whitening into its adult plumage meaning it is three or four years old. Usually the game begins with one bird relaxing in a tree near the pond when the other comes cruising through the restricted air space. The resting bird takes to the sky to meet the intruder. Upward they circle jockeying for position until an advantage is gained and one bird closes on the other ripping at the unfortunates tail feathers. Consistently the older of the two wins these jousts and the both of them then retire alighting in the crowns of nearby trees to cool off. It reminds me exactly of how my well meaning older brother used to kick my butt in an effort to toughen me up for life in our no nonsense Detroit neighborhood. This is tough love at its essence.                   
     This weekend I was lucky enough to position myself between the sun and these warrior eagles and get a great light for individual close-ups. This winter is my first as a serious devote of bird photography and these marvels have stoked my enthusiasm day after day.


              
        
         


             Now its time for World Bird Wednesday X

This is the home of World Bird Wednesday. A place for bird photographers from around the world to gather and share their photographs and experiences as they pursue Natures most diverse and beautiful treasurers, the birds. The Blogosphere connects like minded people from around our planet like no other technology can do. World Bird Wednesday will be open for posting at 12 noon Tuesday EST North America through noon on Thursday.

You are invited to link your blog with other bird photographers in a weekly celebration of these most diverse and intriguing of Earth's residents, the BIRDS



                                                         

#1. Simply copy the above picture onto your W.B.W. blog entry. It contains a link for your readers to share in WBW. Or you can copy this link on to your blog page to share W.B.W. http://pineriverreview.blogspot.com/


#2. Come to The Pine River Review on Tuesday Noon EST through Thursday Noon and submit your blog entry with Linky.

#3. Check back in during the course of the next day and explore these excellent photoblogs!


The thumbnails below are links to our contributors blogs where you can view their beautiful posts. The idea of a meme is that you will visit each others blogs and perhaps leave a comment to encourage your compadres!

                   Please in your linky description give a clue to your location be it the U.K. or Bolivia.

                  
                       And hey, it's okay to link one of your older posts that you worked so hard on.

                                      Come on it's your turn!

Sunday, January 23, 2011

CatTV


 

It was a bitterly cold weekend here at the Pine River with temperatures crashing to below zero temperatures night after night. Suzanne and Chazz the cat were in town visiting. Suz likes to cross country ski, the weather was perfect for that, and Chazz likes the CatTV. What's CatTV? Chazz sits on the back of the couch staring out the picture window while the neighborhood birds crowd the trees and feeders in the front yard and drive the poor city cat into orgasmic fits. So for your entertainment here are some of the stars from this weekend's CatTV!


Tuesday, January 18, 2011

World Bird Wednesday IX


The Downy Woodpecker[Picoides pubescens] is the smallest woodpecker in North America.

Up close and personal!


I was all set to go out to the eagle pond one gray day this week and see if I could make any headway shooting in the low light. As soon as my hand touched the door knob it started to snow and I gave up on that idea. The dishes needed washing so I shifted my mind set from crack photographer to domestic servant. The window above my sink looks out over the back yard and the river. As I began to suds up I caught sight of a Pileated Woodpecker banging on the tree near the high bank! Crack photographer threw off his apron and shot into action. In a blur of motion the tripod was set up and with the big 400mm strapped on to it  I was ready for bear. I nudged open the sliding glass door and with the cold air pouring into the house I clicked off a few reference shots. I had not seen a Pileated in the six years since I saw my first and this guy was calmly pounding the tree and paying me no mind. I looked down at my camera settings to make some adjustments and when I looked back up the bird was gone and the meter reader from the electric company was trudging through the yard oblivious to everything.Yikes! Crack photographer put away his gear and went back to sulk in his suds with thoughts of what might have been.
Curses, foiled again! 


Now it's time for World Bird Wednesday

This is the home of World Bird Wednesday. A place for bird photographers from around the world to gather and share their photographs and experiences as they pursue Natures most diverse and beautiful treasurers, the birds. The Blogosphere connects like minded people from around our planet like no other technology can do. World Bird Wednesday will be open for posting at 12 noon Tuesday EST North America through noon on Thursday.


You are invited to link your blog with other bird photographers in a weekly celebration of these most diverse and intriguing of Earth's residents, the BIRDS


                                                        



Three Easy Steps!

#1. Simply copy the above picture onto your W.B.W. blog entry. It contains a link for your readers to share in WBW. Or you can copy this link on to your blog page to share W.B.W. http://pineriverreview.blogspot.com/

#2. Come to The Pine River Review on Tuesday Noon EST through Thursday Noon and submit your blog entry with Linky.

#3. Check back in during the course of the next day and explore these excellent photoblogs!


The thumbnails below are links to our contributors blogs where you can view their beautiful posts. The idea of a meme is that you will visit each others blogs and perhaps leave a comment to encourage your compadres.


              Please in your linky description give a clue to your location like U.K. or Bolivia.
               And hey, it's okay to link one of your older posts that you worked so hard on.


                                                       Come on, it's your turn!

Friday, January 14, 2011

Who Mourns the Passenger Pigeon?


Consider the Mourning Dove, bane of every church steeple in North America and public square in Europe. Seventy million of their U.S. population are killed annually for target practice and food stuff. It doesn't seem to put a dent in their numbers and indeed as an endangered species they are considered "least at risk." These meek birds are thought to be a close genetic relation to the Passenger Pigeon. Unless you are over 97 years old it is unlikely you have ever seen a Passenger Pigeon as September 1, 1914 is when Martha, the last of her kind went belly up at the Cincinnati zoo, was frozen in a block of ice and shipped off to the Smithsonian where she was stuffed and this day rests in peace between the Roswell alien and the Arc of the Covenant in a warehouse in D.C.

    Some people doubt mankind's ability to much effect the overall condition of our ecosystem. They postulate that a world population of six billion people, who if standing shoulder to shoulder could fit inside the city limits of Los Angeles, has a negligible effect on Earth's systems. Personally I don't think these theorist are giving us enough credit.
    In the early 19th century the Passenger pigeon pictured on our left  flew in flocks, estimated on the conservative side, of a billion birds!
   Cotton Mather, a New England puritan minister who figured prominently in the Salem witch trials, recalled seeing migratory flocks a mile wide that took hours to pass overhead. Their groupings were the largest in the animal kingdom save locust swarms. This tendency to roost in numbers reaching the tens of millions and the fact that they gained popularity as America's first fast food became their undoing. In the early 1800's you could purchase Passenger Pigeons for a penny a piece and they became so popular as a cheap source of protein for the poor that they were shipped by the train loads to cities in the east. Oh the land of plenty!


        John James Audubon described a typical pigeon hunt thusly.
       "Few pigeons were then to be seen, but a great number of persons, with horses and wagons, guns and ammunition, had already established encampments on the borders. Two farmers from the vicinity of Russelsville, distant more than a hundred miles, had driven upwards of three hundred hogs to be fattened on the pigeons which were to be slaughtered. Here and there, the people employed in plucking and salting what had already been procured, were seen sitting in the midst of large piles of these birds. The dung lay several inches deep, covering the whole extent of the roosting-place."
     

  
 Besides feeding the flocks alcohol drenched grain and then smoking them out of the trees another method of attracting the hapless pigeons was to stitch a captured bird's eyes shut and let it flutter endlessly on the end of a stick that was attached to a spinning stool. Apparently the fluttering wings and furtive bleating lured the passersby to the killing fields and thus was born the stool pigeon.
        The last large flock was "harvested" just north of here in Petoskey Michigan in 1878. Tens of thousands of the pigeons were collected each day for five solid months. What wasn't known was the birds were dependant on their humongous numbers to practice communal breeding. They simply could not reproduce in small flocks in the wild or in captivity. A tipping point had been reached and soon there after it was over. Several billions of Passenger pigeons gone in a hundred year heartbeat.




Today scientists believe they may be able to recreate the Passenger pigeon by cloning them in some kind of Jurassic Park like escapade. But I am reminded more of a Twilight Zone episode called "How to Serve Man" where aliens come to earth and befriend mankind. The aliens inadvertently leave behind one of their textbook and the government immediately begins to decipher it. First the title is interpreted to mean "How to Serve Man" and everyone is relieved that the alien's intentions are peaceable. Only later is it discovered that "How to Serve Man" is a cook book!  Maybe what comes around goes around.
     There you have the whole brutal story in a nutshell. And still we wonder, can mankind effect the outcomes of Earth's vast systems? Is a few billion dead pigeons evidence of anything beyond one species playing an evolutionary trump card over another? Hmmm.
   Well, at least we don't need to speculate if the fellow on the left is appropriately known as a  Mourning Dove. That we know for sure.      









"I am sorry to say that there is too much point to the wisecrack that life is extinct on other planets because their scientists were more advanced than ours!"

                                                                    John F. Kennedy
                                                                       1917-1963

Tuesday, January 11, 2011

World Bird Wednesday VIII

The Wild Turkey (Meleagris gallopavo)
I have been off this week and have had a wonderful time taking a ton of photos and never has my lack of knowledge of the DSLR camera been so apparent. After months of practice my stellar average is still about one really good bird picture per thousand shots taken. I lucked into this turkey shot while struggling with a razor thin depth of focus, the low light and my shaky cold hands. How is it possible to consistently focus accurately on the birds eye? I wait for that glorious day when my ratio doubles to two keepers per thousand!  




It has been a spectacular week for eagle watching. Many times I have seen three or four birds in the sky chasing each other. Two adult Balds have been landing together way out on the lake ice rather than lazing in the trees between their fishing forays. The haggard young eagle on the ice has been getting his tail feathers ripped to shreds by the older eagles. Still he persists dauntlessly.  





A female American Kestrel (Falco sparverius), 
 The long suffering Suzanne was admonishing me to keep my eyes on the road and out of the trees when I drove off the asphalt after spotting this Kestrel swooping by. We sat on the side of the road for twenty minutes while I popped my head in and out of the sunroof taking pot shots. It was 15 degrees Fahrenheit out and Suz's so badly wanted to get to the resale shop. Since Suzanne likes moon shots, I will include this weeks crescent in honor of her new role as official bird expedition driver!



  Now it's time for World Bird Wednesday VIII 

This is the home of World Bird Wednesday. A place for bird photographers from around the world to gather and share their photographs and experiences as they pursue Natures most diverse and beautiful treasurers, the birds. The Blogosphere connects like minded people from around our planet like no other technology can do. World Bird Wednesday will be open for posting at 12 noon Tuesday EST North America through noon on Thursday.


You are invited to link your blog with other bird photographers in a weekly celebration of these most diverse and intriguing of Earth's residents, the BIRDS


                                                      

Three easy steps!

#1. Simply copy the above picture onto your W.B.W. blog entry. It contains a link for your readers to share in WBW. Or you can copy this link on to your blog page to share W.B.W. http://pineriverreview.blogspot.com/


#2. Come to The Pine River Review on Tuesday Noon EST through Thursday Noon and submit your blog entry with Linky.

#3. Check back in during the course of the next day and explore these excellent photoblogs!


The thumbnails below are links to our contributors blogs where you can view their beautiful posts. The idea of a meme is that you will visit each others blogs and perhaps leave a comment to encourage your compadres.

               Please in your linky description give a clue to your location like U.K. or Bolivia.
                And hey, it's okay to link one of your older posts that you worked so hard on.


                                      Come on, it's your turn!


Sunday, January 9, 2011

Exploring the Middle River Region- Part 1

I have "discovered" a rolling rural area isolated in the "Middle of the Mitten Michigan" that has somehow sidestepped the passage of the decades and is its own mysterious inner kingdom. To travel here is to be transported to the family farm dominated rural world of a century ago. It is a landscape dotted with strange field stone homes and barns built with the granite rocks gathered by the first European farmers who turned the soil here after the peninsula was cleared of its magnificent white pine forests around a hundred and twenty five years ago. Many of these large farms remain in the hands of later day family members. This odd timeless feeling is further fostered by the Amish population who pursue their peaceful path tilling the earth with 19th century implements and traveling its roads by horse and buggy. Before the taming of electricity and the mass marketing of a homogeneous consumer culture, a way of life that most of us have bought into one hamburger at a time, America was a quirky patchwork of distinct regions that birthed there own local music, accents, cuisine and customs. This is such a place. These lands are centered around the middle branch of the Tobacco River and so we shall call it the Middle River Region. The Middle River still exists because its citizens are quiet, extremely private, and do not seek the favor of outsiders. There are no hotels, tourist associations, nothing on the radar that alerts attention to this quirky realm. It is my desire to look inside this tiny forgotten region and capture some of its light. Over the next several weeks The Pine River Review will delve deeply into its sights, people, and history. Consider this your personal invitation to tag along!

Pastures of plenty. An Amish farm complex rests it's land under winters snow.
                                                        And so it begins...
      I started off today on the run chasing the light as a photographer must during the winter months. A day with sun is about a once a week occurrence. I had my second cup of coffee in the car driving northwest on M-10 jumping off northward on Lommis road. It doesn't take long then, just past the slow turn we pass a creek flowing clear with winter runoff and suddenly Lommis road turns into Tobacco road and the atmosphere shifts. This is the glacial moraine, the highlands between Lakes Michigan and Huron where the Great Wisconsin Glacier paused 10,000 years ago on its northerly retreat and deposited its stony load of sediments creating an odd and unexpected rolling landscape here in the middle of table flat farmland. I have loaded every camera lens I own in the Chevy along with my Gazetteer, a detailed atlas of the dirt roads that crisscross the countryside. The sun has swung to the south and is reflecting brightly off a fresh layer of soft snow as the first of what will be many of the Middle Rivers signature stone homes comes into view at the top of a rise. This fine home is being lovingly restored starting with a very expensive steel roof.


The first stone home of our tour. 

 I was born in Michigan 58 years ago and have been in and out of nearly every nook and cranny of the State. I look Michigan, talk Michigan, and one day, when I die, my Michigan blood will flow no more. So isn't it ironic that I feel like a foreigner here in my own backyard? The local's eyes puzzle over me. I am obvious and out of place. Even wandering down deserted dirt roads I often feel like the mysterious eye is upon me. I try to shake this feeling of being an intruder but I can't. I recall Freud's words,"The paranoid is never entirely mistaken!"





One never knows what's around the next corner. Note the swirling pattern of the stone columns.




In the Middle River Region folk still hang their clothes out to dry on a sunny day even when the temperature is 10 degrees below freezing.


We will continue our exploration of the Middle Region next week!

Check out Bluff Area Daily each Tuesday for Barn Charm.

Tuesday, January 4, 2011

Beware the Titmouse! WBW VII



Baeolophus bicolor
One of the great little friends a person can make in the Michigan woods during winter is the Tufted Titmouse, a gregarious bird that doesn't mind the company of humans and enjoys their feeders. I have read that loggers back in the 1800's hand trained these birds to the point where they practically became personal assistants. The gray birds waited expectantly for the Shanty Boys to appear in the morning from the log cabins and accompanied them on their jaunts into the White Pine forests perching on the hats and shoulders of the workers. Certainly much of what went on in logging camps was exaggerated as the stories were told and retold but in this case I am a believer because it is a common sight on Utube to see these guys being hand fed. If you have the time and the inclination you could prove the point to yourself by sitting still and enticing them with a palm full of seed. Beware though, Tufted Titmice like to use animal hair to line there nests and may decide to use yours as this anecdote from Familiar Birds illustrates. We quote Mrs. Vitae Kite from 1925.
"Without the least warning he lit squarely on top of my head, giving me such a start that it was with great difficulty I controlled myself and sat still. At first I thought he was trying to frighten me away but soon changed my mind, when he began working and pulling at my hair with all his might. Now my hair has been very white for many years, but I still have plenty of it, and was more than willing to divide it with this little bird, so I steadied myself and 'held fast' while that energetic 'Tom' had the time of his life gathering 'wool' to line his nest, for that was what I now felt sure he was doing. He didn't seem to have much luck with the coils on top, so he worked around over my ear, where there were short loose hairs, and I could hear and feel him snip-snip as he severed them--not one by one, but in bunches, it seemed to me."
People were tougher in those days!

    Now it's time for World Bird Wednesday VII

This is the home of World Bird Wednesday. A place for bird photographers from around the world to gather and share their photographs and experiences as they pursue Natures most diverse and beautiful treasurers, the birds. The Blogosphere connects like minded people from around our planet like no other technology can do. World Bird Wednesday will be open for posting at 12 noon Tuesday EST North America through noon on Thursday.

You are invited to link your blog with other bird photographers in a weekly celebration of these most diverse and intriguing of Earth's residents, the BIRDS!



                                                          
Three easy steps!


#1. Simply copy the above picture onto your W.B.W. blog entry. It contains a link for your readers to share in WBW. Or you can copy this link on to your blog page to share W.B.W. http://pineriverreview.blogspot.com/

#2. Come to The Pine River Review on Tuesday Noon EST through Thursday Noon and submit your blog entry with Linky.

#3. Check back in during the course of the next day and explore these excellent photoblogs!

The thumbnails below are links to our contributors blogs where you can view their beautiful posts. The idea of a meme is that you will visit each others blogs and perhaps leave a comment to encourage your compadres.

                  Please in your linky description give a clue to your location like U.K. or Bolivia.


                  And hey, it's okay to link one of your older posts that you worked so hard on.

                                                   Come on, it's your turn!

Monday, January 3, 2011

Color Me Cobbled


If you don't double click this picture you ain't seeing it!
Just a short post for my friends at the Barn Charm meme. I am hoping to venture out this week to get some Mid-Michigan winter landscapes which will of course feature a few fresh barn pictures. In the mean time lets reminisce back to last summer and check out some structures featuring cobblestone. The classic red barn speaks for itself still standing straight and tall. This ramshackled little bungalow is radiant as its stoney paint by numbers exterior reflects the late summer sun.
Happy New Year Barn Charm!


Saturday, January 1, 2011

January Thaw



For two days a warm wet wind blew up from the Southwest, melted all the snow, and pushed the ice back from the banks. Briefly this morning the clouds moved out and the skies cleared. Now the temperatures are falling back from the mid-forties and into the teens. We have been waiting days for the sun to light up our world but when it came it lasted just a few short hours. Isn't it interesting how the ice/water edge mimics the cloudy/clear edge?  I am fascinated by borders, it seems so much hangs in their balance. Consider the edge of a saw or a splintered shard of glass. How different the character of the jagged edge as compared with its tedious middle. One cuts, the other conforms. Below lays an image of the Pine River still locked in ice but showing its edgy side. When the snow falls again all such troublesome nonconformity will smooth over and disappear  from our immediate concern. Spring is the next big thing coming down the pike but not just yet. It approaches at a speed of something less than one extra minute of daylight per earthly revolution. At this imperceptible pace we inch along toward the inevitable.



 To the Thawing Wind


Come with rain. O loud Southwester!
Bring the singer, bring the nester;
Give the buried flower a dream;
make the settled snowbank steam;
Find the brown beneath the white;
But whate'er you do tonight,
bath my window, make it flow,
Melt it as the ice will go;
Melt the glass and leave the sticks
Like a hermit's crucifix;
Burst into my narrow stall;
Swing the picture on the wall;
Run the rattling pages o'er;
Scatter poems on the floor;
Turn the poet out of door.


Robert Frost


Happy New Year!


In this ever changing world in which we live in so much of what we know of, and how we conduct our relationship to, this precious little gift we call existence is in a state of flux. It is well we stand to the side for a moment and take stock. Our time is so brief and there is so much detail to wonder at and grasp hold of. What new adventures shall we share this year? Who will teach us? What epiphany will suddenly illuminate a dark secret? I live in anticipation of the next good song, the next good story, the next friend met, and the new day revealed. 
  Remember when Dorothy opened the front door of Aunt Em's house expecting Kansas but got Oz?
Surprise!!! Happy New Year!