Home Again

A little bug porn...er a pair of damsel flies

The Men

Discussing kayak advertisements....me, I like the canoe.

Foundation for the Future

FFTF-Rainbow Stew for the Dairy Farmer

Is a new dairy pricing program that the National Milk Producer's Federation is foisting on farmers proposing to Congress. It includes monetary assessments on milk checks, some of which will go straight to the Treasury to help lower the deficit, the rest of which will be administered by yet another board. We dairy farmers already have boards reaching into our pockets to fund the Dairy Check Off and CWT among other programs, so of course we should be just delighted to crowd a couple more hands in there. The board will decide what generic milk promotion will get the funds that they take from us. Of course generic milk promotion has been proven not to work...or at least not very well, but why worry about that?

And then there is the whole supply management thing. If the supply management tool kicks in farmers will only be paid for a percentage of their previous three months average milk production. The theory is that they will produce less to avoid that. Since cows don't have on/off switches I wonder how that will be done. Feed less? Kill a few cull some cows? I don't imagine that it will be pretty.

Plus I figure if they lower the amount of milk US farmers are permitted to produce, someone else will step up to the plate...er.....glass...and fill the void. Melamine anyone?

Supposedly farmers are in favor of this new, improved, dairy policy, but really, I have yet to talk to one who is, unless they are on a cooperative board and toeing the company line although I have read a few positive comments on ag media stories. Most folks seem pretty skeptical.

One good thing I can say is that it is planned to decouple prices from the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, a move that is long overdue.

However this pup, and it is a pup, will probably fly through Congress because it does away with the dairy support price program and milk marketing orders are "simplified".

Most ag publications are talking about FFTF as if it were Rainbow Stew for dairy farmers. Of course it is obvious that they listen to the pundits at NMPF and not so much to actual producers. I don't really think that many cooperatives ask farmers how they feel about things like this....they are more inclined to tell them what to think instead.

Here is some analysis of what is going to happen if this is passed.

Almost Butter

These are pink from the front, a sort of washed out, not terribly appealing color. I like them with the sun behind them though. I wonder if adding something like Miracid to the soil would bump up the color a little. When I had them planted up near the house they were a much nicer shade.

Sunday Stills...People

Oh, wait, update...here is a brand new one of Liz with Bling.

Pictured the latter yesterday for her registration paper and she is being trained for the fair.

I always get a kick out of this pic of an Amish horse pulled up to the gas pumps....fill 'er up!

Had to use the archives this week...sorry Ed. It has been such a crazy week what with haying, planting and getting ready for camp and no one has been around the house when I wasn't working myself.

For more Sunday Stills......

Saturday Before Camp

We are off to camp today.

The dog now has tags on his collar, which will definitely need to be taped together if anyone is going to sleep. License and rabies certificate is stowed and packing is about done.

Noodles, poles, life jackets, tackle boxes........I love the smell of an old, well-loved tackle box...melted rubber, wood smoke, Skin-so-Soft...there is nothing like it.

The weather forecast is for rain and library books.

I have left a series of posts for the week, but will be out of reach of a way to answer comments. However, I will talk to you next week when we get home from Peck's Lake NY.

Hope you all have a good one!

Company for Breakfast

*Do click any for detail

Lettuce Begin

We have grown this lettuce several years now and have been only moderately impressed. However, this year it has outdone itself. Where other years it has been rather pale and bland in flavor, this year it is a gorgeous color and has a robust flavor and delightful texture. It is called Beleah Rose and comes from Pinetree garden seeds.

Get Goats

That is my answer to this problem.

It worked here. And as to the fencing thing, the guy we bought the original border collies from had a business out in California grazing goats on the power lines to keep down brush. One man, one dog, no fence needed.

Behind the Scenes

Phoebe watching for insects.

They nested right under the eaves of our bedroom window.

It has been fun to watch the babies peering down at me while I hang out the laundry.

Right up there center stage here at the farm...the boss finally finished planting the Sudex. What a wet year! Now they can get serious about finishing up the hay.

Alan I and I got the barn all cleaned, every corner scraped and swept. Makes it a nicer place to work.

The car is back from its inspection ordeal. It is an older car and it is always a delightful surprise when it passes.

Farm Side deadline was met. We ran into someone who reads it and to my surprise, also reads this, and had a very nice conversation. I do love surprises like that.

Fishing licenses are now in hand. Alan has a lifetime, but Beck and I bought 7-days. What with my ankle and her job we probably will only fish camp week anyhow and they raised all the fees a lot. I will be debating whether I will get a sportsman's this fall. I don't hunt that much any more, but I can get a resident doe tag. However, the new fees are pretty bad.

Alan received the most wonderful college graduation gift a kid could imagine. A shiny new Henry 22 rifle. He has always wanted a Henry and is a very happy young man.

All in all a pretty nice day until chore time. Then, behind the scenes, the Case 4490 developed electrical problems and refused to work. Couldn't chop for the cows, so Alan spent most of milking toting baled hay out for them. The heifers broke an overhead waterline after the parts stores are all closed. The electric fence quit. Actually both of them did, but one is an easy fix. A windstorm popped up suddenly and blew out a big attic window showering the yard with glass and requiring a major clean-up which made milking late.

We should have shut the day clock off at four is all I can say. Guess today will be fixit day.

Roosting with the Roosters

Who is that, w-a-a-a-a-a-y up there in the box elder tree?

Hmmm, orange and speckled critters,

spotlighted in the light from the setting summer sun

Why, it's the chickens! Enjoying a strong sense of enrichment!

Right over top of this chicken-eating dog,

who evidently also keeps them safe from the wild things

that want to get to know them better

Been working on a Farm Side column about the new agreement between HSUS and UEP on a national standard for hen cages. You know, those "enriched" colony cages that will cost $4 billion bucks to construct. Just thought I would show you the reaction of chickens to the ultimate in enriched environments....the great outdoors.

Here is another column I liked that addresses the topic

Tonic

A good porch is like a tonic. You can step out there full of worry and care, brimming over with problems and pains.
In a word...glum...

Then the sun peeks out from behind a bank of foggy clouds.

Company arrives.

Light mantles the land like a glowing golden blanket.....and along with the light and the birds and the beauty and joy, comes peace, stealing in on the song of a secret catbird singing in the grape vine, sliding home on a carpet of dew, creeping up to curl in your lap like a contented cat.......

Yeah, I love a good porch.

Product of Colorado

Pinto beans from Linda

Cows Hate Mud

So you can just imagine how they are loving this summer. We pay extra when we buy their grain to have a special kind of zinc included to strengthen and improve their hooves and help them fight lameness. Still a few of them are getting tender feet just from walking in the godawful swamps produced by all the rain.

They also get a fancy (and expensive) mineral pack added to their grain so that every bite they eat helps them stay healthy and do the best they can. Their selenium is the best organically derived kind too. (Meanwhile their valets buy generic vitamins at Wally World).

A balanced diet is so important to them, so we shop for the best grain we can find.

Sunday Stills...the Letter F

Flowers and finches

For more Sunday Stills......

Willow Flycatcher

I think. Though this has been just the worst summer for weather we have seen in decades, it sure has been a great one for birds. Sit for a few minutes on the sitting porch or listen to the fields and hedgerows around the house and you will see or hear something interesting every day.

Right now I am too lazy to get up, but something is singing right in front of the door....okay, I got up, it was a baby house finch singing, and very prettily too, for its breakfast right on the porch railing. The cardinals and house finches still come to eat in the cardboard box every day and the baby finches still beg for food even though they are weeks old.

And I think I finally got a shot...or two actually of the willow flycatcher ....I think....(we know we have one by the call..other than that it is an lbb).

I believe I have identified our other caller...the thing I thought was a crazed turkey. It sang right by the house yesterday and I am pretty sure it is a black-billed cuckoo. A few more listens and I will put it on the yearlong list of birds we see here at the farm that I am keeping.

Hope you are having a good weekend. We had another godawful gully washer last night, with lightning so bad I sat up and waited it out in case it hit one of the barns. It didn't and I am hoping the fencers are okay. Lost one a couple weeks ago. They don't like lightning much.

I Guess

If I didn't have a heart attack yesterday I am probably not going to have one right away.

I got sick of the bull not having any water. The water tub the boss gave him was too small and I was always filling it. And he is a snorty, snotty little bugger and I don't like going around him, but I had to get right up close to fill his tub every day.. I decided to take action, by myself, as no one was home but me. Mistake. Big mistake.

I put a big water tub in with him and filled it. The whole time I was running the hose the little creep was threatening me. As soon as it was full he drank what he wanted and then started working it over with his head...thank God he doesn't have horns.

An hour later I went out to check him and he had broken out the top board of his pen (which had previously been cracked) and was only held in by boards up to his brisket. All he had to do to get out was step over...he wouldn't have even had to lift his feet very high.

I called the boss, who was taking some paper work to his aunt, and stood on the porch with a stick, hoping to not see him rambling down the driveway before help arrived.

He stayed in at least and the guys moved him over to the cow barn on a halter. It was pretty much of a rodeo. He is just a little bull, but he is not nice, no sirree.

We were going to put him in a pen with some heifers, but decided instead to put him in a stanchion and put a ring in his nose....which was done. We were kind of concerned about what he might do if he jumped out or tore up another pen.

He greeted me when I went in to milk last night with threatening bellows and snorting. I was really, really, really glad that he was locked up by his head, the stanchion was tied shut and he was sporting a little chain just in case.

Then just as I was putting the machine on Bayliner, Liz let out a yell and I saw (and heard) a wall of brown, thundering down the manger.

That is when, if I was going to have that heart attack, it would have happened.

I screamed for the boss, who milks in the back of the barn and hollered at the girls to get out of the way. And looked for a pitchfork.

Then Liz called over, "Mom, it's not the bull, it's just Shamrock."

Shamrock is about the same size as the bull and she was having a field day racing up and down the barn, but she is just a Jersey heifer. It took a while, because she was having fun, but Liz caught her and put her out in a pen with her half sister, Shameless, who was put there to make room for the bull.

Time for a sigh of relief, right?

Heck no! In all the excitement, my cow Asaki (read that out loud....Rebecca named her in a name the calf contest a while back) blew out of her stanchion and little Cinnamon jumped through a stall and in with her great big yearling older sister, Rio.

Fun, fun, fun. Asaki ran up the back manger. Cinnamon was terrified, although thankfully Rio was a real lady about the whole affair and just licked her little sister. It took a while before everybody was caught and put back where they belong.

I am too old for this. I was ALWAYS too old for this. Where do I get my (one way) ticket to some place with a beach, something cold with a little umbrella, and maybe some interesting shells and fish and birds? I think I am ready. No, scratch that. I KNOW I am ready.

Better Late than Never

Now that deadline has come and gone a friend posted this story about how farm land generates more revenue for local municipalities than it uses in services.

We have been saying this for years. Farmers generally own more land than the average person, thus facing a hefty property tax bill. Cows and corn don't go to school, or speed down the street in unregistered cars, or many of the other things that use tax money to provide services. People in houses do.

I was writing about the potential for the advent of high speed rail to change rural communities in a negative manner, what with the influx of city folks and McMansions. I knew houses uses more services than they pay for and have to rely on other land uses to subsidize the cost....just couldn't find the figures to prove it. Wish I had had the numbers from this article when I was working on that column...darn it!

A Request

Today is my younger brother, Matthew's, birthday. His job as a driller has taken him to North Carolina for weeks on end....far from his family and the small farm they run here in Upstate NY where we all live. If you were to go here and leave him a birthday greeting, I think it would be a terrific surprise for him. He likes to get updates from home on his wife, Lisa's, blog.

He is the nicest guy you could want to meet. Years in the Midwest instilled in him and his family that western hospitality and kindness that is not so common here on this coast. I don't think he has ever met a stranger....

Anyhow, Happy Birthday Matt, hope you have as good a day as you can so very far from home...love you!

Down Sizing

His name is Chainsaw and he usually lives up to it....however, maybe he is trying to tell us something.

Should we change his name to Brush Nippers?

Happy Birthday America!

Fireworks

Psycho Bunny

Milk Weed in bloom

Lavender

Here is a birthday card for you from Northview Dairy Farm.

Sunday Stills...Patriotism and 4th of July

This is the story of a little blue shirt that has insinuated itself into the tapestry of my love for America and the people who make our country great.

It all started on September 12, 2001. Our family was already in turmoil when 9/11 took place. My beloved mother-in-law had passed away on July 4th, incidentally my birthday. She had lived at the farm, while we lived in town and commuted to run the place with her. I cannot convey to you how close we all were. The kids loved their grandma, the boss loved his ma, and she and I had worked through some rocky years to be truly close. When she needed to communicate with her hospice workers she called on me to be her interpreter. That meant a lot to me. We were all hurting.

Now we were moving, from our home of 15 years to live at the farm ourselves. Not going to lie and say that I liked living in town, but still...there were gardens that we built and planted, years of memories and years of junk, all needing to be sorted and dealt with. I was doing it pretty much alone, because the boss was farming and the kids were in school.

Then the planes hit the Trade Center. Normally I would have been milking cows, but I was home packing with the radio on. When I heard the news I turned on the television and watched the horror, then ran to the farm to tell the boss and to the school to grab the kids...that is just how we are...together in crisis.

The next day the whole world was different and yet life had to go on. Our house in town belonged to someone else and we simply HAD to move. So I went on packing. On my knees on the floor in Alan's bedroom I reached under the bed to the nightmare/tangle/boy's nest underneath and pulled out a little blue shirt.

I spread it open in my lap to see if it was a keeper or a tosser.

And there was the NY skyline complete with the Twin Towers. I remembered...class trip with Becky, buying the souvenir from a street vendor for the little boy left at home.

It rocked me. I kept it.

Then, what with the move and all, it vanished not to be seen again for nearly ten years. Sometimes I vaguely wondered where it had ended up, but this house is staggeringly huge...26 foot long rooms, three stories and a cellar, a footprint that would scare you. I didn't forget it, but I didn't come across it either.

Fast forward through those nearly ten years. I love the Sunday Stills challenge and try to participate every week. As I hung up laundry last Wednesday I thought about the little shirt. And thought that if I actually knew where it was I would use it for this challenge. Didn't say a word about it to anyone though. Figured I would grab pics of the fireworks at one or the other of the two racetracks on either side of us, even though I am terrible at nighttime photography.

Thursday Beck and I undertook to finally clean out the front hall. Two stories high and the size of a normal living room. It is an incredibly beautiful space, but a catchall for any junk anyone is too lazy to cart upstairs.

We were about half-way done when Beck held something up. "Look what I found, Mom."

Yes, of course, it was the little blue shirt. Mind you, she didn't know about that moment ten years earlier when I pulled that shirt from under the bed The kids were busy with their own adjustments to a changed world and a new home then so it didn't show up on her horizon much...and I hadn't mentioned to anyone about wondering where it was.....

I suppose you could call it all coincidence...but to me that is one spooky little shirt. I am going to launder it now and put it in my dresser drawer with other mementos of old friends and baby dresses (yes there was a time when my daughters wore dresses) and things of that ilk. And I am glad the lost is found.

Yesterday

Cleaned the bull's water tub and refilled it. He seemed quite grateful to have clean fresh water. I didn't know what to tell him. He is the one who backs up and uses it for a potty. Who said bulls were smart?

Shoveled all the ashes out of the outdoor wood stove and started a new fire.

Weeded and staked tomatoes.

Spelunked for the second planting of green beans. Not a one to be found. Something is definitely eating them and I am thinking chickens.

Cut brush around the water faucet where you turn the hoses on to water stock. I hate ticks and being brushed by weeds like that makes me think they are crawling all over me.

Photographed yellow warblers (while trying to photograph indigo buntings who were hiding.)

Laundry, you can't beat days when it is dry enough to get several bunches dry on the line.

Meatloaf and gravy. An accidental recipe that everyone likes so I made it two nights in a row. (Got to enjoy Jade's "meatloaf face"...guess he liked it.)

Chores and milking both ends of day.

Wasted time on the computer. Playing Zuma Blitz on Facebook.

And at my worst moment felt way smarter than the guys in the photo above. I saw the two ultralights coming at me when I was on the porch with the camera, night before last. As I watched they came THAT close to one another. Yowsa!

****Update: also watched an incredible fireworks show. From bed. By merely turning my head toward the window. The race track next door held one for the holiday and it was a humdinger. I tried to get enough gumption to go down and get the camera and try for some pics for Sunday Stills. Nope...none there...gumption that is .

We did worry about what the cows' reaction to that fusillade over their heads might be...and of course they were in the pasture nearest the track and the show.

Hope they are still in the fence this morning.

****Update 2: half a herd of cows at the barn door this morning. The other half had gone walkabout. Fortunately they stayed on our land and just feasted on sorghum and grass. Notably all the cows that have been to the Fonda Fair and lived through the fireworks show right over the barn were among the ones at the door.

Nationwide Chicken Massacre

RIP

We lost a hen last night up on the bowling green (yes, this old Victorian homestead sports an actual bowling green...not that, other than mowing it, we have a clue what to do with it.)

It was one of the silver-laced Wyandottes that Teri gave us...the last one. She is also having problems with predators getting her birds.

I have mixed emotions. The hens are wrecking my garden, slurping up bean seedlings before they finish emerging from the ground. Still, she was a pretty old thing....

Then I read Fuzzy's Friday blog and discovered that hens are coming under attack way out west too. What is the world coming to?