Arggghhhhh

Nuff said

Twin Cousins

Susurrus Samaras

Out on the porch watching the dog, who knows better than to stray, better than to bother heifers, better than to harass horses or chase chickens, or fight with cats, but not better than to avail his delicate-tummied border collie self of deer innards, (which will be removed TODAY or my name isn't mom.)

Something makes a soft, sweet, swishing sound, like pattering rain drops falling down.

What could it be?

The sky is cool slate grey, with milky yellow undertones, not a drop in sight or sound.

Mr. Half moon is sliding through the branches of the box elder tree that is playing host to that same deer.

It is pretty out, and kind of warm too, all things (like November for example) considered.

What is that sound?

Barely a puff of breeze ruffling the samaras on the box elder as it whooshes by. How sweetly sibilant.

Sunday Stills....Portraits

Shavings and all

Not pigeon-toed, just frozen that way staring at something

People portraits proved impossible. Thus, Nick, being a border collie and Jack, looking for noms. Best I could do, sorry.

For more Sunday Stills.....

First

Doe permit=filled

Update

The good news is a couple of warm (ish) days in the offing. The not-so-good news is, that although at least the factory did not condemn the wood boiler, it will take around six weeks for them to get it repaired.

Maybe more.

Hopefully less.

(It is in Wisconsin now. If any of you live there and happen to see it, tell it hi for me and that I miss it.)

Six weeks ain't much in the grand scheme of things except when it is six weeks of November and December in the Northeast. Then the death of the oil burner becomes a bit of a crisis.

Only to us though. The boss has spent hours on the phone trying to track down a new firebox for the old wreck to little avail. Everyone wants to sell us a new furnace. Yep got those thousands of bucks sitting right here. Hard enough to find the cash to pay for repairs to the wood boiler, but dang, how are we going to do it twice!

Little brother had a thought. We have a small propane furnace in another location. Might could be that it can be installed in our living room or somewhere to hold off just the actual freezing thing for the next few weeks. Kind of hard to pursue it on the weekend but it is high on the agenda for next week.

Meanwhile, I have been reminded that I have been cold before. It is more comfortable to forget moving to an ancient farm house when I was 8 and heating with antique coal stoves. We were never warm, but we survived. I can remember huddling next to the stove in near darkness (lord only knows why we didn't have good lights, but it seemed like it was always dark there) reading and putting off going to bed in those icy upstairs bedrooms.

Then moving to my grandparents summer camp in January. Unheated. Sticking a stove pipe out the window for a little sheet metal stove designed to heat maybe a shoe box. "Burning" wet, dripping wood. (Burning is a euphemism for striking a lot of matches and trying to light the paper under the pile of soggy junk then watching it steam while we froze.) That was the cold of despair. I have never been so cold. I didn't know then how to get warm without proper heat.

That is when I learned to really build a fire though. When we bought the wood boiler the man who installed it was astonished how fast I got it up to operating temperature. Heck I had dry wood.

Anyhow, we are getting by. It stinks to be this cold and I fear for my house plants, but we are surviving. And it's warm in the barn.

This Week's Farm Side

Can't link to it this time, not on the freebie pages. However it is about one of my favorite authors, Ralph Moody.

And story (or storey) poles, both farmer version and government version. Gotta love the contrast. (be sure and scroll down on the latter to see the photos.)

Awakened

Got mud?

Yup...snow too, this AM

By a certain individual who has to arise at three to milk someone else's cows. Good that you are making money, but the rest of us don't need to get up at that hour ....just sayin....

I am actually comfortable though. Hot water bottle (two liter soda bottle heated in the microwave) in the back of my chair. Blankets in the chair too...nice and cozy. Oven on for about ten minutes with a pan of hot water inside (scented with cloves and cinnamon of course). Ran the shower for a minute to let out a bit of steam. Amazing how fast you get used to the cold. I worry about my house plants though.

Proof that Magic Exists

Right here.

Happy 80th Birthday

To the man who made me care for cardinals.

Notice red leaves.

And take stock of the heavy samara crop.

Along with all that reading and learning and making of things by hand.

I love you Dad.

Amid the Wreckage

As I run...er....trudge..up and down the cellar stairs in hot pursuit of photos of the no longer at all hot furnace, I find that there are bright sides to be found.

So far it is not all that cold out. (Please send our share of Global Warming now, thanks.)

My little three-breed heifer, Scottie (half-Jersey, one-quarter Holstein, one-quarter milking shorthorn) had a heifer calf by our milking shorthorn bull yesterday. She is a little cutie. The boss and I milked Scottie for the first time this morning and she didn't kick much. That could change, but we didn't have a rodeo this morning at least.

Scottie is just a tiny little thing, takes after the Jersey half of her pedigree I guess, but she goes back to some decent Holstein show cows and has a nice enough udder and pretty correct feet and legs...which don't quite match her very large and excessively hairy head, but what the heck, you can't have everything and she will probably look much better when she sheds out in the spring.

And each fall I bring in my multitude of house plants, including a lot of holiday cacti. Usually I stick them in the parlor, a room we don't use much, and although they bloom, no one sees their flowers.

This year I was in a hurry and they never made it past the living room, which we use as just what it sounds like. Thus the flowers are right there handy to brighten our days...works pretty good too.

Thanks

To everyone who called yesterday with caring and concern and offers of help of assorted kinds. Thanks for all the kind words here to....It is so heartening to know that you are there and that you care, even when many of you are facing your own challenges far worse than ours. Love to you all....be safe and thanks again.

Boom

Our furnace just exploded.

No one hurt.

No fire.

No heat either

Cell Phones

Kids, or should i say young adults, and cell phones go together like celery and turkey stuffing....you rarely see one without the other.

However, I resisted the technology, mostly because of cost, right up until a few days before the floods....literally, six days before the water came. At that time I purchased a $20 reconditioned Straight Talk phone and began learning to text and take lousy photographs and be annoying and all the other good stuff you do with cell phones.

It was kinda nice. I could keep in touch with the kids without being intrusive, send it with the boss when he went out on the highway after parts or groceries and get on the Internet any place any time. We could call the vet or the oil company or anyone else we needed to talk to right from the barn....or really from the barn yard, as there is little service inside the actual barn.

Then came the floods. Our land phones were out for days, but with the cell we could keep in touch with family all over. All was good.

Enter the cell phone slayer. Yeah, our twenty-something boy child. He hurts phones. Drops them in fast running creeks, the gutter between the cows, gets them kicked into orbit behind cranky cows when he uses them while milking, and other nefarious deeds.

Gets them sprayed with hydraulic fluid and gets it behind the screen. I swear his phones always smell like rice from all the days and hours they spend resting in bags of same.

I could go on and on and on and on. All that stuff I listed was done to one especially tough model he used. It was run over five times, by the truck and tractors, besides enduring the oil, the kicks, the stompings and any number of other indignities. (When he dropped it in the creek he was hunting with a friend and actually watched it floating away, underwater, flashing and blinking happily.) Rather than a smart phone I guess we should have called it the tough phone.

It actually still works, you just can't read the screen.

Thus he was finally forced to buy a cheapo flip phone to replace it.

Which he dropped the other day while working in the dark in the free stall barn at his new job. That one didn't survive its encounter with an errant cow hoof atall, atall..

So guess who is without a phone right now. No, not the slayer......

Sunday Stills...Potluck, with a Purpose

This was quite an interesting challenge for me. I know almost nothing about the technicalities of photography. As a frustrated painter, I see something that catches my eye, point, click, shoot, good, bad or indifferent.

If I don't like what I end up with I might change the setting or angle or distance, but there is no logic to it at all. I am wildly impressed by folks who actually know what they are doing, but for me it is enough to sometimes be able to capture the moment.

With the moons, that was the exact case. Kept changing settings until I got one I could live with. The top one and most successful in my opinion was taken with the aperture priority setting.

The top, and to me more interesting, rhubarb leaf was just getting a little closer, framing a little differently and cropping more attractively.

I am looking forward to getting some free photography lessons from all you much more skilled bloggers who will be doing this post today. Thanks in advance.

For more Sunday Stills....

Chilly

Tisn't Alaska, but it sure is nippy. Kitchen faucet was just a tad frozen this AM. Have to get some things buttoned up around here or we will be regretting it I fear.

I think we are going to have to start afternoon feeding a little earlier too. It was so dark last night when we were finishing up that you couldn't see the feed going into the wheelbarrows from the transport wagon...made it kind of interesting.

Well, have a great weekend. We are supposed to get a bit more decent weather and I am downright grateful....something else to be thankful for...October in November.

Filling the Suet Feeder

Farm Side Freebie Friday

Here you go.

A little bit of everything this week so hang on tight.

The Christmas Tree Tax

Was in fact not a tax and was never intended to be one. It was a checkoff program. Checkoffs are producer funded and driven generic advertising programs intended to increase sales of various farm products. Christmas tree growers wanted to get on board with this concept to help real trees maintain their market share against artificial ones. Here is a pretty good story about it.

Such programs are common among various commodities. Here is a bit on the soybean checkoff which explains some parts of the concept.

There is a beef checkoff...a buck a head for every cow or calf sold for beef in the nation. Beef, it's whats for dinner, is an example of the resulting advertising campaigns.

There have been times when that beef checkoff has really ticked me off. Say when calves are bringing five bucks and out of that you pay the checkoff and commission and get nothing back at all. However, all those new cuts of beef you see, flat iron, etc....developed and promoted with beef checkoff dollars, in the interests of making beef more appealing. Plus lots of recipes and other programs are thusly funded.

There is a dairy check off too. Fifteen cents per hundred pounds for every bit of milk that leaves a dairy farm. We do not get to pass that along to consumers either, because our price is set by government formula, which does not take it into account. If it is in any way a tax, it is a tax on us, not on the folks who drink our product.

It has also irritated me on occasion, such as when it spent our money to help the EPA fund air quality studies on dairies. Seemed dumb at the time and seems even dumber now. However it also funds the wonderful Dairy Princess program and partners with grocery stores to better display our products, schools to convince students to drink it, and restaurants to use in new offerings to keep folks using it in drinks and as cheese on burgers. Here is a link to the local "chapter".

All three of the Northview crew served as dairy ambassadors on various Dairy Princess courts. They learned a great deal and spent a lot of time at various public affairs meeting consumers face to face and explaining about the value of dairy products in the diet. It was good for them and good for the industry. And it put faces on farmers in a very real and personal way for thousands of non-farm customers.

I have been appalled over the past couple of days by the sheer ignorance of some pundits on the topic of the Christmas tree checkoff. They are to be excused for not understanding the whole checkoff concept when the furor began. They are not to be excused for not doing their homework before they sounded off. I give them an F in research.

I am kind of on the fence on the whole checkoff concept though. It makes for splashy advertising and in the case of the dairy and beef checkoffs has come up with some really popular campaigns. However, it has pretty much been proven that such generic advertising has very little benefit for individual farmers and when it gets down to the nitty gritty that is who is paying for it.

Creepy

Simon, the unlikely, elderly, best hunter on the farm

Fog this morning. Couldn't see more than the vaguest outline of the heifer barn, which is right next to the house. I worry with the crew out on the roads so early; Alan off to milk a lot of cows somewhere else and Liz on the way here to milk ours.

Last night bringing the cows in by moonlight was an interesting experience. It is lovely out there in the moonglow. Even the mud turns all silver and shines. However, dear little Rosie, the milking shorthorn heifer, has turned into a lunatic, who charges anyone she sees.

Oddly her roan and white coloring blends in with the darkness much better than the stark black and white of the Holsteins so watching for her is problematic.

You kind of have to rely on the sound of hurried hoof steps in the mud to tell you when this juggernaut of naughty (and dangerous) bovine is coming at you.

However, in the dark the sounds of the cows walking echo off the horse trailer and the corn crib and the heifer barn. Sloppy, soupy, mud-song-surround sound.

I was kind of nervous about it when I got left behind, being fence while waiting for the last few cows. Everyone else went in to let cows in.

Then the last few cows surprised me as I was shutting the big gates...old lady with a broken foot, deep, sticky mud, big, heavy red gate that has to be dragged...I wasn't moving very fast.

From right behind me I heard a soft moo. Oops, the cows weren't all down yet. (Even with a good flashlight it is really hard to see them). There was Mandy...and the two Jersey heifers...and Rosie.

Who took one look at me and ran like heck...to get away from me.

Hmmmm......

Wings

Sheltering wings. Somehow it seems that they are always there when we need them most. Someone's word or touch or kindness beyond the call lends them when the challenges are the greatest and we take comfort in the care and caring.

Sometimes we are called to lend those wings ourselves...sometimes we are shielded beneath them.

I am most thankful in this month of Thanksgiving to all of you who have stretched out your wings over the rocky parts of my life. It has always meant more than I could say. I hope sometimes I do the same for you.

Cider

Gallon of fresh-pressed in the fridge, new picked apples on the table and a jar of soft, sweet honey in the cupboard. The kids took a friend's toddler to the orchard to pick yesterday and brought us home some of their bounty.

What can I say but yay!!

Sunday Stills...in the Dark

This guy was the size of my thumb,

creeping (and creeping us out)

along the edge of the porch step

Sir John

Town to the north east of us

Plow Handles

My efforts are pretty lame this week. Not much of a hand at night photography.

For more Sunday Stills.....

Engulfed

Milkweed for Dani

In November. The air is like taffy, pull off a piece, crisp, bright, sharp, twist it up and enjoy....pumpkin pie flavored maybe. Just breathing is an adventure in brisk.

If I am slow to post it is the absence of usual help and the addition of feeding (and trying to figure out WHEN the boss is going to feed-the man is allergic to routine, won't tell me when he's ready and gets mad as a hornet if I don't show up on time...ten in the morning, four in the afternoon...arrggghhhhh) to my daily chores. I don't mind feeding, but it would be nice to be able to plan.

Most of the leaves are down, but the oaks across the river sport bright gold, and green and russet, layered like an expensive hair cut and shining in the angled sun.

Birds are bright too, hi chickadee from the clothesline, creaky, beaky, blue jays teetering on the tube feeder. Crows on high, very high this fall for some reason, and just a smattering of passing geese. Word is they are off to the west of here, scrounging through the harvested corn fields, gleaning up gold for winter.

Here and there a late monarch. Sometimes a few caterpillars.

Coyotes on the lawn, spooking the horses.

Yowsa! What!

Broad daylight, high noon. No wonder the cows have been acting strange and Wally the blue heeler has been barking all day. I don't like this.We have kitties and hens and beloved dogs, all just menu items to the grey and brown haunts of the hedgerows. They are welcome to around 300 of our acres, but they need to leave the vicinity of the house and buildings.

All week, I have been reading the comments of comfortably-insulated, non animal owning, smug urban folks on a friend's blog on this topic and seething. They know just how we should deal with the proximity of creatures that plot to eat our livestock.And their plans do not include lead projectiles. We should just find a way to get along with the cute little critters kumbaya....

I am not going to link and get into it, but damn Disney anyhow. They have a lot to answer for in my opinion. Once animals started walking on their hind feet, dressing in suits and talking and singing it was all over for common sense wildlife management.

Why would we not want a large predator in our back yard? Hmmmmm.....just can't imagine.

It is Unanimous

Heifer hill, early morning and mid afternoon

All the kids have off-farm jobs now....well, Alan's is off our farm and on another one. Good thing I have been getting in some practice helping feed cows...

The Best Surprises

Are sometimes round and grow on Ida Red Apple trees.

This is the first apple off a little tree we planted a few years ago. I didn't realize that it had set fruit this year, but Alan noticed when we were out taking photos of the pretty morning.

Amazingly, considering that it surrounded by old apple trees with tons of wormy apples, there wasn't a single worm in it.

And it tasted, far, far better than it looks.

Brotherband

Read the first of John Flanagan's new series, the Brotherband Chronicles last night....cover to cover....in three hours. Beck got it at around 3:15 PM and finished it by chore time (less than three hours, but, hey, she's younger.)

Mind you this book has 434 pages.

Yeah, it is really that good.

Beck is kind of a guru of young adult fiction in her spare time. The library consults with her quite often about good stuff to purchase or bring in from MVLA for that section. They also often notice what she is ordering on inter-library loan and buy it. She discovered the Ranger's Apprentice series and she, Alan and I read them...at least twice for each of the books for each of us. Once is not enough and there aren't enough of them.

Then Mr. Flanagan wound up that series and yesterday the first of this new one came out. (It was very hard to say good bye to Halt and Will. Good thing I like to re-read books.) Brotherband is even better than they were.

Flanagan is like the Dick Francis of young adult fiction. (If you read Dick, you know that he did not use a single extra word to advance his plot, yet wrote riveting stories that grab you by the throat and pull you right in...and keep you there until the last page is turned.)

These are adventure stories for young boys that transcend the genre. By miles. I am not young and have never been a boy, yet the spare prose and tongue-in-cheek humor, along with wall-to-wall roaring adventure, simply enthrall me. Lots of bows and swords and building of shelters, lots of sailing, complete with terms and how it's done, issues like bullying addressed, but as part of the story line, all with unfailingly satisfying results.

Kind of like a Middle Ages Gary Paulsen without the politics.

The Outcasts, was like a Thanksgiving dinner for the mind only without those pesky calories.

A small challenge, from your humble farm wife.....if you do read one of the Rangers books, I'll bet you can't stop at one. And if you read this new one, i'll bet you will be panting, as we are, for the release of the next

I envy anyone who hasn't already read either the RA books or the new one. Lucky you to get to enjoy them for the first time!

And no, I am not being paid by anyone, I just love great books.

Our Neighbors

Just down the road a piece. This is where we used to go for ice cream when we needed a summer break and bought sweet corn and peas and honey and met friends and socialized. I loved to sit in the car there and look across the green, green fields to the sandy cliffs along the Schoharie where the swallows nest each summer. It is a wonderful spot but the flood hit there hard.

This story offers a real tribute to the persistence, toughness and heart of this NY farm family. These are good people and I hope the road before them is smoother and easier than the one they have traveled this year.

Willy Wonka and the Chocolate

Milk? This is really cool. The gentleman who played Charlie in the movie, Dr. Peter Ostrum, is an upstate NY large animal veterinarian.

I did not know this before I read the article, but Liz has met him. Anyhow, this story is fascinating and the videos are great.

I watched the one about deciding whether or not to operate on a DA in an older cow and it was amazingly well done. That is JUST what a visit to a conventional dairy by a bovine practitioner is like.

Here is a YouTube channel with many more excellent large animal medicine videos.

If you watch the one on pregnancy checking you can see just what we did yesterday, ultrasound and all. Of course we have quite a lot fewer animals, but the management is about the same, just smaller scale.

Vet Check Day

This year's last poplar leaf

Spent almost all of yesterday in the barn feeding cows and letting them in and out. (We used to have a power feed cart, but it passed away last winter).

Now the guys feed with wheel barrows, which doesn't really take that long, but it is tedious. I figured that this year it would get done faster if I "manned" one of the barrows and so I do. Figure in a couple of weeks I will either be pretty fit or pretty dead. So far the trend is towards fit.

Had a relatively new (to us) veterinarian do some preg checking and it went quite well. She was competent and fun to work with. Most of the cows we thought were carrying calves are in fact and a couple we were pretty worried about surprised us in a good way. Dear old Zinnia gets to stay another year, which made my day. Nobody likes her but me, but I like her a lot. She doesn't even belong to me...is Alan's cow...and she steals other cows' calves and guards them even from us...but I just like her.

However, thanks to NY State's exorbitant tax rates for land, somebody has to go to pay some bills (we spend nearly two months income paying county and school taxes on our land) and it leaves us looking for income outside the milk check after we get done being fleeced.

Unfortunately Blink, a sweet old retired show cow and Cider, not so sweet, and in fact downright mean, will go to the auction today. Nuff said.