Incredible Photos from the 30s and 40s

Do take a few minutes to look at these in the Denver Post. They are phenomenal and include homesteaders inside their prairie homes, juke joints, dam building and so much more. Amazing!

HT Luv Hahn on FB

Armed Robbers Hitting California Dairy Farms

This is a chilling story of armed robbers attacking Fresno County farmers as they go about their work. The attacks have been brutal with injuries for the victims


It seems horrifying that even out in the country people can no longer feel safe in their own homes, barns and fields.

Grinning in the Garden

Do click for comparative largeness

My garden is small and crowded, but I have a lot of fun with it. These giant sunflowers are volunteers that I let go among the beans and sweet corn. As you can see my model was more than a trifle reluctant to participate in this particular comparison (Coulda been the nettles).


BTW the model is six feet tall under normal circumstances and six one with those big boots.

Tornado

Alan was up chopping Tuesday when a hellacious storm hit. Trees were bending right over, rain was slashing and drumming and he could barely see to drive the tractor. When he came down he told us about a thing dangling down from the clouds that was circulating and undulating up and down. Over the past few years we have seen that two or three times so we didn't think too much of it until today....when we heard that an E-F1 tornado touched down just a little bit from here.
Wow! He must have been watching it forming. It went right over him.

Defining a Family Farm

Read about it here

Local Meat Harvesting Facility on NPR

HT to Chuck Jolley on Facebook for this story about the meat lab at SUNY Cobleskill. Alan took some classes there, which made our venison processing efforts much smoother. He learned a lot about cutting meat from Director Eric Shelley and worked in the room pictured in the article.

Could We Have

Male bobolink in fall plumage

Indigo bunting singing in the sweet corn

An almost wordless Tuesday? Much to do and never enough time, so I will leave you with a couple of bird pics I took the other day when I was working on Sunday Stills.

This Explains a Lot

From John Bunting's Blog. I frequently feel sad and guilty because our place doesn't look as nice as it should. These numbers can tell you where the fix it up money goes.

"In June, 2010 New York dairy farmers were paid a total of $177,505,300. According to USDA "Costs and Returns" the total costs were $261,960,900. There will be those who argue the "costs" numbers are not accurate because milk can be made cheaper - think slavery."

Monday

Remember Scottie?

We don't usually work Sundays except for chores but yesterday the boss worked his fanny off, all by himself, finishing up a hay field because it was going to rain.

And then it didn't .

But he got some things cleaned up so they can start fresh today. The Sudan grass/sorghum is so wet they are mixing it half and half with dried out first cutting so they can get it in the bag. They are feeding a similar mix green chopped to the cows and they seem to like it pretty well. The kids worked for my bro then went to the fair to the tractor pull. Mark finished up seventh I guess.

Today the sun is coming up in a blaze of red and it is humid enough to wring a glass of water out of a handful of air. Off to the barn then the usual round of garden, kitchen and bookkeeping. Have a good one.

I was walking over to take my Sunday graffiti pics and heard a loud rustling in the creek bed between the farms. ANOTHER woodchuck carting plastic. I have no idea where he found it...but must be a new style in marmot housing.

Sunday Stills...Graffiti

Hickory Tree Field

Instead of concrete and railroad cars...

This could have been quite a challenge in our neighborhood. We do live near a city with a bit of a problem with it, but right here...well, not so much.




However, the boss gets creative with the markers when he is keeping track of which field is put up in the ag bags and this year was no exception.


He is quite the artist isn't he?

Bird Graffiti

And so was this little bird (thanks to Alan for tipping me off to all this good stuff)



For more Sunday Stills....

Blue

Indigo blue
Indigo bunting
In a cottonwood tree

We Don't Need No Stinkin'

Yellow jackets. This has got to be the worst year ever. The tractors are full of them. I swear we are going to buy Hand's right out of wasp spray. The men have been finding nests the size of dinner platters everywhere.

Yesterday I found my share. It was only one, but it came boiling out of the barnyard gate and dug into the upper curl of my poor ear, buzzing ferociously.

And stinging too. It hurt so bad I could barely stand up. The kids sent me to the house with ice cubes and pain reliever and milked without me. I couldn't believe how pale it made me...white as the proverbial ghost. Nasty darned things!

We have been opening and closing that gate a dozen times a day all summer....even earlier in the day....without a sight or sound of the vicious things. Suddenly in one day there are three nests in it, with hundreds of the buzzing abominations.

Alan got them gone, but somebody is going to have to get some cans of Great Stuff and seal up all the holes on tractors and gates. I don't care to have that experience again any time soon.

How Much

Wood plastic could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck.....?

I was sitting here at my trusty computer yesterday when I heard a weird rattling sound from the front porch. There was a lusty breeze bending the sumacs so I thought it was just the plastic that was on the door in the winter rattling in it.

However it went on and on so I got up to go look. Elvis was staring out the door in his grab-the-robin pose, only different. Kind of hesitant and nervous-ish.

Well no wonder! In place of the robin was a fat young woodchuck gathering plastic in its mouth like a gerbil collecting tissue for a nest. It was perhaps six inches from his face. It was so darned bold that it let me take its picture. Then when I clapped and shouted to make it leave the region it ignored me.

The cat ran away but not the road rat. Dag nabbitted thing anyhow. It just looked over its shoulder in an irritable fashion and sauntered away.

A much better encounter of the wild thing kind came later on the other porch. I was watering the plants when I heard an unfamiliar bird call. I looked up and the speaker came right to my knees...right there a foot away from me a lovely little Carolina wren. It hopped all over the porch looking right at me, completely unconcerned, then flew down below the driveway. How cool is that?

Sold on Milking Shorthorns

If you've been reading here a while you know about Checkerboard Magnum's Promise, a milking shorthorn bull we bought to breed heifers for calving ease a few years back. We had used Angus, Hereford, Jersey etc. and had complaints about all. Mostly temperament but calving ease on the Herefords was no better than Holstein bulls. We don't have access to the kind of genetics you find on ranches....

I had hoped to sell some matched steers for oxen, an option which has not materialized. However, we were astonished at how typey the shorty calves are. I think that is partly that we were very lucky in the bull we got, but they are just so correct and sharp that you can't stop looking at them. Dense, strong bone, lots of dairy character and tough as nails. A little bit of attitude in every one of them, but it is not meanness, but a strong will to prosper.

We raised one shorty steer and the processor we took him to ruined the meat so we didn't get to find out how we liked it. Then this week we finally got a shorthorn beef back from a reputable place. When the boss picked it up our man said it was the best we ever brought in. I took that with a grain of salt, as he is quite the salesman....but....

It is! The ground beef is very lean like we like it, but tender and succulent....so good. And last night Becky broiled us some steaks. Flashback to Missouri where we ate at a really nice steak house. They have a lot better beef out there where they grow it and this was like that. Fork tender, juicy, very flavorful. I am delighted, partly that we have a freezer full and partly that we have a heifer all raised up that we can process at any time, plus two more steers of various ages. After a long winter of venison, goose, chicken and vegetables I am such a happy little camper.

Music

Stumbled upon some wonderful music on Facebook yesterday...real traditional country sound.
We are fans of the Texas singer, Todd Fritsch, and have him as a friend on FB. He "liked" RW Hampton, so I checked out his music on his page.
I liked it.

Even bought one song with part of the Amazon gift certificate brother and sis-in-law gave me for my birthday. (Thanks guys, my iPod is a much happier place because of you)




Here is RW"s Facebook page....give the song, "Donny Catch a Horse" a listen...wish I could buy that one, but alas, it doesn't seem to be available on Amazon.

Nation's Oldest Farm for Sale

Read about it here.

Wordless Wednesday

What's Up with The Milk Numbers

According to all those dairy situation reports you read in all the farm publications, production is up from last year despite the loss of so many farms. According to a source close to the industry (who shall remain unnamed) plants are scrambling for milk and taking loads they turned away a few months ago.....hmmmm......

While We Were Gone

Nothing daunts a border collie.

If there are no cows to herd, a lake will do nicely, thank you

The bull calf tide continued....very few heifer calves this summer. Alas Spruce had a really nice boy, tall and dairy, Balsam had a Silky Cousteau son of fine proportions, and Bonneville (Balsam's daughter) had a Keeneland Astre Pat son too (same sire as Spruce's).

No more calves expected for a few weeks...However, fair preparations are in full swing. The health work is finished on Lemonade, a Holstein veteran of the show ring of Becky's, Rose Magnolia, the milking shorthorn daughter of the Select Sire Power bull, Poker(pdf) and my Broadway cow, and Gypsy, the Roylane Jordan daughter of Lizzie's retired show cow, Mandy.

Lots of clipping and washing going to be going on, which may be a challenge as Liz has started her new milk inspector job and is at least half past busy. We also have to hustle up and get Rose Magnolia and her mother, Broadway, registered, not a small feat as we have never registered a milking shorthorn before. Liz will be taking the three of them to Altamont Fair this year while the rest of us hold down the fort here at home. Maybe you will see them there.


In the meanwhile, the garden is beginning to produce, I have more lawn cows to paint, we are getting a steer back from the processor and haying is continuing apace. Although I miss camp, as I always do, we came home to glorious weather, which makes it all seem fine.

Noticed

These stories might be of interest to North-viewers....I was thrilled to learn the results of Web Moo.O, an agricultural social media contest, (which I had incidentally forgotten that I entered) (although no one has contacted me yet). I discovered it through the stats on Site Meter and did some happy dancing etc.

Northview Diary is a lot of fun for me...I love getting to know all of you....and it is so nice that the folks at Nutridense liked it too.