Christmas Bird Count

Alan, Becky and I are off to do 'er today, with the brothers and family and all. Our family has a small section of the Johnstown circle, Mayfield South, that my dad started doing before the boss and I were even married.....one of our favorite holiday traditions is to drive and walk all day counting every cardinal, chickadee and other avian critter that we see. Sometimes we get so desperate for birds that we count the golden eagles on garages and blue birds on mail boxes (we don't turn them in to the offical count though.).

We do our part of our family Christmas celebrating today too, which is why yesterday was an insane whirlwind of sewing, quilting, wrapping...... and interruptions. Phone calls...you would think the darned thing was possessed the way it rang. I'll bet I jogged off five pounds of Christmas cheer jogging and dodging dogs to answer it. One call was the milk tester so we had to test last night. While we were trying to get the testing done twin calves were born almost two weeks early. Heifer and a dead bull. All you farmers know what's up with heifers born twin to a bull...usually they are freemartins and will never breed. So that was exciting.

Had a first calver have a little bull in the morning too and she was insane....wait a minute, let me write that correctly. INSANE! I have been milking next to her for a couple of weeks and we are talking hand-raised, much handled animal here. Still even with the "kickers" on and me holding her tail, she kicked the boss right in the head. Before we got her milked it took FOUR of us to hold her still....and we were at the same time trying to finish up a night's testing. Way too exciting.

She has two sisters in the herd, by two different sires, and they both are challenging as well, although one is drying up for her second calf and the other has had a bunch of them. The pundits say temperament isn't hereditary. I say hah! The original cow in this family, old Cubby, was the sweetest thing you could imagine.... a really nice, gentle old cow. Every single one of her daughters, granddaughters and auxilary offspring is miserable. Every single, solitary one of them. This new heifer, a Straight-Pine Elevation Pete daughter named Cider, stands in my line. I can barely milk old Zinnia who stands in the stall next to her without Cider kicking me. I dread the day I have to start milking the heifer by myself......

At the end of all this is a video of Lizzie's rooster, Mr. Fluff, given to her by Teri last summer. She went out to film the duck...oh, that's right I forgot to tell you about the duck.......and asked Fluff to crow for the camera so he did...do play it, he is quite a chicken.

Photo by Liz

And about the duck.....besides the phone calls, trio of calves, assorted furnace fan belt emergencies and milk testing, somebody showed up here with a big, fat, white, part Muscovy duck in their car yesterday. They said it was running down the road in front of the farm, so they brought it up to see if it was ours.
It wasn't.
They left it with us anyhow.

We are not exactly equipped for duck husbandry, (the turkey is still running loose in the feed room part of the hen house) so the boss took it up to Hand's and gave it to one of the girls who had lost her hen duck a few days ago.

Anyhow my word for the day was arrgggghhhhh.....but I must admit. I truly hate to be bored and really never allow my mind to get into that state if I can help it. Living here, what with people dropping off poultry and all the other stuff that goes on, is a big help with that situation....a really big help.



Mr Fluff