The Farm Side

 I just discovered that many issues of my old newspaper column, the Farm Side, are now available online for free. You can find a whole bunch of them here.

Meanwhile, here's the text of one if you would like to read it. The photo is what I used to look like a number of years worth of moons ago when my boss made me get a new profile pic for the column. I look older and uglier now.

For The Recorder

A bully moon in full regalia gave me the third degree the other night. Not a truncheon in sight, but she shined her blinding spotlight right into my room and chased my sleep from pillow-to-pillow. Arghh, but not-so-soft, what light through yonder window breaks, and in all-night misery the sleeper wakes?

When I rolled out of her way, she used the white paint on the door to reflect on her accusations and wake me up again. What happened to the nasty drizzle of rain that was falling at bedtime, I wondered. I am really, really sick of rain, but least it was dark then.

The first robin started yelling at quarter-after-four and within minutes was joined by a dozen more. This place is baby bird central, a veritable assembly line of fluffy fledglings. Robins are the most numerous and full of early noise and drama. Little ones dot-dot-dash across the lawn, chirping for hand-me-down worms and looking cute as puppies.

Enough baby bunnies to fill a dozen Easter baskets are lined up along the garden edge every morning drooling over the beans sprouts as well. Tiny fawns hide among the bushes in the heifer pasture. We watch the does slipping through the tall grass, all secret and sly, butter wouldn’t melt in their mouths, as they visit the places where their babies are hidden. “Nothing to see here, move along, move along.”

We know they are there though and pretty much just where. It is a wonder how they stay hidden when the coyotes hold howling fests just yards from their secret nests in the tall grass.

The moon was relentless in her questioning so I gave up on sleep to start the day. It’s summer after all, moon to noon and dawn to day’s end. I don’t want to miss a minute.

As sunlight shivered on the other horizon at just about dark thirty, that meanie of a moon fell off the edge of the west, smirking in the early fog and pointing chilly fingers as I stumbled down the stairs.

Her sleep robbing midnight rudeness could not deflect from the delight of not one, but two, Indigo Buntings singing furiously from a pair of Box Elders in the front yard. It was surround sound awesomeness at its finest. After the robin opening sonata the other birds tuned up for the adagio movement, although daybreak is not so very slow in June at all.

Grey Catbirds snap crackle popped a medley of a dozen other bird songs from the shrubbery. They can’t bring me a shrubbery, but they sure can sing me one.

“Look-up, over-here, see-me, up-here,” a Red-eyed Vireo played his cheerful flute notes, while a fledgling Northern Cardinal banged on daddy’s shins, as he sat in a tray full of sunflower seeds, begging to be fed.

A Carolina Wren suggested with his “tea kettle, tea kettle, tea kettle” that I put on a refreshing morning beverage to shake off the last dregs of sleep deprivation. I went with strong coffee instead and another June morning was off to a brilliant start.

June is my favorite month. It’s better than December with Christmas…who needs the stress and hassle anyhow? There is no need to agonize over appropriate presents in June, just a few brotherly birthday cards for the guys I grew up with. And what’s not to like about Father’s Day?

Golden June is way superior to February, chocolate hearts or no chocolate hearts. You can, after all, eat chocolate in summer too.

There is more fizz and bang in June than all the fireworks of July or the thunder that punctuates May.

It’s even better than Thanksgiving. Turkey is all well and good, but even the smell of homemade dressing in the oven can’t compare with the seductive scent of Riverbank Grapes blooming in their myriad millions all up and down the valley.

Despite delays in planting, corn is popping up all over, dressed in the exuberant shades of bright spring green. It has been a great pleasure to watch the river flats fields we pass, as the corn seedlings double in size overnight and triple their tall by the weekend.

Hay fields have been sheared and fertilized and are racing toward second cutting faster than a speeding lawn mower, only better.

June is also Dairy Month and that may just be the best part of all.

Dairy Month began as National Milk Month in 1937 and was originally a program planned to promote dairy products. Today it is still aimed in that direction, but I see it as a good reason to enjoy delicious things and have a lot of fun too.

It’s the perfect month to take a drive through perfumed air under an azure sky, heading for ice cream that tastes like Heaven.

It’s fun to change up the destination. We have a couple of favorite ice cream shops, where we indulge in a range of delights.

My favorite, and Becky’s too, Hawaiian Moon, a decadent concoction of coconut, cherry, and pineapple, is only available in summer, and as far as the Internet can tell, only right here in our area. Despite being named after that midnight nemesis that robs our sleep, we love it. We wait eagerly all winter for the first cone, and save a pint or two in the freezer for the winter wasteland.

And what’s a picnic without ice cream to follow the cheeseburgers from the grill?

There are more delicious dairy things in heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy!

I chased down some recipe suggestions for dairy month delights and found cucumber yogurt dip, another great possibility for picnics by the lake. Or how about a Tangerine Strawberry Creamsicle Smoothie? If you can’t find just the recipe you want you can be sure that the American Dairy Association has your back.

I hope you are enjoying June as much as I am this year, rain or no rain. After all, June is Dairy Good.

Fultonville dairy farmer Marianne Friers is a regular columnist. She blogs at http://northvilledairy.blogspot.com.