What Not To Do

If your gentle, amazingly well-behaved house cat goes tearing out the door to fight with a barn cat when you open it to let the dog in..(he has never, never even tried to go outdoors before.....)

Well, the thing not to do is to go out and try to get him back. The &^%^^&& cats rolled right across my leg, biting and clawing. I finally had to separate them with a canoe paddle.

So I am all clawed up.
Nasty. Painful.
I shoulda left the little stinker out there.

This Oughta Raise Your Eyebrows

John Bunting had this today:

Organic Foods Made in China

Oh, yay. I don't see much point in organic myself (sacrilege I know, but there it is). However, with all the fine quality control that particular nation exerts over its dairy products and food ingredients, I can just imagine what their organic standards are like. I think if you pay a higher price for a premium product you probably ought to have some assurance that you are actually getting it. Doesn't seem to be the case here.

Oh, and it is pouring this morning, torrential, all-consuming, all-soaking downpours. I haven't even had the doggies out yet. And dag nab it, the boss just fixed the driveway the day before yesterday after the last set of monsoons took it out. I know even though the sun isn't up yet that it is gone again.

If I Haven't Had Much to Say

Things have been so crazy here..... Just no time to get it all down. Been fighting for three months with the ISP/cable/phone company over some incorrect billing they perpetrated on us. Got to the point of contacting the Attorney General and the Public Service Commission over that situation.

They turned off all our stuff Sunday, which was nasty.....thank God Liz has a cell phone... I guess that situation may be, possibly, could be, I hope, I hope, resolved now. I would not be exaggerating if I told you that in the past three months I have spent at least five hours on hold and been hung up on disconnected more times than I can count. Had I not carefully written down everything that was promised to me when we first took the deal to get the service with the speedy birdie logo, and logged the time, date, content, and the name of the employee I was being bamboozled by for every one of the multitudinous, increasing acrimonious calls I made, I would have been left paying twenty bucks more a month than I was promised.....and as far as that goes I still don't actually have a corrected bill in my hand....

We took Becky back to Potsdam to finish out the semester Sunday. Bringing her home and back took two whole days. I own a run down little cabin in the Adirondacks, no power or running water and not on any lake or anything...just a little shanty stuck in the woods. Alan and I both had that odd tingly, spidey sense that we should visit on the way home Sunday. So we did.

The cabin isn't really ON the way home as far as that goes, but we wanted some balsam fir boughs and there are firs there so....we took the long, winding, miserable run across the Bleeker Benson road and stopped in.

Good thing we did. Somebody had broken out one of the big back windows to get inside. Alan climbed in too as we didn't have the keys with us. No sign of damage and nothing missing that he saw, which is amazing. It has been burglarized before and usually the results are somewhat different.

Have I ever told you about the time thieves broke in and stole all the light bulbs and every other thing that wasn't nailed down? They also took one of those huge, cabinet style record player, stereo, radio sets that were popular along about in the late seventies. I am talking FURNITURE here. I'll bet it weighed as much as a Volkswagen. It was up a cramped and nervous-making narrow little open stairway, in the loft style upstairs bedroom. We would have moved it out ourselves but for the daunting thought of getting it down those stairs.

That and the fact that it hadn't worked in years.
(Thanks guys for getting it out of there for us.)

This time Alan picked up a few things that were lying around that had been left behind, including a nice old iron frying pan, which I will use to cook out at camp (Pecks that is) next summer. He will have to get back up there with his buddy and board up the broken window....oh, and we did get some fir boughs.

No New Plates

In an act that seems outrageously anti-upstate NY, (we don't have subways!), our illustrious governor has decided to soak us all for new license plates (at $25 a pop) next April, whether we need them or not. Seems a lot of folks think not, as the petition linked to below already has over 5000 signatures.

New Yorkers, go HERE to sign the petition against this action. St. Lawrence County Clerk Patricia Ritchie began it and says, "It’s an outrage to ask families and businesses to pay more for new license plates they don’t need or want when they are being battered by the ongoing recession."

Isn't This Nice

Time Warner Exposes Customers......to hackers....

I have been having over two months worth of sometimes heated and certainly frequent discussion with that particular company, as they signed us up with a nice year long offer, then sent us a bill or something else. Which was considerably higher.

They keep promising to fix it.

And then not fixing it....and hanging up on me, not returning calls, etc. etc. I had thought better of the company, as they have treated us exceptionally well in the past. However, I gotta tell you, one more bill for the higher amount and my next call will be to the Attorney General.

Just sayin'

Meanwhile, the blue bomber is finally fixed. (For which I am amazingly grateful). The wiring and pump that sits in the gas tank went bad and it was a major project to get it fixed...long story.

Now we can sell some livestock to pay the rest of the taxes. I am so leery of sending anything as prices have been appalling, but we simply have no choice. Guess I should be glad we still own them so we can sell them.

Dang it

This is just lousy. We have been overrun with illegal hunters since turkey season started. (We are completely posted against trespass so they are breaking the law the minute they cross our fences.) We know they are out there because we hear the damn fools bang, bang, banging away at their prey, until if there is any turkey meat left, it is pre-ground and ready to spread on bread.

We can't catch them though because they wear full camo and hide in the bushes if we go out there.

One morning last week at 5:30 AM, with still at least an hour to go before crack o' dawn, someone shot about fifteen times in quick succession in our maple woods, then there were a bunch of scattered shots. You know and I know that they blasted a flock down out of the trees and then picked off the stragglers. Not too sporting and also illegal....besides the whole trespassing issue.

We still have fourteen heifers at pasture. It is a big pasture, they have lots to eat, the woods to sleep in, plenty of water and are content.

Except when nut cases start shooting in that pasture. We have noticed the heifers running real bad a couple of times the past week and heard more gun shots than we could count. It has been tempting to bring the stock in, but if we do we will run short of winter feed. Besides, barring hunters harassing them, they are much better off outside as long as the decent weather holds. Even the milk cows are outside days with a feeder wagon and inside just at night.

Now comes the lousy part. Liz went up just now to walk through the herd and check on them, something she does most days. Normally she has to take a stick to keep them from climbing all over her. They are absurdly tame and will knock you down looking to get petted and fooled with. Today she could barely get near them. Even the Jerseys, Moments and Hillbilly, ran away and Sugar, her purchased heifer, who is too tame to even be safe, wouldn't let her anywhere near.

Then she saw that Moments, who was pregnant and due to calve in January, had just aborted her calf. Of course I can't prove that the running away from the fusillades from the turkeys chasing turkeys was the cause, but I know what I think.

And I think I wish they would go hunt on state land, of which there are thousands of acres within a few miles from here, and leave our cattle the heck alone.

Calling all Parents of College Kids (Caution/Mild Profanity)

What on earth do you do when your half way decently raised young-un is paired in a tiny college dorm room with a person who thinks it is just dandy to bring the BF back to the room and spend the nights in loud...well...use your imagination? We are not talking quiet and discrete and possible to ignore here...we are talking chasing each other around the room at three in the morning screaming and yelling and then....

I mean the beds are just a few inches apart. I am stymied. Heard about this kind of stuff and seen daughters of a number of friends forgo education at top schools to come back to local colleges and live at home so they didn't have to deal with stuff like that...and worse I guess. I know it's college. They are grown ups. Etc....but dang, the grown ups I know have more class than that...or most of them...or maybe I am missing something. Maybe these kids all want to grow up to be David Letterman.

Advice from those more experienced with college kids would be much appreciated. Up until this semester the kids have lived at home and commuted to SUNY Cobleskill, a fine school from which Liz graduated first in her class, which alas does not offer a degree in anthropology or archaeology.

We just don't know how to handle this...or how to suggest that our girl handles it. We were thinking of sending this extra-large economy-sized black belt guy we know...up to put in a quick appearance or something...however, it is getting to be not funny and we are about done with joking about it.

If the rest of the privileged, spoiled brats want to party, drink, smoke dope and so forth all through their time at college, cheating themselves, their parents, and the employers they will work for in the future, by not learning a blasted thing at college I guess that is their right. Damn if I think it's fair that they are cheating my kid too. Thanks in advance for what I know will be the best advice in town....and have a great weekend.

Have You Seen This?

If this is true, the government appears to be permitted to completely take over your computer if you log onto Car.Gov for the Cash for Clunkers program and accept the privacy statement. There seems to be a great deal of discussion on various sites as to whether the privacy statement exists at all and as to whether it says what Beck says it does. Some people think that it is only the dealer log in page that requires that you give up all your information to big brother...but even so...should Uncle BO be allowed to look into everything on a business computer like that?

Anyhow, I am not logging in there to find out.

I hope you will share your thoughts on whether this is actually in the privacy statement and if so, what it actually will mean to folks who opt into it. Meanwhile, I would avoid that site like a patch of radioactive poison ivy. Good grief!!

Watch Out for Facebook

And be afraid to rely on Norton Antivirus. I was enjoying the former networking site yesterday when the latter product failed in its task of protecting this computer in a proper fashion.

It took nine hours of computer time.
And a hundred bucks to Norton......
......To get rid of the resulting virus. I never did get a coherent explanation from the many technicians in India who attempted to resolve the issue. Or from about the sixth or seventh one who finally did.

I didn't get much sleep, but it is fixed and the Farm Side was sent in on time.
Yay me.

The kids have AVG free version antivirus software on the other two computers. Both are on Facebook day and night.
Both are fine.
I am trying to figure out why I am paying 80 bucks a year for a product that doesn't do the job when I can get a free one that does. Hmmmmmmm.....

Stormin'

We are having thunderstorms every day. Sometimes several. Beck and I went to the library and Stewart's yesterday and raced home because they were talking tornado warnings over in town. I didn't see any myself but it was hailing when we got home. It was weird to cross the river bridge. The sun was shining brilliantly on one side, although the clear blue water was white capped.




On the other side leaves and branches that had broken off were lashing across the road. The sky was thick with ominous grey clouds and hurtling rain. You could barely discern the difference between the surface of the river itself and the rain that was dashing into it.



Sunset was weird. Unrelieved textureless grey clouds with just a round yellow ball dripping through them down to the horizon. It was so unusual that we all ran to look at it, even our milk tester who was here testing last night. It spotlighted the flowers kind of nicely though.

No Joy in Mudville

It's been like Casey at the bat here the past few days. Liz and I had a great Friday, managed to get some more grapes and make more jelly, got a lot cleaned up and caught up. We were having a cup of coffee and feeling pretty good about ourselves. Then the boss came in looking grim. He had good reason. The big tractor, the 4490, blew some portion of its anatomy out through the engine block. Parts flew 70 feet. It will not be running again without a whole new motor. It is sitting in the farthest back field too. I don't have any idea how they are even going to get it down here.

Some friends loaned/rented him a tractor so he can keep grinding away at the corn. (Thank God for people like them.) Then we got three inches of rain. He had to give up on the field he was in and move to another on higher ground. Then a sweet cow (well Liz doesn't think she is so sweet because she banged her up pretty bad when she was a show cow) aborted her calf last night. She isn't an easy one to get bred in the first place so this could be it for her. We will have to see.

Now this:

HERKIMER

WINTER STORM WARNING

MONTGOMERY

FLOOD WATCH

WINTER STORM WARNING

OTSEGO

WINTER STORM WARNING

Something is wrong with this picture. Whoever heard of dreaming of a white Halloween? I think I'll hibernate!

***And I want to know where my share of global warming went!



Found this on World Dairy Diary...Saratoga Cheese Company to open new plant in NY. The region has lost a lot of dairy processing facilities in the past few years. Good to hear of a new one coming in.

Blogrolling down

Arrgggh!!! I have most of my friends in my bookmarks menu too, but I normally use my own blog roll to read everyone's blog whenever I have time. The update feature is real handy.

According to word in the Blogosphere the site was hacked.
Frustrating indeed.
It may take a while for me to get around to say hi to all my friends and mentors,,,,and most frustrating of all, I made a new friend, to whom I would like to link, but my linky thingy is all gone!

Anyhow, you can still visit Life on a Colorado Farm.....and when Blogrolling is working again I will put up a proper link.

Making apple jelly now...back to work!

Another one to gitcha mad

5-year old mistakenly put on bus and dumped in the middle of NYC. Talk about egregious! It is lucky a decent person was the first individual he approached so he made it home all right.

Outrage

I just got off the phone with a very dear friend of our family. She called to congratulate me that our son's name wasn't on the front page of the paper today. We have been having trouble getting our newspapers lately and no one had bothered to go down and get the last one we still subscribe to, so I had to ask her what she meant. She said that she was glad he wasn't one of the ones arrested for burglary....or rather a whole string of burglaries in the town of Glen. (For the record, between college and working when he is home he doesn't really have time to be involved, but I am pretty darned sure he wouldn't be anyhow).

I sent the kid who isn't on the front page on a hurried trip down the driveway to get the paper, which, for a change was actually there.

There it was...or should I say there they were. Thirteen kids, every one of them someone he knew from our school, four of them football stars, arrested for stealing lap tops, ipods, cash, credit cards, car stereos, gps units, and radar detectors plus money out of a church donation box. We had heard weeks back that there was something nasty going on around here, with a lot of break ins, but didn't realize the scope of the ring.

The youngest ones were only fifteen. I am not going to get into wondering how they found unsupervised time to get into that much trouble. What really ticked me off is how the school bent the code of conduct so they only miss four football games.

Same thing happened several years ago when a bunch of guys from the football team blew up a bunch of mailboxes (including ours I do believe) with bottle bombs. There were championships games at stake. Suspensions were reversed just in time for them to play. I am sure they learned a lot from the non-punishment, no consequences approach to enforcement of the rules and laws.

What a way to teach them that stealing is wrong and crime doesn't pay. Sports are supposed to teach cooperation, following of rules, sportsmanship and all that aren't they?

Instead I am sure they feel a sense of entitlement and freedom from social constraints.
Dang it makes me mad. How on earth are you supposed to raise decent law-abiding, caring kids when they have to watch their peers get away with such stuff?

Here is an excerpt from the Gazette story linked to above

"Deputies said the 13 were charged after a month-long investigation by sheriff's investigators, Amsterdam and Johnstown police and state troopers into numerous reports of burglaries, larcenies and vandalism throughout the county, including the city of Amsterdam, the villages of Fort Johnson, Tribes Hill, Fort Hunter, Fonda and Fultonville and the towns of Glen, Florida and Amsterdam. Among the incidents were break-ins at Karen’s Produce, the Auriesville Shrine and a private residence, all in the town of Glen, deputies said."

And speaking of corn

This is outrageous!

Fonda Fair Day Two

I never made it over...so much to do with all the kids gone. I did housework and laundry and built a good hot fire so everyone can have hot showers. Fed all the calves and heifers except the pen calves in the barn. Fed Pecan who stays in the barn because once we let her out we can't get her back inside. And milked. And cleaned calf stalls.

Liz had some problems when someone's kid punched poor November in the eye and refused to stop hitting and leave the barn. Everyone had gone to dinner or something and she couldn't find anyone to help her, but finally repeated threats to get security got them to go...but not until they had given her a good dose of verbal abuse. They saw nothing wrong with hitting the poor calf. It is a rare occurrence to have fair visitors act in such a manner but it happens...and it always seems to happen when you are alone. Years ago we took a small baby that had no chance of wining, but loved people and was cute as a button, over to the fair just for fun. She was Becky's and Beck was small too and needed something little and easy to lead. She loved people so we tied her on the end of the string so kids could pet her. One night Ralph stayed to watch all the cows while there was a meeting up in the main barn and the same exact thing happened. He is a burly, rugged, intimidating-looking guy (nobody ever budges in line in front of him) but I guess the folks had been in the beer tent or something. Poor little Juniper Heart! It was years ago and it still gravels me that some rotten little brat would beat on her and his parents stick up for him and think it was fine.

Frontier Net was down a lot yesterday so things are kind of behindish...sorry about that.

Slugs love relentless rain

Farmers don't so much. We had a terrible flood here in 2006. It did much harm to the small villages that line the Mohawk River Valley, not to mention making it nearly impossible to grow or harvest crops. I believe it was one of the worst years we have ever experienced, although I am still proud of the reaction of valley folks. People pulled together and stories of courage and sacrifice abounded. Friendships were made that still endure today with the foundation of shared hardship keeping them strong. It feels pretty good to live in a place where folks rise above such a natural disaster and pull their friends and neighbors right up with them.

However, I don't ever want to go through anything like that again. The farm barely survived. We couldn't get enough feed in for the cows and milk prices were at an all time low when it came. We lost a lot of businesses that folks in the valley relied on and roads were closed for weeks.
Now we are getting rain. Serious, relentless, heavy, long-term rain.
And more rain,
And more rain. It is falling on already saturated ground.

Some predictions call for more than seven inches in a single storm expected this afternoon. The last time it flooded our Agway was under about 8 feet of water. There was no power. We had barely enough diesel to run the generator to milk and authorities wouldn't let us off the farm to buy more. I don't want to see it again. As far as direct damage we were comparatively well off. We live on a near mountain. The driveways washed out but the boss is good at fixing them. We lost some trees and farm roads and some corn was ruined. Our town and our neighbors weren't so lucky.

However the slugs are having a regular slug fest out in the yard. I must have picked fifty off two pots of marigolds last night. I put the pots up on a table to protect them from the voracious little buggers, but I think I am going to have to bring some house plants back indoors. That is usually an October chore.
Anyhow, I sure am hoping for some dry weather. Folks need to make hay. I am so sorry for my brother, a part time farmer, who took this week off to bale up his hay. It has rained every single day. We don't even have any green chop left for the cows and may have to open a just finished ag bag to feed them. Pretty counter-productive in terms of winter feed storage.

I am hoping the authorities are paying attention to the dams and spillways, especially Gilboa and the dams at the river locks. There was some pretty harsh criticism of how the canal was handled last time. I wonder if we should buy in a load of diesel even though prices are dropping and it might pay to wait......

How about this story

GIPSA Alleges Swift and Company, d/b/a Swift Beef Company Violated the Packers and Stockyards Act

Some days just get out of hand

Fox tail fern

Last night we worked through supper time. This morning we worked through breakfast time too. It all started when Liz's show heifer, Blitz, started to calve just at the beginning of milking last night. She was still at it when Alan, Becky and I came to the house when we finished chores at about eight-fifteen. The boss and Liz stayed with the cow. It was a real good thing that they stayed. They did need to intervene a little as the calf was a great big boy, but both mother and baby came through fine. (Alan mowed lawn through the whole affair, although he did get to meet the police officers at the end. Yes, I did say police officers. And they were the nicest, most helpful, thoughtful, kind and dedicated to their job officers you could imagine too.)


As I peacefully waited for the soup to reheat, a little worried about Blitz, but aware that she was in good hands, Liz ran in to get the phone to call the police. Seems some very strange characters showed up between the two sets of barnyard gates and got their van stuck...half in and half out of the manure spreader shed. So the boss closed the lower gate and sent for reinforcements. They were scary guys I'll tell you. Several police cars and a tow truck later we finally came in for supper....at like ten thirty. Didn't get much sleep either as the creeps with their belligerent ways scared the heck out of me. We have been through this before. Our driveway is deeply rutted, there is a sign at the bottom that says it is a farm. These weirdos claimed they wished to come up to view the sunset. They were both guys. With a pit bull. A big one. They were not a bit nice.




Then this morning one of our two-year-olds, Camry, didn't come down with the cows. The rest of the crew (I started milking alone as it is tanker day) went to find her. She was having problems calving and either the other cows rolled her down the hill or she scrambled down herself because she was in pretty tough shape and the grass was matted down in a long aisle leading from her up the hill. They lost the calf, sadly, but Camry may make it. She is at least sitting up now and was holding her ears up when we went back up to check her after milking. Meanwhile we were late for the tanker, although not too bad, and really late getting in. We went out again so the boss could bury the calf before the coyotes come and we could doctor on Camry a little more. I hope she makes it. She is wild as heck, but she is out of a good Mansion Valley Delaware cow and by Ocean View Extra Special. She is a real pretty little thing. Any how, I hope she gets up pretty soon. We left the rest of the herd in the barn for an extra hour so they won't bother her. I also hope to never see those guys again. They just radiated something that scared me....a lot. Mostly Liz, but sometimes other ones of us, go out to the barn often at night to check the springers, of which we have at least seven right now. If the boss hadn't been out there with her last night, I hate to think what might have gone on.


***I did get to take some pictures between coming to the house and returning for the fun with freaks follies.

Not a tall tale

Brand new driver's license hot in his hand he betook himself shopping for shells and a new turkey call. (Lost the old one). This super-duper dandy new call is better than the old one anyhow and he was good enough with the old one to call in turkeys and occasional trespassers who mistook him for a strutting tom. (Do you have any idea just how crazy a kid practicing with a box call can make you?)

He left this morning at daybreak, chose his spot and sat down on his little turkey hunting seat to test the new call. Soon some hens responded, coming so close he could hear the frost crunching under their little turkey feet. No toms though and that is all that can be taken here in the spring season.

So he moved toward where he could hear some toms gobbling. As he was walking a deer bolted out of the woods not far away, and curved away when it saw him. Before he had time to really wonder why it was running, a coyote burst out of the woods behind it. It turned toward him and began to approach. His mind was full of the six shots his twelve gauge holds, when it stopped just out of range.

And looked at him funny.

Real funny. As he puzzled over why it was peering at him in such a strange manner he heard a faint crunch behind him.

And whirled to find the OTHER coyote twenty or so feet away, crouched down in the grass, stalking HIM. He couldn't get the gun around fast enough to disabuse it of that notion. It ran off over the hill where it would not have been safe to chance a shot.

I thought it was only where there are no hunters that coyotes are getting just a little too bold. Guess I was wrong.