Too good to be true

I don't think I have said too much about our ongoing situation with our milk truck driver. It has been just one of those things. Way back in the spring our regular guy got hurt and a substitute began to pick up the milk. (The milk truck picks up every other day here at Northview, which is pretty much the norm for all but the largest farms.)


We always got along wonderfully with our regular driver and his son-in-law, who was his relief driver. They were the kind of guys who glanced in the barn now and then and if they saw something amiss, they dealt with it. For example we left one day to go to the farm show in Syracuse. Chores were done and everything was ship shape when we left. We thought. However, Dale took a look in the barn and there were little twin heifers behind old Zinnia, who had calved early. He knew we were away and put them up in front of their mama where they were safe. It wasn't his job, but he took care of it anyhow.


Dale always picked us up at 9:30 in the morning. It was no problem to be done by then. (It takes at least a couple of hours to feed grain, set up the milkers and to actually milk the cows. By the time you factor in actually getting up, getting dressed, making coffee, letting the dogs out and walking to the barn, you have to get up pretty darned early even to be done and the milk cooled by then.)


At first the new guy did the same. We missed Dale, but what could we do? Then he started showing up at 8:30. Then 7:30. Now we were running into difficulties. The milk was still warm when he was pumping it into the truck. (Illegal and wrong.) Still, it was summer and with the kids home we could be done milking by then. So, of course, he backed it up to 6:30. Terrific. Sometimes if we have mechanical problems or a calf to pull, that is when we START! We were starting earlier and earlier and still not being done before he came in. It was pretty frustrating.


We couldn't wait to milk until after he picked up either. Before we can milk again after milk is picked up the tank has to be washed. It takes an hour, which made us too late to milk 12 hours later at night. There were any number of other issues, such as him hooking up the hose to the tank before the milk was measured, breaking the tank washer, and the milk being warm so we got high bacteria counts that we didn't deserve. Still, we soldiered along and compromised at being done at 7:30. He still pulled in at 6:45, but everybody just put up with it all.


Then Monday he didn't show up. He had been promising for six months or so that he would be done driving the first of December since he has a winter job. When another guy picked us up at 9:30 we were absolutely ecstatic. We practically handed out cigars. We figured he had quit early and we could go back to our normal milking hours of 6 or so in the morning and 5:30 at night (which is when we have been milking anyhow, stretching the days out very l-o-o-o-o-n-g.) Happy, happy, happy!


However, just as we were getting ready to put the milkers on at 6:37 this morning, we heard the rumble of the tanker truck down below the gate. We had to shut down, let him draw off the milk, and wash the tank, before we could milk. It put us hours behind and I felt like kicking the wall!
Seems he couldn't get up the driveway Monday because of the ice, so Tyler got the milk. (This is another issue if he keeps driving since the boss can't add another task, sanding the driveway, to our already crowded race to get done before he gets here.)


Woe is me!

Rainy days and Mondays

Today is both. There is a fine scrim of ice on every bit of ground, which makes walking a challenge. The milk tanker didn't show up this morning and we are hoping he isn't off the road somewhere.

Yesterday was certainly something. First Nick and Wally got into a discussion through the kennel fence and woke me up way too early for a morning off. Then Alan set out to skin and cut up that nice little buck he got. To his dismay something was terribly wrong with it. Every bit of meat was full of holes and blood clots, essentially ruining it. What a shame! We figure that any one of four scenarios is possible.
1) It got policed in a fight with a much larger buck, which did an amazing amount of damage.
2) Hit by a car.
3) EHD
4) (Most likely in my opinion) Some idiot loaded it full of turkey shot thinking they could kill it with a bird load.

Whatever happened, we won't be eating it.

Then the kid brought down the Christmas tree (I use the term loosely). Last year he got us this tree. We teased him about it but we liked it. I expected something similar this year when he suggested getting another, so I said, "Yeah, go ahead."

About an hour later he dragged this thing in the house.

It is over ten feet high and set up it reaches half way across the living room (you can see how wide that is in the shotgun pellet pictures below.) I am not sure quite what to think of it, but looking on the bright side, there will be room for every single one of my many and various Christmas ornaments on it.... For all of Grandma Peggy's too.... And for all the ones that have been languishing in boxes in the attic for a decade or six.

Half decorated

Wow.....

Hunting safely

These are our living room windows. We love the view. We don't love the shotgun pellet holes. The glass is very thick and we have been told it would be absurdly expensive to replace so the reminder of someone's vandalism and foolhardiness remains with us. This was done before the folks bought this half of the farm back in '62.

Taking mandatory NAIS to a whole new level.

Here is the story of a farmer who defied NAIS, so the state came in and RFID tagged his cows under a court order. (What part of voluntary did they miss?State troopers enforcing ear tagging rules? Good grief!) Although I do think we need TB testing, I have to say that I admire Greg Niewendorp for standing up to the government on mandatory RFID tags.

Here is a group that wants to make it easier for farmers to direct market to the public without jumping through all the hoops that government has put in front of small operators. I have mixed emotions about some of this, as we do pasteurize milk for a reason, but still it is interesting. We know of several small turkey farms around here that were utterly defeated in their efforts to supply folks with tasty, home-grown turkeys, because state regulations mandated separate stainless steel pans for every turkey and dozens of other rules intended more to stifle small players than to make meat safer.

Scouting bucks

The boy just bought a new barrel for his 500 6-shot Mossberg pump 12-gauge. He bent the original barrel when he was nearly struck by lightning while turkey hunting, (he threw it, ran and rolled when he felt his hair standing up straight) just weeks after he bought it after saving his money for a whole year. The new one is a 24", rifled barrel, ported, with a Bushnell Sportsman 3-9 by 32 scope. He is hoping that poachers don't beat him to the buck he saw last week, which, from the photo he took through my binoculars, looks like a pony with antlers. It amazes me how big deer get on a corn and alfalfa diet.

Alphecca had an interesting post today linking to a TU article about Chuck Schumer wanting to gain more hunter access to farm land. He wants to throw twenty million of federal money into that project. Good manners and attention to safety on the part of hunters would probably help more. The fellows who come in and shoot all the deer before hunting season and tag them as being shot up north where it is open make problems for the honest guys. It gets to the point where you would rather have deer and turkeys eat a third of your crops than let some of the maniacs from the city hunt your ground. We can grow more crops, but the guy who ordered Alan off our own fields at gunpoint two years ago caused a lot of other hunters to see posted signs when they hit our boundaries. Then there are the three kids from our local town who were apprehended while RUNNING after a deer, while shooting at it....right where the guys were working. Sad

When do the meaningful inspections start?

More recalls


The more you read about the stuff we are importing, the worse the situation looks. I for one, am scrutinizing the labels on everything from boxes of cereal to bottles of shampoo. But how do you know where the stuff actually origninated when they have changed the way they write the labels? Istead of saying, "Made in the USA", they say assembled by so and so in the USA? From what? From where?

This stuff is labeled for ages four and up. Unreal.

Shivering now

After a balmy October punctuated by just a few frosts, November is living up to its reputation. It is cold. It is windy. Yesterday when the boss was up in Johnstown picking up some heifer headlocks he bought it snowed. Excuse the shaky fingers, but the picture above is what this morning's "sunrise" looked like. (It seemed more like the backdrop for a Gothic romance than a sunrise to me).

So, of course last night the fire went out. I dragged poor Alan out of bed early to try to get it going, but the water temp was only 105 when we came in from milking. That does not translate into balmy indoor temperatures. I was up against the Farm Side deadline, so I really wanted to write rather than play Daniel Boone. However, you can't type when your fingers are shaking and you can't think during an environmentally induced brain freeze (with no ice cream in sight.) Therefore I hauled myself and a big stack of Country Folks, Lancaster Farming and assorted other newspapers, oh, and a box of matches, out to the stove in the yard. There I found, much as I expected, that the reason that we are cold is that we are burning huge, round, blocks of green maple. (I suspect it has something to do with certain people being busy chopping corn, but it is still absurdly cold inside). Unsplit, wet wood is about as easy to light as a pile of snow and gives off just about as much heat.

With a little help from the boss I got the sadly-smoldering, super-sized rounds of soggy wood close enough together to be kissin' cousins at least, piled on some shredded paper and waited. And waited.
He went off to feed the cows, while I watched not much happening. The thermometer crept up to 113, which is a long, long way from the stove's optimal operating temperature of 187. The wood kinda, sorta gave off a few anemic wisps of cool, yellow flame, but a conflagration it was not.

I was irked, not to put too fine a point on it, as I do like to make deadline and thus money. The Farm Side is sort of the meat and potatoes of my writing efforts (with Northview Diary being the gravy, the frosting on the cake, and a whole lot of fun). I make a serious effort to get a column in every week. This wood stove induced slow-motion frenzy of cold-fingered misery was not much of an asset to my work related goals.

Finally I went hunting small wood. There really isn't much left around the stove, as having to build frequent fires is not exactly a new issue. (I wonder if I could get frequent fire miles?) At first my efforts came up empty.

However, just behind the stove is an estimable pear tree, which weights itself down with fat, magical pears almost every summer. That sweet specimen of arboreal splendor had my interests at heart yet again. During last night's thundering November winds it dropped, not one, but two, gnarled, twisted, knotty branches. These branches were dry, crispy, and small enough for me to break up for kindling. Within a mere matter of minutes my fire was jumping and I was back inside at the computer typing, still with my hat and coat on, but with functional fingers and brain (or at least as much as usual anyhow).



Thank you pear tree. You look great in spring, you provide treats in summer, and you help us keep warm when the cold winds blow. What a friend!

Ap-pear-ent success!

Advice

For this poor man. SSS****




****Shoot, shovel, shut up

What is wrong

with this picture?


Update: I guess I need to be clearer. I have some great answers, but I specifically mean what is wrong with the picture itself.

***Answer in the comments. First to get it right will get a post with a link tomorrow.*

Wrench in the works

Last year we, or rather I, bought a young bull calf from a registered Holstein breeder who sends cows to a friend's farm to be milked. We wanted to draw semen from him to breed our own cows AI as we don't like to keep bulls, but we like something cheap to use for "clean up", to mate the cows who don't breed as well as we would like.

Anyhow, we raised him up, fed him and cared for him for a year, and then sent in some ear hair from him for DNA testing as required by the Holstein Association for AI. His dam, who belongs to the people we bought him from, also had to be tested. Imagine my dismay when we got a letter Saturday stating that his grandpappy wasn't in fact his grandpappy. (Your papa aint' your papa but your papa don't know.) Somewhere along the way somebody goofed. I suspect until this is all straightened out he is no longer even registered.

Never having faced such a situation before I simply have no idea what to do. We paid for a purebred and eligible for AI use animal. As it stands right now that is not what we got. We fed him for a whole year plus a couple of months, by far the greatest expense in owning an animal. We really, really want to send him up to Verona where the drawing takes place and then sell him. He is big, messy, hard to care for, and costing us MORE money every day to feed. I am tempted to beef him and just take the loss....but I just don't know.

***Update...spoke to the Holstein Association today and all efforts are being made to resolve this. However the sire of the mother cow looks like it is going to turn out to be a bull we used heavily that had a bad proof and was beefed by the bull stud. If this turns out to be the case we will sell Frank, but at least he will be registered. I laughed out loud when I heard who the probable grandsire was and I'll suspect the lady at Holstein thought I was nuts. It was so ironic though. Ocean View Extra Special was a bull we used heavily enough to have the winning get of sire at Altamont a couple years ago. We like his daughters and couldn't really understand why they dumped him, but really can't use any more of that bloodline.

Anti-NAIS blog

Good stuff here! Watch the videos if you get a chance.

Ear tags and disease

Isn't it amazing that the Holstein Association is in favor of national animal ID?
(Well, no, it isn't all that surprising....They maintain a large and lucrative animal database. They make money by identifying animals. Why wouldn't they support it?) It aggravates me to see them pontificate like this no end though. They prey on the ignorance of the general public to make their point of view seem like the right one. I disagree. Pretty strongly, in fact. England has one of the most restrictive animal ID systems in existence. They still have outbreaks of horrific animal diseases. Ear tags don't stop them.

I defy the proponents of NAIS to explain to me how putting expensive ear tags in cows will stop the spread of foot and mouth disease should it come here to the USA. It blows on the wind, flows with the water, is spread by birds, animals, car tires, and people. You could ear tag every domestic animal in the country and it would still do the same thing. Oh, the government says they could find the animals quicker to "do something about it" (read kill cows...the Brits killed a number of herds that didn't even turn out to have the disease. Tough luck for the cows and farmers). Maybe they could find cows faster. However, ear tagging my cows wouldn't do a darned thing to stop the dozens of deer that ramble all over our farm..and the neighbors' farms...and the Amish farms. It won't stop the wind, or the water, the Thruway or the starlings. It won't stop the disease either.

Speaking of meth

Last year the guys saw a car in the barn driveway and ran down to accost the individual.
We are on a high hill with a winding dirt drive.
His excuses for being at our barn didn't exactly jibe so we called the police.
He claimed he was looking for Argersinger Road.
However in this picture you can see an abandoned house that we think he wanted to get into. I never mentioned it here, but the guy in the car had no teeth, just tiny rotting shells and stumps sticking up out of raw, ragged gums. He couldn't have been more than thirty. I figured at the time and still do that he was looking for a place to cook meth. Just a couple weeks before some fellows got caught cooking on a farm road near some friends' place.
We were scared for a while.
Still think twice about checking the barn after dark.
Oh, and he had a kid about nine with him.
Nice, huh?

Reasearch

Liz accidentally woke me up at four this morning when she got up to go to the fair. (Frankly, it hurt.) It was not time to milk, but since I was up anyhow, I went to work at my other job.....the Farm Side. Deadline is today (not unlike every other Wednesday) and I didn't even have a rough draft. I started doing research on the new federal regulations on 7% iodine solution. I didn't find good news I'm afraid. Instead of being able to go to the farm store to buy a gallon, we will have to look elsewhere, probably a pharmacy, for this much needed medicine. The drug will now be sold only by entities registered with the DEA and records will be kept of its distribution. (I don't suppose that will make it any cheaper.) The law is changing because depraved drug dealers use iodine to cook methamphetimine to sell to their customers. They already steal anhydrous ammonia fertilizer; now they have their fingers in the farm medicine cabinet and their chicanery is taking away a much needed tool for calf, lamb, and kid health.

When baby critters are born, their navels offer a veritable highway by which nasty pathogens can enter their bodies, often causing a disease called joint ill, or navel ill. Dipping the newborn navel in strong tincture of iodine disinfects it and helps it to dry out, closing that germy autobahn into the baby body. Joint ill is a really nasty disease causing swollen, damaged joints and often death. Thanks to all those entrepreneurial drug cookers our calves will now more vulnerable to it, at least until we find an acceptable (and hopefully useless in making meth) substitute.

In the course of my pre-milking research I learned all kinds of stuff about laws, drugs (the bad kind), drugs (the medicinal kind) and public hearings. More than I had wanted to know, really.


Then after all that clicking and ticking away on the keyboard I changed my mind and wrote about this story instead.

No phone, no 'Net, big news

Except for the subject of the news story that happened while we were without outside communication, that about describes the weekend. (Our phone went out Friday during a teeny, tiny storm that was barely noticeable. The phone company didn't exactly fall all over themselves getting it fixed...although I am wildly grateful to the phone man who finally came out -on Sunday no less- and got it done.)

I was able to weather the lack of access to the outside world, (other than TV, which is worse than nothing), until the big story broke in a crawl across the MSNBC news show the boss was watching. The discovery of a new case of foot and mouth disease in Great Britain is huge and sorrowful news for farmers there and for agriculture around the world. The dreaded disease of ruminants is so incredibly contagious that it is recommended that people who visit farms abroad where there are outbreaks avoid visiting farms at home for some time. This is because they can transmit the disease via clothing, footwear and even possibly carry it in their lungs. It spreads through contact. Birds cart the virus from farm to farm. It even moves on the wind. Tires. People. Wild animals, pets, almost anything can bring it to the doorstep of a previously healthy farm.


I hope this outbreak is contained before it causes the kind of economic damage and heartbreak that the one in 2001 caused. Thousands of animals were killed, even working border collies from farms that had to kill their cows and sheep. The farmers simply couldn't afford to feed dogs that no longer had jobs. That outbreak was caused by a pig farmer feeding improperly cooked food waste from an airline that had visited an infected country. Officials are hard at work tracing the source of this one. My heart goes out to British farmers who must be worried beyond belief right now.


***Update....after jumping online to write this, I started reading through my favorite blogs and found that Sarpy Sam has several detailed posts on the topic. If it turns out that the virus did indeed "escape" from a government laboratory, the story takes on an even more horrific aspect.

A suitable reaction to Michael Vick

Check this out if you would rather have stinky pond scum for a neighbor than someone like Michael Vick.

Where the buffalo roam

Wouldn't it be nice if Congress, animal rights activists and assorted other folks who don't feed the world were even half as concerned about the people whose cattle were slaughtered willy-nilly because of disease spread by government animals as they are about the bison? This is a new arrangement will let the bison wander ever farther outside the park, where they act as a reservoir for brucellosis in Montana.

From Rep. Denny Rehberg, "Let's not start throwing funds in on a federal level because of some guy from New York who's not familiar with the situation," said Rehberg's spokesman Bridger Pierce.

I guess I am one of those dummies from New York, (not that I don't agree with Rehberg,) but I will be darned if I see any sense in giving diseased animals more lee way. If you take some time to read some of the articles , you will probably be as mad as I am about how cheap the government was in compensating the ranchers and then turning around to force them to pay capital gains tax on what they gained by being forced to sell their cows for much less than they were worth. Bah!

Some animal rights stories

Nice folks these. (Killing the family dogs was what really got me going.)

And these

They're everywhere. (The problem is that chickens are simply NOT cats or dogs.)

Frost in June

The sun looked brassy enough this morning.

Who would believe that Wednesday night it froze? The moon flowers and cardinal climber took a serious hit and a tomato got nipped pretty badly. This is the latest spring frost I have ever seen here. Two days later it is in the upper eighties. Weird weather!

But this is so horrible

That I truly feel sick about it. These poor people losing all their years of hard work, having to kill so many cattle, probably because the government doesn't do a very good job of managing wildlife problems.