You KNOW You're a Farmer If

You are flattered when you buy a new brand of hair spray and your twenty-something daughter says, "Let me know if this is any good, okay....."

"Of, course," you say, "Why?" (You know her carefree ponytail hair style doesn't usually include hair spray.)

"It's almost time for the shows and the fair. I need something good to do top lines."

Ri-i-i-i-i-ght.......and there goes that fashionista moment.

***For folks who don't show dairy cows, the top line is the ridge of hair on the backbone that is sprayed up and trimmed flat to give the cow a nice, sharp, smooth appearance.

Yeah, she wants to see if my new hairspray is good enough for her cow.

Don't I feel fancy now...

Happy Birthday Elizabeth

Now when you travel to distant cities for National Farmers Organization you can get a rental car and see the sights.
Love you!

And to add to the ongoing drama the boss was attacked by a cow yesterday...he came in and told me that I probably would have been calling the undertaker if it wasn't for the cow in the photo above, Mandy. Mandy is Liz's retired show cow, kinda dumb...or so we thought...but very sweet. Yesterday cow #171 charged the boss when he was calling the cows...from behind...

He heard the slurping of running hooves in the mud and turned around to see her racing at him with her head down. He didn't have a stick (he never does) and couldn't move in the mud...he has trouble picking up his one leg anyhow. As he watched his life flash before his eyes a big, black bolt slammed 171 right in the side, nearly knocking her down.

Old Mandy had seen her charging and ran in and nailed her before she could get to him. Every now and then a cow will do something like that and just astonish us. They aren't big on communication, don't wag their tails or sit at your feet. Still they must relate to us in some way, perhaps as especially dumb calves or weak and stupid herd mates.

Now the debate is on about what to do with the offender. We are short on cows and she is a good milker, dry right now and due for a calf in a couple of weeks. My vote is to send her over to the sale just the same. I would rather be short on cows than short on husbands. Others think we should maybe put a ring in her nose like a bull and let her drag a short chain from it so she can't run with her head down. For now at least she is going to stay in the barn anyhow.

Good Morning Beautiful

And Happy 23rd Birthday.....we love you!

Young Ag Leaders Conference

The Institute for Rural America is in Kansas City, MO this week, and so is Liz. She flew out Sunday and won't be home until Thursday night. I guess the hotel is nice and the speakers at the conference are really interesting. (Here is a pdf of the schedule.)

She spoke yesterday with a lady involved in the Missouri Prop B battle, who offered her email address so I can talk with her as well. Prop B was touted as an anti-puppy mill initiative. However, according to this lady, a certain individual who runs a large animal rights group, (whose name I won't mention here, as I don't need trolls filling up my comments)*** (but his initials are the same as the first letters of the words "Wall Paper") has promised to apply the bill to farm animals as well. Here is a map of how the vote went down last fall. As you can see it was divided along rural vs urban lines. Country folks, who actually live with and understand animals voted no. Folks in the city voted yes.

Later in the week Liz will be attending the National Farmers Organization convention in the same spot. Last year she attended as a young farmer representative. This year she works for the cooperative. It is amazing the opportunities that a life time in agriculture, a college degree, and her own hard work have opened up for her. When I was her age I was working at someone else's farm just learning to milk cows.

It is also pretty exciting for someone who has never been on a plane to watch their offspring fly off to distant cities to talk with and learn from important ag leaders. I get to some events here in NY and much enjoy them, but this is big doin's to me. Can't wait until she is home though. I am, after all, a mom first, and a farmer second.

And I am jealous of the bird watching. Eagles nesting right in view of the hotel window. Lots of water birds and maybe ospreys as well. They kinda make my gold finches pale by comparison. I hear there is a board walk and she may take her camera out for some pictures.

Chasing, Not Amy, Nor Rainbows

The week in review...so far anyhow..it is only Thursday. Cold but mostly clear. A few lake effect flurries mornings, soon gone when the sun comes up. Coyotes howling right nearby most nights or so it sounds. The dog hustles to get back in the house then I can tell you.

Liz passed her milk inspector test...good job kiddo.

The white-crowned sparrow is still here and waits in the lilacs for me to put down seed on an old platform feeder, then hurries right out to eat. Geese and ducks still filling the open water, although I heard very few yesterday. I hope they aren't leaving...they are good company. They sing my lullaby each night and I will miss them when the river locks down for the winter

Some big dairies selling out on the west coast. Milk are prices high world wide, with supplies tight, except here in the USA or so they are telling us. I think maybe two people in the world actually understand what is going on with milk pricing, but I am pretty sure we are being cheated by players a lot bigger than we are...

Chased heifers with the car Tuesday. The men took the stock trailer through the gate and left it open for the milk truck. Five springers there, but they stay up the hill at a feeder and never bother....until Tuesday.

I could see they were feeling riley and wild so, since it was noon and I had not had time to get breakfast, I hurried over to the house for a piece of corn bread, glass of milk, and my book (the new Kathy Reichs, which has a mistake in it...just ask Becky, our McDonald's guru) planning on taking all back to the barn and watching the gate until the milk truck came.

We don't like our driver to have to get out of the truck to open and close the gate.

Well, I just about got back to the fence when Monday, dang her midnight-spotted hide, threw up her head and raced down the hill through the gate. I set my breakfast in the driveway, grabbed my keys and ran for the car to go down the house drive and up the barn one to head her off.

I got there in time mostly because the little snake went up the old pasture lane instead of down the road. All the others followed her and one of the black ones was down on the ice and had trouble getting up.

I won't bore you with the details of how I got in front of them to get them past the car, while making them think I was behind them too, so they would go back up the hill, but I got it done.

They went up and lay down among their feed tires, happy as clams. I watched the barn cats from afar while they ate my breakfast, and listened to my stomach singing four part harmony as if I was a cow, until almost two. That was when the tanker left and I could close the gate.

Just about then the men came back and apologized for leaving me in that fix.

I was nice about it even though I had been planning on writing the Farm Side while the house was quiet. There was still some cornbread left and since it felt more like lunch time anyhow I had it with homemade vegetable beef soup. I am sure the reason it tasted so good had something to do with how late it was.

However, the word is out. On tanker day those five heifers either go in the barn or up in the hill pasture.

Period.

I 81 South to Cabela's

Alan took Becky and me along on his senior trip yesterday. He didn't choose to go on his actual class trip (to drink and party down in the Catskills) and, although the Cabela's trip was something he always wanted to do instead, cash and circumstances had never conspired to make it possible.




However, he and his sister pooled their money and planned this excursion to the Cabela's store in Hamburg PA for yesterday. And they invited me to join them.



There is a certain amount of choice in routes between here and there. And it is possible, nay probable, that Alan's choice of 476, the toll road that ambles off toward Allentown, may have been an improvement over my choice...I-81 that is....which is the one we took. I-81 is industrial strength ugly, make no mistake about it.




Some quotes from participants in the epic journey and others who heard of our woes:

"I-81 is one long rumble strip from the border to the exit for Hamburg."

"Hey, lookit that guy that went off on the median and is driving there! Wow, is he crazy or what???"

"No, it's probably smoother there."

And of Route 61, which was the one we took from 81 to Hamburg, "I think this road was laid out by a white-tailed deer on crack."

Yeah, the ride was rough.





However, the store is really, really, really cool. It is an amazing thing to actually see the mounts of deer you have read about in Outdoor Life or Field and Stream. I wish my feet had been up to more time in the deer room, where there are legions of legendary bucks for viewing. I didn't even take any pics there as the room is very dark and I am a poor student of flash photography.

There is so much stuff to see, and hear (such as folks who should stay away from turkey calls as they are going to scare away any turkeys they encounter...of course I couldn't get Alan, the terror of the stairwells at Coby...to demonstrate his stuff) smell, (I shudder to imagine the reaction of a deer that accidentally found itself in the deer lure department...just mind boggling...if I ever go again I am going AROUND that departement) and taste, (yeah cinnamon roasted pecans, what's not to like)



I took some photos, probably fewer than I should have, but if you can visit the place yourself, do.... just plan on buying ball joints, tie rods, shocks, and tranquilizers at the end of the trip..

My favorite part was the aquarium. I could have spent the whole time there!

More pics from our trip here.

Pins and Needles

Fair time is nervous time for me.

I worry.

The drive is terrible. 32 miles of twisting, winding road, bad enough in the day time, horrible at night when shared with hard core elbow benders and worse. We have been followed, harassed and witnessed massive drug busts while on that merry jaunt to the show and back.

Then there are the cattle. I worry about them. They are so vulnerable to who knows what while they are there. There is a good watchman, but there are so many um.....people....not cow people...all kinds of people. And loose cows, always a few loose cows.

And dear Lemmie has to be hand milked today as the milking parlor won't be open until tonight. She has been hand milked before, but I worry. She is one of my very favorites to milk, tall enough so I barely have to bend down to put the machine on, always clean with a properly placed udder, just a very nice girl...and she is the best cow Becky has ever had. Here at home one of Liz's best heifers, a Silky Cousteau, out of Mandy herself, turned up with a bum hock yesterday. Real bad. She is a big strapping thing, but somebody or something did her harm. Probably one of the other big heifers in that pasture. They tend to play rough. I am so worried about her too. That whole family of cows is very soft, not toughies like some who will just rub a little dirt in it and walk it off. I hope she is better today.

And then there is Gael. Gael is Liz's border collie, Mike's half sister. Her dad was a great enough dog to go to the National finals with his owner. I have written about him here before, one of the most staggeringly talented dogs I have ever seen. Gael was softer when she worked, but she had a git er done attitude that made her more dog than she actually was. She is fifteen. Old dog vestibular disease and with it intermittent blindness. Incontinence. She was drinking from the garden pond when I looked at her yesterday. The next time I looked out to check on her she was gone. I looked and looked. She had fallen behind some plants and couldn't get up. I went and helped her. Then she fell in another flower bed and couldn't get up. She ate a couple bites of meatloaf and nothing more. She has lost so much weight in the last few weeks.... I will get her some canned dog food and see if that helps, but in my heart I know it is getting to be Time.

How I hate to make that decision. I know will feel guilty as I did when Mike left us last fall. Who am I to say? When is it right? Too soon? Too late? Good dogs. Good friends. Good helpers. They are all getting old at the same time.

It all adds up to not much sleep. Worry and a buck and a half will get you a cup of coffee (unless you are the Star$$$$ sort) but I do it anyhow. I will be glad when the week is done and all the decisions are made and the cows and kid back home again.

****Update...first thing I saw out the kitchen window when the sun got down to business this morning was Monday, the Cousteau daughter, lying in some bushes looking awful and very sorry for herself. I was so discouraged I could barely stand it. She is good one. I want her to thrive and prosper. We brought the cows in and were discussing what we would do....try to get her down into a pen, take food and water to her right where she was (problem, the other animals would fight her to take it away from her) or put her in the empty pasture behind the barn. Then Alan said, as he looked out the cow barn window, "Isn't that her right there? Isn't she the only one with a collar on?"

Nonsense....she was so bad off, how could she walk? Well it turns out she could walk pretty darned good and was right there in the barnyard with the rest of the heifers...going back to that whole family being a bunch of wienies.....Yup they are. Guess she sprained her hock, but she is infinitely better this morning. She refused our offer to rest in the barnyard and hustled right out with the others....see this grey hair here...this one right here? It's hers!

New Job

Our milk marketing cooperative has hired our oldest kid to be a milk inspector...a demanding job, but she will be using her degree and in this job market it is pretty exciting. She sure is going to get to know a lot of farmers!

Happy Birthday to the Cow Whisperer

Liz is twenty-four today....She truly is a cow whisperer too. She can even come over on my side of the barn and milk the miserable Encore, whose back is as high as my head and who likes to put her hind feet about that high too...without fireworks or drama. Happy birthday kiddo...we love you!

Some Extras From Sunday Stills

Liz, doctoring on one of our very best cows, Mandy

The boss, clean up time

Becky, making buckets for baby's breakfasts

Bama Breeze's new little red one, Rio

Rose Magnolia, nom, nom

I just couldn't stop at four for Sunday Stills...sorry about the poor light. Not much sun this week.

I Was Wondering What to Write this Morning

And then I read our morning paper. This happened right down the road from here.....May I assure you, any map would tell you that we are nowhere near Canada but....

Liz on Lobby Day

Could This Be Fame?

The National Farmers Organization recognized one of our own this week.
Way to go cow girl!

A Twenty-Two is Handy to Have

Whether it is a Mohawk 10-C, my favorite gun in the world, (unless some day I finally really find a cannon)

Or a fine, upstanding 22-year old daughter.

Happy Birthday Becky!

Sorry the good Lord didn't send warmer weather for the event.
Love you!

Cold With Possible Irruptives

Yep, it's winter. Not my favorite season. Barn has flooded three times this week because of sump pump failure.

Hope they got that fixed finally. I am sure the men hope so more than I do, as they are the ones who have to pump water out of one gutter and into the other...Alan got kicked pretty good working behind one cow named Baha. Don't know what has gotten into her lately but she sure has turned miserable. Liz got kicked too, in the knee just like Al.

What is up with these cows? Really I think they just don't like this kind of weather either. They are inside a fairly warm barn and have what they need to eat brought to them, but it is still probably not as comfortable as when it is say, fifty degrees, which our milk inspector says is a cow's favorite temperature (I lean towards 70 myself.)

Anyhow I am working at grinning and bearing it, as there are plenty of people who are experiencing much worse weather than we are....it is winter after all.

The cold sure does bring in the birds. I think I saw a red poll day before yesterday when I was on the phone with the milk inspector (discussing Liz's upcoming trip to Iowa). I didn't have my glasses on so I am not going to be betting on it yet....but I think so.

I won't lie. I am real nervous about that trip. It is an honor to be chosen to represent the entire Northeast region of the National Farmers Organization and I am excited for Liz. What an opportunity!

On the other hand, guess where she has to change planes.
And January is winter there too, with all sorts of accompanying weather possibilities. I will be glad when it is done and she is home and regaling us with stories of all the goings on.

Well, time to milk the cows and then polish up my own year in review essay for this week's Farm Side. Stay warm if you can.

Looking Forward

Becky will be coming home this week. I am looking forward to it more than you would believe. It just can't come soon enough.

Too Early by Half

Must go out to milk now and take Beck back to college.
Do not want to.
Argghhhh........

Yesterday in the Mountains

One of those very special brothers of mine offered to help us out with the challenge of getting Becky home from Potsdam for break. He was kind enough to take time from his work and home life and choir practice and all to drive for over nine hours up mountains and down, across night and day, so a college kid could come home and see her family for the first time since the 28th of August.



As always the Adirondacks offered up their best and shiningest as a reward for the long distance drive.



The trees lay across the mountains like the tawny pelt of some large wild thing, rocky, granite bones jutting up through golden browness. They seemed to shrug off a few leaves here and there as we passed like a lion shrugging off flies as it lay licking its paws on the Savannah.




All the colors of a lion swirled across them, turned luminescent by bright, thin sun. There were trees the color of pumpkins, lanterns,and oranges, with crimson cardinal flags from the swamp maples, and russet, gold and cinnamon from the many scattered oaks. Hickories splayed leafy brown and green fingers over swift, and silent waters, lakes and rivers turned blue jay blue where the sun hit, and liquid ink in the deepened shade.

Sacandaga River, Raquette River, sleek lakes by the dozen, I don't think I have ever seen them lovelier. The Sacandaga was showing its teeth after all the rain, with whitened fangs piercing the smooth indigo of its flow wherever a rock was hidden. Beck was in class when we arrived, and not answering her phone. We were looking for a coffee stop when I glanced across the road, across the campus, across a dozen others, and spotted her as instantly as one heart recognizes another. It was a grand moment I will tell you.





As we returned home and dusk fell, along about Lake Durant the catch-light waters let go their hold on the sinking sun and closed their shining mirrors for the day.

I love the Adirondacks. A trip across them is as much a treat as any theme park or holiday party. More in fact. Much more.

Thanks brother for the joy and the music and the good talk of old memories while we made new ones too.
And thanks for the special reward at the end of the day...the whole family together again, at least for a little while.....we love you muchly.

***I must also thank those who stayed at home and kept the work moving along, so thanks guys and especially, thanks Liz....hope old Mando gets it in gear and has that calf real soon.

*****I must also question. What is with the corner yard with bathroom fittings (you know, the most important ones) set at regular intervals with sunflower planted behind each of them? In downtown Potsdam that is? The traffic was just too heavy to get a picture, but we sure were puzzled.

What Does a Homesick College Girl Do

In the middle of a long, lonely night far away from home?
Why, read the Northview Diary archives, of course.
Love you Beck and miss you too......
Can't wait until you are home for the real thing instead of virtual home and farm life.

Fair time marks the end of summer

Mandy is all clipped and shined up.
On show day she will be bagged too, but in this shot her udder is pretty empty
as she was milked a few hours before.

This year it also means that the last of my babies is off to college. Liz has graduated and is staying home to work with us, which is truly sweet. The other two start Monday and for some reason it is bothering the heck out of me. I can barely sleep nights, even though they are both commuting as there is an excellent state college about 25 miles from here. Becky will be continuing her studies majoring in anthropology and Alan will begin in fisheries and wildlife.


Their schedules are just plain nasty, with many days that they will leave at 7 AM and not return until 10 PM. Becky has been the calf raiser this year. Liz and I will be doing that now so it means an extra job. Alan has worked as hard as any man helping his dad and milking with me. We will miss their help for sure. However what I am going to miss most is the comedy and camaraderie we normally take for granted. We have a lot of fun no two ways about it. NapoleON and his appendi and the excellent discussions of all the latest reading material will be sadly lacking in the barn this fall. I am sad, even so far as to feel kind of crushed about it all. I know babies are supposed to grow up and leave, but who knew I was going to like them so much?


On the plus side Liz and I will have lots of good long cow talks and that is a very satisfying passtime. We can talk about cows and feeding and fitting and showing and making advantageous matings all day and half the night if we get a chance. I am sure glad I will still have that.....and weekends.

We love our cows

Thunder and Parakeet

(alternate title, This IS SPARTA!)


We are in full fair preparation mode here. (And the guys are in full disparately trying to fix the diskbine mode. As soon as they run out of mowed hay we are going to have to feed winter feed...and that is very, very bad.).

Anyhow, Liz and I hit WallyWorld, she for fake maple leaf garland for her cow display (about the fourth trip...they finally came in) and myself to get the photos I am entering printed and put into frames. We also had to get cat medicine but that is another story for another day. When we arrived back at our wild and crazy domicile on the mountain, the boss was just walking over from the barn with a spec sheet for the gear box on the mower. He said, nonchalantly, "There's a parakeet over at the barn if you want to see it."

WHAT!?!?!? We have been excited all summer over the barn swallows, but a parakeet?

I had the camera with me...I always have the camera with me. So I shuffled off my flip flops and ran for the barn (didn't want to get my only good pair of flip flops all mud now did I?)

I arrived to see this:


I took the picture and turned around and trotted straight back to the house to send Becky, who is bird crazy, over with a couple of fish nets. I didn't want to watch. That is my only son there. I am kinda, sorta fond of him and watching him climb the rafters of the cow barn after that little blue bird was not on my list for the day.

A few minutes later they came to the house, him clutching the poor little thing in his wiry (and astonishingly grimy) hands. They put it in this Plexiglas pet thing that some friends gave us years ago. We don't have a bird cage...we don't have any birds...or we didn't until this one showed up in the barn yard.

Of course I had to be regaled with the rafter climbing stories. (They made me shudder in proper mother mode). The bird was kind of shocked at first, but soon settled enough to hop around the sticks they offered him as perches and to drink from a cut-off soda bottle and tear up baby sunflower heads for seeds.

They named him Leonidas.
They want to keep him.....I dunno.....he must have belonged to someone at some point, but he seems to have been wild a while.


****Oops, forgot to write the thunder part. As soon as the kids got Leo into the house another big storm hit. Wonder if he would have survived.


******Tragic update. although he was eating and drinking and climbing around happily in his cage, Leonidas suddenly keeled over stone dead for no apparent reason. Poor birdie.