On the Land

We love to watch the progress of this field down by the river each year, from stark snow stitched with rows of golden stubble to waving tassels of pale yellow with plump fat ears dangling below.

Yesterday preparations for planting were in full swing.

Ag Blogs

Here is a nice list of blogs dedicated to food and agricultural topics from Agriculture Proud.

Downsizing from Dairy

With only two milk cows left, I guess I can't call this place a dairy farm any more. Of course we do milk old Neon Moon, for the house and for the calves, and some day Bama Breeze will have that calf....but there is no hungry herd waiting in the barn any more.

Thus I changed the template of this blog...finally...to reflect that...and took off the "not your average stay at home mom..." part too. Coming up on the ninth anniversary of the day I decided that it would be fun to blog. Guess you could call me a stay at home grandma now.

This does not mean that agricultural activity has ceased at Northview Farm. We are as busy as ever, I swear. The boss is making hay between the rain storms, and has managed to keep most of what he has on hand from getting rained on...quite an accomplishment this year. He has always made good hay. 

Lots of gardens. Lots of woodchucks. They are eating all our beets!!!! We picked peas and beans yesterday before the storm and had them with dinner. Yum.

The kids have the place full of poultry, including turkeys, chickens, and guinea fowl....and of course, the old peahen.

 You should have seen us the other night when the red sex link hen decided to dump all her brand new guinea keets out in the yard and abandon them.


It was evening chore time, calves to feed, the cow to milk, the pipeline to clean and sanitize...when the drama happened.

The poor little keets were just hatched, some of them still damp, and they could not take even a few minutes without heat. Thus Becky put them all in her shirt while the rest of us ran for.....stuff.....

A pair of light bulbs in a holder that we use to keep the milk pump from freezing in the winter. A lead cord. Newspapers. Wire. Etc. Etc.

Within a very short time an emergency brooder was built, and most of them survived and thrived.....although it does puzzle me every time I come downstairs in the dark and see the light in the heifer barn.

There are plans for other animals, as  time allows. We have always raised good pork, and we have two cows to supply milk. The kids want lambs. I love sheep, but the boss is not enamored, so that is on hold for a bit but....

Other than taxes and paying off the remainder of what it cost us to make milk the years after 2009, we run this place very cheaply. A good part of day-to-day living expenses could probably be paid with the income from diversified livestock. Or we can eat them ourselves. Even when we couldn't afford to butcher a beef and were living on game that awful winter, we ate well.....

So anyhow, things have changed, but they have remained the same too...

Hay Day

Jade brought his tractor,
which once belonged to his great grandfather, down to the farm today

Waiting for the last load

Yep here it comes

Conference at the elevator

This is when I left, just before Jade crawled out on the cross mow elevator.

Girls too

Hay

Black locust trees in bloom

Some nice bales made this weekend, with help from most everybody. It is so soft that I carried a bale, while wearing shorts, and didn't tear up my legs. Sure smells good.

Brown Thrasher. I accidentally pished out a pair
while chasing warblers and they weren't happy with me much.

A bale fell out the mow door and the two cows and Cinnamon went nuts. Mind you they spend all day and night on grass that used to feed fifty head...and then they come in and go crazy over baled hay.

You should have seen the calves. Most of them are too young to have ever tasted freshly baled, early, first cutting before. As soon as I started feeding out a bale they were practically jumping out of their stalls. And yet they had enough haylage left from morning to probably last another day. The hay smelled just that good.

Squashed beetle....Six-spotted Tiger Beetle, I think

Very nice....I don't think there is a farmer alive that doesn't love feeding animals, and then watching them eat. And we have more to feed them this morning.

Timberdoodle or Conserving the Grasslands

A few smudges of low-lying cloud, curled and shuffled by daybreak breezes.

Almost-silhouette of a bold-singing robin, so dark yet, too dark for color or light. Still, I can find him by the denser darkness where he perches, not twenty feet from my head.

Off to the south in the old horse pasture, a soft, nasal peent! resonates gently.

It is so noisy here that it isn't easy to hear, but he's out there.......the timberdoodle.

Also known as the American woodcock, one of our favorite birds of early spring.

I think he actually returned the day before yesterday. Thought I might have heard a whisper of sky dance wings just before dawn. 

Yesterday I was sure. He whirled and whistled right above my head as I walked the other doodle, Daisy the Doodlebop dog, as Alan calls her.

Sheer delight. There is nothing else to name it. Like the deepest mystery of the wild woods come calling at our doorstep.He is so welcome to his little corner of our pasture and the tiny, icy pond.

 I have a friend who writes often, of the grassland farming of Upstate NY and what it has to offer birds and wildlife. Not too many yards...certainly not enough...from our eastern boundary looms a housing development, row upon row of matching houses on tiny lawns carved out of field and forest that was also once a farm.

Mention has been made over the years that Northview Farm would fit right in with the developer's plans, room for hundreds and hundreds more little boxes of humanity.

Imagine, should we be unable to hang on to this ground, or should the kids have to sell it when we are under it, what that would mean for the birds and animals that share it with us. 

As I sit here this morning, typing at my kitchen table, I hear robins, white-throated sparrows, chickadees, the woodcock, the Carolina wren and others that have slipped my mind. By the time the sun comes up many other species will join the list. 

Just here at the house, we have five kinds of woodpeckers, nuthatches, finches, a lingering list of the northern sparrows, and literally dozens of others. 

Well over sixty species are counted here on the farm each year. 

Just yesterday I saw something BIG! and white! And flapping across my view from the living room windows. Alas I didn't have my glasses on, but it was either a swan or some kind of heron. Did I mention it was big!

There are more kinds of birds out on the fields proper and a number of species I don't recognize yet, by call or flickering outline, flashing through the leaves. I am sure with more expert ears and eyes than mine the count would hit at least seventy...some breeding, some just passing through or stopping to grab a snack.

The decline of upland birds in America is marked and documented and drastic. A wildlife biologist sat at this very table a few years ago and linked the dramatic decline of the whippoorwill to the decline of small farms. And when is the last time you heard one?

As farms fail, bobolinks, night hawks, and many other once-common species continue to dry up and vanish. I worry.....The number of viable small farms that have given up and gone out has left an alarming panorama of vulnerable acreage just begging for development. Mile upon mile of it. Should the economy by some amazing sleight of hand, somehow recover....how fast will the houses follow?

Top twenty common declining birds...some of these used to be common here. Some of them still are.

Whippoorwill research, author of which told me about a lot of this.

Links and Life at the Bottom of the River

First of all my dear sis-in-law shared some pics of where my brother and our son are working and have been the whole month of February. Nothing like life inside a cold coffer dam right in the teeth of the river wind. It's pretty nasty up here on the hill, but better them than me down in that ice sluice. 

Then this week's Farm Side research, or at least some of it. Some weeks I feel like a kid with a paper due, instead of an old fogey with a piece due for the paper. 

Dairy Farming Facts and Figures

2012 Census of Agriculture

3% of Dairies Produce 51% of Milk

Young Farmers Growing Fast in NY

Cuomo Announces NY Back in Third Place in Dairy

OSHA Withdraws Memo on Small Farm Inspections

Nothing Runs Like a Deer(e)

The upper deer was truly fortuitous. I had the camera up to my eye and focused, in the act of taking a photo of some trees. Suddenly there was a crackling in the hedgerow, maybe twenty feet from me. Out popped this little spike buck and off he bounded. I would have never caught the shot if I hadn't already had the camera up in mid-click. Alan says he has been seeing him everywhere the past couple of weeks. Hope he has his syllabus with him and knows the season will be starting soon.

Then I came across this other Deere. It was sitting still while its appendage was greased and prepared for the afternoon.

Soon it too moseyed off, a bit slower than its furry counterpart, taking a couple of my dears along for the ride.

And over in some mud left over from the storm, I found more deer tracks, plus one from a coyote.....but what is that smaller track next to the coyote print?

I don't know. Do you?

The Other New York

Where the apples grow on trees and the only thing scraping the sky is the mountains. 

Farm Wife Blues

Stumbled via a Facebook friend on a powerful, outstanding post by a young farm wife discouraged by the outrageous attacks it has become fashionable to toss at farmers.

Farming is hard. We do it because we love it not because we can retire at 44 to standing ovations and tears around the world.

It would be nice if instead of calling us rich, greedy, polluters, out to harm animals and wreck the environment, people realized that cities damage the planet much more than farms, and even minimum wage workers often take home more actual pay than we do....I frequently rely on my check from the paper for groceries.

This young lady's poignant lament is very moving.

NY Ag Tax Cap Signature Needed

New York Farm Bureau is urging the state's farmers to contact Governor Cuomo to urge him to sign the tax cap legislation, which was recently passed by both Assembly and Senate.

High property taxes present a huge challenge to family farms in NY. Ours are among the highest in the nation forcing us to compete with farmers in other states at a considerable disadvantage. You can use the Farm Bureau website to send the governor an email, or use this information from his office to call or send a letter. 

Hope we can get the word out and help make NY a better state for farming. 

Small Pleasures

There is such a feeling of something impending these days, and along with it a sense of endings. I find autumn both stimulating and uncomfortable.....

I guess the boss is going to stop trying to bale hay and fall to chopping and bagging it. Hopefully the rains don't get carried away and he can get some of the second and third cutting that is out there stored away for winter. It is good stuff.

Been chopping it green right along and feeding it to our girls morning and night and they are doing great on it. In a wet year green chop like that tends to go right through them without doing much good, but in a dry year it puts the fat on their backs and the milk in their udders.

It is a treat for a farm heart to walk behind a line of contented cows each morning and evening, milking machines in hand. Seeing rows of smooth, tight udders, full of good wholesome milk, waiting for you to step up in the stall, gently prep them, each with a separate, clean, paper towel and disinfectant solution, then dry them, strip out a couple shots of "fore milk", and attach the milkers. 

They actually milk out quicker when they are producing well, and are happy for your ministrations for the most part, although there are always a few who ignore you as they stretch and quest for that last pellet of grain each day. 

I can attest that it hurts to be stepped on or slammed across the head with a hard, bony tail. Broadway is irritable until she has finished her grain and will kick me intentionally if I interrupt her....and of course she is the first cow on my string so I have to. Still it is really comforting to see them doing well.

It is not the glow of great profits, although it is nice to every now and then make enough to pay the bills. It is the delight of working with animals that you love and being able to do it right. Knowing that they are comfortably doing what they do, in partnership with you doing what you do brings a deep satisfaction that new clothes or a new car can't equal. Nothing shallow about a good cow.

The boss was saying the other day that he didn't think he would miss them much if we had to sell out though. They are stern task masters and he is tired.....getting worn out from decade upon decade of hard physical work each day. The knees don't bend, shoulders ache, especially the one he broke, and he can barely lift his feet to step over stuff any more. 

The mid-sixties are not an easy time to do what he is doing. He has been milking cows since he was a little boy and driving tractor for field work since he was nine. It gets harder each year I think.

I told him that I would miss them and badly though....but then I came late to this business, only 34 years of milking cows for me to his fifty-plus.

Agvocacy..Worth the Effort

You know I'm nuts about you, right?

Dairy Carrie has placed a challenge to farm bloggers and tweeters to post about the topic above.

Is agvocacy, the practice of farmers both advocating for their businesses and explaining they whys and wherefores of what they do, worth the time and effort?

My answer would be a resounding 'you betcha'! The best antidote to contrived videos of alleged cruelty and hackneyed catch phrases like "factory farming" is to open a dialog with our customers and let them in on our world. Talk to them every day about what is happening on our farms and ranches and give honest explanations of farm activities. 

As I have read many times, it isn't about education, it is about communication. Not everyone wants to go back to school, but pretty much all of us love to chat, whether it is face to face over the back fence, at the coffee shop, or in our kitchens, thousands of miles apart geographically, but as close as the next heartbeat in our minds.

I suppose it could be considered a chore to sit down at the keyboard every day to "visit" with a bunch of wonderful folks like the ones I have "met" through Northview Diary. (And thank you all for visiting and commenting on the things that take your interest.) However to me it has become one of the greatest pleasures in my day.

And at least on a couple of occasions folks who visit regularly have set a person or two straight on one farming issue or another......

So, yeah, it sure is worth it.

Yogurt Summit CAFO Regulations/Class III Futures

NY Governor Andrew Cuomo announced changes to the CAFO regulations that may help the state's dairies meet new demand for milk for yogurt. Although a good portion of NY milk goes to the fluid market, any changes that enhance the business climate for dairy farms are very welcome.

And some interesting news from the CME, where dairy prices go to die. Class III futures explode

The Danger

It has been heartbreaking to read the news lately. A farmer we know from quite near here was killed this week at a very young age by a swarm of ground bees or wasps while he was mowing brush. Another farmer near here was recently killed in a tractor roll over and another well-known Holstein breeder from the state was also killed by a tractor while working on machinery attached to it. We didn't know the latter two personally, but the first gentleman was a fixture in the area from a really nice family that we have known all our lives. Now this story. 

Farming can be a great life, if you love the outdoors, if you like to be challenged, if you like to work hard to make a real difference to the world it can be everything to you, truly a way of life....but it is dangerous. Farmers are often ridiculously tired and very stressed, by money worries, weather, the pressure to get crops into the ground and then tended and harvested. Many of the things they do are inherently dangerous and doing them while tired and distracted makes them doubly so.

Large farm animals can be and usually are reasonably gentle, interesting, fun to work with, also challenging, but often in a good way. You can have a very rewarding relationship with even the largest one. However, they can hurt you and sometimes they will. 

That same sweet cow that you can walk up to in the pasture for an ear scratch will run right over you if she is panicked or knock you down and stomp on you when she is in season. The gentlest ones that never kick or crowd at milking time can kill you with a swing of her head batting flies off their back in the itchy summertime. In fact the ones most likely to hurt you that way are the tamest ones. They aren't worried about your presence in their stall and they literally forget that you are there. (Imagine if they had horns!)

There isn't one of us here at Northview that hasn't come out on the short end of a kick or a bite, or very much the most often, gotten run over by a frightened or angry horse or cow. I've even had my nose broken by a carelessly flung tail. We all have  scars and joint damage to remind us of things animals have done to us over the years. We are lucky though, very, very lucky. We are still here to be reminded of how dangerous farming is.

My heart is truly aching for all these families, but especially for the folks we know best.....and all you farmers and ranchers who stop by to read now and then...you be careful out there today.

Tell your own Tale

We had some excitement here yesterday, the actual story of which I am using for this week's Farm Side. However, if you would like, this is your chance to write your own version of the tale, right here in the comment section. Please have at it!

***Disclaimer-no farmers or livestock were harmed in the filming of this wild adventure on the back and side and front (etc.) lawn.

The Drought

The grass in the shady, damp lane is much taller than it is up where the sun gets at it all day.

Is going to hurt pretty much everyone even if it starts raining all across the country within the next five minutes. Corn is already being imported from Brazil and our grain price is sky rocketing. I shudder to think what food prices will be this fall, winter, and next year.


Here in Upstate NY we saw a bit of what it has already done when Alan and I went out to walk and clear electric fence yesterday. We (really he...I carried tools, kept him company and took pictures) inspected and cut brush out of the wires, propped up a couple of tired posts and fixed this and that. We got over about half of it...it's a big field...before the old lady petered out from the hot sun and we came back down. It was time for him to go get Becky anyhow and the boss needed him to help unload hay that he had baled

Anyhow, the grass was as curly as the fur on Gil's back and not much longer. There were more wasps and bees than weeds and thistles.


This is not at all normal. The cows have been out of that field for weeks...maybe even a month. In an average year, even in the doldrums of summer, there would be grass at least up to the top of your ankle and weeds as high as your head anywhere the dirt was exposed by cows making paths and such. 


Nada.


We did see a nice selection of birds though. Lots of gold finches, indigo buntings, turkey vulture, red-tailed hawk, mourning doves, brown thrashers, song sparrows, some unidentifiable small warblers, crows, starlings, pigeons, cardinals and probably a couple of others I am forgetting. No good pics though. They weren't feeling friendly and the light was so bright...

We will try to finish up today. The cows will get a few days supplemental grazing while the other field recovers. It is just barely worth the effort though.....

The Shirt

We were walking over from the barn last night, quite a drove of us with Alan home and all, when the boss said, "I'll eat my shirt if it doesn't rain tonight."


As farmers do, we looked at the sky. There were a few promising clouds, but there was no scent of water on the air, no sharpening breeze or tempting little chill....nah, we all said...ain't gonna happen.

And so we came inside and started picking out the shirt. Although Alan and I actually trekked to the laundromat after camp, washed the  blankets and soggy swimsuits and all, along with a week's worth of farm laundry, there is always at least one shirt around here that you probably wouldn't want served up with your meat and potatoes.

We had it all planned, how it wasn't going to rain, and we would hand him the shirt in the morning....maybe allow him a bottle of ketchup, or maybe even mayo.


Then along about ten o'clock there was a little susurrus outside the kitchen window. 


It WAS raining.....The kids went outside and whooped and hollered and danced around in it. After four or five years of monsoons, it felt strange to be glad of a rainstorm.




Saved by the drips.


It didn't amount to much...a sheen on the hood of the truck, a trickle for the starving flowerbeds, a glimmer for the dying grass, but at least it dampened down the dust a little bit.

I'm Farming and I Grow It

These folks did a spectacular job with this!

Bred in the Bone

Farming-it gets in your blood, it's bred in your bones. You hold it in your heart and it holds you. 


This story is a great example of how it takes you in to its soul and never lets you go.