Oops

If I have missed replying to your comments, or answering emails from a couple of you who are my favorite folks, it is because I somehow changed the filters on my main mail box. Kind of an "oh, duh", moment. I think I have it fixed now, but if you are fuming and wondering why I am so rude, well, now you know. Nothing to do with rude, but everything to do with clutzy. Or idiotic. Or careless. Or a doofus. You get the idea.

Sorry.... if you have emailed me in the past few days and didn't get an answer I humbly apologize, but you are going to have to resend because they are just gone...

More possibilities

You might be a dairyman if....

(These are a little more graphic than the last set).
Still an awful lot of them apply to me.

Number one: is a big waste of time. You do it AFTER work
Number two: Yep, haven't we all? Nails too. Fence pliers, nitrile gloves....I could go on and on
Three: And Sunday
Four: No accident about it
Five: And dinner
Seven: And worse things
Eight: It's "have drunk". (Where do these kids go to school anyhow?)
Nine: Some are tougher than others. What farmer hasn't seen a perfectly healthy cow with "I am dead, aren't I?" syndrome? Or maybe it is "I have fallen and I can't get up."
Ten: Shirts too
Eleven: Right up there with baling twine
Twelve: They are aren't they?
Thirteen: No, it is "close enough for government work" around here.
Fourteen: Fluffy reindeer bathrobe actually. It is warmer than jammies and covers a multitude of sins
Fifteen:Nope
Sixteen: Yup, and more than once
Seventeen:Yes that too
Eighteen: Uh, huh,
Nineteen and twenty: some cows are smart as rocks and have a death wish too. From getting loose and falling upside down with their head pinned under them in the manger to getting wedged upside down in the watering trough I have seen more than I want to.
Twenty-one: Actually I love the stuff
Twenty-two: Both, not at the same time
Twenty-three: Actually not
Twenty-four and twenty-five: When the boss had emergency surgery and I was all alone I could lie down on a bale of hay and sleep as long as no one bothered me
Twenty-six: All my life in fact
Twenty-seven: Well, you get the idea. I have never tried to back up a spreader, because that is not one of my jobs, but I can back up a forage chopper and hook up wagons (it took me a very, very long time to learn though). Fairs used to be a lot more fun than they are now. Too old and tired I guess. And I have no problem whatsoever figuring out what to do with a day off. It's finding them that is a problem.

Why blue?

A recent comment asked why the ice in the previous post is blue. We have always figured it was because it picks up minerals as it flows through the ground on its way down the hill. This road cut is along the highway at the front of our property and the water that flows out of it comes from under a maple woods where a fellow we know taps our maple trees for maple syrup (and gives us a couple of gallons each year for the privilege.) Above that woods is a good alfalfa field on fertile slate ground, some of the best we have. The low quality of forages in NY in the past couple of ridiculously rainy years attests to just how many nutrients are leached by excess water. Why wouldn't that make the ice look different?

Just to be sure we were correct in our assumption, I did some research on blue ice. (Did you know that there is software with that name, and rappers as well. I sorted through a mountain of dreck before I came up with anything remotely useful.) I found lovely pictures of ice. Then I found this, which really doesn't seem to explain our ice, since there are sections that are just as thick adjacent to the blue ice that are plain white. And this, which shows black ice. Here are more links about ice color. I guess you can take your pick of theories.

I am still inclined to think ours comes from minerals, as the blue occurs right next to plenty of plain old white and some that is just sort of dirt-colored, probably from dirt. Anyhow....

Thanks, Laurie, for an interesting question.