Going fishing just after sunrise

Postcard from camp

Hope your week is going great as well, with no snags worse than this one in your world.

Sunflower

Powerful flood photos

Dan Weaver has some aerial pictures of the river at its worst on his blog. Even having seen much of the flooding they are amazing.
Upstream. A Mohawk Valley Blogzine.: Aerial Photos Of Flooding On The Mohawk River.

It's time

Jobs for today... boot up the old computer, find the list of things we need to bring, (until I created this list I had to drive down and buy a new plastic collander every year for three consecutive years). Pray that the Lexmark printer has just one more task left in it.

Accompany Liz food shopping.


Take the middle seat out of the mini van so there is room for the cot and the dog crates.

Do last minute laundry, water ALL the plants, pack the field guides to birds, trees, and wild flowers and all the binoculars. Oh, and the Collin's Complete Field Guide to American Wildlife and Cache Lake Country.

Go to the library for stacks and stacks of other books. Try to get down to the hospital to see mom, or at least give her a call. Replace the worms the %^&%#!* birds ate out of our compost bin/worm bed.


Milk the cows and feed the calves for the next to the last time before CAMP!!!!!


See you next week!

Still more rain

Possible solution to a watery problem

Out in the barn tonight Liz and I were discussing ways we could share this outrageous largess of water we are laboring under with our friends to the south and west. They are suffering from an interminable drought, while we are getting too much rain. Rain that is wrecking our neighbors' homes and businesses.


All day rain.

All night rain.

Sluicing, sheeting, rattling rain that is washing out all the roads that the boss just finished regrading for about the fifth time this summer. Rain that is preventing us from storing our crops or getting the cows fed properly without using up what stored feed we have.

We have way too much; they have too little.

Seems like a solvable dilemma.

However, we struggled to come up with a way to create enough wind to blow the rain clouds over hills and mountains to where they are needed.

Then Liz came up with a brilliant idea.

Politicians.

Lots and lots of politicians. Granted the rain will likely be kind of warm by the time it makes it to Florida and Montana, but there is enough hot air produced in Massachusetts alone to push the rain all the way to California. I think that if we point Kerry and Kennedy and Dean west and use everyone in the White House as a relay south, the watery unbalance that is plaguing our nation will soon be remedied.
It's worth a try.

Here we go again

Look what we have for today.

THE NATL WEATHER SVC IN ALBANY HAS ISSUED A * FLASH FLOOD WATCH FOR PORTIONS OF N. CT. WESTERN MASSACHUSETTS.EAST CNTL NY & SOUTHERN VT. THIS INCLUDES THE FOLLOWING AREAS IN NORTHERN CT.LITCHFIELD COUNTY. IN WESTERN MASSACHUSETTS. BERKSHIRE COUNTY. IN EAST CNTL NY.ALBANY. COLUMBIA.DUTCHESS.GREENE.RENSSELAER.SCHENECTADY. ULSTER.HAMILTON.MONTGOMERY.FULTON.HERKIMER. SARATOGA.WARREN.WA & SCHOHARIE COUNTIES. IN S. VT.BENNINGTON & WINDHAM COUNTIES. * THE FLASH FLOOD WATCH IS IN EFFECT FROM 9 AM EDT THIS MORNING THROUGH LATE TONIGHT. * LOW PRESSURE MOVING EAST FROM THE GREAT LAKES WILL INTERACT WITH VERY MOIST AIR OVER THE REGION TO PRODUCE A GENERAL RAINFALL OF ONE TO TWO INCHES OVER THE REGION THROUGH TONIGHT. HOWEVER.THE AIR OVER THE REGION WILL ALSO BE VERY UNSTABLE TODAY AND TONIGHT. THIS WILL RESULT IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF THUNDERSTORMS CAPABLE OF PRODUCING ONE TO TWO INCHES OF RAIN IN AN HOUR. THESE HIGH RAINFALL RATES COULD RESULT IN LOCALLY EXCESSIVE RAINFALL AMOUNTS & PRODUCE FLASH FLOODING. A FLASH FLOOD WATCH MEANS THAT CONDITIONS MAY DEVELOP THAT LEAD TO FLASH FLOODING. FLASH FLOODING IS A VERY DANGEROUS SITUATION WHICH RESULTS IN VERY RAPID RISES OF WATER LEVELS & LITTLE TIME TO REACT. YOU SHOULD MONITOR LATER FORECASTS & BE PREPARED TO TAKE ACTION SHOULD FLASH FLOOD WARNINGS BE ISSUED

Just what we need!

The One I Drove

The big red tractor, with the big red chopper, with the big red wagon is the one I drove yesterday.

Mowing Hay

As performed by a sixteen-year-old virtuoso....you can see that the hay is well past its prime, but there is quite a lot of it.

Chopping hay

I haven’t chopped hay in years, but I did yesterday as per my son’s request. He figured (rightly), that an extra person would speed things up at least a little. I used to do almost all the hay chopping, but when the Boss’s mother passed away I took on most of her jobs and really didn’t have time any more. Plus a sixteen-year-old kid can work rings around a middle aged woman when it comes to running machinery. Seems as if they are just born with the knack.


It was kind of fun in a nervous sort of way. Our tractors and impliments are pretty antiquated and I am scared to death of breaking something and putting us even farther behind. The weather has done a good enough job of that already. However, I chopped in second gear, high range and managed to not even break a shear bolt. Not bad for an old lady.


I took the camera up in the field with me, which offered a little enjoyment to lighten up the seriousness of trying to get in first cutting that should have been cut a month and a half ago.

I suppose that what we lost in quality we will probably make up in volume though. It will mean supplimenting with more expensive grain this winter, but what can you do?


Of course after a big day and getting in ten loads, counting what we fed the cows, the floor came out of one forage wagon destroying part of the drag bottom and leaving us with only one working wagon.

Such is farming.

Animal Welfare Bill

House bill H.R. 5557 will probably go down in defeat...or at least we hope so. Read why here.

Frieland Z Mandolin Rain

Pretty sunset

Heavenly skies after a week from Hell

Flood tales, tall or otherwise

There are a number of flood horror stories that I can’t put in the Farm Side because they remain unsubstantiated. However, some ring true and deserve to see the light of day, so here are a couple or three.


The authorities are alleged to have failed to open the river dams in order to save pleasure boats moored below them at the expense of further damage to land facilities. Whole towns were pretty much wiped out. I am thinking maybe there just wasn’t time to do anything about the locks and dams, but who knows?


Our diesel guy was reportedly refused admittance to our road, even though there was no possibility of flooding anywhere between the intersection where he tried to turn and us. (This one is no rumor, but came right from the driver.) We live about an 8th of a mile from that intersection by the way, and were out of fuel for the generator and field work.


One valley fire department is said to have lost all their fuel to water contamination. The same delivery guy told us that they were called because their trucks are on relatively high ground. They could also apparently be accessed without going through any serious high water spots, at least nothing that would stop a large diesel engine. Local authorities refused access to the trucks anyhow.



A local farmer was allegedly arrested for trying to get into town to pump out a stranded family member. He left court and drove right down and helped her anyhow.


FEMA is offering people who lost entire homes and all of their possessions between $2000 and $2500 to help them rebuild. They gave each person a debit card for that much in Katrina, much of the money being used to buy shameless luxuries. Guess upstate NY isn’t quite as glamorous.
(Bear in mind that these stories are just that, tales that are being told as folks gather to assess the damage and commiserate over their losses.)


At least one rumor that was giving us fits is that Peck’s Lake is closed. My much-anticipated week at that facility begins a week from Saturday. When we heard that the lake was closed I came pretty close to bawling. I know a lost vacation isn’t much stacked up against the devastation that has hit our neighbors. Still the peace and quiet and the loons and rainbow trout mean a lot to me.
Thus I was delighted, thrilled, overjoyed, and just plain real happy to talk to an extremely agitated Alby Peck today. Seems the papers were just fishing for something to write about, and pretty much fabricated the closed lake story. Peck’s is open and eager to regain all the business the false story cost them.

More flooding down along the Delaware

Endment has some photos of the flooding in other parts of the state....plus a bear!

Doppleganger?

Close but no gar

Dam(n) Info

I have been checking The Gilboa Dam Information site regularly, since last week's flood. I suspect that you will be as distressed as I was when you read today's entry about the failure of emergency warning systems for the affected area.

To put it simply, nothing worked.

I know that up here on our hill we were almost entirely cut off from outside communication. Although we have a generator, cable TV was out and local radio stations went right on running talk shows and playing lousy music as if nothing had happened. Thankfully we still had a phone, so my parents let me listen to TV bulletins over it. However, many folks had nothing and the systems that should have been operational failed.


There are thousands of helpless peopleliving in the footprint of that antiquated structure. I think some serious attention had better be directed at effective emergency warning before it is too late. This week should serve as a lesson in preparedness....or the lack of it.

Toad Mode

Surprise

During the flooding that struck the valley this week, we were very much in need of something interesting to distract us from the dark side. Alan provided me with a great diversion right in the middle of the worst of it.

All the big tractors were about out of diesel by Thursday morning and we still needed to run the generator so the boss sent our boy way back in the field to get our ancient 930 Case tractor. It is getting close to 40 years old now, but although small, it had a full tank of fuel. (Roads were closed and our fuel supplier is still under water.)

When Alan came back down he hurried into the barn and shoved something wet and grey under my nose saying, “I think you are going to like this.”
He was really excited, but all I saw was a small toad. I don’t have bifocals any more, and with my distance glasses, which I use for work, it WAS a toad.
He insisted that I take a closer look, so I took my glasses off and peered…and oh, my God, it was a grey tree frog!

I love frogs. Well, heck I am pretty fond of most herptiles and have taken an interest since I was tiny. A big old milk snake actually created quite a diversion at my high school graduation party by getting out of its terrarium and terrorizing all my great aunts.
Although little hyla versicolor is fairly common and you can hear the toad-like call on many spring nights, I have only ever seen one single specimen when I was a little kid camping at Peck’s Lake. This is probably because they are able to change color like a chameleon. They also have special pads on their feet that allow them to stick to surfaces and travel up and down trees (or teenaged boys' arms...Alan said it felt "cool" to have it climb on him).

Ours sported an amazing array of patterns. I suspect that the toad camo was a handy-dandy defensive mechanism, as toads are poisonous to eat. Alan said that the critter was the same rusty color as the engine block of the Case when he found it crawling around on it, but it turned into a “toad” when he picked it up. We put it next to the garden pond, where an hour later it had turned the precise dingy white color of the faded paper label on the side of the tank (photo above). I haven’t seen it since but the kids with their younger, sharper eyes have seen it doing dirty brown on an old wooden box and the precise green of one of the pond side plants. I hope it stays around.

I am so glad my boy is a frog lover and thought to save the frog from certain frying as the engine heated up. I am also delighted he brought it home to me. My birthday is next week and I'll bet the little tree frog will turn out to be my favorite present.

Fairgrounds

This is the fair grounds, where the rides are set up, and parking for Fonda Speedway. We could joke about having jet ski races this Saturday in place of the usual stock cars, but the situation is just too serious to laugh about.

Flooded Mohawk Valley

Park Street in Fonda

More flooding

We are finally back in the modern world after 36 hours stranded by closed roads and no power. There is a street under this water, as well as a playground and two parking areas. As bad as it is here, there are many places who had much worse damage.

The river and its clone

This is the Mohawk River at Fonda. The trees you see in the center of the two channels are not an island. They are the northern bank of the river. The second "river" was a corn field yesterday with some of the best corn in the county growing on it. Now, well..... it is not.

Emergency helicopters are flying over and the police prevented our feed rep from getting here. At least the milk tanker finally made it in.

So much rain last night

Fire whistles are wailing an eerie harmony across the river and down in town. I don’t know how many villages are represented, but more than one for sure. Trains are still running at least as I hear one banging down the tracks right now.

I fear for Gilboa. The Mohawk was more than bank full yesterday and laced with whirlpools. Everywhere else there are drought and fires; here we have relentless rain that is washing the whole valley away. It is the worst I have seen it so far this year.


When it is like this I am afraid to leave the farm. If Gilboa goes there will be a darned near Biblical flood and we will not be able to get back home to the cows. At least we are high on the hill. I shudder to think what would happen to friends, neighbors, indeed whole comunities around us.


There goes the whistle again.


Update: We took Liz's four-wheel drive and tried to go to town for some groceries. However, we are pretty much isolated by flooded roads and bridges that are under water or deemed impassable by local authorities. (Water is up to the bottom of the bridge between Fonda and Fultonville) One can escape to the east and south, but there is nowhere to buy anything to the south and east is straight into Gilboa Dam flood plain territory. I just don't want to go there. The interstate is completely closed, trains aren't running and there are chunks of telephone pole in the middle of the road just down the way. Not good.


Also not good is that the sheiff went by with the airboat on a trailer with about five patrol cars flying low behind them about half an hour ago. TV is out and there is little coverage on the radio so we are pretty much cut off except for phone and Internet. We will just have to wait to find out what happened.

More rain tonight and tomorrow.

Wheep!

After the big rain yesterday we were sitting around waiting for it to be dry enough to go out and get something done, when a loud sound like a smoke detector with a low battery pierced the air. It seemed to be emanating from the front porch. It was a sort of whistled, "wheep............. wheep," in that exact tantalizing rythym that makes it so hard to figure out which smoke detector is doing the beeping.

Since there are no smoke detectors on the porch I knew it had to be a bird. A number of them have discovered that if they sing or call from that porch or the cedar trees beside it, the two story front hall amplifies them nicely when the front door is open. They sound like really loud, big, dangerous birds that way, and impress all comers.


This call was one I had heard before, although never as clearly, and had never identified. I stalked the porch with great care, tiptoeing through the entryway and out the door, but the singer was concealed in the trees. Although it continued to yell, “wheep!”, even when I was on the porch I never saw it. However, through the wonders of a Google search for “bird call wheep” I soon discovered that our smoke detector imitator is a great crested flycatcher. You can see one and hear the call here.


Now if only I could see the actual bird out there, instead of just looking up every few minutes because that, "time to change the batteries", sound is such an important and ingrained signal to my brain.

Oxygen please

You have surely heard the phrase, “under the weather’, as in, “He was feeling a bit under the weather yesterday and stayed home from school.”

Well that about describes life in the great Northeast in recent weeks (although we only wish we could stay home and make it all better). We have wavered between constant cold, clammy rain, a few blazing days of 90-degree temps and sticky, humid misery or the stuff we have right now, that is living inside a low-lying cloud of thick, scummy air reminiscent of Los Angeles at its worst, only with no sunshine.

As I sit at this computer gasping for oxygen and dreading the barn, where said already scarce oxygen is going to be shared by 54 cows and few million flies, (which adore sticky airless weather) reaching hard for weighty words that will inspire you to comment freely, all I can come up with is ARRGGGHHHHHH………..

Yeah, we are under the weather all right.

These are some of my dad's woodcarvings, although he has done many, many more.

Frieland Zander Foolish (born on April Fool's Day) and Liz. Foolish is all clipped for the show, except for her head, so she looks a little silly.

The catbird seat where he sings just outside the front door. I missed the catbird though.

More NAIS

The government of our fine nation is frantically attempting to get a national animal identification program into place, allegedly in part because we are at risk for BSE or mad cow disease. They are cramming the whole concept down our throats as if will actually change anything rather than costing farmers a lot of money for the privilege of being further inspected and regulated and getting to do a lot of pointless paper work.

Canada already has such a program up and running.

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency just released the results of their investigation into a case that surfaced there in April of this year.
(From the Cattle Network), “The investigation, conducted in line with international guidelines, identified 148 animals, including the affected animal’s herdmates and recent offspring. From this group, 22 live animals were located and all tested negative for BSE. One additional animal, which is currently pregnant, has been placed under quarantine and will be tested once it has calved. Of the remaining animals investigated, 77 had died or been slaughtered, 15 were exported to the United States and 33 were untraceable.”

They blame the age of the animals for the lack of traceability, but notice that only twenty-some animals that they did locate were found alive. 92 were long since eaten or disposed of so they couldn’t be tested. What good did the tracking system do?

Not much by my measurements. Except for 23 animals still at the farm, which were negative anyhow, it was much too late to prevent disease from entering the food chain if was ever going to. NAIS is just a feel good program for the government to point to and say, “Look what we are doing for you.”

Farmers can say, "Look what you are doing to us," instead.


[NAIS]

Dad

Master of anything you have ever attempted.

Antique dealer. Gun collector and expert on them. Master cabinetmaker. Artifact finder. Mineral collector, stone cutter and wonderful jewelry craftsman. Silversmith. Award winning wood carver and painter. Bibliophile. Book dealer. Teacher of fishing and bird watching and citizenship. Book binder. Blacksmith, the forging kind, not the horseshoeing kind. Fly tier. Historian. Gardener. And so very much more….forgive me for anything I forgot.

The man who blanched but didn’t holler when I dropped his station wagon into park while driving down Main Street in Fonda, when he told me to stop. (Well I DID stop didn't I?"

Happy Father’s Day Dad. You have always been the greatest!

Stealth frog

The boss of something

Every border collie needs to be the boss of SOMETHING. Ours have each invented their own little job to help keep order around the place. They have lots of time on their paws and control their little behavioral fiefdoms relentlessly.

Nick hates cats and thinks it is his place to eat them all. We frown on that since we just happen to like them, but sometimes the strength of his desire overwhelms his good manners and he nails a cat. He starts with a wide mouthed grab at the head, not too hard, just to see if he can get away with it. He never does. I think he would swallow them whole if no one was watching.

Mike considers himself cat protector in chief. When Nick bites a cat; Mike bites Nick. At any other time there would be an instant dogfight, but Nick knows he is wrong. In fact he is just testing. He slinks away with his tail tucked under.
Surprisingly Mike is especially protective of my favorite cat, Deetzie. Border collies are so expert at reading body language that I am sure he realizes that I like her best.

Gael has chosen to be the receptionist for the family business. She runs to the door barking at every variation in the wind, each woof from Wally, the blue heeler who lives outdoors, every siren, clap of thunder or extra loud moo from an amorous heifer. She makes sure that we never miss anything, whether we want to know about it or not. She answers the phone too or barks dramatically at anyone who does. So helpful! It is delightful to converse with your banker or veterinarian with a dog barking six inches from your ear.
However, Nick has figured out for himself that I holler at Gael every time she barks at the phone. He darts out from under the table where he likes to lurk and bites HER on the scruff of the neck whenever it rings. She is his mother and will not put up with such stuff from a mere whelp, so she turns around and bites him back. Now, instead of a dog barking at the phone we have a dogfight under our feet. Thank God for the answering machine!

Three dogs; three very important goals in life. And to think we got them to herd cows.

Sunrise

Three Collies

Gael, Nick, Mike

Gypsy moth

The grass glows like a carpet of emerald here, with the sun shining after all that rain. (Especially since I could finally get at least the part around the pond mowed. In other sections the grass is so tall that Nick went in through the open garden gate this morning and then couldn’t find the gate again to get out. I could have used side commands to talk either of the other two dogs out, but he doesn’t know his “sides”- "come bye" and "away to me" that is. He had to find his own way out. Pretty tall grass when you can lose a full-sized border collie in it!)

The trees echo the same bright summer color, but you only have to drive a few miles either north or south to find all the branches bare and black and ugly. It doesn’t smell too good either. There are no birds, no leaves, no color, nothing but a twisted desert of disaster. The gypsy moth is having a high point in its cycle and the caterpillars are devastating the woods both in Fulton and Schoharie Counties. It is the worst I have ever seen. I think I will do some research today and write the Farm Side about the mess. I haven't seen any mention in the paper anywhere else and it needs to be noticed. I heard that the state cut funding to control the critters and I am wondering what the story is there.

Shameless Bunny

It's been a while so I guess it's time for another shameless bunny picture.
This is Pegasus

So now we worry

We just turned on the news while we get ready to go out to milk the cows and heard that a 15-yr. old died driving a go-cart out into the road just above the school. The odds that it will be one of the kid’s friends are very high. Alan is after all 16 and knows kids who own go-carts who live on that road. It is a small rural road.

It is the next to the last day of regular school and our gang is looking forward to getting the regents exams behind them and getting on with whatever summer the weather is going to allot us this year. It is not going to be much of a summer for some folks near here though. So sad.

Beautiful Becky

Bad, Bad, LeRoy (or in this case Jack) the cat

I want a cat like this.
Tip of the hat to Jeff at Tazaret.

Global warming?

It is 50 degrees at the airport and probably a lot colder outside town. That is over twenty degrees colder than normal.

The furnace is running.


The windows are closed.


The winter clothes that I sorted out to take upstairs and put away have been placed in a pile in the back room where they are handy, since we still need them every day.

In June, no less.


I usually keep a couple of sweatshirts out for everyone, as you can expect some cool mornings, but this “summer” there are still as many heavy (not to mention muddy) boots by the kitchen door and big, thick coats and shirts piled on the chair there as if it were still January.
And rain! 26 out the past 30 days it has rained. We are supposed to POSSIBLY get two nice days before it rains again.

We have no corn planted. It should have been finished weeks ago. This may actually be a good thing, as at least one farmer of our acquaintance is going to be forced to replant all their land because of the rain. We don’t have any, but at least we don’t have to pay for it twice.


The guys are only able to chop green grass for the cows (which is what we feed them in the summer) by towing the tractor on the chopper with the 2-105 four-wheel drive. This means double the man-hours, double the fuel and the field is turning into a disaster area. Three-foot deep ruts fill with running water before they have gone ten feet. The field will be ruined and have to be plowed for corn, which it is according to the government too late to plant. If this doesn’t stop soon they will have to hit another field the same way.


The corn fields were all ready to plant when this weather struck. They just sit there bare and muddy. Don’t know what we are going to feed the cows this winter.


Or this summer for that matter. We can’t make hay either. The old saying about doing that task while the sun shines is true. You have no choice in that matter.

The only heartening aspect of this true slow-moving weather disaster is that when you go to a farm meeting, the farmers are still joking, although you can see the fear behind their eyes.

“The drought is over,” they say.

Photo failure

Is anyone else finding it impossible to post pictures to blogger using picasa?
Or is it just me?

The sign........revisited Northview style

Al-Zarqawi

We are getting ready to go out to milk the cows and Fox news is muttering in the background. According to news sources, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was killed by coalition forces in a safe house in Northern Iraq. Despite this having been a major coalition goal, as he was blamed for inciting much of the insurgent violence that has slowed the effort to build a new government in Iraq, the news folks are falling all over themselves trying to find some reason that this is a bad thing, or at least not a good one. They so hate the Bush administration that they deny them even this. Al-Zarqawi is blamed for beheadings of foreign captives and hundreds of roadside bombings. Whether the press likes it or not, he won’t be missed.

Now what?

We are a quivering lump of collective disappointment around here today.


Becky is our second one to graduate from high school here at Northview Farm. When Liz finished her school career, we took out a funny ad in the yearbook, sending her a congratulatory message from a long list of her favorite cows. It gave us all a happy chuckle at an emotional time in her life passage.

Therefore, back in early January I composed a somewhat similar, but appropriately different, ad for Becky. Hers said something along the lines of “Emerson Drive rules, we love you Becky etc.”, as she is a great fan of that country band. I sent my check for thirty-five bucks and assumed that all was well, since the school cashed it. Beck spent six months badgering me about the text of her ad, as I kept secret what I wrote. We had a lot of fun with it.
Then yesterday the yearbooks came out.

No ad.

Nothing.

Oh, all the ads for the school board member’s kids were there. The teachers’ kids. The jocks.
But no ad for my Beck who has been waiting so eagerly for so long.

This is a one-time thing. She will never have another high school yearbook or another chance to see how proud we are of her in print in front of all her classmates, who have given her plenty of misery for being an opinionated bookworm, who has never been afraid to have an unpopular opinion or to speak out against conventional thought.

I am angry and I strongly suspect that I will have a lot of trouble even getting my money back. We went through this before with some magazine subscriptions I bought from the school, paid for, never received and never got my money back, no matter what I did.

What to do? What to do? First step is to call and complain this morning. Then what? Hmmm. I think I know what Friday’s Farm Side will be about.


And we do love you Becky, and we are very proud of your sharp mind and incisive thinking. And the 17th (when we have tickets for a real, genuine, live Emerson Drive concert) will be here before you know it.

Update: I talked to the teacher in charge. She was quite nice about it, said that they are going to improve the oversight of the program and send me back my money. We were not the only ones to end up in the same situation and I had the feeling there had been a lot of flak flying around before my call, so I took it easy on her. Too late to fix it anyhow. It is a disappointment, but I guess there are worse things.

Some things don't mind all the rain quite as much as we do.

Montana terrorist hunter

Here is a story that Sarpy Sam featured on Thoughts From the Middle of Nowhere. It is a bit long and is printed in the notorious WP, but it just fascinated me. Imagine an ordinary American woman taking the time to learn Arabic after 9-1-1, and running eight computers all night long, luring would be terrorists out of the woodwork, in order to turn them over to our intelligence agencies. Imagine being brave enough to testify against some of those crazies in court. Impressive.

We are not having nice weather

Normally this is a six-inch deep, clear trickle over pretty stones.

Lucky me

I sometimes complain about the challenges of farm life, probably more often than readers would prefer. It can be a hard life, and it is comforting to whine. However, there are some rewards we don’t often think about that can make a day very pleasant indeed. Such as taking your 18-yr. old to get new glasses and pick up the wonderful dress grandma made her for the Senior Ball.(Thanks, Mom, she looks so beautiful in it.)

And coming out of the store to find a young man with a big box of yellow kittens free for the taking.

And being able to take as many as you can carry right home with you.

Oh, it was a job to push my cart loaded with a big pile of stuff, including fifty pounds of dog food, out to the car, all the while juggling two little golden live wires. (Thank God for elbows.) However, I was more than repaid in excited smiles when Becky finished her shopping and I gave her one, and when we got home with the other one for Liz.

Lucky me, yellow cats! If I had more arms I would have taken them all.

"Come on now, hold still, for a second."
Maqua-kil Blitz Mendocino

Tornado warning today and this is what we saw. It never made it to a tornado here, but north of us it did some damage.

Rana clamitans gardenpondiensis

Beyond the horse pasture

Name that calf

Since an outrageous percentage of the calves belong to Liz anyhow, she is hosting her own darned "Name that Calf" contest over on BuckinJunction. If you are clever with names, give her a hand.

I wonder

This is truly a family farm. Before his parents passed away, the boss farmed with them his whole life. Then when we married (over twenty years ago) I joined the crew and the kids came on board as soon as they got big enough to see over a shovel.

Although it was a challenge to work together day in and day out and keep any semblance of serenity, I grew very close to his family, especially to his mom. I miss her every day, particularly buying her plants and flowers, and looking for special bits of china that I knew she would love when I visited garage sales. She was always so delighted with any gift, no matter how insignificant, that it was a real pleasure to come across something she would like. She worked hard at being a “good” mother-in-law. I am sure that I didn’t make that easy for her sometimes.

Today we went to the cemetery to “visit” the folks. I don't have the plants we put on their graves every year quite ready yet, but we were out and just felt like stopping. As we walked up to the graves from behind the stone I noticed that the earth had sunken a little and it looked kind of bare. The cemetery is located in very sandy soil that supports little in the way of grass. (Although the farm fields that come right up to the boundaries and even inside on the unused parts, have a thriving crop of rye, corn and oats this summer. It seems fitting for all the old farmers buried there to be surrounded by the chugging of tractor engines and the sighing of grass in the summer winds.)
I remarked to the boss that I should buy some Johnny Jump Up seed and plant the bare area, so there would always be flowers that wouldn't mind the mower and would come up every year in that special spot. Peg loved plants and it was a way I could have the joy of giving her some again. I knew it was a plan that I would carry out as soon as I could.

We stood and reflected for a minute, then turned toward the car, where the kids were waiting for us.

Suddenly cold chills raised a crop of goose bumps on my arms and stood the hairs up on the back of my neck.

There, right where I had been thinking of doing my seeding was one, single, perfect, dark purple Johnny Jump Up plant, its little cat face turned up to the sun.

There were no others anywhere around that whole section of the cemetery, just that one, on Peg’s side of the little square plot.

I am still shivering.

Take me to the asparagus

What a day…and it isn't even noon yet. First the cows were on high alert this morning. (Even though both cow and cooperate start with the same two letters, the similarity ends right there.) Don’t know if it is that we are going to get a storm later today or if the flies are starting to bite, but the boss and I both got switched in the face by dirty tails this morning. Several times. That REALLY hurts, and it doesn’t make you more cheerful to have it happen!

Then we couldn’t get Alan’s show cow, Bayberry, into her stall to milk her. There were just the two of us, and we just could not get her to let us lock her up no matter what we did. Liz had the morning off for her birthday, but she came over to help us feed calves, and even with her help we couldn’t get her to put her head in the stanchion. Maybe she is coming in heat.
Tonight hopefully she will calm down. Alan will have to go out and catch her in the field with a halter (she will only let him do that-nobody else), because we are not going to let her do the circus in the barn thing again.


While she was tear-assing around the barn being an idiot she went up into the manger in the annex of the barn and stepped on that little kitten in the picture below. Miserable witch anyhow. I think the kitten will be okay, but there was just no reason for all that misbehavior.

I am going to hide out in the garden today and try to get some stuff planted. Hopefully the asparagus will behave itself.

Two teenagers

There are only two teenagers here at Northview now (and they are both asleep). As of around 1:30 this morning or so, Liz has been twenty years old. As of last weekend she has been a college graduate with an Associates degree in animal science. (Four semesters on the Dean's list are in the bag, so to speak). As of the 10th she has been out of college for the summer and helping us here on the farm.

Oh, the clean mangers, calves moved to new stalls with automatic water bowls and daily help with the milking we have enjoyed. She is going back for her Bachelors in August, but for now it is a delight to have her home. Soon everybody will be on vacation (which is something of a misnomer for a farm kid, but you get the idea). Maybe we can even get a day in digging Herkimer Diamonds or collecting brachiopods this summer.

Anyhow, Happy Birthday, Lizzie; hope it is a great one. We sure do love you!

"Wild Thing" and one of the kids

Brand new "black red" baby from Salt Lake.
The black blob by her head
is her calf coat, which she took off herself.

Valley light

Good reading

Here is an interview with Jeff Soyer of Alphecca and Tarazet.

The man is plumb brilliant.

I wish I had one tenth of his genius and way with words! If everyone listened to his arguments in favor of Second Amendment rights, we would not be worrying about them being abridged.

Maqua-Kil TNT Hattie, named after my great grandmother

Wealth

Our oldest forwarded this to me and somehow it resonated:

What is the difference between the rich and the poor?

One day, the father of a very wealthy family took his son on a trip
to the country with the express purpose of showing him how poor people
live.
They spent a couple of days and nights on the farm of what would be
considered a very poor family.

On their return from their trip, the father asked his son, "How was the
trip?"

"It was great, Dad."
"Did you see how poor people live?" the father asked.
"Oh yeah," said the son.

"So, tell me, what did you learn from the trip?" asked the father.

The son answered: "I saw that we have one dog and they had four.
We have a pool that reaches to the middle of our garden and they have
a creek that has no end.
We have imported lanterns in our garden and they have the stars at
night.
Our patio reaches to the front yard and they have the whole horizon.
We have a small piece of land to live on and they have fields that go
beyond our sight.
We have servants who serve us, but they serve others.
We buy our food, but they grow theirs.
We have walls around our property to protect us, they have friends to
protect them."

The boy's father was speechless.

Then his son added, "Thanks Dad for showing me how poor we are."

Barbaro

Over the past couple of years we have developed the tradition of milking late on Triple Crown race nights so we can enjoy the excitement. Thus it was that two weeks ago we were cheering Barbaro on when he won the Derby, (mostly because I have admired Michael Matz since I was a horse-crazy kid and he was riding in the Olympics).

We were delighted when he won. However, tonight when the pre-race commentators began to sing his praises and chortle about how easily he would probably win the Preakness, I had the kids mute the sound on the television. Every farmer knows you don't brag and you don't take anything for granted. Ask a farmer with a barn full of hay, twin calves on every cow and a rainbow arching over his farm gate, how things are going and he will tell you, “Hmmm, not too bad I guess.”


It made me nervous hearing those city idiots predicting the race results before the horses were even saddled. However, nothing prepared us to see the horrible breakdown of that lovely horse. I will be very surprised if they don’t end up putting him down, although as I write this they are still exploring their options.


My heartfelt sympathy goes out to all the people who work with him. If you care for animals you have empathy for their pain; when they hurt, you hurt and you want to fix it right away. His people must be feeling terrible right now.

Idaho Wage and Hour Dept.

Sarpy Sam, at Thoughts From the Middle of Nowhere, has an important entry today on the oversight of proper wages way out west. This kind of thing happens here too.

The post is called "Half-Wit". It will only take you a second to read it, so click right on over.

Take a deep breath

Lilac on a sweet spring breeze.

Wow, yay Liz

Liz just got her grades for her fourth semester and she has a 4.0! We are so happy for her.

Paulo Crimber and Guilherme Marchi signing autographs at Turning Stone

A Champion? Maybe, maybe not.

What do you think?

When a guy who loses his wallet and sets the whole family to tearing the house apart searching for it, so he can drive up and get straw? And then finds it in his pants pocket. (You think GRRRRRR..!)

He was well paid back while building fence, by nearly stumbling upon a setting hen turkey, who flew right in his face and nearly gave him a heart attack. She then rocketed off through the woods careening off the trees and brush and making an awful racket. I can see the headline now, "Farmer done in by injury caused by collision with large black bird."

Is the most challenging material to get back out that gets sucked up into the dredges when the state is dredging the river to keep the channel navigable? (Bowling balls, which conjures up all sorts of interesting conjecture.)

Of a woman who claims to be sane, but buys a bull calf sight unseen, from someone in Connecticut, that she has never met? (Time will tell. He was delivered this morning; His sire is Calbrett HH Champion, so maybe he will be one too. Weirdly, although I didn't realize it when I bought him, his great granddam is a cow that the boss was contending bidder on at an auction way back when we still were doing the 4-H club. That was the year we gave all the kids in the dairy club imaginary money to spend at the Dairy Fashion Sale and they all bought the same heifer. I can not believe that through an amazing bit of serendipity we now own a descendant. Hope we can keep him growing.)

Of all this rain? (We do not need it and the people in Missouri do, so let's send it all down there. Then maybe we can get some more corn in.)

Thanks Mom

Today is Mother’s Day, a day we dedicate to honoring our mothers, who dedicate themselves to our wellbeing all the rest of the year. My mom visits my brother and his family on this actual day, so the kids and I did our mommy visit yesterday.

Mom was a rock to us kids growing up. No matter how crazy things got in our chaotic world she was (and is) always calm and reasoned. Patient. And loving. Always loving, no matter how awful we were or are.

Mom taught me to cherish family first and to realize that who we are is built upon a foundation of who there was before us. She has always worked hard to keep us connected with extended family and to help us understand how who our ancestors were shaped who we are. (It is sometimes easier to accept personal quirkiness when you know that a hundred generations of Montgomerys before you were similarly and equally quirky and weird.)

Although when I was a kid genealogical research seemed to be a deadly boring pastime, reading journals that she discovered, visiting cemeteries where long ago relatives are buried and tracing the dedications on their weathered marble gravestones brought the past alive for me. When you contemplate the Civil War in terms of your own family fighting there, then coming home to try to salvage their family farms, it ceases to be an abstract history lesson and assumes a reality that a list of dead strangers cannot offer.

I have my mother to thank for that insight. In fact I always wondered what drew me so irresistibly to farming. I came right out of the box loving animals and the land and growing things, even though I was born in the city. All the close relations were railroad men or factory workers so where did the farmer gene come from? Thanks to Mom’s research we found legions of farmers just a couple of generations back. I guess I came by the addiction honestly.

I have to thank her as well for dragging us kids along wherever my father’s passion for knowledge took them, although at the time sitting in the station wagon waiting at yet another antique store seemed somewhat less than scintillating. Because she kept us with her, I love books and living with antiques, and understand the imprint of the Iroquois upon the region (from many hours of sitting at digs sifting red and blue trade beads and fragments of "worked" flint and hand made pottery out of rich black dirt). I have seen up close and personal the abundant minerals that are hidden in New York’s mountains and streambeds, and in fact collected the ones in the links. I know all about Scotland and have visited the land of our ancestors vicariously several times. (And despite early-life immersion I still like bagpipe music.)

I love you mom. Keep up the good work!

Look what Alan found

Here

The new market

Went to a meeting of the new milk marketing cooperative yesterday. Alan was my escort and he can be quite a gentleman when he wants to (with time out to run out to the lobby and do some deer hunting on a video game.)

Nice enough folks, including some neighbors who are real good farmers and probably to know what they are about.. In fact we sat with some real engaging people, with whom we much enjoyed talking.

However, the sense of my fellow members having a real grasp of milk marketing wasn’t there. They seem to rely on their board for direction, which is of course what they are there for. Still I think, no, I know, that I am going to miss Canajoharie Cooperative and Allied Federated Coops. The independence is gone. Big brother is watching. Oh, well.

Best Food Nation

Here is a new industry driven website intended to tell the farmers' and ranchers' side of the food production story. I haven’t had time to read it all, as it covers a lot of territory from beef to potatoes, but it seems to do a pretty good job of offering a somewhat simplified version of the realities of farmers' stewardship of land and animals.

I think this kind of thing is the right way to go in the effort to combat the propaganda shoveled around by animal rights and other activist groups. I have found that nearly every time I make an effort to explain why we do something on a farm, even something that might seem a little weird or wrong to a non-farm person, they at least try to comprehend. However, even with a newspaper column, this weblog, and years of sitting with the show string at fairs chatting with the city folk who wander by, I can only talk to just so many people. Same for every farmer and rancher. There aren’t very many of us and we tend to be kind of busy. Activists on the other hand have huge budgets and massive numbers of volunteers and paid staff.

Maybe web sites like this, especially if they send out plenty of press releases to the MSM can help with the job of counteracting the garbage people have to wade through to learn about how their food is grown.

I am going to give Best Food Nation a link in my sidebar anyhow.

Another Day in Paradise

What do you say to a veterinarian who literally drops everything and darned near flies to your place to save a dying cow? Well, "thanks", comes to mind…along with, "good job", not to mention, "sorry the gate was still closed".

And that is just what we found ourselves saying this very morning along about at the end of milking. The day was already well on-the-way to over the top chaos. First the cows didn’t come down from pasture, (or at least none of the older high producers did). The boss had to go get them and be rather persuasive before they could be convinced that they really needed to come down the hill.

Then Hattie, Liz’s 2-year old Jersey show heifer sat down and had a bull calf right in the middle of milking. Not too bad yet, although it is tanker day and we did need to get done promptly.

While we were scurrying around shifting machines and washing cows, the boss decided to give some pregnant cows their routine injections of selenium. That mineral is quite deficient in the soil around here. We normally give all the cows a few cc's two to three weeks before calving, as it helps prevent retained placentas and other birth-related problems. Still no big deal.
Then about a half an hour later old Balsam, a successful retired show cow of Alan's, went right off the deep end. She began kicking her head, drooling great strings of saliva and began to swell up all over. She seemed to be having convulsions while standing up. We knew immediately that she was going into anaphylactic shock and needed epinephrine.

We didn’t have any. All we had was an Epipen that we keep on hand for Liz’s bee sting allergy. I called our favorite vet and asked if it would help. The dose was a fraction of what is needed for a cow the size of Balsam, but she said to give it anyhow and headed down our way.
I no more than got back to the barn with the medicine when the blacksmith arrived and needed help catching DG, (who despises men).

By the time I had him haltered Kris was already opening the gate herself, for which I humbly apologize.

A few injections later and poor Balsam was beginning to relax and stop swelling and I was beginning to catch my breath from all the running from the cow barn to the phone to the horse pasture and back.

Thanks to the quality of animal care that we take for granted from our veterinarian, Balsam will probably be all right. However, if she makes it through this episode and has her calf all right, she will certainly not get a shot of selenium next year. And I sure do hope things slow down for the rest of the day. I am too old for this.

Bulls walking through the hallway in the casino

East meets West

We visited a whole different world yesterday and to my surprise I liked it there. Liz took me to a Professional Bull Riding event at Turning Stone Casino up in Verona. I did not really want to go, as I am no big fan of bull riding, (I hate to see guys get hurt).

However, I can’t remember the last time I had that much fun. We got autographs from the riders, sat behind a woman who bred one of the bucking bulls, (who answered any questions we had about the bulls, contractors and contestants) and drank bad coffee in one of the cafes while we watched the people walk by. Cameras were permitted so I took tons of pictures, but the bulls were a lot faster than my shutter so most of them are just colorful blurs. Sometimes you can pick out a pair of horns or a cowboy hat though.

The contestants were amazingly well-mannered and pleasant guys, taking time to chat with each person in the autograph line and being incredibly courtly, (even the ones who were bleeding all over the table from the scrapes and cuts they got in the arena.) I might add that Guilherme Marchi is about as handsome as they make them, right along with having very charming manners.

I expected the casino to be embarrassingly glitzy and garish, but except right in the gambling areas it was hushed and elegant and very welcoming. We figure that farming is all the gamble a sensible soul needs so we didn’t even play a slot machine, but we liked the place and were impressed by the security.

Obviously with all that money changing hands a lot of guards and police are needed but they were unobtrusive, professional and actually quite nice. There was certainly no danger of getting lost in the gigantic place, as there was always someone around to ask how to get where you needed to go.

Liz drove, both ways, bought the bad coffee and fed me McDonald’s on the way home, as well as paying for my ticket for a seat in the second row, right in front of the chutes.
Thanks, kiddo, it was great! Let's do it again next year...and have Alan show me how to speed up the camera.

Turning Stone. ..fast bull, slow shutter.

Gael, the queen bean. 

Alchibah

I am trying my hand at a new kind of writing. So far it is a lot of fun.
Jeff at Alphecca is producing, with the help of all sorts of other folks, an online science fiction novel about forming a government and society on a new planet, in a new century.
Check it out at Colony Alchibah. I am sure you will have no problem figuring out which colonist I am playing.

Flower Drum Cows

The cows went out to pasture yesterday for the first time this year. When the old ones like Star, who at eleven is second oldest, Butternut, another senior citizen, and all the other veterans of many years at grass saw that the lower gate was open, they headed for the hills.

Literally.

It was not quite the same story with the two, three and a few of the four-year-old cows. They were much more intrigued by the fact that they could run for about a half a mile at a rip than by the new food source.

So run they did.

All day.

They ran up the hill. I looked out the window, not a black and white body to be seen. Five minutes later, with a thunder of hooves on packed earth, they were back, mooing at me, and staring as if asking what they were supposed to be doing.

Then they were gone again.

It was a noisy, busy day. Of course there was a bunch in the barnyard when the corn truck came so I had to hold gates with a big stick, since they thought all open gates were there for their entertainment.

An of course, when it came time to bring them in the barn for milking there was a conspicuous dearth of bovinity anywhere to be found.

The young ones were evidently still on the prowl though. As soon as they heard the grain auger they showed up at the door, wide-eyed and blowing.

However, the old ladies had to be escorted all the way down from the farthest hills. They knew a good thing when they tasted it. After a long day of vigorous grazing their backs were dotted with spent flowers from the box elders, wild plums and maples that are in bloom. They were quite contented and full of milk. I hope things are a little more peaceful today though.

No time to write

Accepted students' day, two weeks of college finals keeping the kitchen table under cover of a sprawl of books, cards and assorted study materials, the Participation in Government project wherein we must drive to and obtain signatures from every conceivable government agency for miles around, fence building, stone picking, herb planting, firewood, hay, calves and two beefers to go to the auction; it is just nuts around here.

It is hard to even remember slower days. The big conclusion from the PIG project is that there are way too damn many people working for the government in upstate New York and they all take LONG lunch hours. It was possible to find only about twenty percent of the many we searched for actually occupying their offices to get their John Hancocks. What with gas prices and how busy we are and will be, the teacher will have to make do with MY signature on a note detailing our search. I hope my kids never need to know where the jail and the welfare offices are anyhow. If they do, then I have been doing something way wrong all these years.

We are real proud of Liz who got an award for scholarship because of her GPA and being on the Dean's list all four semesters. Sadly she was too sick to attend the ceremony.

The bunny wrangler feeding a chickadee 

A good thing

My extremely handsome younger (not much younger) brother is doing a good thing for a good cause. If you have a minute check it out and maybe lend a hand if you are able. Thanks.

I am going to try to keep this on top for a bit, so read below for current post.

Beautiful Broadway