This is what happens....

when you try to take pictures of the guppies through the glass of the aquarium.

Tis the season

For all that winter is hurtling towards us like a frozen rocket (and yes I know that autumn doesn't officially start until tomorrow, but, trust me, winter is nipping at its heels like like a coyote on a white tail) this is a fabulous season. The air is so crisp and invigorating that it fair makes your skin tingle. When I have occasion to go outside to hang up laundry or fill the stove with wood, I don't want to come back inside. I think we are filled with the same instincts that set the Canada geese winging down the great flyways and the woodchucks and squirrels fattening up on alfalfa and corn. There is a constant, intense, urge to get something, anything at all, done and done right now. It is surely a restless time of year.

Every Friday it has become my task to drive Becky over to college and wait while she has three classes. You might think that three hours spent sitting in a car might come under the heading of cruel and unusual punishement, but it is nice in fact. I get to read all the papers in peace, and maybe a good book too, and the campus is tranquil and lovely. The girls both attend SUNY Cobleskill, an ag and tech school, which has liberal arts degree programs as well. It also has a renouned horticulture program, with much of the campus landscaped by students. Young maples are just now turning bronze and gold, flowers that are unfamiliar to me flourish in dozens of beds, and wonderful birds rustle in the shrubs.

In fact a small sparrow comes every week to torment me, hopping briskly back and forth along the curb under the front bumper. He is in constant motion and a frustrating puzzle. It is as if he were saying, "Nyah, nyah, bet you can't guess what I am."

He is right, I can't. Is he a chipping sparrow in fall plumage, or perhaps a juvenile? Probably not, although he has a dark russet cap reminiscent of a chipper's summer garb. Savannah sparrow? The notched tail and markings almost fit, but not quite. Something else altogether perhaps? I just don't know. He is always ruffled up as if recently injured and has a few upturned wing feathers that suggest the same. I even took the binoculars along this week to try to get a good look, but he is always on the move. It is really bugging me.

If we ever retire and can afford it, I would like to go to school at SUNY Cobleskill and study some of the horticulture and maybe fisheries and wildlife programs. They are just so darned interesting.

Fall

A coolish wind whistled through the goldenrod today. What heat comes upstairs from letting the hot water from the wood furnace circulate through the oil furnace plenum felt darned good. Everything is getting ready for the cold. Monarch butterflies like floating stained glass windows, teeter and tip on every breeze. There are a couple of early maples blazing like torches across the valley. I found the big wooly bear on the drive next to the compost bin. (Longest one I ever saw.) I don't think fall is going to wait for its official start this weekend. First frost won't be far behind so I am dragging house plants in a couple at a time.

The other night Alan saw quite a sight. A female coyote lay right in the middle of the farm road, in the second field behind the barn, nursing four pups. She barely bothered to get out of the way of the tractor, although her whelps hustled off into the corn. Wonder if she is rabid or sick with some other thing. Not normal to stay right there with a human around.

Another strange visitor is a bat, probably a little brown, that sleeps right downstairs in the barn, beside the vaccuum tank for the milk pump. What a weird spot to choose to sleep, as he (or she) is barely above head level, right out in the bright light, in the noisiest spot in the barn. It was so low tonight, clinging to the outside of a metal sheathed powerline, that if I had the camera with me, I could have made quite a close up. Of course it was over at the house. Naturally.

Wooly bear caterpillar

Question of the day. What does this guy's color pattern have to tell us about the weather we can look forward to here in the Northeast this winter? I am sure I don't know. Any ideas?
(If you can't see him well enough to tell, he was about the longest wooly bear I have ever seen with an exceptionally wide orange middle.)

Strange days

Sundae on the Farm 2006

Alan and I took a few pictures yesterday during the time when he wasn't carrying ice cream and I wasn't playing tour guide. As you can see a good time was had by all.

Another hazy morning

This picture of the water garden was taken a few weeks ago, but it still looks much the same. Hoping for some sunshine later for Sundae on the Farm.

19,000

Thank you to my 19,000th visitor, from Syracuse NY, referred by NYCO's blog at 8:06 PM today!

Horse auction

The boss dragged me across the river to a horse auction yesterday. I won't lie and say it wasn't fun, although I really didn't want to go. (Just lazy I guess). We came within about 25 bucks of bringing home a horse. (Whew, close one there.)

Anyhow, what an assortment of horses we saw. The migration of the Amish to the area brought a huge offering of draft horses of all ages and descriptions and there were a few local light horses and ponies too.

It was exciting. While we were standing behind the auctioneers' stand watching a pair of Halflingers being paraded at a high trot, I looked over at a commotion a few feet away and found myself staring right at a horse's belly button. Argghhh!!! A tall, flaxy chestnut mare was sunfishing right there among all the auction goers and horses waiting to be sold. Only the fact that a couple of big Amish boys were on her halter kept her from throwing herself right over backwards. We decided to go over by the grandstand until they got her through the ring. She was a hot one and I don't envy whoever has her in their stable today.

Just after she sold an Amish fellow brought in a little yellow colt. I was pretty sure it was a Halflinger, but it didn't have the refinement about the head you see in the hotblooded ones around here. It looked more like a miniature Belgian with a puffy little curly tail and thick, furry blonde ears. I liked it. It was very correct and seemed very quiet (could have been drugged of course.)

We watched a few more sell hoping to see what that one brought and then left. We were over in Fonda getting laundry detergent when the boss said, "I want to buy that colt."

O....ka-a-a-y.....we are about as broke as we could possibly be, milk prices are what they were in 1970, fuel prices aren't, and we already have two horses nobody does anything with. Still, the man works like a dog...two dogs maybe, and today is his 58th brithday. (Happy birthday, Ralph,we love you). So, I said, go get him, no more than four hundred bucks.

We rushed back to the sale where I sat in the car with a good Andrew Greeley book while he went in to see what he could do. He bid up to $250 on the little guy, then decided that was enough. A dealer took him home for $275.

Can't say I was really sorry. We knew nothing about the colt except that he was cute and had no real use for him. Still he was cute...... really, really cute. He had excellent feet and legs and was put together just right.


Horse prices ranged from ten dollars for a skeletal old thing that someone is hoping to rehabilitate, to near four thousand each for a pair of locally grown Paint showhorses. They must have sold a hundred head, and were still selling long after we left. You could hear the aucioneer's chant from here when the wind was right.

Finding my folks

When I first saw the picture below and a number of others that were given to my mom along with it, all was explained. I have always felt like a changeling child, dumped into my more conventional family from some weird place where girls like to wear boots and jeans and run around in the woods doing guy things. Heck, I have spent most of my five decades trying to outdo guys at what they do. I only got smart and let them take up the heavy lifting…and tractor driving, cow wrangling, ladder climbing, huntin’, fishin’ (wait a minute, I still fish and milk cows) and all that stuff a couple years ago. I haven’t owned a dress in over thirty years. (They damn well better bury me in blue jeans.)

Both my grandmas were lady-like. My mom went along with my dad whether he was digging rare minerals in the wilds of Canada or wearing the kilt and representing the clan at the games or carving or painting, lugging books into shows, or doing hands on archeology, but she was always a girly girl.
Not the kind of kid like I was, that brought in a dinner plate sized toad and dumped it in her lap when I was supposed to be on a date with that cute blond guy. Or had my big milk snake get loose at my graduation party and scare all the Lachmayer great aunts half to death. Or was the best, most un-tackle-able football player in our gang. Or played guitar in our garage band that graduated into a bar band that rocked any number of wild places, even one biker bar....where we played Born to be Wild for about three hours straight because we felt safer doing so. (After all some of our audience was out in the parking lot throwing some of their buddies off the roof onto parked cars...all in good fun, of course.)

I felt like a freak.

Until I saw the pictures. There were my great grandma, Carrie Montgomery, whom I never met, and a whole passel of great aunts, wearing rubber boots and men’s knickerbockers or baggy old men’s pants, camping along the beautiful Canesteo River. They held up massive bass they had hooked; they cooked rough in the woods. They rode in wonderful wooden boats and set up this delightfully inviting camp. (Don't be fooled by the dresses in the cooking picture. Others that are not posted show them dressed like female hunting guides and darned proud of it.)

When I saw the camp I wanted to just walk right into the picture. It said home like my own living room does.

Take a look at my mom’s blog, Tryon Books and More, and see my late great aunt Fanny. (That is her with the bass in the bottom picture. She is the one wearing knickers and close-cropped hair.) Fanny had a collie dog too!

How I wish I had known all my Grandpa Montgomery’s sisters-in-law and his mamma.

They were my kind of women. Or maybe I am theirs.

Comments

If you are a Blogger user stymied by the failure of Blogger Beta to allow you to comment, you can do so by signing in as "other". A pain in the neck I know, but I do love to hear from you.

Thanks
*sticky post, scroll down for new ones*

There is a story behind this picture

*Thanks to my wonderful mom for allowing me to use it. Story to follow, later when it isn't time to go to work. While you are waiting look closely, and think about just walking right into the picture......

The running of the wools

Yeah, yeah, I know, in Spain it's the running of the bulls, but we do things differently here at Northview Dairy.

See, I used to keep a half dozen or so of assorted sheep to introduce border collie puppies to the wonders of herding. Sheep stay together better than cows, don't kick as hard and are much easier to herd. However, Nick, our youngest, is seven now, so there has been no need for sheep for years. Still, there are two elderly hangers on around the place, Freckles and BS, her ancient dam. (And, yes, BS stands for just what you think it does.)

They are rarely any bother at all and we are quite fond of them. They live, by choice in the cow barn yard and the tool shed. They could duck under the fences and go wherever they wish, but they seem to like their chosen domain. However, there is one cardinal rule on a dairy farm. No sheep (or pigs, or horses, or chickens) in the cow barn. It is not only sensible practice, it is the law, enforced by the dreaded milk inspector.

This morning those naughty old ladies, who heretofore seemed to know better, strutted right into the stable behind the cows, ran up into the manger and began to fight the cows for their food. It was plumb ugly.

The boss was NOT happy. Beck and I quickly haltered them and led them across the bridge to the heifer yard and locked the gate. (I am grateful that they are halter broken, as dragging a reluctant sheep is nearly impossible.)


They were so miserable. You have not seen forlorn until you have viewed an elderly sheep deprived of its chosen hunting ground. They paced back and forth and blatted sadly with drooping ears. However, sheep have been sent to the auction for getting in the habit of coming in the cow barn. (There are any number of other buildings where their presence is acceptable.) We let them stew all day until we were done putting cows in for night milking. Beck went over and opened the gate.

Then it happened, the running of the wools. It is a good thing Beck was quick to get out of the way. Those two old ewes raced across the bridge and up the hill to the yard in front of the tool shed. There they fluffed their wooly coats and settled down to chew their cuds as if they had been there all along. I wonder if they will try to come in the barn tomorrow.

Still another sunrise

Carl DiFranco Tribute

Since September 11, 2001, when one of the planes that flew into the World Trade Center turned south just east of here over Amsterdam, it is hard not to notice the rattle of the kitchen windows when a jet passes by. I still stop to listen every single time I hear a plane. In the first days after the attacks it was estimated that more than five thousand people died in the assault. As bodies were counted and some of the missing found, authorities finally decided that only 2996 people actually died.

Only.

As if any single one of the souls who were lost that day, heroes and homebodies, doctors and stockbrokers, firemen, policemen, cooks and secretaries, could be encompassed by a word like only.

They were not only.

They were not some incomprehensible count of the dead and missing.

They were our friends and neighbors. People loved them. People wake still wake up today missing them and mourning them and go to bed each night bereft because they are gone.

One of those 2996 friends, neighbors and loved ones was 27 year-old Carl DiFranco.


This is to honor Carl on the fifth anniversary of the nightmare that took him from his loved ones. Raised in Huguenot, NY and a lifelong resident, Carl was assistant vice president of Marsh & McLennan Cos. Inc., located in the World Trade Center. He graduated from Monsignor Farrell High School and cum laude from St. Johns University. He liked to bowl, play tennis and jog. Married a short time before the attacks he was widowed within months, when heart problems while awaiting a transplant took his longtime sweetheart, Loren Bosso.

Carl must have been a wonderful person. He supported his sister through the birth of his niece, then helped through the difficult weeks that followed. The day he died his mother’s car had a flat tire, so like the decent son he was, he offered her the use of his truck. This made him a little later than usual, but not late enough to be saved. He also took his mother on “dates” and surprise trips. He pitched in willingly to help her with projects around the house and yard. In a New York Times article she said, “I keep thinking I hear him coming in the door, that I'll have a chance to help him get through it," (referring to the loss of his beloved wife.)

From what I read in many tributes from people who knew him, his kindness and caring for his mom reflected the way he always was. Friends remember him as someone who was brave and confident, kind, generous and quick with a joke. There are many poignant references to him by the people who knew him to be found all over the Internet. They make hard reading, but they put a face on what our nation lost that terrible day.

I hope this small tribute will help to remind us of Carl and the many other special people who were taken from us on September 11. I will try to think of him and the good life he lived when I hear planes overhead, instead of reflecting on the terror of those days.

***I would like to thank everyone whose written tributes at the time of the tragedy provided me with a glimpse into Carl’s life. I couldn’t know him, but I admire him just the same.
***The picture appears many places on the Internet, so I don’t know to whom to attribute it.
***I will cross post this to my other blogs in hopes that it will reach just a little further.

Foggy morning

*Cows crowding up to the barn door*

*Take the E-Train*

E-Train is a Golden-Oaks Andy calf, born last May out of my Citation R Maple daughter, England. I kept her up to show, but she didn't grow up either very big or very stunningly beautiful. She is a sweetie just the same. She runs with the milk cows and doesn't bother so she gets to stay down from the heifer pasture on the hill.

Bucky caught

I am sure anyone with in half a mile of a TV knows that Ralph "Bucky" Phillips was caught yesterday evening. I am pretty darned glad. Even though we are a goodly number of miles east of most of his hang outs, the guy stole cars like elephants eat peanuts. For five months he pretty much went wherever he wanted to, thanks to the shameless idiots who helped him hide.

I think we will keep up our new habit of locking the house while we milk anyhow. After the theft of our telephone pole a couple months ago, we obviously can't be in two places at once. Can't rely on the dogs for everything.

Apple Season

*Honeycrisps*

Just brought home a half bushel of the first apples of the year. We eat a lot of apples when they are in season...probably a couple of bushels or so. I usually like the later varieties best, but there are a couple of early kinds that are good too.

The very sweet man who owns the orchard around the corner from us lost his wife a few weeks ago and it was a sort of sad trip. First time we have seen him since that tragic event. I wish I was better at knowing what to say.

I think we will make some jelly with the Honeycrisps we bought and maybe take him up a jar.

Looking out my front door

Fonda Fair Butter Sculpture

By Betty Myers

Once a public record, always a public record

Or so says this story about consolidated animal feeding operations, or CAFO s in Idaho.
An Idaho Supreme Court decision there maintains that feedlot nutrient management plans that are not held in government hands are still accessible under freedom of information laws. This may mean that even if National Animal Identification databases are held in private hands activist groups can access them. This has been a big sticking point to implementation of the plan as no one wants every Tom, Dick and troublemaker in the country to know how many animals they own, where they are, how old they are etc.

Bucky hunt affects everyone

Last night we had to rescue the girls. The transmission on the truck started giving them trouble on the big hill on the way home from college. We told them to find a safe place to pull over to wait, and hurried to town for some transmission fluid. Then we hustled south to meet them. It was a roughly half an hour drive to where they were parked in the driveway of an old hay barn.
With some added fluid, Liz and the boss limped home with the little Dakota, while Beck and I followed in the van.

However, what happened while they waited made us even more aware of just how intense and frightening the hunt for fugitive Bucky Phillips is, for both civilians and police.
The girls had been waiting there by the road for only a few moments when a county sheriff pulled up behind them after giving them a thorough once over.


He exited his car, strapped on a bullet-resistant vest and loosened his side arm before approaching the pick up to ask if the girls needed assistance. They explained the circumstances, and were very, very glad to see him. Becky tried to screw up her nerve to ask him to stay with them while they waited for us, but she couldn’t quite get the words out.

I’ll bet he would have been glad to. At least I am sure he checked to see if they got away all right. There is a very noticeable police presence on the roads even here, miles from the search scene. I for one am glad to see them. I turn the news on a dozen times a day hoping to hear that he has been captured. We are keeping things very thoroughly buttoned up and locked and dogs are loose in the house when we are out. I wish this would end.

Steve Irwin killed

I couldn't believe it when I heard the news this morning. Even though he was famous for taking risks, it seemed as if he staged his stunts carefully enough to get away with them. At any rate he was a television icon, easily recognized and sometimes fun.


Here at Northview it was very popular to make teasing remarks in his instantly recognized Australian accent. Becky loved to sneak up on me and say, "Here we have an example of the very rare mommy bird, a very rare species, very rare," in awkward Aussie. This was followed by a sometimes much needed hug. I guess it won't be funny any more.


For all of the controversy over his methods, Irwin certainly made an effort to remove our fear of dangerous reptiles, handling them as if they were cute and cuddly. He was killed by a stingray barb to his chest.

Bossed around by little birds

*goldenrod on the long lawn*

Yesterday when I came in from chores the tame chickadees were ticked right off. You see when a friend gave the boss about a million old Holstein World magazines, not quite all of them made it upstairs to the spare bedroom. A hefty few languished on the back porch….smack dab on top of the bag of sunflower seeds. I was too lazy to move them (besides the principal of the thing) so the wild birds have been on their own.

However, the little black and white birds had had enough deprivation. They clung, up side down, to the lower branches of the honey locust and cursed me mightily in chickadeese.

Dee! Dee, dee, dee!
Peep, dee, dee…Peep! Dee!

I had no trouble translating. So I hoisted those smelly old magazines in their battered, crumbling boxes off the birdseed bag, along with Alan’s blue tackle box and spinning rod, (which have been there since camp). The feeders were so starkly devoid of sustenance that I took them down and hauled them inside to fill them. As soon as I hung them back up chickadees lined up on the clothesline still chirping impatiently for their turn at the seed spouts.

It was well worth it. This morning a sassy male cardinal did a hummingbird act in front of the plastic tube feeder trying to extract a seed. Cardinals can’t hover for beans, but it was fun to watch him try. Half a dozen chickadees, a veritable Christmas tree of goldfinches, some downy woodpeckers and titmice joined a pair of white-breasted nuthatches eating seeds at the feeders and drinking from the pond.

Then a small brown bird slipped unobtrusively down the bark of the honey locust to pick around in the rocks of the herb garden. It searched each flowerpot and walking onion looking earnestly for something to eat. It was a house wren, probably the one that spent the summer ferociously defending the bridge to the barn. It seemed out of place among all the tame seed feeders, but I enjoyed watching it as it jerked its way around the pond eating whatever it found there.

Blogger Beta ain't Mo Betta

To all my friends who would like to comment here, but can't, or are are wondering why I haven't commented on their blogs....it wasn't me.....Blogger Beta strikes again.

So FC I am sorry about that. And Karen, nobody should have days like that, although I guess everybody that has animals does now and then. At least here at Northview the rattlesnakes are all over on the mountain on the other side of the river. Big Nose Mountain that is.

(See below)

The mountains here sure aren't the Rockies, but Big Nose is a famous landmark here. The picture isn't the greatest as it was taken from the car on the other side of the river (safe from those infamous snakes.)

Happy 55th Anniversary Mom and Dad

I am so very glad that you met on that blind date so many years ago. Thanks for the good times and for all you taught me!
Love,
Dotter

Ralph "Bucky" Phillips

The low life jail break artist who lately has become the topic of many supportive blog posts from pals and family members is now alleged to have shot two New York State troopers who worked out of our local Troop G at Loudenville. It has been clear from comments on other New York State blogs that people have been laughing at his ability to escape the police and helping him stay on the run.

The police officers were shot from ambush about forty miles from Buffalo...in the back, according to news stories, by armor piercing bullets.


One radio station even started a sort of a joke reward system, making fun of police, and offering such enticements to turning the slime ball in as car window darkening and custom birth announcements. Somehow this has lost its humor as 32-year-old Joseph Longobardo and 38-year-old Donald Baker lie in critical condition, fighting for their lives. I hope they catch him now and I really don't care if they aren't very nice to him.

Wow

You can't imagine how happy I am to find Northview Diary back where it belongs. Last night it went bye-bye and was replaced by an error message. I was surprised to realize how much it means to me to write here, to "talk" to my friends and put my scattered thoughts in order. Due to lack of space and general personal disorganization many of my photos are only here. Not that they are all that spectacular, but I sure would hate to lose them. Ouch.

Sunset today

Barn Fire

This story is about the farm of one of Liz's classmates at college. So terribly sad. Our hearts go out to them.

Pale touch-me-not

Flower

Seed pods

Not so itsy bitsy spider

Blogger beta

Northview Diary was switched to the new beta version of Blogger yesterday. It took most of the day to occur. I find the end result ugly. Dull colors in the template, much loss of photo clarity.

Am I alone in not getting quite as crisp a view?

Committee

Big discussion going on in the kitchen. Bayberry is in season. What bull, what bull? Everyone has an idea and a reason why it is the right one. Rain, Kingpin, Citation R Maple, young sire, proven bull, golden oldie, they can hear the shouting in Fonda. I am staying out of it. I have cows of my own that I need to plan matings for.

I lost one of my favorites this week, sweet little Erin from my Trixy family (pushed in a ditch by other cows, and suffocated from the weight of her stomachs when she couldn't get back up. She was fine at night milking and gone when we went out in the morning. I was sick. Really sick. I cried over a cow for Pete's sake.)

On the other hand, England, from the same family, gave me a pretty heifer calf, which I named "Encore" because she looks a lot like old Dixie. Hope I can raise her. It is heartbreaking to lose a favorite cow and exciting to get a promsing calf. The latter keeps us going, the former makes me at least want to quit. It is one thing when an animal gets sick, but to lose a healthy vibrant young one for such a stupid reason. Bah. Cows are not the sweet little placid things that a lot of people think they are. They fight like crazy, all the time, because they have a pecking order just like chickens. However, they are a hell of a lot bigger and more dangerous than chickens when they get to squabbling over who's the boss. It gets me everytime I walk by the empty stall with the grain uneaten. Farming can be a bitch.

Close encounters of the vulpine kind

I was on my merry way to the barn this morning, juggling a cup of coffee with cinnamon and whipped cream in one hand and my bright yellow and red Scottish lion umbrella in the other when I got a big surprise. A large cat seemed to be slipping between the two green tubular metal gates that keep the cows in the cow yard. I could see immediately that it was not one of our cats, because although it was the right shade of grey, but it was orangy brown too.

It neatly threaded its way between the gates, obviously a habit, as it moved so neatly, and ran straight to my feet....whereupon I darned near tossed the coffee one way and the brolly the other.

Because it was no cat, it was a grey fox. It was as startled as I was and did a 90 degree turn, claws scrabbling in the stony path and vanished into the tall weeds of the heifer barnyard. The encounter didn't last ten seconds, but the fox was less than ten feet from me when I realized that he wasn't a cat and he realized that I wasn't ....well, whatever a fox might mistake a middle-aged lady with a gaudy umbrella and a mug of java for. Perhaps a minivan with a bad paint job or something.

I know the goosebumps on my arms didn't subside until halfway through milking. I also now know that the rustling bushes along the walkway that we have been blaming on a woodchuck might just be something much more interesting.

The sun came up in a ball of fire

No Nais.org hits the big time

Congratulations to the anti-National Animal Identification Program website, NoNAIS.org on attracting nationwide mainstream attention to the grassroots movement against this intrusive and expensive program. (I have had a link in the sidebar to the site for quite a while now.)

NoNAIS, run by Walter Jeffries of Sugar Mountain Farm, has done such an excellent job of getting the word out on the problems inherent in the proposed program that his site was mentioned and linked to by Drovers Alert, a mainstream beef producers newsletter, sent out by the well-known magazine Drovers.

It is impressive for a small farmer to do such a fantastic job of getting his ideas out into the public that he manages to reach so many people within and outside the industry. There are a lot of farmers and ranchers very much opposed to national ID, but not too many of them are able to get their opinions out there.

Look mom, no cows

These dark August mornings the cows don’t come down from pasture. Milking time arrives and the barnyard is empty. No big spotted bodies or shiny little horse-chestnut-brown ones either. Not a bovine to be seen.

No Mandy, no Junie, no Heather or Hattie.
Not Zinnie nor Eland nor Bailey or Ricky. To the top of the silo to the ridge of the barn…now dash away, dash away…no wait a minute, it is too early in the year for that.

What are we to do? Milk late and get nothing done during the day, when we are already far behind from the bad weather in June and July? Or stagger up the hill to get them, in the dark, dodging thistles and late wandering skunks? Which if you take a cow dog along are like a mutt magnet, the first thing the hound comes upon to the benfit of neither dog nor stinker. (Maybe the dogs are just dedicated to herding anything black and white, I don’t know.)

I thought of outfitting the cows with their own personal flashlights. It would take a Rube Goldberg arrangement of batteries and timers to keep them on the cow and turn them on and off at the right times. Perhaps they could be fitted around their necks with collars or harnesses and set to turn on at five AM and off at six thirty. And aimed straight down the cow path (someting of a challenge if you take into consideration the characteristics of cow paths) to light their way home.

With an arrangement like that you would think that they could find their way to the barn before noon anyhow. It would be a big help.

Think it would work?

Garlic chives and lobelia

Another shot across the bow

Here is an article on the practices of a high profile "organic" company.

And below is a quote to give you an idea of just how dedicated to their cows' welfare they seem to be.

"If grazing was going to interfere with higher production, they didn't want to graze," he said."


And another from the farm veterinarian,

"They don't appear to have an interest in grazing other than window-dressing and lip service."

So spend triple to buy milk from Horizon and get what you pay for....or maybe not.

Thanks for My Cattle.com for the quotes. My cattle has a long list of useful articles most of the time if you get a chance to check it out.

There be moonflowers

And the sago palms are putting out new leaves; must be summer in the northern tropics.....upstate New York

Zucchini

Bringing you a brief respite from all that nonsense about showing cows and giving you a glimpse of what really keeps everyone happy when all is said and done.

Frieland Z Mandolin Rain

This 3-yr. old is a daughter of a homebred cow. The dam was sired by a bull we owned when Liz was a baby, Foxfield-Doreigh NB Rex, a son of Whittier Farms Ned Boy. Mandys' sire was Ocean-view Zenith-TW, a bull which Liz chose and used extensively as a young sire. Here are some photos of his other daughters. Check out the one of Ocean-view Zenith Cora. I always though she and Mandy were marked a lot alike down to the little spots on their (opposite) shoulders.

Show day

Alan, the boss and Liz with a group for junior exhibitor's herd

Show day at the fair was surely eventful. On the 32 mile drive over we saw a police SUV backed into the bushes on a blind curve on Duanesburg Churches Road. Locals know that as a twisty, windey, wild thing of a goat path that makes a shortcut through some pretty untamed country on the way to Altamont.

We wondered why he was there and talked about it as we hustled to get over to hold halters for Liz. It is just not a place where you see policemen.

Then in the post 10PM darkness as we convoyed home after the show we came upon a whole school of police cars, light bars flashing, lighting the roadside like a garish noonday. The policemen were emptying out a vehicle they had surrounded, dumping what looked a lot like the product of an illegal green crop out on the ground beside it.

The kids had seen hitchhikers in that spot every day on their way over to take care of the cows. The folks in question were dressed like hippies (no shame there, I still have my beads), but they had a hinky feel about them. The kids mentioned them and speculated about what they could possibly be doing on a rural farm road, when we were discussing their fairground adventures after they got home.

Anyhow, those exact people were standing beside the captive vehicle. The news may be interesting today I think.

The show results were strange. We never expect to win anything with our Jerseys, as there is a nationally known and ranked herd at our fair. Kind of hard to beat. This year Liz won reserve senior champion and reserve champion with Heather her five-year-old Jersey cow. We were simply stunned. Of course we bought her from that well-known herd as a calf, but still....

On the other hand we generally do quite well with our homebred Holsteins. This year we only had one first (I think) and lots of seconds and lower placings. Still I was pleased with how our cows look. We like them lean and dairy. Some years that is what the judge is looking for and we do very well, and some years we get a judge who likes a big, powerful, less-dairy cow and we don't fare as well. I am thinking though, that although Mandy hasn't won her class since she was a calf and got junior champion every year, she will mature into a more competitive cow in a few years (if we can keep her going that is). It is those extremely dairy cows that mature into lastingly good looking animals I think. Certainly Frieland LV Dixie, our all time biggest show winner never earned a blue ribbon until she was an aged cow, but she was rarely beaten after that. She even won senior and Holstein champion twice as an old lady. We can hope for the same for Mandy.

At least there was no glueing, taping, blocking or icing done to our string. Those of you who show will know what I mean. I would rather lose with an honest cow than win the way some seem to need to. I hate to see that stuff at a small county show and shame on the folks who need to cheat to win. It is one thing to stick a little glue on a cow to stop her from leaking out all her milk (not something we do either) and quite another to glue the teats to the bag so they hang straight. Ugly.

Where the wild things are

We have been doing our chores at odd hours because of the fair. Because of this we are seeing animals that are probably always there, but not out where we would normally see them.


Monday Liz went out at the first flush of foggy dawn to bring the cows to the barn. They come down on their own if we wait until five thirty or so, but any earlier than that and they have to be
fetched.


She had just turned a corner in the lane when she saw something mysterious in the misty semi-darkness ahead of her. Then the shadowy lump in the path started to move. It was a tiny red fox kit, tussling with a weasel nearly as long as it was. It was tossing its prey (probably provided by an indulgent mother) into the air and catching it again, totally absorbed in its play.
All at once it saw Liz and paused to peer at her feet. Evidently because of fog and shrubbery it couldn’t see her torso.

It stared in puzzlement until she spoke, realized that she was probably dangerous, and grabbed the weasel to vanish into the haze.

A few minutes later she was chasing cows off the feeder wagon when a mother killdeer and chicks came out from under it. Mama fanned her wings over her stilty babies and shrieked in dismay at the early morning intrusion. If you have ever had an up close view of baby killdeer, they look as if they were designed by Disney, with an excess of cute that just won’t quit. Liz sure had a good story to tell when she got down to the barn.

Then Alan was chopping hay last night and saw a whole herd of deer in the next field. A moment later a magnificent buck, which he said already had antlers as long as his arm, came out to stand right on the hay and watch him. There have been a number of deer around this summer after a total absence all winter, but nothing like this big animal. There are often big bucks around in late summer and early fall, but as soon as hunting season arrives they vanish and are not seen for months. They don’t get large enough to grow those big racks by being dumb.

Anyhow, everyone has put in crazy hours this week, which is why there will be no Farm Side on Friday. I sat down to write it, with a bunch of interesting research on the origins of fairs at hand, and darned near fell asleep with my head on the keyboard. Still sometimes it is worth working extra hours when the payment comes in moments like these though.

Our string

Mandolin Rain using Junie as a foot rest

Things to see at the fair

Little piggies. Two of these will be coming home with us not too long after the fair.

The boss bringing in straw

Fair time

This is our farm sign on our fair display.

It was cool and pink and hazy this morning....

I love mornings like this....

Whitewash revisited or a lot of bull in the afternoon

Well really it was a steer, but he sure acted like a bull. We whitewashed yesterday so I went over to the barn about four PM to start undoing everything we did to get ready. I was pulling plastic off the bulletin boards when I noticed something amiss. The great big shorthorn/Holstein steer we are raising for beef was not in his stall. Instead he was up in the manger fighting with a yearling heifer, Chicago, who was still tied in her stall.


This guy is a brute, may 13 or 14 hundred pounds of nasty-as-a-bull. (We women have often wondered if the guys missed something of key importance when they castrated him, although they swear they didn't). Anyhow, he doesn't like me and has always lunged at me whenever I walk past his stall.


Still I couldn't just leave him fighting with that poor little heifer.
So I picked up a piece of pipe that had missed being put away and walked over to that side of the barn. I was careful to stay close to things I could hide behind.


Good thing too. The first thing he did when he saw me was charge right at me. I jumped into the baby calf tie up and swung the gate closed in his face. He ran right up to it and threw his head over snorting at me. I gave him a pop on the nose with the pipe, which backed him off a foot or so. A second pop sent him back to fight with poor Chicago some more.


As soon as he was otherwise occupied I slipped through the stalls, where he would have to wind around them to get to me and ducked out of the barn.

I hustled to the house to send Becky after the men, who were baling, and Liz and I went back to the scene of the crime.
There is no stopping that girl.
"I am not afraid of him!" she declared. Chicago is one of her babies and she wasn't about to let her be abused by a big pile of beef.

I took my hickory stick; she took the pipe. She opened the gate to an empty pen; I tiptoed up behind all the fans, which were stored under a canvas for the whitewashing. That gave me something to duck behind if he charged. I hollered and whacked him on the rump with my stick. She stood by the gate and threatened him with the pipe. In less time than it takes to tell it that stinker was locked up in the pen. However we had to let Magma, our red calf, loose to run around the barn because she was tied to the gate. She had a fine time thundering up and down the mangers and walkways and running underneath him and under Chicago while we were working.


The men were as far back on the farm as they could be, about a mile away, and Becky couldn't find them, so we had the barn all cleaned up by the time they came down. It took at least an hour to rope the darned "steer", (which I still think is a bull), get the nose leads and a halter on him and walk him back to his stall. With three people holding the ropes.


I think Lizzie and I ought to get the farm-girls get-it-done award or something. And I think it is time to call the processing plant real soon.

Kashette, up to no good.

Getting ready for the fair

Christopher Porco Guilty

I am stunned by the verdict. Although I have been convinced all along that he probably was, in fact, guilty, the evidence that the press released didn't seem much more than circumstantial. I suspect we will see an appeal, and I can't really blame them if they seek one.

At any rate, the six hours of deliberation seem short for the situation, but then I wasn't sitting there in the jury box. Still...

Good post at NYCO blog

NYCO has a good post today on the traumatic stress the June flooding caused area folks.
The boss noticed early on that there were a lot of untimely-seeming deaths in the towns worst hit by the waters. Guess he wasn't the only one.

Oh, and Assemblyman Tonko is asking that the rumors about the dams not being opened fast enough be investigated too. We first heard these stories at a local business that was destroyed almost entirely. Only a limited amount of credence was given to the rumor at that time, but now, hmmmm.

Japanese enjoy US beef

According to the Cattle Network three Costco stores there sold out of American beef products as soon as they were available. Five metric tons fairly flew off the shelves the very first day the beef was available. Beef prices are already trending upward, probably on the strength of that story and the shortage of feed that is fast developing across the nation. Now if the blankety, blanking fools in the processing plants can keep banned material out of the meat and the USDA can do their job to make sure of that, maybe we can enjoy the open market for a bit.

Review milk

Thanks to Kim Komando I discovered today that Amazon.com is selling milk, and, since folks like reviewing books and records, they are doing the same for nature's most perfect food. Read all about it here.

Sunday's prize catch

Just outside the kitchen door...

Good morning sunshine

One year

I missed it! I missed the anniversary of my first year of blogging. It was yesterday. I was busy taking my son fishing and such. (They weren't biting so we brought home some crayfish for the fish tanks and lots of pretty rocks instead.)

Oh, well, I would like to thank all the people who have stopped by to read and/or comment over the past year. Without you this would all be pointless.

Went to Mill Point on Schoharie Creek this morning. Good time had by all

Susan Butcher

How could it be? How could Susan Butcher, athlete enough to have won the Iditarod four times, probably one of the toughest people in the world, be gone? Susan was one of my greatest heroines for as long as I have followed and loved sled dog racing. Her name was synonymous with everything that the Iditarod represented. You know, bravery, determination, heart and a spirit of adventure.

She died from complications from a bone marrow transplant undertaken to combat polycythemia vera, a rare disease of bone marrow and blood..

Born in 1954, she had two young daughters and was married to lawyer and fellow musher, David Monson.


You can leave a message for Susan's family and friends at theStatus.
(Type in butcher for the ID and butcher1 for the password.)
Trail Breaker Kennels
Susan's bio

Don't touch bats!

950 or so Girl Scouts may have to be given preventative shots for rabies, because a counselor at their camp caught wild bats and encouraged them to touch them. There were also bats roosting in the girls' sleeping shelters.

We used to have problems with bats coming indoors down at the old house until we finally cemented up the right hole in the chimney. Becky woke up with one on her pillow one night and we hauled her and the bat straight to the hospital to be checked out. She was unmarked and the emergency room doctor actually asked if he could keep the bat (which Ralph knocked out with a spray can of ether used to start tractors, and put in a jar). The doc wanted to put the bat in his new bat house! Only 1% of the bat population has rabies, but you can't be too careful with that terrible disease. I am terrified of it. There are wild cats around here and they just scare the life out of me because we are in a rabies area.

Reminiscing and Rustlers

You never know what will make a difference, what will stick, what will stay with your kids forever (which is scary as heck!). This morning I was at the sink talking to Becky while trying to get the smell of filamentatious algae off my hands, after cleaning some out of the garden pond. (I originally went outdoors to chase Comedy away. She was trying to scoop out some lovely guppies and goldfish for a mid-morning snack. The empty OFF! can I tossed her way served its purpose, but I somehow got pulled into the great time-sucking black hole known as puttering-in-the-yard. I wound up dragging a half a mile or so of stinky green gunk out of the pond and mulching under the hostas with it. You could tell what I had been up to from six feet back.)

Colin Raye’s song, I Think About You came on the country radio station. Beck, who is now 18, said that she had always liked it and would always remember it in a special way. She reminded me, “You sang it to me once. We were outside Grandma’s house and it came on the car radio. I was sitting in the front and you leaned over and sang it to me. I remember because I was eight years old.”
(You have probably heard the line, “I think about you, eight years old, big blue eyes and a heart of gold. When I look at this world, I think about you.....”)

I think I like the song because it has always reminded me of Beck, who does have that sort of generous, giving and caring heart (which she hides under the exterior of a teenaged curmudgeon.)
Imagine remembering something like that for ten years and liking it because I sang it to her (if you have heard me sing, you will know how unlikely THAT is.)


I walked away from the sink, still stinking of rank green pond weed, but with a nice, warm feeling to carry around for a while…at least until the next time we go to war over prepping cows or feeding the pony or something.


*On another topic entirely, check out this story on modern day rustlers. These cows didn’t need a national animal identification system to be traced. All that was required here was a vigilant owner and some eager policemen.

Morning through the moonflower vine

Goodbye to the Catskill Game Farm

What a shock this morning to hear that the Catskill Game Farm is closing. It has been there simply forever, as long as I can remember (since 1933 in fact). It was a popular school field trip, a fun and educational, if exhausting, day out with the little ones and a well-known breeder of many threatened species. (The facility won awards for many of its breeding programs, including Przewalski horses.)

The farm features over 2000 animals from dozens of species. For some reason the Galapagos tortoises and the rhinos always stick in memory, as well as seeing the long blackberry colored tongues of the giraffes coil towards your hand when they reached for grain.

They say declining attendance in large part blamed on several lousy summers in succession is to blame. Insurance costs are another factor.
Although I have been there so many times that the trips and animals rather blur together it will be sorely missed. Even local farmers often sold lambs to the owners to stock the petting zoo.

There will be an auction this fall to disperse the animals and equipment. From Addax to Zebu by way of Kulan and Kudu, that will be quite an event.

We are thinking that we will take the kids and the camera back this summer for just one more visit before it all falls under the hammer.

Poor baby

Twisted Robin

I wouldn't have seen this if I hadn't been cleaning the filter on the garden pond this morning after milking. However, I walked over to hang the used filter on the fence so I could hose it off and there it was. I hurried over to the door to ask Becky for the camera and rushed outside for a close up.


I thought it would be really cute.

Then I saw the beak. Poor twisted little bird. The parents are still caring for it, and soon arrived to beep and boop at me in protest at my presence in their territory. I don't imagine it will survive long after they stop. Comedy was hanging around too, looking for handouts. She is a terrific hunter but I didn't chase her away. I suppose that being eaten by a barn cat would be a kinder fate for the poor thing than starvation.

Buying a new car

Actually that is kind of a misleading title. I was really just doing research online in order to do a better job of buying a USED vehicle for our second daughter to drive back and forth to college.

Anyhow, I stumbled across this article and was stunned and kind of shamed to see how easily we fell for some of the ploys used by car salesmen to suck in innocent buyers. (We drive a beat up old '94 minivan that we bought new from a dealer who used several of the tricks described in this story to get a few extra bucks from us.)

I will know better next time. You can too if you take time to read this admittedly long article.

Creamsicle

BlackJack....Northview's other equine

New "face" in the blogroll

I added a new link to the Blogroll this morning to a colorful and interesting blog from Central New York. The author stumbled on Northview via flood photos and generously gave me a link way back last month.

I am returning the compliment, (albeit kind of late in the day) especially since just their Blogroll alone is worth a visit. Anyhow, welcome to NYCO's Blog.

*Just a note: If you are an upstate New Yorker, plan on spending a while if you click. NYCO links to dozens of pertinent stories that you will find yourself wanting to know more about.

This is Frieland Andre Magma, daughter of Frieland LF Volcano. We finally got a red one!

Still more global warming

A Coyote at the Dog Show wrote an interesting post linking to this story last Sunday. Seems global warming is affecting Mars a lot like it is reported to be doing here on our comfy little home on the third rock.

"In fact, Mars may be in the midst of a period of profound climate change, according to a new study that shows dramatic year-to-year losses of snow at the south pole." Says Space.com (Sound familiar?)

Okay, our ice caps are melting; their ice caps are melting. If we accept that ours are wasting away to mere snow cones of their former selves because we drive to the mall too often, should we assume that Ray Walston and Bill Bixby found themselves somewhere unexpected when they shuffled off this mortal coil? And that now that the front yard is red and doesn't need much mowing they bought a new SUV and are spending their time 4-wheeling among the red rock.....polluting the atmosphere in wanton disregard of what they are doing to their climate? Maybe they need a treaty?

Or should we rethink our arrogant assumption that we are turning up the boiler here on earth and instead look to the head honcho out there in space for answers to hypothetical climate change?

Of course, if we think we have strange weather these days, up there on the red planet it snows dry ice. Imagine talking about THAT kind of weather around the water cooler.

The Same Old Same Old

Those who are longtime readers here at Northview Diary will remember how long and hard we agonized over the hostile takeover of the cooperative we had long shipped our milk to by a financially struggling cooperative in New England.

We felt that we were being sold a bill of goods by the new owners, so we called for our contract and moved to another company. It doesn’t pay as well as Allied Federated Cooperatives did and we miss having good people working hard to negotiate favorable prices for us. However, this news story from the Burlington Free Press, made us awfully glad we changed. Seems Agri Mark, the folks who shut down our old cooperative are in big financial trouble and they are taking the cost of their problems right out of their members hides.

We may be experiencing record low milk prices right now, but at least nobody is dipping into our check book to pay for what looks an awful lot to me like bad management. A number of farmers are leaving as soon as their contracts are up.


We are glad we never joined.


Still it will be a terrible shame if Agri Mark goes under. They are one of the few independents left in the region. The demise of each small coop results in a worse monopoly on processing and marketing dairy products than already exists and this does not mean good prices for producers.

Dang dog

Sorry to have been AWOL since Sunday. It was entirely invountary. Alan's delightful border collie, Nick, decided that day to run over to the window to bark at Lizzie's horse, which she was allowing to graze on the lawn. He used the phone jack for a handy dandy brace so he could see better. It was not up to the strain of a forty-pound hound bouncing up and down on it, all the while screaming epithets and bellowing death threats at the intruder on his own personal, carefully marked, lush green (thanks to an overkill of rain) grass. A teeny, tiny plastic piece parted company from its shell and the whole shebang gave up the ghost. What with the flooding and all, repairing dog damaged wall jacks is a low priority I guess and it didn't get fixed until tonight. I have to give the phone guys credit though; they were still working tonight at 6 PM.

After almost three days without phone or Internet one thing has been proven.

I am addicted. Relentless restlessness, irritability, crankiness, crabbiness, it was like being without coffee. Worse even. It is going to take my family weeks to recover I fear.

Sorry Ralph, Liz and Becky, you'll have to blame Alan. I told him to put the darned dog out...about five minutes before the phone jack joined the Hesperus on the reef of Norman's woe.

Home again

Came home from camp today, with the car stalling at every intersection and rain pouring down. Found the river on the rise with rushing black water pouring under the bridge. There are flood warnings out for both our “home” counties and it is looking pretty bad.

Again.

We had a great week though. The lake was as warm as a bathtub and yet refreshing in the heat. Fishing was poor, but we caught lots of trees and stumps as well as some rocks and a good part of the State of NY.

Alan took up fly fishing, which yielded the best catches of the week, including a big fallfish and a number of small-mouthed bass.


I don’t need to catch fish to be happy. A good book and a pair of binoculars….and my camera of course, and I have every thing I require for contentment. A fresh cup of coffee bumps it up to total luxury. Took many pictures and "note blogged" since a little red notebook is much more portable than a desktop. It was all good.

Wish it was just beginning.

Before the storm

Beggers

Solid comfort