As requested

*Shagbark Hickories behind Seven County Hill*

Finally made it up to the top of the farm today to get the overview photos of the farm requested by mrs. mecomber and my dear friend, numberwise, (in Vitamin Sea's meme the other day). Becky and I took Mike and walked a good part of the way, but every now and then Alan picked us up with the truck, as he was working getting wood in.

The rides were most welcome. Seven County Hill is named that because you can supposedly see seven counties from there. You can certainly see quite a distance, although there is no telling what counties you are looking at. We saw many amazing and wonderful things, including a three legged frog, turkeys, vultures, and a marsh hawk.

*The three-legged frog*

*Looking out over the valley from the 30-acre lot*

Seven-County Hill

*Click for a better look*

*The villages of Fultonville and Fonda can be seen from here*

Here how the world looks from the top of Northview's tallest hill. On a day like this it is cold and windy up there, but it sure is pretty. We just missed a spell when the sun was playing shadow games with the clouds, making brilliant patterns of dark and blazing colors from the maples and poplars. When it is sunny and clear you can see several more sets of mountains behind the ones in the background.

However, by the time we got home from Bellinger's Orchard with some nice Ida Red apples, it was mostly all grey and threatening, so the pictures aren't all they might be. Oh, well, Alan and I had a great time poking around on the back of the big hill, which drops off in a very steep bank to a few fields in the back of the farm.

Pumpkin Tide

A lovely picture of a St. Augustine, Florida church, surrounded by burnished gold-orange pumpkins, was posted recently by Florida Cracker on his wonderful blog, Pure Florida. It reminded me abruptly of one of my favorite poems. I had pretty much forgotten it, since it was something I liked way back in college when being seen reading counter culture poetry was quite the thing to do. Still, the instant I saw all those pumpkins lined up in front of that beautiful edifice it jumped into my mind as swiftly as a leaping whitetail.

Here it is just in time for the Halloween season.

The Pumpkin Tide
I saw thousands of pumpkins last night
come floating in on the tide,
bumping up against the rocks and
rolling up on the beaches;
it must be Halloween in the sea.

from The Pill Versus The Springhill Mine Disaster 1968 by Richard Brautigan

What's up at the paper anyhow?

I dunno. A few weeks ago the Farm Side started showing up on Saturday some weeks when Friday is its normal day to run in the Recorder. That seemed to happen when I got real close to my noon Wednesday deadline before sending it, so I figured that I was not getting it done in time to make the cut for Friday. Then they started leaving off the tag line about me being a dairy farmer and regular columnist and all. I didn't pay much attention; this is a busy time of year and it just wasn't a big deal. However, a good friend was bugged by it and called the new publisher and complained. She phoned me after the fact and said he was very nice and told her he was sorry about it. I chuckled and thanked her for noticing and caring enough to take the time to bring the situation to the man's attention. As long as they kept paying me, I wasn't going to get too excited about it.


Then this week they printed it with no byline, no grinning mug shot, no tag line, no nothing, not even the name of the column. Come on now, how is anybody even gonna know what they are reading, except that at least it was in its usual spot on the side of the Friday editorial page? (If you actually want to see it you will have to spend a buck as the paper has a pay per view website.) There have been quite a few changes at the Recorder lately and maybe that is what is going on here. The masthead is bigger and has a nice drawing of a windmill. In fact the whole look of the newspaper has changed, mostly for the better I think. Still, I hate to see that look change so much that I am no longer part of it.

Are they trying to irritate me enough to drive me to full time blogging? Sort of a death by a thousand (paper) cuts type of thing? Do they hate me? Was it an oversight? Should I cry and pound my heels on the floor?

Or should I laugh and wait to see what they do next week? Yeah, that works for me. That's just what I'll do.

Doggone it!

I mostly mind my own business where other people's dogs are concerned. However, yesterday I was just plain perturbed by a doggy situation the girls and I experienced. We were at Wally World buying an elbow brace. I blew my right one a couple of weeks ago struggling with a barn door that had come off its rollers and it has been getting progressively worse. I parked, as is my habit, in the rows in back down near the swamp. There was no one else around.

However, when we returned to the van there was a gigantic blue truck parked about as close as it could get to our driver's side door.
And in the open back was a beautiful blond Doberman.

Loose.

Completely unrestrained.


She was a gorgeous dog, although there were several rather serious scars marring her lovely golden coat. She wore nothing but a choke collar (something I would certainly never leave on an unattended dog).

I felt strongly uncomfortable, despite having no particular fear of Dobies. (Some of the nicest dogs I have ever met have been Dobermans). However, I have worked with dogs all my life, and this dog gave me the willies. Determined not to show breed prejudice, I unloaded my stuff into the back of the car (including an extra-large bag of dog food), all the while keeping half an eye on the occupant of the next vehicle, who was about five feet from my face. The girls and I kept up a stream of nervous chatter about the dog and her presumed-to-be-idiot owner while we worked. When we done loading our things I turned to walk to the driver's door. The dog came quickly toward me and leaned out of the truck bed with an "I mean business" growl rumbling in her throat. She bared her teeth right at my face.
Needless to say I went around to the other side of the car to get in.

A few seconds later a man jumped into the truck and drove away with the dog still loose in the back. We marveled at his unconcern.


What kind of dimwit leaves a dog loose in the back of a truck in a busy parking lot anyhow?
And what kind of malicious fool does it with an aggressive dog? It certainly isn't fair to the dog, no matter how well trained and it isn't too safe for passersby either. I sure hope I don't meet him again.

Yummy

A new product has just hit the shelves in the Middle East. Its release was timed in order to coincide with the Holy Month of Ramadan. When this Camelicious substance reaches our shores will it sweep Coke and Pepsi aside in its wake? Will Mountain Dew be replaced by Desert Dew Drops? Only time will tell, but date-flavored camel milk may be the Yoohoo of the future.

Evergreen Cemetery

*Fonda, NY*

Catskill Game Farm closes

This is the last weekend for the big attraction and naturally the animal rights idiots are there protesting. The place has an incredible record of breeding endangered species in captivity, helping to assure their continued existence on earth, but there is always somebody who has to stand on the sidelines whining and waving signs. And of course they get the headlines and camera time.


I wish we could get away to go to the auction. Although I have no interest in owning an addax, a yak or a rhinoceros, they have peafowl, guinea hens and exotic chickens. I could go for something like that maybe. I certainly miss having guineas. Ours used to fly up to the top of our 72-foot high tower and cackle and screech for hours as they surveyed their territory. For some reason I found that amusing. They are also wonderful for curing horses of being spooky about noisy things bursting out of the bushes. They spend all their time in a state of frantic alarm and after a while the equines pay no attention to such antics... a big help in a region where there is an equally feather-headed wild turkey under every other bush.

Speaking of screeching. About an hour before first dawn today I was luxuriating in my cozy nest, fairly wallowing in the knowledge that this is my morning off. No need to haul cold, still-damp sneakers onto stiff, achy feet to trudge through what feels like half a mile of mud to where fifty muddy, cranky cows await. No need to work for four hours before breakfast and second coffee. No need to do any darned thing I didn't want to.

Suddenly, SOMETHING let out an awful wail that sounded like it was right beside me.
Close.
Real close.
I thought one of the kids was having a nightmare. It came again. And again. And again. I realized that it was outdoors, but it was the most unearthly sound you could imagine and it was right next to the house.

I woke up the boss and we jumped out of bed to find Liz about to pound on our bedroom door. It had wakened her too. Of course it was still pitch dark and the land was blanketed with dense fog, so thick you couldn't see across the driveway. Whatever it was it was gone by the time the sun came up, but I kept dogs in, much to their chagrin, until I could actually SEE them when I let them out. Chances are it was a coyote, but it just didn't sound normal. We have the wild brush dogs around all the time and although they have a pretty unearthly cry we are used to them. Could have been a rabid one or a dog that had been hit by a car and was running in the dark. There is just no way we could tell because of the fog. I went out on the porch for a while, but couldn't see at all no matter how bright a flashlight I had. I suggested that the boss take a .22 or something to the barn with them, but he didn't. I am not going out to fill the stove until the fog lifts. It's cold, but it isn't THAT cold.

**Update...along about noonish when Alan finally stumbled down the stairs (having the morning off himself and having stayed up to watch the Mets game in its entirety last night) blond hair puffing over bleary eyes and jammies hanging off his bony hips, we got....dum da dum dum......the REST OF THE STORY.

We asked him if he had heard those infernal Hellish shrieks that paralyzed the rest of us with shivering terror.


"Oh, yeah," he replied. "That was Gael* howling back at the coyotes out on the hill. I heard her but I was too sleepy to go down and holler at her."

*Border collie number three, in season and evidently in the mood for love...any love.

Danged dog!

Maple

Blogriculture

I stumbled upon a stellar West Coast agriculture blog yesterday, by way of checking out my Site Meter to see who visits here. Someone did a search for "dairy farm blog" and found both Blogriculture and Northview Diary.

Blogriculture is the blog of two writers for the Capital Press Agriculture Weekly paper, which looks to be a tremendous source of useful ag info. Interestingly, one of Liz's best online friends, a writer whom she competes with on Its Your Turn, writes for the paper as well. They were kind enough to Blogroll me, so I am returning the favor. Take a minute and check out Blogriculture and the Capital Press. I am personally looking forward to a promised upcoming post covering a very interesting trip.....

"We send me this weekend to an Oregon farm to watch a crane drop, from the equivalent of 10 stories high, a 1,000-pound pumpkin on a Mazda hatchback."

I can't wait to read that one!

Fall color as promised

*Lovely old carriage house down in the village of Fultonville*

*The neighbor's sugar maple*

*Staghorn Sumac down along the driveway*

Checkerboard Magnums Promise

This is our purebred milking shorthorn bull, Promise, perhaps an anomaly on a Holstein farm, but calving ease on heifers is important to us and his babies bring a good price at auction. Beautiful Broadway is the one red daughter we have from him. All the rest have been various combinations of black and white.

This will take you to a picture of Promise's 90 point dam.

Here is a picture of Promise before we bought him. Sadly his speckles vanished.

For laurainnj at Somewhere in New Jersey

Great Border Collie site

Carina shared this site with me. It is truly hilarious to anyone who has ever been around a BC...or even three of them.

The dogs at Northview

A recent comment from a good blog friend in Michigan reminded me that not everyone at Northview Diary can read the column I write for the Recorder, the Farm Side, thus not everyone has already been bored to death with our three border collies.

Let me rectify that situation. Mike was my first border collie dog. I bought him from a local breeder, who has since moved to the left coast. Mike Canaday also sold me Gael, who was out of the same dam, Floss, and sired by his open trial dog, Robin. I liked Mike so much that I bred Gael to Bill, Mike's sire to get my young dog, Nick. Floss and several other dogs in the pedigrees of the three collies were actually imported from Scotland.

Mike (the man, not the dog) once brought Robin to the farm with some sheep and another fellow, his dogs and a horse, to practice for the national sheepdog trial. He just let the sheep out of the horse trailer and turned them loose. The darned things bolted for the barn and raced down the cow barn driveway towards the road. Sheep are fast. My heart was in by throat. I was envisioning carnage with wool and lawsuits and jumping up and down, when Mike released Robin and whistled something. Within seconds, literally seconds, even though Robin had never seen our farm before and hadn't seen the sheep go, I was pinned against the gate by a milling, wooly flock. He had gone over the bank, through the creek, and down below the sheep to fetch them back. Those open trial dogs are plumb amazing!


Border collies of the real sheepdog persuasion, as opposed to AKC, where good looks are all important, can have any length of hair and be just about any color you can imagine. As long as they work, it is all good. Mostly black dogs are pretty much preferred because sheep can see them better and don't mistake them for other sheep. Two of our dogs, Nick and Gael, are of the shortcoated sort; Mike is a pretty boy. They never need grooming, he requires frequent unraveling.

All three dogs work. Mike as a young dog was quite talented, although he has retired himself now at almost twelve. However, they have no where near the skill level of dogs like Robin or even nursery trial dogs. This is my failing as a trainer, not theirs as dogs, although Gael is a bit weak for a cow dog. Training sheep dogs is the hardest thing you can imagine....like parenting with sheep.

Read Mike's Ten Tips page for a little insight into getting a Border Collie puppy started.

Websites about working Border Collies.
United States Border Collie Handler Assoc.
American Border Collie Assoc.

Blondie

*Here you go Liz, as requested*

A meme!

Sort of. A regular commenter on one of my three very favorite blogs, (Pure Florida) started a neat photo exchange thingie for this weekend that sounded like a lot of fun. So I am going to play along.


Vitamin Sea is Laura's blog, worth a read while you check out other bloggers all around the country who are taking pictures of their hometowns, fields, forests, oceans and rivers this weekend and sharing them with us all. I am just waiting for the sun to come up before I head out with the camera to see what I can find to photograph. It is opening day of fall turkey season, so I am going to stay near the house. Of course it is pouring.


Wish I had taken the camera with me when we went out bringing heifers down yesterday. We brought all the springers in with the cows, so we can put the open heifers in with the bull in a couple of weeks. It was SO pretty on top of the heifer pasture hill, with the trees just starting to change and all the little white churches shining their steeples out among them.

I was amazed to find that I was able to comfortably hike up that big ol' hill TWICE! We went up first to get a half shorthorn heifer calf that wild little Mary had hidden in a tiny cup-shaped hollow we call the calving grove. (Cows have probably been hiding babies in there for a couple hundred years or more, ever since this has been a farm anyhow.) Then we had to go back for Mary, who for some reason wouldn't come along with her baby. Every breath was like a cool drink of water on a hot day. You could just feel the air recharging your lungs. In the heat of summer that hill about kills me. In fall I was able to charge up it faster than the boss.....the first time at least. He had a bit more stamina on the second trip.


Our resident red tailed hawk screamed as he sailed above us and the other heifers ran along side us dancing at the fun of it all. It actually was fun....for work.

UPDATE: I believe after reading posts on other blogs that I am supposed to take requests....so what would you like to see photographed here at Northview Farm?

Fall colors are kind of subdued this year

Bunny

*For matthew didier

The dogs

*Mike and Nick, 3/4 brothers*

*Nick, who is not thrilled about the camera*

*For carina

*Gael is in season and can't have her picture taken with her son and brother...

Moth TV

The boss, a man with a true magnetism for low flying bats, (along with an intense horror of them,) came up with a pretty good reason why bats start showing up in the cow barn in late September.

The outdoor bugs are mostly gone.

(Except mosquitoes of course.) We always wondered why they come in, because they don't bother us until quite late in the year. However, now, around eight PM, they flutter down out of the haymow and dive bomb us while we work. They are just eating stable flies, to which they are most welcome, but with all the rabies around, we wish they would stay the heck away from our heads.

According to moth TV, the boss is probably right. On a normal summer night Alan and I can spend ten minutes watching our special television every night on the way up to bed, and never run out of interestingly different species of moths to exclaim over. Now one or two skittering up and down the glass of the window on the front stair landing it is a lot. For some reason that high window is like a magnet to them, although other lighted windows in the house are insect free. These creatures of the night are plumb amazing, a study in delicate shades of brown, tan and cream that is as intricate as a 1000 piece puzzle.


Anyhow, the bats drive us nuts as soon as it begins to get dark. The other night one actually landed on a white porcelain light receptacle and began gobbling up flies that were clinging there soaking up the warmth. I never imagined a bat landing to munch lunch, but this one hung there for several minutes until the light evidently got too hot for his little feet. Then he went back to buzz-bombing us. I can't say I am sorry that the little flying mammals will soon follow the bugs into hibernation.

Speaking of rabies, Alan saw what was probably a rabid woodchuck yesterday. It was fumbling and stumbling around on the ground in a most alarming manner. Thankfully he was on the tractor. Not so thankfully it was the first time he went out without his .22 all week.

New England Asters

*Sorry about the blurry picture, but this little green wasp or fly didn't sit still long and left very soon. Any idea what it might be? Perhaps a cuckoo wasp?*

Grain not to blame

Last week, the New York Times, which loves to hate conventional farmers, blamed the recent outbreak of E. coli O157:H7 in spinach on cows fed grain diets. The story carried the sensational title of "Leafy Green Sewage." Even though use of any fertilizer product that has anything to do with cows on leafy vegetables is strongly discouraged by the FDA (if not downright outlawed), the activist newspaper eagerly snatched an opportunity to bash animal agriculture.

Now an actual, real, honest to gosh, scientist has pointed out that they are full of hooey. On US Newswire comes a story, quoting Dr. David Renter, an assistant professor of veterinary epidemiology at Kansas State University, as saying, " E. Coli O157:H7 Not Limited to Grain-Fed Cattle"

Turns out that sheep, deer, bison, raccoons, birds and cows that live on grass and hay, not to mention the humans who harvest the crop and are often as much as a quarter mile from the nearest bathroom, can all carry the disease in their digestive tracts.

Shame on the Times for being so quick to trot out the latest in unscientific bilge for a blame game in such a time of crisis.

Spitzer not a farm guy

Days are getting very short, less than twelve hours of sunlight now. This means dragging a flashlight along to every milking and hard times getting any crop work done between chores.

I have been asked to aid some other farmers in drafting a letter to the NY Attorney General, Elliot Spitzer, about the current fad among milk processors of marketing so called BST-free milk. BST is a naturally occurring hormone, synthesized by Monsanto, and used by some farmers to increase their cows' appetites and thus their milk production. It has always been rather controversial, even though it is impossible to detect differences between the milk of cows that have been given it and cows that haven't. For the record, we have never used it here at Northview.

However, of late, some milk companies have asked their farmers to sign pledges not to use it so the the companies can market their milk as BST free (even though it really isn't, as all cows produce this hormone naturally). No problem there. We need to offer consumers what they want and if there is a market, good. And I repeat we don't use it here at our farm anyhow.

Problem is the milk companies are charging consumers a whole dollar more a gallon and paying the farmers not one cent for producing it for them....even though it becomes more expensive to produce milk without it. It is just another example of so-called farmer cooperatives becoming instead for profit companies and making those profits by stepping on the necks of the real producers of our food. I will gladly help draft the letter, although I don't expect that it will accomplish anything. Spitzer is busy running for governor, as he has been since he took office as AG. He has no interest in fairness to farmers, or as far as I can see in upstate at all. NY is bleeding dairy farmers like a gushing torrent, with farms all around us selling the cows and looking for new lives.
Unfair practices like this will just speed the death of the state's number one industry. The fools.

New Piggies

Liz and I drove over fifty miles one way to pick these guys up.

And ended up with these thrown in for free.

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

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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