Leftovers...

*Leftover berry canes*

After a full moon night with so much light pouring in through every window that it looked as if an alien space ship was landing outside, we were gifted with a sunny day that felt like April. I took advantage of the warmth and light and walked up to the pond in the horse pasture to see what was stirring. The most excitement I came across was a noisy flock of mourning doves, which fluttered into the nearby trees, then twittered back down in an adjacent hay field.

I found plenty of leftovers though and posted more pictures of them over on my other blog, the View at Northview.

*Leftover wild rose hips*

Hawk Day

I think this must have been hawk day. First, in the half light of dawn, a Coopers hawk hurtled out of the gloom beside the heifer barn, hot on the tail of something medium-sized and dark...either a starling or the lone male brown-headed cow bird that has been hanging around. Don't know if he caught him, but they sure weren't picking any berries.

Then when I took the dogs out for a run this afternoon I heard the distinctive cry of a red-tailed hawk. Whenever you hear a hawk or eagle cry on television it is usually the call of the red-tail that is used. I looked up over the old orchard in the horse pasture and the pair that nests here was sailing in lazy circles, just above the trees and calling out to one another. Beautiful!

Mike, heart and soul, a border collie

Happy New Year

Baby lettuce seedlings. Planted about four days ago, in a Styrofoam cooler and set in the living room window. We buy Pinetree lettuce mix from Pinetree Garden Seed company. So many kinds of wonderful of lettuce all in one package...just delightful. They also have a winter mix that is outstanding for fall planting. We had lettuce long past frost until deer came right up on the back steps where I have container gardens and wiped it all out.

Blue Jay

*New Year's Eve visitor*
*Northview Dairy petunia basket*

Tagged, oh Heavens....

I've been tagged for a meme-type thing! Thanks, Moonmeadow Farm

The Rules:
Each player of this game starts with "6 weird things about you". Each person who gets tagged needs to write a blog post of their own 6 weird things as well as clearly state this rule. After you state your 6 weird things, you need to choose 6 people to be tagged and list their names. Don't forget to leave a comment that says "you're tagged" in their comments and tell them to read your blog for information as to what it means.

I won't tag anyone, instead, feel free to do 'er on your own if you want to! Leave a link or list weird things in comments if you wish.

I will start at the bottom of the list...just because of personal weirdness.

6. I can call myself Colonel threecollie because I graduated from Missouri Auction School back in 1984. Although I ended up with a respectable score in our class, I am shyish in public and have never called a single bid. The boss, on the other hand, is a real humdinger of an auctioneer and only dairy farming keeps him from doing it seriously.

5. I grew up in a used bookstore, reading the merchandise out of sheer boredom. Tarzan, the original, Tom Swift, the Hardy Boys and Roy Chapman Andrews were favorite childhood companions. From my chair in the window at Tryon County Books, I tramped Africa behind Osa and Martin Johnson and tore down the beer can wall with Mrs. Feely, Miss Tinkham and Mrs. Rasmussen. I may have missed out on basketball and cheerleading, but I sure had interesting friends.

4. I started life hating cows. Hated them for quite a while too. I like them now. Most days.

3. The china closet still contains lots of my toy horses, from when I was a horse crazy kid and couldn't have a real one. I still buy them sometimes...toy ones that is, although we have a couple of real ones now too.

2. I gave up painting to write, because when you have a passel of kids you need a hobby you can stop and start...OFTEN! Thank God for being able to hit "Save" when a crisis hits.

1. My husband of over twenty years lived about a mile down the road from where I spent the happiest years of my childhood, and would have ridden our school bus (except that he walked to school) but we never met until he was 34 and I was just a tad younger.

Bird Bottle or Martin Pot

As Matt said in the comments on the previous post, the object below is a replica of a Colonial bird house or feeder. According to the package insert, the use of these dates back at least to 1700. The original of this one was excavated from the yard of the James Geddy House. The opening on the larger side is affixed to a wall or post and a perch is place through the tab and into the opening in the bottom. (Matt is correct that it was upside down in the photo.)

Early settlers were not bird watchers so much as that they valued the local avians as bug zappers and wanted to encourage their proximity. I am hoping our tame chickadees will like this addition to the ornamental bird house on the sitting porch where they nested last summer.

Thanks, nyv, for a really neat Christmas gift!

Bet you are smarter than I was...

A very special person gave me this for Christmas this year. When I opened the box I was very, very puzzled. It looks like a lovely wine jug, made of shiny ceramic material, but a thirsty soul would have an awful time getting much of a drink from it. There is a hole in the little tab that sticks up and another in the body right across from the first.

I have to tell you that I NEVER would have even come close to guessing the purpose of this jug, but I can't wait to use it. Perhaps everyone but me has seen dozens of these things...we shall see.

Code inforcement and the five-day work week

Got the wildly unwelcome news yesterday. The state is planning on having towns send code enforcement officers to inspect cow barns and farm out buildings as if they were offices and stores.

Insane, just plain off the wall nuts, but what can you expect from this outpost of liberal idiocy? New York I mean. Can you imagine the cash cow that enforcing building codes on three-sided cow sheds, pig pens and chicken houses could be for municipalities? We keep our piggies in an old horse trailer. Do you suppose it has enough electrical fixtures to meet the fire and maintenance regulations? I can just hear the enforcement officer now, "Mr. Farmer-man, this structure has insufficient wiring, we will be fining you XXXX dollars a day until it is brought up to code." Actually, it doesn't have any wiring, but what the heck, money is money.

I am thinking that comparing a cow barn to an insurance office or grocery store is like comparing a water buffalo to a penguin. Different structural requirements for different uses.
Farm Bureau has managed to get the state to agree to suspend these inspections on farms, pending some negotiations on exempting farm buildings.

I am thankful that while I was enjoying a very pleasant holiday with friends and family, someone was in Albany keeping an eye on the various lurking legislative bodies. They do bear watching.

Which brings to mind just how delighted I am that the Democrats are planning to go back to a five-day work week in Congress. Although for the most part I admire a good work ethic, the more time they have to legislate, the more laws they can cook up.
And there is nothing we need less than more government intrusion into our lives…thankyouverymuch!

Ex-president Gerald Ford dies

Not sure quite what to say about this. I kind of liked the guy. He seemed fairly harmless, a rather rare trait in a politician.

I got magic for Christmas, how about you?

Music for the kitchen after a forever-feeling silence. Rum Tum Tugger is playing now.

A new hatchet. Someone who shall not be named broke the one the boss bought me as a housewarming present (pun intended) twenty-odd years ago. Only a truly determined youth could actually break an all metal hatchet. And of course I have one.

Warmth for my Sunday chair, sewed by my dear mother's loving hands, a beautiful, wonderful, completely perfect lap robe in glorious blues and yellows.

Useful knowledge, something to read while I sit in that favorite chair, Beer's History of Fulton and Montgomery Counties.

And footie socks, tasty tea, a bird feeder and cookies, what a very wonderful holiday it was.

Thank you all very much!

Tis the Great Day

Merry Christmas to all,
Special friends and family of course,
And to all those we have "met" through the wonderful dialog that is blogging,
We wish you the best that the future has to offer,
And a great day today,
Thanks for making Northview Diary all thebest fun the Internet has to offer!
The Northview Crew

Scenes from the Christmas Bird Count

**Photos of my aunt and uncle's farm, taken by my baby brother, who was willing to scale the barbed wire fence at the top of the hill in the mud and the rain to get them.

Christmas bird count

Today was our area National Audubon Society Christmas Bird Count. We have participated for many years and have a small territory in the Johnstown area. This year rain was predicted and we were pretty gloomy about our prospects. However, almost as soon as we set out we started seeing a lot of birds. The woods were alive with the musical calls of chickadees and the strident shouts of gangs of blue jays. We saw juncos, tree sparrows, mourning doves and turkeys. Some years we don't see any cardinals at all, but this year we saw four. Oddly we only saw one house sparrow and very few starlings or pigeons. Usually they are numerous.

One of the high points of the day was startling a female harrier out of a tree and getting to watch her hunt. She flew with the typical low, teetering marsh hawk pattern over a golden field of left over hay, mixed with dark brushy areas, along the edge of an evergreen woods. It took her three hits, but she finally caught some kind of rodent, I am guessing a large vole, and flew across the road to land not far away to eat it. Suddenly a red-tailed hawk swooped out of nowhere and tried to steal her lunch. She was faster though and got away with it safely. The red tail retreated to a nearby snag and fluffed his feathers in irritation.

We also saw well over a hundred ring billed gulls, which although common in summer or down on the river where we live, are not generally seen in large numbers in our count area. Because of the weather and the hideous holiday shopping traffic, we didn't see either the number of species or the volume of birds that is normal, but we had many nice experiences.

In one woody swamp along a seasonal use road we sat for a few minutes in the center of a huge flock of tree sparrows. We called it thirty, but there were surely many more than we actually saw as we were surrounded by the flock. Their calls were so musical it was like sitting in the center of a symphony of tiny tinkling chimes and bells.

One of the not so high points of the day was seeing what I am almost, but not quite, positive was a goshawk. It flew up right next to the car in a very high traffic area. I got a very good but fleeting look, and it was impossible to go back and look again, so I didn't claim it. The second low point was looking really, really silly as we drove along that same little dirt road. We kept hearing the two note chirp of feeding chickadees and eagerly scanning the woods for them. None there. We looked. And looked. And drove. And looked some more. Lots of chirps. No birds. Suddenly we realized that the sound was remarkably rhythmic.....because it was a squeaky wheel on the truck.
Oh, well, you can't win them all. We had a great day, saw lots of family and enough good birds to make it worth the driving and peering through binoculars.

Hybrid marijuana

Why can't they do something like this with corn or some other useful (and legal) plant?

*You can buy corn seed that produces a plant that is resistant to pesticide, but you sure can't plant it any time you want to or get yields like in this story!

The sun is low in the sky now

No place like home for the holidays

Liz and Becky are out of school for a month! No classes until the middle of January.

Love and joy come to you…

I have lovely Stewart’s eggnog in my coffee this morning, thanks to Becky. It is SO good. And so festive!

And to your wassail too.

Alan will be done with classes for a week on Friday. Then we will all be home together for Christmas.

And God rest you and send you a happy New Year..

Christmas Bird Count is Saturday. Riding around our territory all day counting numbers and listing species. As much fun as you can have and still be legal. And Mom and Dad have an OWL this year!!

And God send you a happy New Year.

Lethal Frog Fungus

*One of the Northview Frogs of Summer*

This is wiping out entire species and populations of frogs all around the Caribbean. I hope it doesn't come north.

Snow like meal, snow a great deal

*But what does snow like perlite mean?*

A sheepish posse

A sheepish little tale

.....or they aren't as dumb as they look!

A little background. We have two very old sheep left over from the days when I kept a small flock to train Border collie puppies. They spin not, nor do they toil. They are, in fact, pets. One, called Freckles, is white (well dingy grey and yellow really, but they call that white in sheep) with brown spots on her nose. The other, named BS, is very, very black. They have the run of the place and generally hang with the biggest animals they can find, in order to have protection from coyotes. Right now this translates to seven pregnant heifers that run with the milk cows if they are outdoors, or live in a shed by the barnyard when the cows are inside. They also have the use of the barnyard. However, sheep can walk right under the barnyard gates, so they go where they will.

This morning the boss finally confessed to me something that happened way back on Monday. He was feeding late because a certain teenaged boy hung around in the house watching TV instead of going out to help him. It was full dark. The lights went out on the tractor. (A short in the wiring I guess.) Anyhow, he dumped a pile of haylage in the barnyard so the heifers wouldn't leave while he was doing the job and proceded to feed the milk cows. Then he took one last trip up to the corn pile for a bucket load of corn silage for the other bunch of heifers that is still out on the hill.

When he dumped the bucket in the heifer pasture there was an indignant blat from somewhere in front of the tractor out in the dark. He ran around to find a very unhappy BS shaking corn off herself, as Freckles ran up from behind him, eager to catch up with her pal. He had somehow scooped the old sheep out of the ag-bag (where she had been helping herself to corn in the dark) and given her a free ride over to the pasture in the tractor bucket along with the corn. She was not a happy ovine!

Which she proved yesterday, when he was standing in front of the milk house chatting with the repairman who came in to work on the bulk tank washer. She sauntered right up to him and let him scratch her between the ears. Then she nonchalantly backed up, got some real good traction, and charged, nailing him right on his bad knee. She has never done anything like that before. She is generally much the nicer of the two sheep and rarely bothers anybody.
Tell me she wasn't just lying in wait for a chance to get even! I swear I am still laughing.

Citation R Maple

*Bull Calf*

He is about five minutes old in this picture and was standing up looking for his first breakfast about twenty minutes later. (Now if only he had been a heifer.) His mama, Eland, has had ten calves even though she is only ten years old. (Normally, she might possibly have had eight in that time.) This is because she has had two pairs of twins, one set of bulls and last year twin heifers, which we named Epic and Etc.
Her oldest living daughter, Egrec, is expected to have her first calf in February. Epic and Etc have the same sire so all three are full sisters, by a bull we once owned named Foxfield-Doreigh NB Rex. He was a son of the famous Ned Boy bull. I am sorry to get a bull calf, but delighted that so far old Eland is looking pretty good, standing up and eating (and licking her new baby of course). She didn't like the camera much, which is why the photo is so poor. I wanted to get out of the manger and leave her alone.

The progression of darkness

It is pure dark when we go to the barn in the morning…unless the moon is gleaming at the zenith like a cold pearl in a sea of jet. Then there is an unearthly freezing light making spooky shadows behind everything on the lawn. The lawn mower looks like a grizzly bear and the garden pond is the black lagoon. Orion is stomping his way across the heifer barn ridgepole, bound straight north to the horizon. It is dark as ink. Dark as black velvet. Dark as night.
The rooster is crowing.


It is half dark when we are finished with morning chores. Although a flashlight isn't needed, it is dim enough that it is easy to remember to take the one we used to get to the barn back to the house to illuminate our evening stroll. Orion has gone to bed and the moon is long gone.
The rooster is crowing.


At seven, when the girls are warming the Dakota up for the drive to SUNY Cobleskill, and Alan is rushing through a pre-bus shower, it is sorta dark. You can see, but all is shrouded in a misty, clinging gloom. It is not a pretty time of day.
The rooster is crowing.



It is sorta dark again when the girls get home. (Unless it is Monday or Wednesday, when they have late classes.) Then it is pure dark when the beam from their headlights sweeps the gloom away as it precedes them up the driveway.
The rooster gets in one last rebel yell at the sight of the light.


It is half-dark when the guys go out to night feed. By the time they are done, you can trace their progress by the tractor lights out on the hill.


It is pure dark when we start to milk again and pitch dark when we are done. Orion is standing on the eastern horizon, pulling on his boots for his nightly trek across the sky.
At least the rooster has finally wound down for the night.

The piggies, they are a changin'

*Click here to see Piggies then*


*Piggies now*




*Why they call them piggies in the first place*

I feel lucky

And pampered. My cow, Frieland Profit Eland, an elderly lady of ten summers, is expecting a calf by Citation R Maple sometime during the next few days. And last night Liz got up TWICE with her and the boss checked her for me this morning, so I didn't have to go out to the barn in the middle of the freezing night at all. BIG thanks to both of them. No baby yet, but keep your fingers crossed......

Lace making, no bobbin, no thread

Trans fat ban

Here is a wonderful advertisement from the Center for Consumer Freedom on New York City's new trans fat band. I will agree to food control when they pry my last chocolate chip cookie from my cold, dead hand!

Chicken on the garden pond pickin' out snow

That was the week that was.....

Wait a minute. It's not over yet!

Weekend, storm rips up section of barn roof, making a big mess of steel and boards. The hay mow is now rather drafty.


Monday, deer cutting and Christmas tree raising. Blacksmith to trim horses' feet.


Tuesday, wrote the Farm Side early, did the books and banking. Takes me about two hours to spend the milk check these days.

Wednesday, insurance adjuster, milk tester, grain truck and Select Sires rep. We bought another rack of Rain, because two out of three kids picked him out of the young sires line up. Set Tom looking for some Four-of-a-Kind Eland for us too. My sweet little Erin that was killed this summer was by Eland and I want to try to breed another one. We also had the old semen tank filled with nitrogen. If it hasn't sprung a leak we are going to give it to a good friend who has helped us out in many major ways over the years. He fed cows for weeks when the boss had his appendix out a few years back and really bailed me out with fixing silo unloaders and such. We will throw in some semen from our own bulls too. Some of them have turned out pretty good and he can use them for clean up if he wishes. Cleaned house too, including shaking out door mat and sweeping mud off porch.

Thursday, cats deposit large, eviscerated, very dead, rat on nice clean door mat. Thanks guys, I love you too. High school Christmas concert tonight. The boy sings in chorus and bangs on various implements of percussive pain in concert band. I love the choral part of the deal. However, the band instructor loves complicated, hard to play and intensely boring music, so I will spend that part of the show trying to decide which of the mops of blond hair on tall boys at the back belongs to my tall blond boy, and which to his pseudo-twin, Pat. (They have convinced one of their friends that they actually are twins despite Pat being six inches taller and living a couple miles down the road. Amazing what underclassmen will believe.)

Friday, wait a minute! I don't have a darned thing scheduled for Friday, except taking Becky to college and getting some groceries. Whoopee!!!!!

The boy tree

The kid got a second deer on Sunday, so yesterday he stayed home to get it in the freezer. It was just a little spike buck, but the meat will be welcome this winter. The beef that those yokels in the rant a few posts down let hang for a month is barely of "okay" quality, thanks to their cavalier treatment of our meat, so we are going to be eating a lot of venison.

Anyhow, all through the tedious process of boning out a whole deer, he was antsy with the desire to get done and get out on Seven-County Hill to look for a Christmas tree. Because the kids have asthma he has never enjoyed a real tree. We have a stately, but phony, fir thing that serves, but it surely isn't a creature of the wild forest. It was edging on toward dark when the last package flopped on the freezer shelf and the knives were lined up on the counter for mom to wash. He grabbed his chainsaw and took off with the 884 bucket tractor as soon as he was done.

About an hour later he showed up with a fat, bushy little white pine. Not exactly the most sought after of Christmas shrubbery, but it is cute just the same. As all the official ornaments are stashed upstairs in a closet we spelunked around in the china closet and various drawers and hidy holes looking for strays. Then the weird thing happened. I shined the flashlight into Grandma Lachmayer's china closet, looking for a cousin-made creation I knew was lurking there. Instantly a tinny rendition of Silent Night rang out.

What the heck! My furniture is not in the habit of serenading me when I look inside. As that same cupboard is the repository of much treasure, from marbles, stray old coins plucked out of the woodwork of this ancient domicile, and every other oddity that someone brings in, we open and close the door all the time. There generally isn't a resounding Christmas carol to greet us. However, after much searching and emptying (and the incidental discovery of the little rooster ornament we were seeking) we tracked the tune to its source. Years ago mom gave me a little "Mary Moos" music box....and it is light activated. Guess the battery is pretty special and the thing liked the shiny flashlight. Anyhow, it wasn't the ghost of Christmas past celebrating the introduction of a real live tree after all these years, just a neat little resin decoration.....still it gave me pause.

If you fill it, they will come....

Herd of collies

*Mike, Nick and Gael. The slightly stunned expression on Mike's face is because Nick, the rowdy dog, has just run into him and knocked him down.

Cord McCoy

Cord McCoy was kind enough to grant Liz an interview via email. You can read his bio and his answers to her questions over on her rodeo blog, BuckinJunction. Cord is a highly successful PBR bull rider she was lucky enough to meet at Turning Stone this spring.

A case of mistaken identity

Liz says that the calf that followed me home, (see below) or actually to the cow barn the other day was Soiree, not Dakota. Liz is the oracle of cow identification here at Northview, so I will not argue. Plus she owns both of them. This differing identity is significant in that Dakota is the daughter of a retired show cow, Dallas, and granddaughter of our best-ever show cow, Frieland LV Dixie, and thus would be expected to be a bit of a pet.

Soiree on the other hand is out of Soir, the worst kicking, meanest, most miserable, nasty, ill-tempered so and so in the barn, and one which I flatly refuse to milk under any circumstances. Soir is out of Star, who although she is a sweet old thing now, used to jump every fence on the place, and wouldn't ever come into the barn until she was darned good and ready. She was not impressed by Border collies either and just stomped the heck out of them if they got in her way.

So how did this come to pass? I truly have no clue but I am not complaining.

The neatest thing

There is a new editor over at the paper, whom I just "met" via telephone this week. He seems like a really nice guy. He called me today to explain something to me and I am afraid he must have thought I was a bit of an obliviot when I returned his call, because I didn't quite get what he was talking about. As regular readers know, today is my day to ferry Becky over to SUNY Cobleskill and sit in the parking lot for a couple of hours drinking orange juice, reading exciting books uninterrupted, (a Kathy Reichs Bones book today) and talking pictures if something wonderful comes along. (As it often does, since that campus is more like a park, than, well, a park.) It's a tough job but someone has to do it. The day's newspapers are usually on my reading list

However, today for some reason we got an extra copy of Thursday's paper instead of today's so I didn't see the Farm Side. So I didn't know quite what my new boss meant when he talked about "Diary" being spelled wrong. However, as soon as I was off the phone I ran and got the Recorder and saw what he was referring to. He put the address of Northview Diary in the little blurb at the bottom of the Farm Side about me being a regular columnist and all. And although the web address was correct, the title was Northview Dairy...which makes perfect sense after all.

That is so cool! I am just delighted. Thank you, thank you! Most of my friends, who stop by to read ND, come from west of the Mississippi or south of the Mason Dixon line. Maybe local folks will visit now. I can only hope.

Unplug the television

Probably everybody in the world but me already knows this thing about televisions.
The "sucking power whether you have them turned on so you can watch Supernatural or whether they are just attracting dust like the black hole they resemble" thing that is.

However, until I read it in a Kim Komando update I was trying to puzzle out, why, when we bought the girls their own televisions when they came of age, the power bill suddenly skyrocketed, even though they are rarely home and don't really watch much. Kim had the answer one day though. Modern TVs are always "on" so they can recognize the remote control. Of course it didn't take me long to begin a semi-scientific experiment. I told the young ladies who reside with us to unplug the darned things whenever they were not actually watching. The boss volunteered to do the same with his.


In less than one month our budget plan with National Grid dropped over thirty dollars. I expect with a full month of this practice it will offer an even larger savings. I am dancing little jigs and grinning ear to ear. Thanks Kim! So if you have a television and can stand to reprogram the time thingie all the while, unpug, unplug, and be paid in serious savings for your trouble.


***disclaimer...I am NOT a TV watcher and when the kids were little we didn't even have one. They read, were read to, or joined us at everything we did, from business trips to turning going after the cows into a nature walk. We were much more likely to take them down to Schoharie to collect brachiopods than to watch Disney with them. I despise most of what is offered on the very well named idiot box. However, when the girls hit the age of officially grown up we figured they were old enough to choose. Besides I was sick of the fights over the remote when the boss wanted to watch football.

Out near Richfield Springs

Strange mornings

Dakota

Had to make a quick trip to the house this morning just at the end of milking. I was in a hurry to call the propane company and thus was dismayed to discover a medium-sized heifer on the lawn behind the house. However, to my complete and utter amazement she gave a happy little hop and moo and started right down the hill to me. I threw some chicken feed pellets in a bucket that was handy there by the back door and headed to the barn. She trotted happily along behind me at peace with her world and glad of my company until we had to pass Nick's kennel. He was reacting to her presence about like any frustrated Border collie would and she was afraid to pass his triple strength screaming black turmoil.

"Kennel time!" I bellowed over his tumultuous uproar and he beat a retreat into his dog house and shut up for a moment. From there the trip all the way to the cow barn was uneventful, with the heifer, (I think Dallas's yearling, Dakota), even waiting while I opened the gate for her before proceeding right on through. There are days when I am really, really glad that Liz makes pets out of all her calves. This one isn't even a show calf. Amazing.

Election edumacashion shocker

Elaine Shein over at Blogriculture, the Capital Press newspaper blog, has one of the most powerful pieces I have read in a while over there today. She discusses studies showing that a majority of people get a majority of the information upon which they base their election choices from political ads! Elaine's article is very thought-provoking, asks a lot of important and hard to answer questions, as well as most likely being a nice refreshing dose of maturity after my post below. Hope you get a chance to read it.

Beware, tirade ahead

I don't know if I should even write when I am this angry. Maybe a chill pill would make more sense. It seems that every time we find a meat processing plant that does our beef the way we like it, they go out of business. We loved the SUNY meat lab; they did a great job. We tried another place after the dean closed them up, but they were horribly high priced. Therefore, we took our most recent animal to a company we used for years, back when some very competent older people ran it. We stopped going to that plant when the old folks sold out to some geniuses who sent back meat with steaks off opposite sides of the same cow that were so divergent in size that we could tell somebody got a little creative about who got whose meat. Since we sent out a Belgian Blue with rib steaks the size of platters and the weird ones were palm sized, but probably came off a prime angus, we didn't really do too badly out of that deal but still...

I didn't say anything to the boss when these new characters quoted him a real cheap price even though my feeling wasn't good about it. The feeling was right. They have had our steer for twenty-nine days, about two weeks past when we should have had it back. And they STILL have not cut it. (Beef normally hangs ten days to two weeks. Three weeks is pretty long, although we have hung them that long and had good meat. If the cooler the animal is hanging in is not a real good one the meat starts to taste funky after a while.)

For the nasty man from that company who just finished reading me out on the phone for having the audacity to actually CALL his place on the phone about the matter.

1) If you don't want me giving your girlfriend a hard time on the phone, don't leave your customers hanging on, waiting and wondering if you are ever going to cut their beef for weeks past the time you said you would have it ready. So what if I talked to you about it before? That was last TUESDAY. And the boss called you the Monday before. I don't think calling back six or eight days later is pressing you too hard. And tell her not to explain the aging process to middle aged farmers. Trust me we are familiar with it. I want to eat the meat not get Medicare for it.

2) Sorry you have had people sick and meat cutters out and all. We were real reasonable about that the first couple times we called. After a while reasons become excuses. That is OUR milk-fed steer sitting in your cooler getting older...and older...and older. Just how long CAN beef hang before it turns into something else?

Bah! I am too mad to spit!

Of course the guy will eventually cut our meat and it will probably be perfect, but we have been worrying...and worrying...and worrying.

Oh, and I persuaded the boss this morning, with very little difficulty to book the pigs he is fattening right now into the expensive place we went to after the meat lab closed. You get what you pay for and peace of mind is priceless.

**thanks to all ND readers for letting me get that off my chest so the smoke will stop coming out of my ears and I can go get some work done.

8 Point Buck

Here is a link to a picture of Alan with his deer. I put it on my low traffic blog so as not to hurt too many tender sensibilities, but his big brother and assorted other relatives want to see a picture.

Frost Farm

Mornings are getting plumb wintery these days.....

Big buck

In between doing almost all his daddy's chores the boy got his first deer today. He came in all quiet and asked me to put his 20-gauge away for him and get the camera as he got a little bitty spike buck. Completely deadpan. I did as he suggested and went outside and there in the tractor bucket was this huge thing with the biggest antlers I have ever seen outside pictures from out west. It was only an 8-point, but a big, big deer. Nicest one we ever got here on the farm for sure.

So he is happy tonight.....and tomorrow we are cutting up venison I guess. I would post pictures, but they are pretty gory for polite company.

In sickness and in health

Question: what do you do on a farm when everyone gets really sick? Answer: The same thing you do when you are not sick, only it hurts more. Somebody has to milk cows every twelve hours, they must be fed their grain twice daily and be served forages on a regular schedule. Cleaning stables can possibly be put off a little, but really should be done every day and if you burn wood for heat and hot water someone needs to get some. That is just the basic schedule of that which must be done. It never stops and cows don't care if you are sick.

Thus the boss and I, who succumbed in quick succession to whatevertheheck Alan brought home last week, are grateful, oh, so grateful, to have the "kids". (At 16, almost 19 and 20 and a half or so, they really aren't kids any more, though we call them that, to differentiate them from the "old farts", the other generation, so to speak).


As I mentioned before Liz cooked the Thanksgiving dinner. And milked Ralph's string of cows. And fed me drugs, Robitussin, Tylenol, (better living through chemistry) gallons of Gatorade. Put dogs out and in and did laundry. As soon as Alan was back on his feet, he pitched in filling stove, hauling wood, feedling cows, watering calves, helping milk, whatever was needed, including serving his mother assorted medicines and piling on more blankets. Becky was Becky, giving everyone a hard time, but prepping cows and feeding milk calves and taking care of horses as needed. She delivered books when I was well enough to read them.


Now I am on the road to recovery and other than a serious need for SOMEBODY to do some dishes I am not too far behind. Not like I would be if they hadn't all pitched in anyhow. The boss is still pretty sick, but was able to come in last night and go to bed without milking or doing chores and I am sure he is grateful to the crew too. The cows never missed a meal or a milking, the house is warm and the human contingent is well fed (those of us that can eat).


I guess it was truly a Thanksgiving to be thankful for. In some ways.

60-Acre Lot Woods

**Photo by Alan

Things to be thankful for

We all have many of them. Today my favorite is a 20-year-old daughter who can and will (and did in fact) cook the entire holiday meal from the turkey to the squash and yams because mom is sick as a dog. Thanks, Liz!

More cannons

Zendo deb of TFS Magnum was kind enough to stop by and leave a link in the comments so I can look at lovely Civil War cannons (and even buy one, should the boss win the lottery this weekend). Thanks deb.

Overheard in a grocery store near here..

"I can't believe I have to buy STORE potatoes this year! I went to the farm where we always go and the farmer said he was sorry but he didn't have anything but canners. Too much water, can you believe it? I can't see why he didn't keep his crops dry and now I have to buy these store potatoes instead of getting local. And the squash. Same thing. He said it all got moldy and died. Now why didn't he take care of it? I hate buying at the GROCERY store!"

My cannon

A Coyote at the Dog Show has a fine new post called Dangerous Toys for Dangerous Boys, wherein he describes a number of fun, but not so healthy playthings like pow'r tools 'n personal jet packs. I highly recommend it.

Also on the list of potentially deadly toys is a cannon. Swen explains in clear and riveting detail just how to charge and fire said cannon, which was of great personal interest to me. See, there are two things I really want for Christmas...lust after in fact. First on my list is a functional military tank, with which to deter poachers and tres-peserters. Think of the reaction of Joe Redneck, out of season deer hunter, when one of them babies bursts out of the hedgerow, tracks clanking and turret twisting, like a hound dog on a hot scent! I smile just to think of it.

A cannon to set in front of the house, with the business end pointed down the driveway is the second one. I would much prefer one that actually works, but I won't complain if it just LOOKS scary.


In fact here is one of my favorite quotes from one of my favorite movies,

Earl: What kind of fuse is that?
Burt: Cannon fuse.
Earl: What the hell do you use it for?
Burt: My cannon.


Every one in the family can mimic that deadpan, "What else would it be?" tone used by Burt Gummer to perfection. In fact, the barn blackboard is often decorated with neat chalk drawings of cannons of all sorts, with my personal favorite being the Civil War cannon.

Canada geese

Winging west, flying low and fast. Click for a better look.

Happy Birthday Dad!

Hope your day goes better than okay.

Love you,

Dotter

Mohawk River flooding

Last night's rain brought the river up out of its banks and into the cornfields over by Fonda again. Wish they would get the canal closed down for the winter and the locks and dams open so at least the fields would dry out and we wouldn't have to worry about it getting into the towns again. Looks as if it is never going to get done raining this year.

Not much sleep here last night, what with the rain and Alan being so sick.

Misleading

An email update from My Cattle.com showed up in my inbox today that had a really misleading teaser on it. It proposed that the national ID program would offer an overlooked benefit, protection against cattle theft. "One of the most basic incentives to have cattle permanently identified is theft."

On the surface there is no problem with that statement. True permanent ID, such as branding or tattooing, provides a lasting way to tell one cow from another.

However, the story's author added this pure BS statement that really got my dander up, "In the falderal (their spelling not mine) surrounding livestock ID and the tragicomedy that has become the National Animal Identification System, it's too easy to lose sight of one of the most basic incentives to have cattle permanently identified: theft."

Balderdash! NAIS is all about selling ear tags and keeping data bases on farm activities and has nothing to do with preventing theft in any way, shape or form.


Even though the author of the article never said in so many words that ear tags equal permanent ID comparable to brands or tattoos, that premise was strongly implied.


Sorry, tags in cows ears are about as permanent as drifting snowflakes in Florida. If they don't fall out or the cows don't rip them out, it is easy as pie for a thief to cut them out.

Such malarkey, it just kills me.

Scamper cloned

Charmayne James cloned Scamper. I don't think there are many animals worthy of the expense but if ever there was one it would be that horse.

Flu shots

What is it about flu shots anyhow? We get them religiously because all three kids have asthma. (If you think flu is bad for normal people, you should see what it does to asthmatics.) Every single year, as soon as I make the appointment to go see the good Dr. K, someone gets way too sick to get a shot.

It NEVER fails.

This year I made one for Alan and me for tomorrow afternoon....didn't even try to get fancy and get both girls in at the same time or anything. Fat lot of good that did. He came home kind of croupy last night and now he has a 102.4 temperature and is lolling around in the living room, sick as a dog. Now I will take him in for a sick child visit instead, get a steroid inhaler, probably an antibiotic, and start playing try-to-get-the-flu-shot tag, hoping to get it done before the flu gets him. It's enough to turn you grey before your time.

Introducing the newly renamed

*Miss Sausage*

*Lo Mein*

*photos by Alan

A week on the farm

Here is a recap of news from the farm for this week.

About two weeks ago the stable cleaner chute split in half, rendering it impossible to remove cow manure from one large section of the barn except by shovel and wheelbarrow. What with the boss's cracked ribs from being slammed by cow number 96 and the chain still being in the gutter, having a clean barn has been fraught with misery. I guess the parts have finally been shipped and the final repair should be getting under way quite soon. Thank God.


The barn cat, Sausage, who was named for her globoid shape as a kitten, (having always been a bit greedy), now has a surname. She has recently become abusive of the horsebarn kittens, Blondie and Kashette, and is generally about as obnoxious as a cat can be. So we changed her name to Sausage Lo Mein....


Alan found a spot on the back of the farm where some folks, with whom we have had unpleasant contact before, have cleared a section of our land, well within the line fence. (That fence has probably been there since the farm existed.) There is litter and garbage (and a rather less pleasant byproduct of human occupation of the area, complete with the sort of paper that attends that use) all over. The grass is all stomped down and they put a posted sign ON OUR LAND facing US! Way on our land. Guess a letter from our lawyer is in order, since a certain sort of squatter's rights law holds sway in New York State. If you don't want to lose title to your land you cannot let people use it as if it were their own. Wish the city *&)&$$#'s would either stay where they came from or take a minute to understand the laws governing rural property. This is at least the third such incursion since last fall. The men keep putting up fence and signs and they keep going around them. Bah!

There has been quite a red-tailed hawk war going on all week in the field beside the house. There is a resident pair that nests just across the property line and another, lighter-colored bird has been hanging around in their territory. Don't know if it is their young one that they want to cut the apron strings or an outside bird, but they don't like him much. It makes for quite a show.

Poaching started yesterday (as usual) and instead of complaining about among ourselves it we called Encon. I heard shots from something really big when I was bringing the dogs in early in the morning. Probably a 10-gauge. Then Alan found a doe just on the other side of our back fence shot to pieces and left. I wasn't surprised as I knew the shots I heard were from something way too big to be shooting turkeys with. (Turkey season is open; deer doesn't open until next week.) Encon said the next time we hear shots to call right away and they will get a game warden here post haste. We havn't called them in before because they are understaffed and far away, thus unlikely to really be able to do anything. However, last year poachers spent the two weeks before season opened cleaning out ALL the deer on the farm. Thus our guys who wait to hunt legally and do it right (not leaving the carcass in the woods because they put about a dozen shells into it) didn't get one. Seems wrong somehow.

Edgar Guest

Mom sent me this poem this morning, saying that Guest was my Grandma Lachmayer's favorite poet. It reminded me so much of raucous Thanksgiving dinners around her dining room table, with the "Allied Union" collecting dishes of dressing and cranberries and such up at our end of the table and making the rest of the family ransom them and so many people crammed into her and Grandpa's little house that the rafters squeaked, that I had to share. Thanks mom, I love it.

***Someday I am planning to tell the story of that table and the many things that have happened on, under, around and to it over the years. From puppies chewing the feet to cousins getting their fannies fixed on top of it, it has quite a history....and it sits right over there in my dining room now waiting to host our Thanksgiving feast in a couple of weeks.

Thanksgiving

Edgar Albert Guest

How many of me?

Try this site to find out how many Americans share your name. Not too accurate though. It says I don't exist...or a least no one with our last name exists.....and there are five of us here, at least.

What do you say, dear?

To a man who tells you at 10:45 on Friday morning that he has an appointment to talk to a crop insurance rep at 3 PM?

In your kitchen?

On a day when it finally looked as if you were going to get some time (in between filling prescriptions and buying groceries) to visit your parents?


For the first time in a month?

When he knew about it since Monday?

When you live on a farm with three full time students, who own at least five pairs of always-muddy boots, (which are always left in that same kitchen, mud and all), along with three indoor dogs, piles of barn clothes and all the assorted untidiness that goes with busy people who make a living doing a very dirty demanding job? When the kitchen door is where they come in from the barn, the fields and the campus (our campus has cows too.)

Perhaps the question should rather be, what do you DO to a man who does that!

***I know what I wanna do, but I don't think it's legal....time to go mop the kitchen floor.

Deer tracks

Hello Moon

Here is last night's rising moon, taken by Alan's binocular method. As you can see, younger hands are steadier hands. Looks kind of like a rotten jack 'o lantern.

Halp us Jon Carry we r stuck hear n Irak

Thanks to Cousin Scott for this answer from some soldiers in Iraq to the esteemed Senator's comments on their level of education. At least SOMEONE has a sense of humor!

Looking out the living room window

We were slumped in various locations around the living room, comfortable in our Sunday chairs, like so many limp vegetables when Alan spotted a white-tail buck (8-point, or so mr. bright-eyes says) and two does in the overgrown horse pasture just outside. They were a good 800 feet away, so even though we could see them quite clearly, we had little hope of getting good pictures. Kind of frustrating, since we love to share.

Then the kid had the inspired idea of lining the lense of the digital camera up with the lense on the Bushnell birdwatching binoculars....and amazingly, hey, presto, pretty deer pictures!

Smart boy, I think I'll keep him.

Retired cow dog at work

*Mike, eyeing a heifer though the fence*
*She is not dog broke and not a bit impressed*

*Young stock coming down to look at that glaring dog*

Sky

No NAIS noticed again

Remember this post?


Back in August, I thought it was a pretty big deal that Walter Jeffries' No NAIS.org was mentioned in Drovers Alert. Now the same website has been mentioned in this USA Today story.

I for one, am glad to see it. The very valid arguments against NAIS need mainstream attention and I am thankful to the hardworking farmers and ranchers ***who are getting it for us.

Even a state veterinarian, who is in favor of NAIS, admits that there are major flaws in how the program is set up today,

"As for arguments that the program is unconstitutional and a violation of privacy, "I can't counter that," Hoenig says. But he tells the farmers, "In an emergency, you're going to be coming to people like me for help. So give us the tools we need to do our job."


Giving them tools to do the job is all well and good, but they are asking for weapons of mass destruction when a BB gun would get the job done just fine.

***Update...upon further reading I realized that Sarpy Sam's No Mandatory Animal ID, which is linked with the word "rancher" above is also mentioned in the article. I didn't recognize it, as his url is different from the name of his site.

Happy Halloween

Another game for your spooky enjoyment.

Cat Bowling

For those who want to get an early start on Halloween festivities.***


http://www.itsga.com/fun/cat_new.swf


***For cat lovers, no animals were harmed in the making of this game. They were "spared".
***For non cat lovers, bowling for cats says it all.

I don't mind

It is a closely held secret how I feel about driving Becky over to the college for her Friday classes. Liz takes her other days, but has nothing scheduled on Friday so it is my turn. The other day the bookstore lady from whom Becky buys me a coffee for the drive home mentioned to Liz that she felt sorry for me having to sit in the car all that time.



Let's see, how can I handle such punishment week after week? It was so still this morning early that you could hear the leaves falling. They made a sibilant rustle like the pattering of a crisp rain at the beginning of a summer storm. The air was crystal clear after last night brought us the first real killing frost. Oh, we have had a few little ones that polished off the tomatoes and cannas, but last night it hit the mid twenties. Driving down the valley it was so clear that a church steeple appeared to be suspended in space like a knife on a string. You could spot pigeons soaring miles away in the pristine sky.



Oak trees unfurled a sprawling magic carpet of gold and red and chestnut across the mountains. Stark shadows sharply outlined those mountains in the brilliant slanting sunlight. The view was so beautiful coming down into the Schoharie Valley that it almost hurt to look at it.

Once I parked a scattering of crows dive-bombed the parking lot. Amusing to watch one alight on a slender, brittle twig and try to balance, flicking its wings and teetering awkwardly. One flew so close to the open car window that I heard the rustle of its feathers like a whisper of silk right next to my ear.


Canada Geese, flock after flock of them, crisscrossed the sky, flying low and fast. Or they wheeled, calling plaintively, over some body of water out of sight below the campus. I sat in the car, warm sun at my shoulder, a good book in my lap and no more work to do than to leap out of the car occasionally to snap another picture of the unfolding morning beauty. Poor me.

Sycamore leaf

This landed on the car right in front of Danescara when Beck and I were driving by today. We were on a wild goose chase to see a strange, long, wooden sail boat go through the lock at Tribes Hill. Somehow it got so far ahead of us that we missed it. We often make a run for the lock if we see a real cool boat going past the house out on the Mohawk. I sure would have liked to get a look at this one, but it was not to be. Nice leaf though. Big too, that is a full sized pencil there.

Congratulations Sam

To Sarpy Sam at Thoughts From the Middle of Nowhere, one of the best of the best, on three years of insightful blogging. He is one of my first reads every morning.

Wild weather

We had a few bright flashes of sunlight today, which was pretty welcome. The boss found at least one field where he could actually get some corn chopped without having Alan tow him with the White 2-105 4-wheel drive. A lot easier that way.

Sweeney vs. Gilibrand

Fired off the Farm Side this morning SIX HOURS before deadline. I am way proud of myself, but really, it was an easy topic and darned near wrote itself. Although newspaper subscribers will have to read between the lines to figure out who I was ranting about, I will save you the mental anguish. I was all fired up about the campaign between Sweeney and Gillibrand for the US Congress. Good Lord, those two are like whiny little kids, not an issue between them, but plenty of childish tirades and he-said-she-said trash talking.

I love to put the things Becky has learned in college sociology class to work in rating their honesty. She says that when someone is lying they tend to glance involuntarily downward and to the left. Watch 'em when they rant and rave. See where they are looking?

Thankfully, no matter who wins that contest neither of them will represent this district. We just get to suffer through their campaign rhetoric on television. Can't wait until November 8th!

FFA and the vegetarian

Not much time to write these days (broken stable cleaner, two sick cows, three feet of mud in the fields with corn harvest only just begun, seventeen calves in the barn and a partridge in a pear tree) so I will share another great story. This time you can read about the vegetarian animal rights activist who will perform at the annual FFA convention. Amazin'!

Another view back on the hill

* taken from Seven County Hill field looking west across the Sixty-Acre Lot*

Meth

Nothing funny about meth. Nothing amusing about the way it is showing up in rural areas like this. However, this story of how some young, er, dumb and dumber fellows tried to steal some Sudafed to make some is hilarious. Not everyone uses cat food in quite that manner.

Argghhh....

Talking turkey

Hunting that is. (Note the fashionable duct tape fastening the orange vest together. This boy has style.) I know there are those who don't believe in hunting, but we have at least two hundred turkeys on our three hundred acres. (They gather together in the winter and we count them so we know.) The two or three a year that we roast will not be missed...and they are fat from eating our corn and alfalfa.

Partly because he is an avid hunter, this boy knows every inch of our land like other kids know the ins and outs of video games. In this picture he was showing me where he shot three turkeys with one shot one time (quite by accident). He loves to take me out to share his special places...an old pallet leaning on the rocks in the Sixty-Acre Lot hedgerow where he can hide and watch the wild things go by, a puddle where a dozen green frogs lurk, waiting to plop into the water with a startling splash. The old dam, the owl tree, he leads me to them proudly when we have time. I have visited all these places before when I was young and eager, but it is good to see them again through his fresh, fervent eyes. He is a capable tracker and so keen of nose that he can SMELL where the birds have been. My nose isn't sharp enough to notice until he points it out to me, but he is generally right.


It is comforting in a way to realize that the nature walks we took the kids on when they were little, turning over rocks to look for salamanders and spying on birds, have come full circle. Now we are the ones being taken.

How bad the corn is

This morning the sky was lumpy and dingy grey as if someone had stretched a dirty sock across it. For a while the sun tried to spill down between the lumps, but by the time we were done with chores there wasn't a ray to be seen.

It is plumb depressing. It just rains and rains and rains. A flood watch is on for all day tomorrow. Again.
The river is already bank full from all the snow up west last week . Meanwhile the guys go out to try to chop corn and the fields are quagmires. They are getting two or three loads a day on good days and barely enough to feed the cows on not-so-good days. Yesterday the boss jack knifed both feeder wagons bringing them down the hill. Dangerous. Worse when it is the forage wagons that he is bringing down. I don't know how they are ever going to get the corn in if it doesn't dry up soon.

The picture is how bad the corn is in at least one field, from all the rain this summer. There are fifteen or twenty feet or more between the stalks on half of the field, none at all on part of it, then a good stand up where the drainage is better. Very worrisome.

Tragic news

The death of a fellow student* of our girls, the teenaged son of a favorite professor, has been rattling our world this week. This is too sad for easy discussion, so I will just let you read about it. The alleged perpetrator is not a student at the college, but notice that the police apprehended him in a dorm.


I feel so much sympathy for the friends and family of the young victim. Not much more to say about it.
*Correction, the Gazette says not a student, although the girls knew him from campus.