Eastern cottontail

Alan took this photo at night, through the living room window with a flash. You can just see the little round rabbit among the brush along the foundation

Becky

Happy 19th Birthday!

***Becky says thanks to everyone who was kind enough to wish her well in the comments section. She had a good birthday as far as I can see, with a teddy bear from her little brother, clothes and books from the boss and me, neat stuff from big sister and some terrific books from Grandma and Grandpa, who run a bookstore and have books on Tut, archaeology, Native Americans and other things that interest her.

And then we had monster burgers, her favorite, for supper....of course on the down side she had to milk cows and go to college, but you just can't have everything.

Magnum

Nights when sleep is slow in coming I reconstruct my old horse in my mind. Sometimes I start at the bottom at his round black hooves, with just the one waxy, yellowish white one on the near hind that looked pink inside when it was raining. I can say, "Pick," in my mind and he will hand me a hoof so I can scrape clean the grooves around his rubbery frogs and the edges of his shiny steel shoes.

I work my way up over his strong pasterns and the hard roundness of his shaggy fetlocks, with the sharp little bony place at the back that you could always feel through the hair. Next to his cannon bones, on legs so solid that the only unsoundness he ever had in over thirty years of life was a splint he popped when he was two. I am usually asleep by the time I reach the night eyes or chestnuts, the little oblong protuberances on the inside of his upper legs. I am told that those are vestigial toes from the days when horses ran on more than the one toe they use now.

If I start at the top the first thing I envision touching are his fringed black fox's ears. He had wonderful ears. They would flop all anyhow when I was grooming him, or prick eagerly at the prospect of dinner. How he loved to eat...he was always hog fat in summer, so round he made my knees ache when I rode him bareback, which I always did. Next come the deep hollows over his dark brown eyes. They say the offspring of an older mare will have deeper depressions there. I don't know if it is true, but his dam was not young when he was born and his hollows were always as deep as those of an old horse. In my mind I can feel the silky hair of his forelock when I brushed it and the wiry waves of his long, thick mane. I have never stayed awake long enough to feel his sharp withers or to dig my fingers into the soft fur between his forelegs, where he loved to be scratched. However, if I go over him in the daytime, inside the memories of our decades together I find every dapple, feel his elbows, knees and the soft hair on his upper lip when he licked my hand for the salt.

I can remember the way he felt bouncing between my knees at the bottom of Grey Road Hill. He knew we were going to run up it every time we went that way and he loved it as much as I did. What a feeling to have him canter in place beneath me waiting for the slightest lift of rein, the least shift of weight to tell him, go, go, go, race up that hill as if tomorrow waited at the top.

He would pound up the winding curves running so fast he was flat on top, not a ripple in his racing. Then as we reached the apex his fine chiseled head would come up, his back would round into a canter and he would snort with delight, as if to say, "We done good boss, didn't we?"

We had to put him down about four years ago when he colicked from an impaction and twisted intestine. He was 31. I bought him when he was two and I was just past twenty. When I get to missing him...and I do...because you never have more than one first horse and he was both my first and my last, although I owned many others during his lifetime...when I get to missing him, I reconstruct him in my mind and then we tear hell bent for the top of Grey Road Hill just one more time.

Barbaro's death got me thinking of him today....

Frost on the punkins

And on the stained glass windows too!

Summer memo

This is a picture of a water lily blooming on the garden pond. Thought those of you who are also shivering here in the far, far north might enjoy the reminder of better (and warmer) days.

UPSTREAM still swimming along

Dan Weaver, who is probably my favorite local blogger, gave serious thought last week to quitting. More than a few would have missed his particular insights into regional news and politics. Thankfully, someone wrote him a persuasive email, convincing him to continue to keep us upstate New Yorkers informed about the shenanigans of state and local government. I for one am grateful.

Signs of Spring

Postcard from our robin...







Thanks FC!

Blue Monday

At least one psychologist considers January 22 to be the most depressing day of the year. One scientist even figured out a mathematical formual to choose the most miserable day, based on the end of the holiday season, bills piling up, cruddy weather and so forth.

We had no idea two days ago that we were experiencing the worst day in recent memory because of that formula. Actually we though we were just having a lousy day. First both the skid steer and the bucket tractor experienced major breakdowns simultaneously. The fellows couldn't get the manure out because of the ice.There was no pretty way to feed the cows because the bucket machines were both down. Instead the guys drove the feed cart over to the pile to get the corn. It is not made to work outside in rutted snow so one had to run alongside keeping it from tipping over while the other drove. Meanwhile they needed to get a new hitch on the truck as the old one broke and they had to hook the trailer up to take the pigs to the meat plant. While crawling around in the snow under the truck, Alan got a big chunk of rust in his eye and came screaming into the house in horrible pain. We got it out all right, but he really suffered.
It was ugly.

While all this was going on cow # 146 decided to tear her stanchion out, rip down all the water lines on the south side of the barn and run around the barn beating up on other cows.

Then the heifers got out. ...because the guys left the gate open when they ran inside to catch 146 and turn off all the water.

They raced to Hand's to get some plastic pipe and nuts and bolts and such to cobble everything in the barn back together so we could milk and the cows could drink.

It was just a horrible day. I hated to see the men coming toward the house. Every time they came through the door they had more bad news. By the end of the day we were just grateful to be done and sit down and forget about cows and tractors and snow for a few hours.

Who knew that all that misery was just Blue Monday ?

"The truth is a lot of people feel down at this time and a lot of people have depression as well, particularly men, and they don't want to talk about it," Dr. Arnall said.

I feel better now.

Regional dairy meeting made the big news

Liz and I attended a meeting on the dairy farming situation here in NYS last week. In fact, this week's Farm Side is all about it. I was surprised to find that this story about the meeting made Dairy Alert from Dairy Herd Management, even though farmers, literally from the eastern border of the state to the western, were there. Here is another story from a newspaper in the region.

It was a good meeting, well-run, well-attended and very much to the point. Now we will see if all the legislators who attended it are able to do anything about the current pricing crisis. Always supposing that they want to do something.

School is easier

Than feeding all these critters without a tractor!

Hooter

Sister to Hattie

Hattie

Sister to Hooter

Got milk?

In your ear perhaps?

Sequoia

I want grain!

You're not my mother...

Spent the morning outside in 4 degree weather, lugging box elder trees down off the hill behind the stove and trying to get the fire going good enough to get the indoor temperature above 50 degrees.

Other than that it is (in theory) my morning off, it wasn't really a horrible job. Alan had the foresight, when we first got him his saw, to knock these little trees down for emergency wood. They are not far from the stove and they are bone dry so they are very light. It is easy to pick up a 4-inch thick, twenty-foot tall tree and drag it away with one hand. Lots of nice little birds were chinking and cheeping nearby, the sun was shining off the snow, the sky was brilliant blue and the wind wasn't too bad. As long as it stayed down we weren't really uncomfortable at all.

The box elders burn like tinder....(wait a minute....they are tinder) and we soon had the stove burning great. We are now quite comfy, (although somebody is going to have to get the darned tractor started and get some real wood pretty soon).

However, what really gets me going is to come inside and turn on Channel 9 Weather.
And to hear the weatherman, who is quite literally young enough to be my son, tell me firmly, (as if I were three and a half), "Bundle up when you go outside. Cover all exposed skin and don't be out any longer than you have to. There is a real danger of frostbite and hypothermia."

DUH

I have so many clothes on INDOORS that I would roll off the hill if I happened to stumble. When any of us go outside we wear even more than that. Most sensible folks do. The average person over the age of five is smart enough to figure out for themselves that it is cold outside in upstate New York in January. If they missed that part of life 101, having the weatherman tell then how to dress just isn't going to cut it....so to those pesky (and generally inaccurate) weathermen I say, show the long range forecast and get it over with.

I have been dressing myself for a while now!

A duckache tonight

Liz and I were waiting in heavy traffic on Riverside Drive tonight as we left the Truck Stop after fueling up her truck for the big return to college Monday. As we paused for a parade of semis to pass, I watched perhaps fifty or sixty assorted gulls wheeling over the river. There were herring gulls, great black backs and a mess of ring bills. They were just beautiful against the storm blown clouds and I wished aloud for a pair of binoculars and a safe place to park so I could try to sort them out and look for exotics.

As they drifted away east a gap opened in the traffic and I estimated whether I could safely exit or not. Suddenly a large bird, blacker than the gulls and seeming somewhat larger, sailed swift and silent downriver from the west. It reversed right in front of us and swooped like a bolt down toward the water. A pair of ducks we had not seen sprang up in panic and the big bird whirled away defeated.

It was a bald eagle.We were astonished. I was expecting maybe a stray cormorant or something. Not that eagles are terribly rare here but we don't usually get that close to them. It proceeded on east behind the gulls hot on the trail of a mess of mallards. Who knew that eagles eat ducks? We thought it was fishing.

Here we go again...mandatory NAIS

Just as the USDA kinda, sorta, maybe caved into pressure from farmers and ranchers and made National Animal ID a voluntary program, some **&^%$( in Congress wants to go back to a mandatory program.

Hungry visitor

*Chickadee!!

Where have all the small forks gone?

(Old dogs took them, everyone.)

Yeah, the mystery is solved.

See there are a couple (or three) of us here at Northview who like to eat with salad forks. (I don't know just why, but I can promise you that it doesn't have anything to do with small mouths.)

Anyhow, over the past year or so, our small forks have dwindled in number until we were down to four. That meant that there was no skimping on dishwashing between meals. The drawer was always bare.

Then one day there were only three.

I KNEW there were four at dinnertime.

However, when I put away the silverware after I washed dishes one was gone.
I made a serious search. I even dug around in the outdoor woodstove in case some one had burned one up with a paper plate or something.

No fork.

I eventually gave up and we were months with only three small forks.

It was annoying. You almost always had to wash a fork before you could eat dinner.
Then the other day Liz went to take dogs out. Gael sat stubbornly in her crate, not wanting to brave the elements (can't blame her there.) Said crate is tucked in next to the chimney in a darkish corner of the pantry. There are sundry rarely used objects such as divorcee barn boots and single-parent gloves piled around it.

When Liz went in to haul the old lady out for a walk, there was something glinting under her fat, furry fanny.

Yep.

The other salad fork.
There is no way it was dropped there. Nowhere near the sink or table.
There is no way it walked there. No legs.
No pack rats. Too far east.
I don't think we have Borrowers.

Therefore the only logical conclusion is that Gael is practicing for the advent of opposable thumbs in Border collies. She has been using it to eat the dog biscuits that she hides in there every time I hand them out.

Now I am going to have to drag the darned crate out of its cluttery corner and see if the rest of the missing silverware is behind it.

I'll do it right after I have a discussion with Nick about why I found my 1970's era yellow lace prom gown in HIS crate yesterday….

Brrrr......

Solid gold cornflakes

Sarpy Sam has a good post on the rapidly rising price of corn, which is being blamed on ethanol production. The Chicago corn price is the highest today that it has been since 1996. At the same time, world wide corn supplies are the lowest they have been since 1978.

With farm gate milk prices about what they were in 1970, this is creating a horrendous crunch for dairy farmers. We feed about two and a half tons of grain a week to our milk cows, heifers and calves here at Northview. The price we pay for it is skyrocketing, higher every time we get a bill.

The feeding of grain to dairy cows isn't really optional. Cows need grain to make milk. Calves need protein and energy to grow. Here in the Northeast, forages such as the hay and corn that we grew are very low in nutrient value because the incessant rain this summer leached minerals and other nutrients from the soil. Forages are in short supply as well, because excess rain this year prevented normal planting, growth and harvest.

I am not sure how this is all going to shake out, but I suspect by spring there are going to be a lot fewer dairy farms in Upstate New York. It's sad, but there comes a point when there is nothing more to be done.

Feeder closed for a snow day

*Or more properly ice day

Some people have ice wines...

Here at Northview we have ice pines!

Britain vs USA crime rate

TFS Magnum has the figures detailing which nation suffers more from violent crime. They might surprise you...too bad the only place you can find these numbers is not more visible to the general public.

Puppy pictures

*Liz and Nick*

*Socializing the puppies*

*Alan and Lark, who now lives in New Mexico and is a therapy dog*

Taxpayer revolt

Sarpy Sam has a post today that will hit very close to the hearts of many overburdened tax payers. He calls it Perverse Pleasure. It resonated with me in a big way. I have partaken of many such delights myself over the years.

One of my favorites was when Gael gave birth to Nick and seven other little Border collie hellions about eight years ago. The advent of eight extra BCs into a home that already has two on site cow biting, sheep herding, toilet paper wrangling, shoe mangling, tongue dangling, hyper active, smarter than the average bear, little black dogs on hand is not an experience for the faint of heart.

Anyhow, as soon as the pups' eyes opened and they discovered the purpose of those appendages that stuck out of each corner of their sausage-shaped bodies, the floor wars began. We had an appliance box in the dining room to provide safe, secure housing for them.

It failed totally, miserably, early and often. The alarm clock languished, unused and unappreciated, as everyone awakened every morning to the thunder of 32 paws, accompanied by the worried click of poor Gael's claws as she tried, unsuccessfully, to keep them in order. There is not a box made that can contain a determined Border collie, let alone what often seemed like a dozen of them.

Of course with eight, (count 'em, eight) little puddle jumpers piddling enthusiastically during every escape escapade, we went through a lot of newspapers.

Reams.

Rafts.

Rooms full.

In self defense and to preserve the withered shreds of my tattered sanity, I took deep delight in choosing my least favorite politicians' photos to protect my floors.

Face up. I would even fold the paper just so, in order to give them star billing so to speak.

Sarpy Sam's post reminded me of that and I thank him.

Patrick Hooker named Commissioner of Agriculture

This is from an Ag and Markets press release I received this morning;

Patrick M. Hooker is being nominated to serve as Commissioner of
Agriculture and Markets.
Mr. Hooker currently serves as the Director of the Public Policy at the
New York Farm Bureau, a position which he has held since 1999.
Previously, Mr. Hooker was the Deputy Director of
Governmental Relations at the New York Farm Bureau
from 1990 to 1999.From 1987 to 1990, he served as
Director of the New York State Senate Agriculture Committee.
He was also a Rural Affairs Advisor to the New York State Assembly in the Office of the Minority Leader from 1985 to1987.
Mr. Hooker received his B.S. from Cornell University
and his A.A.S. from the State University of New York at Morrisville.

I think this is really good news for New York farmers. Pat is a fair and decent guy with an outstanding knowledge of the industry.

Wait a minute...

*Taken just three days apart*

Organic farming and the hidden corporate agenda

The meeting on activist influence on agriculture in general and milk pricing in particular that I mentioned last month took place today. The main topic was the damage that is done to the image of regular milk by claims by organic companies that their milk lacks something that ordinary moo juice has…in this case antibiotics (strictly illegal) hormones (all milk has ‘em), pesticides, (not legal either) and yucky stuff (not a very scientific term and kind of hard to prove). These claims, made on cartons and in store displays as well as on buckets and buckets of Internet sites are illegal.

They constitute false advertising.

Organic, BST-free, and plain old store brand milk are chemically indistinguishable.
These claims make regular milk seem unhealthy and encourage consumers to either spend much more money than there is any reason to or to give up drinking milk altogether.

I was fascinated to hear that many of the massive anti-“factory” farming campaigns that reach public eyes are funded directly or indirectly by organic food giants such as Horizon and Organic Valley. (On that note, our speaker told us that some folks consider herds of over fifty cows to constitute a factory farm. Guess that makes Northview assembly line all the way. We happen to have just a couple more than that.) I always wondered what spawned such passionate dedication to a food and farming ideal that is actually not nearly as popular as attention by the mainstream media might suggest.
Getting paid for that rabid activism explains a lot.
Interestingly one of the entries in the blogroll, Milk is Milk, was mentioned.

Although the meeting was sponsored by Monsanto, the company which sells Posilac, so the speaker wasn’t exactly unbiased, he reiterated many points on activism that I have belabored for years in the Farm Side.
And here on Northview as far as that goes.

I’m glad I was able to attend. The speaker was so good at his job that two hours went by as if they were nanoseconds, the subject was captivating, and I will probably get a column out of it for next week.
Plus we got a nice lunch and a chance to catch up with other farmers who don’t get out any more than we do.
All in all, a valuable morning.

Sorry, new computer

Sooner or later I will get it all set up and have time to sit down and write. At least yesterday I found the missing registration key for my copy of Microsoft Word, so after five years of using an outdated word processor I can type with the fancy "new" (eh, okay, after that long in the box, languishing unused, it isn't really all that new but still...) one I bought so long ago.

While I am downloading firewalls and Internet answering machines and fixing display properties and attempting to write the Farm Side with an unfamiliar keyboard and word processing program I invite you to enjoy bloggers who are posting frequently.

Liz, although she is still coughing and we are now thinking maybe it's whooping cough, is writing every day at BuckinJunction.

Hurricane Teen who keeps The Minorcan Factor fascinating, has been posting pictures of secret lizards, fiery peppers and luxuriant citrus fruit lately.

Swen, A Coyote at the Dogshow, is on the road in Texas and thereabouts. He has a real good post about fair chase in hunting that is worth a read.

A new face in the blogroll, My Piece of Heaven is posting pictures of just what winter can do when it wants to (just in case all us spoiled Northeasterners have forgotten this year). They are lovely and chilling all at the same time.

Heck, when I have time I just read right down the blogroll, Pure Florida, Sarpy Sam, Upstream, another new face the Poodle and Dog Blog all offer good reading and update nearly every day.

Have a good time reading........

Trust

We spent almost the whole day trying to get a couple of different Wal*Mart stores to honor a perfectly legal, state sanctified and certified, nicely printed and filled in correctly farmer sales tax exemption form.
Because we had to get a computer.
Because the one I do the books and cow records on (which runs Windows 98) is croaking. (Latest thing is the display has turned all pink and funky around the edges and the windows are cut off on the edge. It already won't start without a lot of messing around because it can't find all its files.)
It was time.

The folks at the first store looked at us as if we had just landed our spaceship in the parking lot among the carts. "Farmer? Tax exempt? Never seen one of these before. We can't honor this! No, no, way..." This after we had stood in line and waited for people to ask other people how to handle the usually uncomplicated transaction for somewhere in the neighborhood of two and a half hours. (I LOVE to shop.)

So the boss called a different Wal*Mart in another county where there are more farms and they said, "Sure, as long as you have a certificate we will honor it, c'mon down."

So we went. It still took a while, but we finally got the darned thing. I am too tired to even take it out of the box.

The big thing is, while we were gone the whole herd of milk cows had to be fed. So Alan fed them.
A cow named River had a heifer calf while we were away too. (When we left she wasn't giving a single sign of what she was up to. An hour later there was a baby.) It needed to be cleaned off, put in a calf coat, fed colostrum and made warm and dry. Its mother needed a bottle of calcium and to be hand milked so the baby could have the bottle.
Liz did the cleaning, milking, medicine delivery, navel dipping and all the other stuff that attends birthing, while Becky gophered and Alan helped as needed.

It was good to come home to most of the chores done and the calf and cow cared for as they needed.

It is even better to be able to trust the kids to handle all that stuff and not even think about it.
Thanks guys, guess we'll keep you after all.

**Update, while we were milking that night Alan moved the older computers to their new homes, set the new one up and got it running, and cleaned up all the dust that gathers around such electronic devices. It was nice to come in and have all that bull work done and everything ready to start setting up software and moving programs. I sort of conned him into it when he asked if he could do it for me, by telling him it was too complicated and he would lose stuff and all....of course he rose to the challenge.

Down home cookin'

Our lovely Liz cooked all day yesterday...homemade bread, brownies, blondies, a rice casserole for dinner. She has pictures......

Too bad about the power lines.....

*Although I do love the way the electricity makes all my toys work so nicely*

**In the comments I discovered that I had been tagged by Matthew Didier..answers on the View at Northview.

Rain sounds

Across the valley a freight train is slowly gathering speed as it heads west along the tracks. Its mournful whistle sounds as if it was chugging across the side lawn.
It could even be right under the old swing set where I hang my many birdfeeders.
It demands that I hear it and notice out loud.

When I was filling the stove just before this miserable storm, it sounded as if the boss was using some large, unfamiliar, piece of machinery over in the barnyard. I wondered what it could be, since after all these years I am familiar with the different pitches of the engines of every tractor we have. Then he appeared right behind me to help me toss in logs. It took me the rest of the day to figure out that the east wind was making the sound of the Interstate echo off the L-shaped side of the cow barn….it was as loud as if there really were a tractor there.

Walking to the barn later, in the half darkness of a bleak winter rain, I heard, as clear as if it were right beside me, the chug-clack of the couplers between a pair of cars as a different train started and stopped. It was idling on the siding, awaiting a turn on the bustling westbound track. I could hear each distinct click of the various metal connector parts and the shuddering bang of the cars as if I was standing right beside the tracks, a mile and a river away.

We hear trains and traffic every day. Although there are many scenic, special, secret places in the woods and fields here at Northview, you can never forget for one second that you are just a few miles from the state capital. It is never quiet. The sky is never empty of at least a half a dozen jet trails and a propeller plane or two. When a thick storm or unusual cloud formation blows in, the noise is even more pronounced, because sounds are amplified by the clouds and seem to throw themselves around like a perverse sort of ventriloquist. As far as I am concerned it can clear off any time now, so I can sink back into blissful oblivion and stop looking under the swing set for errant trains.

Colorado snowstorm act of God

..or so says PeTA, so tough luck for Western cattle and wildlife...

If you have a minute, listen to these short MP3 clips of an interview session with Colorado Governor Bill Owens, Denver radio station KRFX and a representative of the reprehensible animal rights organization. Just in case you ever thought that they gave a damn, you will see for sure that their agenda doesn't include real kindness for real animals.

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.