More storm stuff

This little toy car is inside the kitchen window
(gotta find where that snow is sneaking in and caulk it!)

It CAN be pretty

Chingachgook...or just some silly boy hunting pigeons in the storm?

We just like to take weather pictures I guess. It is nice today except for the wind....lots of sun.

Into the heart of the storm

Photo by Alan

Photo by mom

Photo by mom

The snow is 24 inches deep on the car right now, but seems deeper where the wind can't get to it. The extra-large bucket on the skid steer fills before Alan can even go five feet. We haven't seen a storm like this in many, many years.

He took the blue jay photo from the upstairs window using binoculars like he did on the deer pictures last fall. It gives an idea of how hard it was snowing earlier. It has actually gotten worse to the point you can barely see 5S. Big storm!

Blizzard warning-Happy Valentines Day

These came out of the closet last night and are leaning on the wall in the kitchen. Alan was in 4-H rather than the boy scouts, but he belives in being prepared. (For those of you who live where the manatees roam they are snow shoes and I would rather see a flock of robins I can assure you.) He also split up about a face cord and a half of stout maple last night and tucked it in under heavy canvas. We brought heifers in off the hill and stuffed them in the barn with the shorthorn bull, fueled up everything and picked up all the stuff that we could think of that might be hard to find under the snow that is forecast.

As of ten last night the college had cancelled classes for today for the first time in the three years Liz has been attending. Shortly thereafter FFCS joined a growing list of schools that are closing today. I am real glad of that. Although it looks like today is going to be a rough one at least we will know where they all are and have their invaluable help this day.

Now there are blizzard warnings for the first time in years. So far we only have about four inches, but it is that mealy stuff that tends to be a harbinger of lots more to come. I guess we are as prepared as we are going to be, but the B-word makes me plumb nervous.

As a wee footnote, the boss and I had the privilege of being awakened at some obscene pre-dawn hour, by an idiot on a snowmobile going about half again as fast as the plow trucks and the semis on the Thruway. I thought about a hundred mps, the boss says 75. Anyhow the foo' was either on the bike path or actually on 5S itself trying to find himself a headline or maybe an epitaph up in Evergreen. I dunno, but he sure woke me up. Anyhow, Happy Valentine's Day...hope it ain't snowing where you are.

Mysterious bee disease

This could be very bad news!

Could be a rackabore bone

One of my read-'em'-every-day type favorite bloggers, Florida Cracker, posted an interesting puzzler today on his blog. (He is a teacher and likes to test us.)

Most guesses run toward mineral block or salt lick, but I am thinking maybe it is a rackabore bone. We see 'em all the time up here in the hilly country of Upstate NY and I am thinking maybe one retired to somewhat flatter Florida and succumbed out in FC's warm southern forest. Take a look and tell me what you think.

More About Growing lettuce indoors

Cabin fever and garden deprivation can get really intense by this time of year up here in the frozen north country.A sunny day that isn't too cold comes along and you just itch to go outside and plant something or pick something or do something besides stuff wood in the stove. However, the ground is still frozen and will be for a long time yet, the wind is still biting and it isn't even maple sugaring time. Sometimes, I can kind of ease through the no-dirt, no-greenery, no-gardening doldrums by puttering with the houseplants....repotting Amaryllises, cutting down gangly geraniums, picking off spent flowers and such, but really I need to grow something new and interesting. Most years I grow a few geraniums from seed, and maybe some lobelia, moon flowers or other things that require a bit of fussing. This year I am out of dirt and need to go buy some....which kind of goes against the grain.

Anyhow, I decided that we needed some lettuce that I knew came from a clean, fresh, not-in-another-state source so I decided to plant some in the living room. I used compost from the buckets I grew tomatoes in last summer and threw in some perlite and put the whole mess in a Styrofoam cooler left over from toting soda and Bologna sandwiches to the fair last summer. It has been slow going because there is so little sun, but it is beginning to come along quite nicely now. I nip off a leaf every now and then just to sample and I think we will be able to use it in sandwiches pretty soon.

Back to the barn

No-o-o-o....I don't want to walk.

It's cold out here!

Please carry me mommy...

Repeat after me....

There are no flies
It is not muddy
Snow is pretty

Say it again
There are no flies
It is not muddy
Snow is…..

***Most politicians understand that if you tell a lie often enough people will begin to repeat it as if it were the truth...so I am chanting the mantra above in hopes that I will somehow start to like winter...

I might add:

People pay for dermabrasion to make themselves look younger. I am hoping wind blown snow has the same effect for a much lower price. (Although so far all it has made me look is redder.)

When I let the dogs out for a constitutional convention I do not have to stand on the porch shivering and calling, and calling, and calling before they come in. As soon as I open the door I find them huddled on the back porch in a trembling black mass and they fall all over themselves trying to get in.

There are no flies
It is not muddy......

Yesterday

**Alan took this yesterday afternoon, just as the sun was beginning to set. You can barely see the houses with the reflecting windows except at that time of day.

No such thing as a free lunch

Yes, this dog crate is in my kitchen

But, no, that is notadog.

***It's a little Zipper

Today's desktop wallpaper

Brought to you by the ducks of Peck's Lake NY

Following Michael's fingers

Sitting there today I reflected on how many hours, how many years, how many decades even, I have spent watching his fingers fly over the fret board and copying as best I could the chords he made. It has never been more than a poor facsimile, my part of the music, but it sure has been fun doing it.

Making music together began perhaps in my aunt’s yellow convertible out by the curb at 14 Bloomingdale Avenue, listening to fifties rock and roll and singing along. We were small then, and that car was the epitome of glamour and adventure.

Doing dishes together, him washing, me drying, and belting out Beach Boys and the Dave Clark Five. Even then his high, pure voice put my rumble to shame, but we had fun anyhow.

Then the “band” came along, that first one we started, with him playing on an antique wooden drum set that came into the shop and me wishing my short, untutored fingers would somehow learn to bend into a chord on his wonderful black guitar. Neighbor kids who couldn’t play anything either jammed into my bedroom with primitive instruments and an astonishing lack of talent. We made a lot of noise anyhow.

A couple years later we got a bit more serious. We learned to more or less really play our instruments. By then I knew enough chords to actually play a few songs…as long as they weren’t too hard. A better sort of musicians joined the gang, a lead guitar player, a pianist and a bass player. We began to practice in cellars and garages and to play at school dances and even actually got paid… usually about enough for gas money and solder to fix the always broken wires on the PA speakers.

Long before that time his talent was evident. He wrote music, played drums amazingly, learned guitar and other instruments.

After a few years of playing bars and local resorts the band broke up. We grew up, moved away, got married and grew apart, but always a couple of times a year we got together to play. He still took his music seriously and took it places, singing and playing in church, taking lessons, always getting better and still better.

I took cows seriously and never really had any talent to begin with…tone deaf as a dog howling at the moon. I still play the same second-hand imitation Gibson I have had for over thirty years…on the rare occasions that I play at all.

Still when we sat down in living rooms, on porches, at camp, at his house, at my house, at someone else’s house, I could always follow his fingers though songs that I didn’t know. Even though I had often never even heard them before, I could always read the chords he made like a sort of musical mirror and follow somehow. He would drag me along on his tuneful coattails and for a while I could fly on borrowed wings.

As we celebrated a late Christmas with his family, mine, and that of my younger brother today, he played John Pryne’s Paradise and I followed his hands. We played LA Freeway and soared a little…( at least it seemed that way to me, I am not sure how the people listening felt about it). He rattled off a Guy Clark song and I missed a few chords, but his lead was solid and by the end it fell together nicely. We did Danny’s Song and he let me sing the lead on the chorus in my scanty little voice and held me up with his rich harmony. It gave me cold chills.

He’s a pretty good brother, my next younger one. I think Ill keep him.

***I am going to keep the other one too, the baby of the family. He is such a lovely guy. He brought me diamonds today, great, gleaming chunks of them like ice glittering in the headlights on the highway.

*** Herkimer diamonds that is, but I love them anyhow.

The UN Global warming report

Here is a quote from a story that A Coyote at the Dog Show linked to the other day.

"Giegengack may have a personal 50-year perspective on global warming, but the time range he prefers to consult is more on the geologists’ scale. The Earth has been warming, he says, for about 20,000 years. We’ve only been collecting data on that trend for about 200 years. “For most of Earth history,” he says, “the globe has been warmer than it has been for the last 200 years. It has only rarely been cooler.” Those cooler periods have meant things like two miles of ice piled over much of what is now North America. Nothing to be nostalgic for."

Here is more:

“Sea level is rising,” Giegengack agrees, switching off the sound. But, he explains, it’s been rising ever since warming set in 18,000 years ago. The rate of rise has been pretty slow — only about 400 feet so far. And recently — meaning in the thousands of years — the rate has slowed even more. The Earth’s global ocean level is only going up 1.8 millimeters per year. That’s less than the thickness of one nickel. For the catastrophe of flooded cities and millions of refugees that Gore envisions, sea levels would have to rise about 20 feet."

Too bad the world listens to Oprah first and scientists second.

A canine hero

This story of a stray dog, rescuing an injured motorist is pretty amazing. I knew I liked dogs.


***Update...Becky and I got to talking on the way up west to do errands today and came to the conclusion that if the animal that came upon the poor lady was a cat large enough to drag her by the collar she would have been a menu item rather than incredibly fortunate.

Got up way too early this morning

***moon photo uploaded three times before it stuck!

.....to check on a heifer, Sedona, who is going to have a calf any minute now…or so we hope. Yesterday she was leaking milk and you could clearly see that the baby had moved up into the birth canal so it won’t be long. The barn lights were on, so I knew someone had been out since midnight but I went out anyhow. Sometimes you can check an hour after the last person found nothing and the calf is already there. We turn the lights on if anyone goes out between midnight and dawn, as cows respond well to a somewhat extended photoperiod and give between five and sixteen percent more milk if they get enough hours.

Of course, Sedona was fine, chewing her cud and looking at me with mild curiosity. No calf yet.

I checked the other two heifers who are close, Zipper and Bariolee, (no action there either) put some wood on the stove, and came in out of the pearly darkness to enjoy a couple of hours on the computer in splendid, uninterrupted solitude.

I wrote this post and uploaded the moon picture.
Blogger closed and ate the post.
I did it again.
Blogger closed and ate the post.
This time I had right clicked and copied so I could just past the text back in.
Blogger ate that too.

I could think of some lovely choice words for Blogger this exquisite, shining, mid-winter morning. Uploading the same photo thrice and having to rewrite the same number of times is just a pain in the neck. The second words never have the life of the first. However, I will save my nasty thoughts for the busy little troll who put a volume or so of half truths, lies and damn lies in my comments, but doesn't have nerve enough to leave a public profile so we can see who they are.

And I will write this in Word and just go through and fix all the curly quotes later.

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.