How (not) to photograph a calf

(The first time she goes out on a halter)


Running

Running some more

A pause for the cause

But I lo-o-o-ove you

Maqua-kil Blitz Neon Moon making her debut at Northview Farm.

Say it isn't so

Upstream

Who is this raider of the green bean patch?

Here is where I am looking to try to find him. And here.

A couple more cow stories

You might think that it is a chore for cows to be dragged to the fair...that they must mind being shut into a stock trailer, driven 32 miles over twisted hill country roads, and kept away from green pastures and good buddies for a week.

You might think.

However, there is a certain amount of evidence to the contrary. About six years ago one of the show heifers was turned out with a herd of regular heifers. The boss was really worried about how we were going to sort her out to take her to the show. (She had been to the fair the year before.) However, as soon as he backed the trailer over to the heifer yard, she threw up her head and ran up to the gate so she could get on.

Same thing this year. Because of the light duty truck the guys made a second trip back home to get Lemmie and Blink. They loaded Lem and went back into the barn to get Blink. When they came out there was Heather, Lizzie's old Jersey show cow, who isn't going this year because we didn't get her bred until real late, climbing onto the back compartment of the trailer. Foolish, a milking two-year-old, who went last year too, was right behind her and Junie, a dry who has been showed all her life, was running down the hill for her turn. I suppose it just shows that they aren't stupid. For the week at the show they are fed about ten times a day, have nothing to do buy lie in knee deep straw, get washed, and groomed and pampered until they shine like stars. It is like a spa for cows! What's not to like? Still it amazes me that all it takes is one trip over to the fair for them to associate a trailer ride with pleasure. In fact, Foolish has never even ridden on OUR trailer, having been hauled over by our trucker last year!

Then the other day, Alan was standing in the barnyard waiting for the boss, and decided to scratch Balsam, mother of Bayberry, grandmother of Bayliner. He used to show Balsie when she was a heifer but she is an older three quartered cow now and can't be shown. He was being careful to stay at arm's length so she wouldn't knock him down if she decided to take off, as most cows won't let you touch them when they are running free. Instead of taking off, she scooped him into the hollow of her neck, with a swoop of her head, and cradled him there against her neck so she could be sure not to lose the source of all that lovely scratching and petting. It was like a huge cow hug...she is mean to other cows, but she sure is sweet to people.

Mandy

Getting ready

This is Mandolin Rain, a 4-year old daughter of Ocean View Zenith out of an old homebred cow, being milked after the show in the fair's milking parlor. It amazes me how the cows take to the parlor, not being milked in one at home. Lemonade had to be milked off the wrong side and is only a first calf heifer and she stood like a champ.

I see you!

What is amazing about this picture is what Mandy is looking at, staring at in fact, over the side of the parlor stall. There is a roped off area where fairgoers can watch the cows being milked. I was standing in the center of about thirty people a good twenty feet from her. She is not one that I milk, she hadn't seen me in a week, it was way past dark, and yet she picked me out of the crowd and stared at me most of the time she was being milked.

I was amazed and humbled. ...although I guess that there was no reason for me to get all excited. One of the kids' friends showed her in one class last year and as soon as she came over to the string this week Mandy recognized her and wanted to be petted. The cows come home tomorrow night and I am way past ready... a night with more than five or six hours in it would be a real bonus.

Doing pretty good here....92 pounds in a day

This one did win

Frieland Chilt Blink

Although I think the kids came in fifth with that best three females group below this baby, showing as a senior heifer calf, won her class against stiff competition. She is not spectacular in the rear "wheels" and could stand to be a little longer and stronger over the topline, but I have liked her since day one. Blink is a daughter of the Select Sires young sire, Chilton, out of a Comestar Leader cow Alan used to show, Brink.

Finally

I'm thinking this is Best Three Females Class, Altamont Fair 2007. We didn't win the blue ribbon, but it was a groundbreaking, watershed, revolutionary, first time kinda thing just the same. Check out the guy on Mandy's halter...

Milk hauling dilemma

Did you know that dairymen pay the milk company that buys their milk to haul it to their plant. This may change depending on the results of a study that is now being done. I hope it does. We pay nearly a thousand dollars a month for hauling.

What's that bug?

Or mammal or frog! I stumbled upon this site after reading Burning Silo today and realizing that although there are katydids all over the place here I had no idea what one sounds like.

Now I do, having listened to the recorded call on the site. Sadly the site is not very comprehensive, but it is fun anyhow.

Speaking of meth

Last year the guys saw a car in the barn driveway and ran down to accost the individual.
We are on a high hill with a winding dirt drive.
His excuses for being at our barn didn't exactly jibe so we called the police.
He claimed he was looking for Argersinger Road.
However in this picture you can see an abandoned house that we think he wanted to get into. I never mentioned it here, but the guy in the car had no teeth, just tiny rotting shells and stumps sticking up out of raw, ragged gums. He couldn't have been more than thirty. I figured at the time and still do that he was looking for a place to cook meth. Just a couple weeks before some fellows got caught cooking on a farm road near some friends' place.
We were scared for a while.
Still think twice about checking the barn after dark.
Oh, and he had a kid about nine with him.
Nice, huh?

Reasearch

Liz accidentally woke me up at four this morning when she got up to go to the fair. (Frankly, it hurt.) It was not time to milk, but since I was up anyhow, I went to work at my other job.....the Farm Side. Deadline is today (not unlike every other Wednesday) and I didn't even have a rough draft. I started doing research on the new federal regulations on 7% iodine solution. I didn't find good news I'm afraid. Instead of being able to go to the farm store to buy a gallon, we will have to look elsewhere, probably a pharmacy, for this much needed medicine. The drug will now be sold only by entities registered with the DEA and records will be kept of its distribution. (I don't suppose that will make it any cheaper.) The law is changing because depraved drug dealers use iodine to cook methamphetimine to sell to their customers. They already steal anhydrous ammonia fertilizer; now they have their fingers in the farm medicine cabinet and their chicanery is taking away a much needed tool for calf, lamb, and kid health.

When baby critters are born, their navels offer a veritable highway by which nasty pathogens can enter their bodies, often causing a disease called joint ill, or navel ill. Dipping the newborn navel in strong tincture of iodine disinfects it and helps it to dry out, closing that germy autobahn into the baby body. Joint ill is a really nasty disease causing swollen, damaged joints and often death. Thanks to all those entrepreneurial drug cookers our calves will now more vulnerable to it, at least until we find an acceptable (and hopefully useless in making meth) substitute.

In the course of my pre-milking research I learned all kinds of stuff about laws, drugs (the bad kind), drugs (the medicinal kind) and public hearings. More than I had wanted to know, really.


Then after all that clicking and ticking away on the keyboard I changed my mind and wrote about this story instead.

Oh, the weather outside is....

Perfect, like a crisp fall day but longer, drier, and just enough warmer to be delightful. Beck and I ran errands this morning and didn't even mind (much). Liz is over at this fair with the cows...and her friends, which is, after all, the real point of showing cattle....being with your friends, that is. It has nothing to do with ribbons (although we like them) and everything to do with who is there to hang around hollering "phone call" every time a critter raises her tail to take care of business. (As in, "Liz, there's a phone call for YOU," when it happens to be one of hers that is doing what cows do best.) And who is there to "accidentally" "slip" with the hose on the wash rack. Who has a set of ear clippers you can borrow. Who brought that amazing summer yearling...or junior two or aged cow.

***New sign in the Fonda Dollar General Parking Lot***

Or who can get away to take a walk down to the carnival section with you and pick up a corn dog. Which serious hottie down on the end of the barn stands up and belts out, "I've got a Brand New Girl Friend", every time the song with the same title comes on the radio that somebody else has blasting loud enough to be heard over the buzz of a dozen sets of cow clippers, the calliope jangle of the rides and the shuffle of hundreds of feet of the fairgoers admiring the cows and the suntanned country kids that grace the new barn.

Fair time is not without its hassles, skimpy passes, loss of exhibitor parking and things like that, but never stops being a great place to meet your friends and have fun. I am looking forward more than I have in a long time to seeing friends at our local fair in a couple of weeks. I am entering some vegetables and such, but only so I can get in as often as I want to see the folks. I know if I go over with the boss we will be able to spend three hours, never get bored, and never make it past the Cow Palace.

***Back to school '07, college girl version 102***

Who brought that animal in the house!!!!!

Wait a minute...it's kind of blurry

Aha, all is clear now...it was the farmer boy in the kitchen with the yellow cat!

Oat shocks in an Amish field

Foot and mouth update

This story brings up what I said below about Plum Island vs inland labs for this highly contagious material. Interesting that it is running the same day as the Farm Side on that topic.

Ha, revisited

Save a cow

Ha, not in my barn you don't

Foot and Mouth disease disaster

Sarpy Sam posted this about FMD with a link to this post about what is going on over in Great Britain. (These pictures are heartbreaking.) The whole affair is generating some serious anger, even here in the USA. It is pretty much a done deal that the disease escaped from a lab that was manufacturing vaccines under government auspices.
***Update...Here is more

Here in the United States such testing is carried out at Plum Island off Long Island, NY. This research facility is being moved to one of five inland sites in the near future at a cost to tax payers of an estimated $450 million.

Plum Island has never caused an outbreak, but is controversial because it is out in the water and easily approached by folks in boats. It is, however, a long way away from hoofed animals, which Kansas, Texas, and all the other proposed sites for the new lab, simply are not. In light of what happened with the outbreak I wonder about the advisability of moving the lab inland. Here is some good news though.

More reasons to avoid National Animal ID

From Drovers Magazine,
"A Government Accountability Office (GAO) report requested by Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA) and released today found weaknesses in USDA’s plan to implement a national animal identification system. Harkin asked GAO to examine USDA’s animal ID plan in November 2005 after concerns were raised that USDA was not effectively implementing the system and not informing producers and livestock market operators how much the system will cost their operations. Harkin is chairman of the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry."

More,

• "The USDA lacks a comprehensive cost estimate or cost-benefit analysis for the implementation and maintenance of the animal ID system. In response to GAO’s recommendation to do so, USDA has now entered into a contract to have a cost estimate conducted.
• USDA has not prioritized the implementation of the animal ID system according to economic value of the species or those most at risk for specific animal diseases.
• USDA has not developed a plan to integrate the animal ID system with preexisting animal disease eradication programs for hogs, cattle, sheep or goats, thus duplicating effort and cost to producers.
• USDA has awarded 169 animal ID cooperative agreements totaling $35 million but has failed to adequately monitor the agreements or determine if the intended outcomes, for which the funds were used, were achieved. USDA has also not consistently shared the results of the agreements with state departments of agriculture, industry groups, or other stakeholders to allow them to learn from experience under the cooperative agreements.
• The timeframe for effective animal disease traceback from where animals have been raised is not clearly defined for specific species. Some contagious diseases need to be tracked and identified in a very short amount of time to limit further spread of the animal disease.
• Tracing animals from their original origin will be problematic given that USDA is not requiring critical information, such as the type of animal species, date of birth, or approximate age of animals to be recorded in the animal ID system. This information is necessary to limit the scope of an animal disease investigation.
• USDA has no benchmarks to determine if there is sufficient participation to achieve an effective animal ID system."

Just what farmers and ranchers have been saying all along.

For washing show cows

A cleaner, (but wetter) Frieland Chilt Blink

***Update...check out this cowside art at BuckinJunction

'Tis the season

***Photo by Liz (which is the first clue)

Summer hummer

No phone, no 'Net, big news

Except for the subject of the news story that happened while we were without outside communication, that about describes the weekend. (Our phone went out Friday during a teeny, tiny storm that was barely noticeable. The phone company didn't exactly fall all over themselves getting it fixed...although I am wildly grateful to the phone man who finally came out -on Sunday no less- and got it done.)

I was able to weather the lack of access to the outside world, (other than TV, which is worse than nothing), until the big story broke in a crawl across the MSNBC news show the boss was watching. The discovery of a new case of foot and mouth disease in Great Britain is huge and sorrowful news for farmers there and for agriculture around the world. The dreaded disease of ruminants is so incredibly contagious that it is recommended that people who visit farms abroad where there are outbreaks avoid visiting farms at home for some time. This is because they can transmit the disease via clothing, footwear and even possibly carry it in their lungs. It spreads through contact. Birds cart the virus from farm to farm. It even moves on the wind. Tires. People. Wild animals, pets, almost anything can bring it to the doorstep of a previously healthy farm.


I hope this outbreak is contained before it causes the kind of economic damage and heartbreak that the one in 2001 caused. Thousands of animals were killed, even working border collies from farms that had to kill their cows and sheep. The farmers simply couldn't afford to feed dogs that no longer had jobs. That outbreak was caused by a pig farmer feeding improperly cooked food waste from an airline that had visited an infected country. Officials are hard at work tracing the source of this one. My heart goes out to British farmers who must be worried beyond belief right now.


***Update....after jumping online to write this, I started reading through my favorite blogs and found that Sarpy Sam has several detailed posts on the topic. If it turns out that the virus did indeed "escape" from a government laboratory, the story takes on an even more horrific aspect.

Hmmmm

I wonder how many of these are walking around on earth today. Not cute little Holstein heifer calves, there are millions of them. Not daughters of Alan's show cow, Bayberry, there are two of those. Not granddaughters of of sweet Balsam, two of those too.

Nope, this calf has another interesting aspect, rather an amazing one in fact. This baby is an own daughter of the Hostein bull, Whirlhill Kingpin. Alan had trouble getting Bay bred last year. She was sick when she freshened and never got as vigorous as we would have liked. I think she had hardware disease and some issues with scarring from that. Anyhow, in desperation, the last chance breeding before we had to sell her, he chose Kingpin. For some reason we have nearly always gotten a calf when we used him. This time was no exception and the heifer was a nice bonus. The unusual part of the whole affair is that Kingpin was born in 1959. He was a popular bull in the sixties and early seventies. He has been dead a very long time. However, thanks to the wonders of liquid nitrogen and artificial insemination he has a brand new daughter right here in 2007. Now if Alan will just come up with a name for her, other than Ballistic Buffalo, which is his most recent, but unacceptable to both mom and the Holstein Association choice.

***(Suggestions for good names that begin with "B" would be most appreciated at this point.)

A suitable reaction to Michael Vick

Check this out if you would rather have stinky pond scum for a neighbor than someone like Michael Vick.

Ethnol and food prices

Here is an interesting article on the effect (or non-effect, depending on where you are standing) of ethanol production on food prices. I don't pretend to know what the truth is on most parts of the issue, but I think high corn prices have to impact dairy food prices. The story is much more complicated than that though. High grain prices, along with high everything else prices, contribute to farmers leaving the industry, which leads to more competition for the milk that is left. A year ago at this time we were paying $192 a ton for grain for the cows (before discounts). Now we are paying $259 for the same amount of grain. High grain costs also lead to surviving farmers feeding less of it, which lowers production and milk supply. As we speak, two farm families from this county (good friends of ours) have either sold the cows or scheduled the sale. These are folks who want to farm but can't because they got shellacked last year by bad weather and low milk prices while costs went up, in part due to ethanol production. This year milk prices are higher, but everything from corn to cotter pins costs more too. Everyone is playing catch up and not everyone can quite make it.Of course increasing exports matter too, as does increased demand.


Last year at this time we grossed between $13 and 14 per hundredweight of milk before deductions, (farmers pay to have a truck haul their milk to the plant, pay co-op dues, lab fees, state and national check off fees and any number of other deductions out of their milk check, so what you see is very much not what you get.) This year we are grossing nearly $21 per hundredweight. However, along with the increase in grain prices, partly driven by corn, fuel has nearly doubled. It takes a lot of that to grow food for over a hundred animals. . Despite careful management of natural fertilizers in growing our crops, when the milk leaves the farm so do nutrients from the farm, decreasing what is in the soil. Commercial fertilizer helps to replace that loss and to produce food for the cows. Fertilizer has more than doubled in price. We used to think we were getting nailed when we spent three or four thousand dollars in direct crop expense, (that is fertilizer, seed, and weed control). This year we are at almost eight thousand and will end up spending more than that. How much of the increase in fertilizer cost is fueled by increased demand for increased corn acreage for ethanol and how much by increased costs for fossil fuels? I can’t prove much either way, but both no doubt contribute.

Milk at the store around here was well under three bucks a gallon last year. Now even with a frequent buyer program it is over five dollars in some markets. Farmers going out of business because of high costs certainly curtails the milk supply, increasing demand and prices. Corn for grain is only one of those costs, but it is an important one. If ethanol production is part of the reason for grain price increases, it is part of the reason for higher food costs. Here is more on the matter.

The final word

On the organic vs conventional debate. Of course it won't really be the final word, but this is the best written and most comprehensive article I have seen on the subject. It is long, but well worth the time it takes to read it, as Jackie Anver obviously knows of what she speaks. I wish I could write as well.

Here are a couple of excerpts from her column.

Organic milk certainly is not fresher than regular milk. Regular milk is pasteurized and has a shelf life of about 20 days. Organic milk is ultrapasteurized, a process that is more forgiving of poor quality milk, and that increases the shelf life of milk to about 90 days. Some of the Horizon organic milk boxes I've seen at Costco have expiration dates in 2008! There is a powerful incentive for retailers to put the ultrapasteurized organic milk on the shelf just before the expiration date, so consumers will think the organic milk is as fresh as the regular milk. After all, consumers are paying twice as much for the organic product.

Socially conscious consumers have a right to know that "organic" doesn't mean what it did 20 years ago. According to the Oct. 16, 2006, cover story in Business Week, when you eat Stonyfield Farms yogurt, you are often consuming dried organic milk flown all the way from New Zealand and reconstituted here in the U.S. The apple puree used to sweeten the yogurt sometimes comes from Turkey, and the strawberries from China. Importation of organic products raises troubling questions about food safety, labor standards, and the fossil fuels burned in the transportation of these foods.

I personally will not buy organic produce or food, because I feel that stores are deliberately misleading and overcharging me for something that is at least no different and at worst inferior, to regular, plain old, food. I have gone home without potatoes when our local Price Chopper had only organic on the shelf.

E-Train

Last year I took photographed a heifer I particularly liked, Frieland Andy ETrain. E is a daughter of the bull Golden Oaks Andy-ET out of a Citation R Maple daughter I bred from my Trixie family. Trixie was the heifer the boss bought me for Christmas way back when we were dating. She turned out to be a wonderful investment, giving us four daughters and one son that we kept (plus bulls that we sold) and starting a powerful cow family for us.

The bull we kept was Frieland Patriot, (as he was born on the Fourth of July), a Paclamar Bootmaker son. He only sired three daughters as we don't use homebred bulls much, but one of those, Beretta, was the dam of Beausoleil, mother of Bama Breeze, and one of the nicest cows I have ever owned.


E is a grown up milk cow now, and although Andy didn't turn out to be much of a sire of good udders, hers is fairly decent. I think that stems partly because Trixie was rated excellent on her mammary system and Citation R Maple didn't do too badly in that regard either, although now, long after his death, he is minus over 2000 pounds of milk.

Anyhow, here are some pics of E as a working girl.

Can lightning strick twice.....

....in the same place? Of course we all know that it can and does...after all, what do lightning rods do but encourage it to do so? But here is a poor guy who was personally (and painfully) struck twice, 27 years apart. Here is what to do if you are in a car, bus, or a vehicle with a ROPS and encounter a nearby storm.

Cammo and carrots

No frogs this summer! Normally as soon as the garden pond is up and running half a dozen show up to claim super-select bug guzzling spots and stay til fall. They soon ignore us completely and go about the serious business of slurping up mosquitoes and errant grasshoppers in contented oblivion. Some even accept handouts. In return for cheap entertainment we take the biggest garter snakes down below the bike path when we find them seeking frog leg lunches. (It is amazing how far we have to cart them before they stop coming back. They put homing pigeons to shame.) However, there have been no frogs this year....it has been too dry. Even up in the field potholes herpetiles have been rare as hen's teeth. Alan found one little green frog which he put in the garden pond a few weeks ago, but that is all.

The game of who can spot the hidden frogs (they have great cammo) loses some of its glamor when there is only one teeny-tiny frog (and an import at that). Then it rained most of our week at camp. It rained almost every day since too (putting a hellacious crimp in the hay baling I can tell you). Rainrainrain...thunderthundercrashinglightningstillmorerain. The driveway is a washout, barely passable by my SUV, (which I find I really NEED this year). It is too wet to pick zucchini. Or peas or beans. Too wet to weed. Too wet to mow the grass (which is growing again). It is no longer dry to say the least.


Yesterday Alan and I stopped by the pond for a game of find the frog. We hadn't seen even the little import in days. Simultaneously we spotted one....at least a foot a part! There were two! Then a third one plopped under a lily pad and frog-stroked for the bottom. Normally we get big, fat frogs; these were barely two inches long. (It makes spotting them even more of a challenge.) Wonder if the weather has anything to do with the small size or if it is just coincidence that we only have little ones this year. Doesn't matter. The pond, which is especially pretty this summer, is once again a fun place to visit.

We grew carrots in half a fifteen gallon barrel this summer. Our soil is so dense that normally you couldn't pull a halfway decent carrot without breaking it, (if you could even grow it in the first place), but a barrel makes it easy. (We grow lettuce, tomatoes and squash in them too.) Half a fifteen gallon barrel is the perfect depth. A mix of sand and compost equals perfect earth. The stuff we wash the pipeline with comes in such barrels and we only get three bucks if we redeem them so the price is right. They are easy to wash and just the right size for a wimpy old lady like me to drag around. Incidentally I have about six more out there in which the guys need to bore drainage holes pretty soon if I am going to have time to grow more carrots before winter.


I pulled this one for salad the other night and was astonished by the color though. Somehow I forgot all about planting Rainbow Carrot mix this year. Yellow is nice, now I can't wait for a purple one.

Where the buffalo roam

Wouldn't it be nice if Congress, animal rights activists and assorted other folks who don't feed the world were even half as concerned about the people whose cattle were slaughtered willy-nilly because of disease spread by government animals as they are about the bison? This is a new arrangement will let the bison wander ever farther outside the park, where they act as a reservoir for brucellosis in Montana.

From Rep. Denny Rehberg, "Let's not start throwing funds in on a federal level because of some guy from New York who's not familiar with the situation," said Rehberg's spokesman Bridger Pierce.

I guess I am one of those dummies from New York, (not that I don't agree with Rehberg,) but I will be darned if I see any sense in giving diseased animals more lee way. If you take some time to read some of the articles , you will probably be as mad as I am about how cheap the government was in compensating the ranchers and then turning around to force them to pay capital gains tax on what they gained by being forced to sell their cows for much less than they were worth. Bah!

So do they take a vote or what?

This summer the milk cows have been using two pastures, one up the hill, one down and around. Given the choice they seem to like up the hill better, but we can direct them either way just by changing the gates. However, for about three weeks now they have had their choice..both gates are open. Invariably they have gone up the hill, which turns out to be handier for the guys, who put their feeder wagons full of chopped oatlage and field peas there.

The night before last they all sort of drifted down toward the other pasture gate. They hung around down there a while, then changed their collective mind and went back up the hill.

Yesterday morning they did almost the same thing again. However, they just stayed by the gate looking indecisive and we went to breakfast wondering which way they would go.
When we returned, they had clearly gone down the hill and around the back to the old pasture. They came in full of milk and happy as larks.

Today it was back up the hill as if they had never heard of the downhill pasture.

So why did they all do that? It wasn't that Heather, the usual lead cow, took them, because she was lying on the bridge ignoring the whole affair. Nobody drove them. They just went.
Puzzling.

Oh, wow, what cows!

I chanced upon a wonderful site while whiling away a little time before milking this morning. Denise Rich paints fantastic cows..... dairy, beef, and even rodeo bulls. I completely lost track of what I was doing while I browsed through her paintings.

Lucky shot

The view from the outhouse

Should it finally materialize (off topic, but what the heck)

I will immediately listen to the singing on this video....all at once and without waiting a week for it to load. Mike Rowe of Dirty Jobs, (which the guys watch and which I can't seem to avoid watching even though I am really trying to read the latest JA Jance) is the only person I have ever heard sing the National Anthem without straining for a single, solitary note. All the way through, beautiful and painless. I could listen all day. Way to go, Mike.

Getting high speed Internet

Is not all that easy. I signed up the day we left for camp. I clearly and repeatedly informed the young telemarketing/pest gent who sold me the package that I would be away and no one else here deals with that stuff. He assured me that there would be no problem with that. Oddly enough the company's representatives were still frantic that they couldn't contact me instantly. However, along with high speed we also will receive some other services, including voice mail. Guess where they sent the phone calls about getting everything set up? Guess who had no way to access the new mailbox? So--o-o-o-o-o.....guess who spent an unconscionable length of time on the phone with someone with whom communication was challenging trying to get 'er done? Maybe I don't speak clearly. Maybe they don't. I dunno. I hope this gets better as we go along rather than worse. It is only a little more expensive than the tangled conglomeration of stuff that we use for phone and net now, but I am getting worried that it is going to be a lot more challenging to work with. Oh, well....

Congratulations

To the Red Scot at Adventures in Ruralia (and his wife and family, of course) on the birth of their first child. His son was born on the 4th of July and will share his special day with not only our great nation, but with me as well. I can say from experience that the Fourth is a wonderful birthday. Imagine a lifetime of imagining that all those fireworks are for you!

Things that make you say hmmm

Corn affects the weather......

Strange to be back

It is so odd to be home. I was kind of a park rat for so many years...Adirondack Park that is and it is easy to slip back into that world.

"Today the Park is the largest publicly protected area in the contiguous United States greater in size than Yellowstone, Everglades, Glacier, and Grand Canyon National Park combined."

Grandma and Grandpa Lachmayer had a camp there, not on a lake, but we had fun just the same. We stayed there darned near every summer weekend of my childhood. (I was hell on frogs.... needing to get a closer look at every single one I could find.) The special scent of moldy canvas can take me back to sleeping in a leaky tent and living on macaroni salad and hot dogs in an instant.

Then I lived in the park off and on as an adult. And camped in the park. Hiked the park. Canoed the park. Stayed in lean tos. Fished. Picked berries. Watched birds. Tried to garden....(a fascinating pastime with the short, short summers up there). It was another life than this one, as far removed from the high pressure of farming as keeping a diary is from working for the New York Times. Every year our visit to Peck's Lake turns me back into a person of simple wants and needs and few responsibilities for one short week. Then we come home and I morph back into farm wife, parent, writer, bookkeeper, and put on all the other hats I wear. It is like stepping out of one life, taking a trip back in time, then moving forward again. Weird but worth it I guess

Three mornings......More of why we love Peck's Lake

Home again, home again

See ya

Boil up some hummer food, clean and fill the feeders, take out the trash, clean out the fridge, finish up all the laundry, pay the bills, balance the check book, order grain, order teat dip, roll up the change and take it to the bank, pack the snorkels, fins, poles, tackle boxes, grab a stack of books at the library, indulge in the latest Nora Roberts (brought to me by the Farm Side, thank you), bandaids, Skin-so-Soft, Off!, dog food, dog ropes, canoe? (no, we'll come back down and pick that up if things are quiet on the lake; no sense getting swamped by the maniacs) charge up some camera batteries, drag extra hay up to the horse yard, Frontline on the dogs, don't forget the can opener, leashes, life preservers, remember the butter, hotdogs, macaroni, spaghetti sauce and home made jelly, bring along shampoo and flashlights and blankets....and oh, heck, where is that list anyhow!??!!!

We are off to camp tomorrow for a week, hopefully including some fish. Take care!

Jaws

Up from the depths he comes....

Oh, no, he's got me!

Much excitment

About the weather. We have had thunderstorm after thunderstorm...at least a couple every afternoon. For the most part the worst of the weather has gone off to the north bombing Gloversville and Johnstown with dangerous hail and high winds. Last night our turn came.

We got started milking late for one reason and another (mostly having to do with men). Alan had not yet fed the cows their wagon of chopped oatlage with field peas and new seeding so the boss sent him off to do so as soon as the cows were in the barn.

I happened to look up the hill as he was pulling out with the tractor and shouted for the boss to get that boy back ASAP. The gate where they take the wagon through into the field is in an area we call "Lightning Corner". Trees that sprout up there don't usually get more than thirty feet high or so before they are burned or blasted down.

Anyhow the boss let out one of his mighty whistles; the kid heard him and made it to the barn just as the maelstrom hit. Thank God! Within seconds I looked out to see the four or five heifers that stay in the barnyard while the cows are milked bolting down the hill. The tree that they were standing under crashed to the ground, and was still bouncing, as they came for the door. None were hit though. I think they heard it tearing loose before it actually came down. Now there is a large and tangled pile of potential firewood waiting to be cut up and hauled away. Right there handy so to speak.

It was a wild storm. Parts of the overhanging roof of the milk house porch blew off. Rain slashed in through all the windows, wetting us even inside the barn. Dirt blew into our eyes from the windowsills. (Gritty nasty stuff.) The windy downpour lasted most of milking. I hated to touch anything metal because lightning was banging down all around us, but I didn't have much choice as the stalls, dividers, pipelines and the grates over the stable cleaner, which we must walk on are all metal. On one occasion the cow I was milking jumped right up in the air when a bolt hit. I think she got a little zing there.

When the kid finally got to take the feed out after the storm blew itself out, Lightning Corner was a jumble of blown down and blasted trees. It took him a good hour and a half to shift them so he could feed the cows. I lay awake for quite a while last night being very, very thankful that we stopped him from trying to beat the weather and get the cows fed before it hit.
VERY thankful.

Thanks!

To whomever invented this product. I can't think of any beverage that would taste as good as milk with these drinking straws made from Cocoa Krispies cereal. I'll bet they are prefect for slurping up nice cold dairy beverage. and lousy for drinking soda, designer water, grape juice, Budweiser, or margaritas. Yay milk!

The Seven Wonders

NYCO had an interesting post about looking for the seven wonders of
that area of the state, which led me to contemplate the potential for finding the seven wonders of Northview Farm.

Of course holding it down to seven is about like eating one potato chip...there are a lot more in the bag and each one is tastier than the one before.

However, I will start at the bottom and work my way up through seven delights of life on this hill.

7)Soft fog cat-footing up from the river on a gentle summer morning. It deadens the sound of the Interstate and makes the train whistles echo lonesome and long across the valley.

6) Neon Moon peeking in through the sawdust shed window. She can barely get her nose over the edge but she sees PEOPLE and they are about her favorite thing in the whole world because they bring BOTTLES of MILK! There is always an inquisitive new calf or two to keep things interesting.

5) The scent of a mow full of fresh hay, which comes with the opportunity for the guys to grease the cross mow elevator without getting on that awful ladder...they can just stand on the hay and get er done. No worries mate.

4) Knowing that we FINALLY got the blood drawn and the hair pulled from the bulls for DNA testing so they can go to Dependabul and be gone from our lives. Remind me to tell you about what I think of the difference between breed requirements for DNA testing...a few ear hairs from the Holstein and BLOOD from the shorthorn. You can't get blood out of a stone, but you can from a bull's butt...it just isn't pretty...or fun....or safe. I am so glad that that job is over. Now we wait for results.

3) The birds, wildlife, flowers and just general outdoors stuff that surrounds us all the time. Living here on this hill is like spending all day every day in a national park or wildlife refuge. Just yesterday I was able to get the photos of the wren and the vulture on the no trespassing sign without taking any time out of my work day. They are just there. We also saw white tail fawns, eastern cottontail babies, woodchucks with kits, squirrels and dozens of other birds. I love it here.


2) Growing what we eat and eating what we grow. Right now except for herbs and lettuce and our own beef and pork and milk we are waiting...for tomatoes, squash, beans, peas.....and I CAN"T wait, I'm telling you. Meanwhile the guys grow a 300+ acre garden of food for the cows too. Neat.

And the number one wonder of life here is......

1) Working together every day, especially with the three kids that make it possible for us to do this. And I am not kidding. We couldn't do it without their help, from field work to cooking dinner to feeding calves and filling out registration papers, they have their hands on everything and I am glad for it. When you figure that they are fun and funny people too and a delight to be around who could ask for anything more wonder-ful? I am proud of them and I hope they know it.

Prime Real Estate

For the wright wrenter

Beware

I felt a bit bereft

As I came over from the barn after milking tonight a raspy, buzzy, fluffed up family of just fledged wrens chattered at me from the bushes. Bah, I thought. Our front porch songster's family, in the pillar, has grown up now and we will miss our all day front hall concertos. Mr. Wren even goes down inside his pillar home and sings INSIDE it! I love listening to him.

I was thinking how much we would miss his singing as I came to the garden pond. And there, on the wire that brings electricity into the house, he swung, singing his heart out at the sunset. Guess we have TWO wren families. What largess!

I agree

With R-Calf