Falling revisited

Of course

It is important that we attend the interment of my dear uncle's ashes today. He passed away a couple of weeks ago and I want to be there. I need to be there. The kids feel the same.

So, of course, Boston showed up at the barn this morning trying unsuccessfully to have a calf. One of our best cows....naturally. Liz checked her and the calf's head was back, so she turned it. The boss checked Boston and thought maybe Liz has it right now. We gave the cow a bottle of calcium to tune up her uterus and get things going.

Maybe.

So now we wait. And hope she gets the job done so we can all go. At least I will go with a kid or two but it would be nice if the calf came so we could all go.

Meanwhile I took a picture of the old cat, Stormy, looking wistfully at the back end of all those birds yesterday (no she didn't catch any...she hasn't caught anything much in years being a very old cat. I just thought she looked funny sitting in the bird bath dreaming.)



And of a little spider on the watercress in the garden pond. I thought she was something the birds had deposited, but a closer look revealed her hungry, well-camouflaged little self.



*****Update, Liz just came in from the barn. It's a heifer (YAY) and barring complications we can go where we need to. I am thankful indeed.

The Birds

This morning the long lawn, just outside the living room window, looked (and sounded) like a scene from a certain Hitchcock movie, which scared me so bad when I was a little kid that I hid under Grandma Lachmayer's dining room table. Now her table graces my dining room and I am not worried a bit about this mixed flock of red winged blackbirds and a few other odds and ends, such as blue jays, getting in through the doors. Heck, I am not even worried about them pooping on ...er, repainting...my car (the girls took it to school today). However, it was quite attention-getting to have so many noisy birds swirling around the window.



They hung around for a while, picking something out of the goldenrod and sumac bushes, then flew across the old horse pasture to a dead elm tree where they loomed over the neighbor's cornfield, planning today's raid. Yesterday thousands of them rolled over in undulating flocks that took long minutes to fly over. Oddly they were flying west.
I wonder if they know something we don't.



***And I have lovely (well, sort of lovely, I took them through a none too clean window) photos, to add to this post, but Blogger is bogging down in the photo upload department again, so I guess those will have to wait.

******Update, they finally loaded, but you have to click to see all the birds.

Help me

I'm

F
A
L
L
I
N
G

Instant pick me up

I was kind of dragging this morning. Heck, I admit it. I was REALLY dragging this morning. Got through milking somehow and came in to this desk to finish up the Farm Side as today is deadline. Despite my usual enjoyment of that job it was looking like just another chore this time. It took me ten minutes just to proofread the first paragraph. Then on my monitor I found the upper note. Nice...a real make my day kind of treat.

A considerable time later ( I am simply not on my game) I found the other note low down on the side of the computer itself. It was accompanied by chocolate. Frozen chocolate. (You can see it below the notes.) Need I say more? I am happy now. Bring on the deadlines...I can lick 'em all.


Thanks Beck, I love you too!

Big processors at work

Hood buys smaller company.

Daybreak

It happens quite often. (And usually I am there to see it.) Only during the longest days of June does the sun make it up before I do and even then it is still low in the sky. This has nothing to do with any particular virtue and everything to do with being a dairy farmer and morning person. Dawn is the finest time of day and I like to see what it brings.

This day brought an exceptional one. (Despite the fact that I only got quick peek out the barn door). When we went to work the sky was clear as mountain water. (The grass was about that wet too.) Orion was wheeling overhead, bright as winter and almost as cold. It was exceedingly dark except for the starlight and about as quiet as it ever gets.

Then, about the time I was taking the milker off Mango to switch it onto Bubbles, a sharp, clear, golden light appeared toward the east. It made a bright band across the tree-lined horizon and seemed to unlock the colors from the night. Black sky changed magically to a liquid midnight blue, edged with silver and turquoise. The stars were like holes in dark paper, letting bright light shine through like tiny spotlights. The dead elm in the creek stretched skeletal branches toward the sun, as if warming fingers that were ever cold. It was breathtaking, (could have just been the cold, but I thought it was the sky).

I watched for a second then turned back to my job. Milking machines wait for no man (or woman) and cows have little patience with dreamers. By the time I stopped to look out again, the sun was all the way up, the sky was a cold white-blue and it was time to turn the cows outside and feed the pigs. (Which is a whole 'nother story, which you can read in the Farm Side this Friday if you are so inclined. ...and have a buck as the paper is still a pay site.)

It was a beautiful daybreak though, a nice side benefit to working where there is little to block the sky and the air is clear enough to let it shine through.

Baxter Black on animal activists

Thanks to the Center for Consumer Freedom, without which I would not have read this.

Light

OMG

This happened in our bird count territory. HT to wonderful cousin as we don't get this newspaper. Read the whole story as it is spine tingling. It's a bear of a tale.

We have been fed again

And very well too! I thank our benefactor. Good stuff

Yesterday

Lot #1

Some friends of ours sold their cows after a lifetime of farming with purebred Holsteins. Health was the issue I guess. When the auctioneer asked them to speak to the crowd, they simply couldn't. I was almost in tears too, because I had a pretty good idea of how they felt. So many years, such beloved animals, and in a couple of hours it would all be gone. We know the auctioneers quite well after years of attending sales and now and then buying a calf or two....they were Dave Rama of the Cattle Exchange and the dean of pedigree readers in the Holstein world, Horace Backus. They spoke very highly of this farm couple and I have never seen them work as hard to get the money out of the cows. Usually auctioneers sell as fast as they can to get people bidding impulsively, but these guys announced right at the start that they were going to take as long as it took on every cow, until they brought what they thought they should.

Horace Backus

They were fantastic cattle, with real deep pedigrees, .... lots of old fashioned sires like Paclamar Astronaut and Paclamar Bootmaker up close. It was a pleasure to see them as we have done a lot of the same kind of breeding over the years. Just sold our last Astronaut a couple years ago and I milk a daughter of one of our Elevations. My favorite yesterday was an excellent 90 Encore daughter and her own daughter. ....great big, deep-bodied black cows with an obvious will to milk.


I would have loved to have bought one, had I the money or the facilities to keep animals of that caliber..we really don't have either. Our barn is probably a couple of hundred years old and we are real hard pressed to house big cows. Mandy has to have a special stall and she barely fits in it. Anyhow, I felt pretty bad for them, but there was a crowd of the top Holstein folks in the region there for a chance to buy their cows. I think that says a lot about how very well respected they are and what a great job they have done at breeding a top quality herd. We had to leave pretty early as our own cows had to be fed, but I hope they did well enough on the sale to take some of the pain out of seeing the cows go down the road. I wish them the best anyhow.

Name the Calf

It's actually Liz posting this. But Mommy said it was okay. I'm doing a 'Name the Calf Contest' over on Buckin' Junction and Maqua-Kil Farm. See, I've kind of had two heifer calves born in the last couple of days, which both need "S" names. I've got one, but need another. Wanna help me out? You might just get to see the name you put in on a calf. Head over to one of the two to check it out if you have the time and inclination.

Annual meeting

Montgomery County Farm Bureau held its annual meeting last night. It was a fine and stimulating meeting...spirited debate on farm policy issues, dinner with good friends and colleagues, and some excellent speeches by several FB luminaries. (Notice I didn't comment on the food...far better that I don't.) Liz brought a friend of hers, who turned out to be a mannerly, pleasant, and entertaining young man, whose presence bumped the fun factor of the evening up several notches. (I do like farm boys, hands down.)

And then there was the election of board of directors members. Liz, running for the second time, finally made it on. She was delighted. We are an awful political bunch and she wants to get her feet wet. Much to my amazement I was elected too. The amazement part came in because I was already on the board, and had no clue that my term was up. I was pure-D astonished to see my name on the ballot, which is what I get for running off to Pennsylvania to see Emerson Drive rather than attending to my duties as a board member. (I missed last month's meeting.)

Anyhow, I looked down the list of other folks vying for the open seats and figured that pretty much all of them are seasoned FB veterans who would do a great job of steering the county. Those that didn't fit that category are the young and the eager. They have a lot to offer too. I found that I didn't care at all whether I was reelected. I like the board largely because it helps me keep up on important issues (and see my friends), but any member can attend board meetings so it wasn't like I had to be out of the loop if I lost.

However, it turns out there were exactly as many open seats as there were candidates.....which worked out well for all concerned.
Welcome aboard Liz. This is going to be fun!

Lost and found

Alan tossed this rock on the table this afternoon, having found it out on the hill yesterday. He often carries sharp bits of flint to cut ag bag plastic when he is feeding the cows, and at first he thought that is what this was.

I was reading when he put it down and looked up casually and said, "yeah, nice," without much enthusiasm. Then I realized that it seemed to be a bit of the yellowish jasper we find every now and then. If it was jasper it was one of the biggest pieces I had ever seen so I began to examine it more closely.

That is when he pointed out the casually worked edge

And places where fingers fit

And showed me how it might have been held.

I think it was manufactured near here and somebody lost it. .

Art by 3C

Click for a close-up

Advice

For this poor man. SSS****




****Shoot, shovel, shut up

NAIS (allegedly) losing steam

(Although maybe only until Hillary has her hand on the throttle.)

According to this story in the Des Moines Register, even Collin Peterson is folding his tent (at least for a while).

"The chairman of the House Agriculture Committee, Rep. Collin Peterson, D-Minn., says he has given up on the program until there is a new administration. Peterson once introduced legislation to make animal ID mandatory.

"We have our head in the sand if we think we can get by without having one," he said."

Just call me sandy head I guess, because I sure don't feel any need to do more government paperwork and stick more ineffective tags in my cows' ears. If we do end up, as we probably will, with a different party in the White House next fall, I wonder what will happen to NAIS. I am not eager to find out though.

Kegan's pickerel

My handsome nephew Kegan (that's him with the ruler) caught this 28 inch pickerel up at Peck's Saturday. That is one amazing fish and he didn't even have a steel leader. Photo credit goes to cousin Scott's weekly missive and I am thinking to one of my favorite aunts.

25 years today

Since the boss and I met...(been married 22) He asked me to dance and I did, only because of his farmer's tan. I thought by the looks of him that he must have had fifteen years on me (only four, but he was kind of a party animal in those days and didn't get a lot of sleep).


A lot of water has flowed down the Mohawk since then. Lot of gallons of milk been made. Tons of hay baled or chopped. Corn planted. Gardens grown. Toddlers morphed into teenagers, and at least one twenty-something. The babies I used to haul to the barn in a Snugli or Gerry carrier are running it now. They started helping as soon as they could pick up a shovel. Liz has been showing cows since she was six and we gave her Sonora who made the front page of the Recorder when Liz took her off the trailer at the fair. We were the first people I ever saw to get one of those high rear wheel jogging strollers so we could haul the kids around. We started with just Liz in the seat and ended up with Becky in the seat, Alan on her lap, and Liz riding on the foot rest. They were darned heavy too, but our bright red kid buggy would go over anything. Now everybody has them, but I will never forget how excited I was to find something practical in which to drive babies around fair grounds and such.

I will also never forget the day I had Becky in the Gerry on my back while I worked, (not really doing much more than keeping the boss and his late father company. There is danger in inherent in family farming and I always tried to be careful. However, things happen that are impossible to predict.) After a while she got heavy and I had just taken her to the house to leave her with grandma when a steel barn support upright fell on me and crushed me. Cracked my skull, broke the little cartilage thingie on my sternum. (My head is still pretty fragile and I am careful not to bump it.) God was sure watching that day, because if she had been on my back things would have been a lot worse. No one could have known THAT was going to happen, so we sure got lucky.

At one point I often walked around with Alan in the Snugli, Becky in the Gerry and Liz hanging on to the hammer loop on my jeans. Sort of a human baby tree. We hardly ever left them, no matter where we went. Still don't if they want to ride along and amazingly they usually still do.

I think the best thing we have to show for all the years is the kids...Anybody can run a business or grow a crop and there are plenty of farmers who do it bigger and better than we do, but I sure am proud of my kids. Wouldn't trade em for anything, although some nights when they get fighting...well, dang.

Anyhow we are still crazy after all these years. The boss is still flying with one wing and we are still covering all the milking and feeding, although he is chopping corn every day. I don't know how he even gets into the tractor, since most of the time we have to tie his shoes for him....but I am still glad I fell for that farmer's tan and those rugged, outdoorsman good looks. Really I am.

Hundreds of these this year

Praying mantis.
Photo by Alan

Too many peppers

Not enough pepper people***






***I grew a nice mess of hot peppers for the kids this summer. They eat them. We don't.
However, there are a whole slew hanging out on the clothesline waiting for someone to decide what to do with them. Anybody want to make some salsa or something?

Eighteen cents

The boss and I hauled ourselves over to a bank across the river this noon to pay the school taxes on our side of the mountain. (They went up over $300 bucks this year, thanks to a change in the formula used to calculate ag taxes. It nicely canceled out most of the rebate our trusty governor saw fit to hand to New York property owners this year.)


Anyhow, while the boss was standing in line waiting to render up our portion, another fellow was getting in trouble for overpaying his share by $ .18.
Eighteen cents.
Today that will not buy a first class stamp.
It will not buy penny candy. A cup of coffee. A shoe lace.
Or much of anything.

When the boss and I were kids (and Fonda had several stores that sold such things) that same eighteen cents would have bought a grape Nehi or an Orange crush.
Or a Royal Palm root beer.

AND a palm-sized Three Musketeers candy bar. Or a Milky Way. Or a Snickers.

AND SIX pieces of Double Bubble chewing gum. That's a lot of gratuitous sugar in any body's book.


However, we were not fat. We were skinny, wiry critters, probably partly because it wasn't easy to come by eighteen cents when you were a kid back then. That much cash would also darned near buy a gallon of gas for the old Chevy and that had priority over treats for kids. However, it was probably also because he worked all the time and played baseball and because I spent most of my childhood being a horse (since I couldn't have one) and galloping or trotting everywhere.
If by chance we weren't doing something useful my parents' favorite refrain (particularly when we hung around the antique store pestering them for a nickel) was, "Go outside and play. Go over to the playground and swing or something."

So we did

Country folks

Yesterday I was outside hanging up laundry and feeding the ever-demanding maw of the woodstove when a friend called. When I got in to hear the message she said she was bringing over food.

Food...wonderful homemade meat loaf, sour dough bread, potatoes, corn and cuppycakes with the best frosting I ever tasted. She also brought the boss a Sudoku book, which he amazed me by finding totally engrossing when he came in from overdoing it and half killing himself with work he shouldn't even attempt. What a friend! She is busy with her own farm and her own farm guys and calvings and all the headaches that accompany being a farm wife. She already works too hard. Yet she took time to make us the best meal we have had in ages. We couldn't wait to finish up milking last night so we could come in to dinner. It was worth the wait.

Thanks!!! That is all I can say. It was a tremendous kindness that we won't forget any time soon.

The answer

"The eartag hole shows how easy those eartags can be lost, even by goofy looking cows."


Lee, a local reader, saw the problem right away in this picture of a cow involved in the foot and mouth disease outbreak in Great Britain. Even though GB has a cumbersome and extremely restrictive National Animal ID System, not only has the disease spread unchecked reaching 8 farms by this time yesterday, but clearly cows over there don't retain tags any better than they do here in the USA. While researching this week's Farm Side I also discovered that the cows on one farm had foot and mouth for four weeks before anyone noticed. Guess the ID system and tags didn't help much there either.

What is wrong

with this picture?


Update: I guess I need to be clearer. I have some great answers, but I specifically mean what is wrong with the picture itself.

***Answer in the comments. First to get it right will get a post with a link tomorrow.*

New website for dairy farmers

Dairy Cattle Xtension

Looks like a good tool

Not a blue heeler

Nope, it's just a naughty border collie who tried to steal some crust when Liz was making a VIP (that's a very important pie). See what happens to dogs who reach for the table just as the pie crust gets rolled out!?! Wish I could have gotten a picture of her trying to lick the flour off the back of her neck.
Worst thing was that no one said anything about it, so I was peacefully sitting there in the living room when this multicolored dog walked nonchalantly by......

The silver lining

The boy ran into a little tractor trouble today. He came down to get the tools he needed and asked for some company for a while. I was pretty much caught up so....

Behind the barn where the cows like to hang out in summer

Looking for the portable air tank

Hickory tree field, from the 30-acre lot

Pretty

A coyote runs through it

...

Pretty special

Silly turkeys

Found it

Through the gap into the old pasture lot

Click to see how the sun glitters on the corn leaves

A good man

er....I mean a good dog.

Mike

Getting by

We are. The kids have stepped up and done amazing things. Alan has covered ALL the feeding for nearly 100 animals every day plus going to school plus getting the bagger set up and a little corn chopped. Liz cleaned the barn alone (which is a HUGE job...her hands were all torn up last night) and filled the waterers and did all the calves and so many other chores I can't remember them. Then the two of them milked while Becky and I got some groceries so we will be amply supplied with appropriate junk food (plus some nutritious materials to fill in around the edges.)


This morning the girls and I milked very early as they had to be in school by 8. They had to leave when we were finishing up so I finished alone. Couldn't find a couple cows so they will just have to wait until tonight. It is so foggy and dark mornings. Neither of them is giving much milk so they will be fine. The boss is going nuts wanting to work and keeps coming out to the barn and we keep chasing him back to the house. His shoulder is so messed up...there is a groove in his arm where the muscle came off the bone.


Went to a very valuable meeting yesterday with our new assemblyman, George Amedore. He seems like he may be someone who will work with farmers. I hope so. Liz went too, as she is trying to get into the swing of farm politics in the area. You can't just sit back and let the outside world rumble along without you these days or you will find yourself regulated right out of business. I hope we have raised a set of good citizen activists. I know some of their teachers already drive them nuts with the nonsense they preach. Alan has a guy "teaching economics" in school right now who says that public schools originated because farmers needed to learn time management or they wouldn't be able to become factory workers, because they would go fishing if they felt like it rather than build fences. Oh, and he also says that farming isn't labor intensive any more because of machinery.

I could tell him a thing or two.

Oh, and a hellish awful thing...Patrick Bourque, who has long been bass player for Becky's favorites, Emerson Drive, (he left them in August) died suddenly at his home in Canada. Today would have been his thirtieth birthday I think. We were simply stunned and Beck felt particularly bad as she really liked and admired him.

Not a good horoscope

***Plans are shifting out of place today -- but don't waste your good energy trying to figure out why (because the reason is probably out of your control). Instead, direct all of your good energy toward formulating the most effective reaction to the new situation. You can't afford to have a 'whatever' attitude about any surprises throughout the day. So if something bothers you or frustrates you, take charge and get rid of it. You can put things back on track!***

Above is my horoscope today from Iwon.com. I am not sure if applies to to boss falling while trying to drive a cow out of the barn and dislocating his shoulder, or not, but...
His shoulder popped back in on its own, (after he fainted in the milk house) but the doctor says the muscle pulled out a piece of bone from the top of the humerus. This could heal potentially with 2-4 weeks in a sling. Or he could have torn things that won't heal and need surgery. We don't have insurance so I sure as heck hope not.

Kids all came right home from school and dug in. Professors were nice about letting girls out of class. Liz and Alan fed young stock. Alan fed cows. Liz and Alan are putting an Ag bag on the bagger right now. Becky has several foods cooking and the kitchen in order. I am trying to get my brain going again after standing in the hospital for hours as I guess they don't do chairs.

For the future there is no knowing yet how much soft tissue damage took place. The rest of us are just going to do the milking before the girls go to school. Alan will feed cows when he gets out of school. Now if we can just figure out how to get in forty or so acres of corn that is still out...I may have to hire that done if things don't come along well with the shoulder. Never dull that is for sure.

Shameless bunny

Congress explained

Thanks to a very favorite and incredibly talented cousin of mine, I now understand just how Congress "works".

***this is a video

Amish corn harvest

Hello chicken dinner, goodbye plumber

I stumbled on this via a quote in Food Systems Insider. It was worth a little searching for the source of the quote to find the story about a NYC man who tried to grow and prepare all his own food for a month...in the middle of New York City. (It was a sort of an extreme locavore thing.) He lost 29 pounds trying to feed himself out of his Brooklyn back yard, which perhaps could spell the end of the obesity epidemic, if widely embraced.


I was especially interested to read that it cost him more than $120 per meal to grow his chicken, rabbit and vegetables. I think I can do it cheaper than that here at Northview, even allowing for exorbitant NYS property and school taxes.


I understand the satisfaction he found though. I too find it particularly pleasing when sometimes everything on our table, except perhaps butter and condiments, was raised here on the farm. There is nothing like soup made entirely with vegetables from the garden and beef or pork that we raised or venison from the land. If Liz makes homemade bread it is about as good as it gets. (If you want to be picky, we don't grow the flour or yeast, but still....)


Of course we can't do it all the time, but I love it when we can.


I have also always thought that people who can actually turn a living animal into meat for their table are all too rare and much undervalued. I think the author of this story and his family got that concept very clearly by the end of his experiment. Especially his family....

"Howard said she only began to see his side of things after she banged her head in a dark corner of their basement on a slaughtered Flemish Giant rabbit.

"She asked me if she had hit her head on a dead chicken. When I told her it was a 20 pound (9 kg) freshly-skinned rabbit, I broke down and wept," he said. "I think that's when she realized I wasn't getting off on all the blood and gore, and it was beginning to wear me down.""

I remember all too well the first time I had to butcher a rabbit. It was a very long time ago and it was a matter of get it done or go hungry. It is a skill I don't use much today, but I am not sorry to know how. I give this guy a lot of credit for attempting this experiment and I agree wholeheartedly with his conclusions.

"But now his family has a greater appreciation for the business of food and the people who grow it, he said. And the toil made the food rewarding to eat, even if his kids didn't eat everything he grew."

Johanns resigning.

Pretty big news here. I wonder who will be the next Secretary of Agriculture.

What on earth!

I was struggling to get a fire going in the outdoor stove yesterday when I heard the oddest sound. It is noisy here on the hill with a constant backdrop of traffic sound from the Thruway and the trains, so I had to strain to pick it out among the din. It was a sort of purring, clacking sound, hard to describe, but something like a squeaky wooden carriage wheel in the far distance.

As I made my way back and forth from the house with various combustible materials, such as a few scraps of old pine that used to be a flower box and ever more recent newspapers I kept noticing the sound. However, because it was soft and the traffic in late afternoon is loud, I just couldn't find the source.


Then as I paused for a second on the back step, catching my breath (I have this really nasty cold), I spotted a furious whirl of movement out on the heifer hill.

Turkeys! I never did get them all counted, but there were a lot and they were just going crazy. Running back and forth, up and down, and around in circles all over one little section of the hill. They were like little old ladies at a fire sale rushing from table to table and clucking over bargains. Really, it was as if they had completely lost their minds.

There were at least ten adults, which seemed very disturbed by the goings on, like referees at an out of control soccer game. Perhaps twenty poults-of-the-season were indulging in a turkish frenzy. They chested up to one another like boys confronting each other on the playground. Then whoever felt taller would grab the other guy by the back of the neck and they would twirl in tumultuous circles, all the while purring and chuckling musically.


It was the most amazing thing I have ever seen in the great outdoors. They went on and on about whatever they were up to,mostly keeping a little circle, perhaps sixty feet in diameter, but sometimes spilling out across the hill, then always returning.


When I finally got the fire going at least an hour later, they were still at it. I suspect that the little family flocks of two or three hens and this year's young that keep to themselves all summer are combining into the gigantic flocks of a hundred or more that hang around here all winter. I am thinking maybe they were sorting out the pecking order and deciding who was going to be leading the cornfield onslaught and picking up the tastiest alfalfa seeds. Whatever they were up to, I just loved how musical their chick-to-chick battles seemed. Sibling rivalry sure doesn't sound like that here in the house.

Our milking shorthorn bull

Checkerboard Magnums Promise

His blood typing finally came in so he can go to Dependabul in ten days to be drawn. Then we may sell some semen on him if anyone is interested in using him. He is quite well bred, with a lot of milk and type on the dam. Plus we can AI our own Holstein heifers and get smaller calves, which are much more valuable for sale than the traditional Jersey cross calves.

The other bull we did blood work on turned out not to be what he was sold to us as. We decided to cut our losses as we are sick of waiting for his former owner to find the needed paperwork and for new papers maybe (and maybe not) to be issued. Thus the vet performed the necessary surgery to turn him into a steer and he is now destined for the freezer. We didn't pay a lot for him, but it cost me ninety bucks to blood type him and that will be a total loss. Oh, well, we are out of beef and Herman, the beef steer I was already raising, has a way to go yet.

Promise's pedigree, Sire: Checkerboard Magnum
Dam: Horizon Peggy Sue EXP
Paternal Grandsire:Meriville Peerless
Maternal Grandsire: Three Springs Sundance

Foggy mornings, bright afternoons

You make me smile

Two folks generously nominated me for this, but I am too tech-thick to know how to duplicate the graphic. I will just say thanks and that everyone in my blog roll has taught me things. Shared their lives and homes and thoughts with me. Introduced me to their families and friends and pets and livestock. Helped me understand their part of the world better than before...and become valued friends, even though I have only met them in print.


You are supposed to pick ten other bloggers to whom to pass this on, but I never was much one to follow the rules. I just can't choose ten favorites from the 30-odd blogs in the side bar not to mention those of my family (some of them are pretty odd too).
I like 'em all. I read 'em all, almost every day. So here's to all of you...you make me smile.

This little piggy learns a lesson

Two weeks ago the boss and Liz made a trip down to Medusa wherein resides the wonderful family from whom we purchase pigs. These folks breed really good pigs, long and lean, and they grow like crazy. The end result of growing a pig for your freezer depends in part on how well you care for it, but the quality of the pig you start out with also makes a huge difference. They have never sold us a poor one.

This year the guys decided to raise three pigs as we made a lot more sausage from the last pair and they didn't last long. Nichols does our meat processing for us and they made our sausage to our exact specifications (very mild). We loved it.


Anyhow, these three little fellows were part of a huge litter and were kind of on the wild side when they came home. However, they soon discovered that when the door to the 4-horse trailer that we use for a pig pen opened, someone on the other side had a pail of milk. Or a dozen ears of field corn. A zucchini. Apples. Tomatoes. Grain. They soon really liked to see the door open.


In fact when the boss opened the door the other night one jumped right out. Oops! Because they are a little wilder than our usual pigs he was frightened and immediately bolted away in a panic. The trailer is in the barn yard. The cows were also in the barnyard waiting to be milked. Instead of heading for the high country like any sensible piggy, this one ran right into the center of the herd, much to the chagrin of the bovine bunch. A forty-pound squealing, bristly, thing racing among their feet was unprecedented and just plain unnatural. They did what cows do in such circumstances. They kicked the heck out of him. He somehow struggled back up to the trailer and the boss herded him inside, where he flopped down in the straw on his side.

When the gang and I came over to milk a few minutes later the boss greeted us, "I guess one of my little piggies is going to die."

He recounted Lewy's tale of woe. We all trooped up to the trailer, where a few minutes earlier the pig had been slumped in the straw panting and quivering and looking not long for this world. When that wonderful door opened however, he somehow dragged himself up out of his death bed and limped over to the food dish where he looked up expectantly. He was noticeably lame in the rear trotter, but he still had his priorities straight. Maybe things weren't so bad after all. A few days passed with no further porky excitement.

Just now I asked the boss, "How is your little piggie?"

He replied, "I can't even tell which one he is any more."

However, when the door opens for pigs to be given their many and various gustatory delights, nobody jumps out of the trailer.

Todd Fritsch

Video

***there is just something about the kind of bands that play county fairs....

Lucky and the new piggies

Mickey Mouse ears

****Tomorrow if things aren't as crazy as they have been the past two days I will tell you of the adventures of Lewy, the third little piggie, who found out something about cows yesterday.

Speaking of hmmm

Thanks to Miss Cellania for this story on the effect of high ceilings on thought processes. This old house has at least ten footers. Heck the windows defy commercially available drapes by being too darned tall unless you like open space either at the top or bottom. So we do without; I like to see the sunshine anyhow and no one can see in way up on this hill.

Anyhow, now I know why I am weird.

( “When a person is in a space with a 10-foot ceiling, they will tend to think more freely, more abstractly,”)

Yup, that's me all right....abstract thought indeed.