Dan Fogelberg passed away

An incredibly talented man, who wrote and performed a number of my favorite songs, including Run for the Roses, Leader of the Band, Same Old Lang Syne, and so many other great ones. Prostate cancer claimed his life at only 56.

Farm vacations

People doing for fun what we do for a living.

Letter from college (to Liz)

CONGRATULATIONS! As the Bachelor of Technology 2007 graduate with the highest grade point average in the School of Agriculture and National Resources, you have been selected as the recipient of the December 2007 Commencement Academic Achievement Award.

Not bad at all

Herd health yesterday. A chance to talk with our favorite vet for a few, which is always a treat. (We share a lot of interests, such as birding, quiet times in the Adirondacks, and the health of the Northview cattle. If life wasn't so busy I'll bet we would talk more often.)

It was a great day for preg checks. Both Lizzie's top show cows are in calf, my lovely Beausoleil is bred to Straight-Pine Elevation Pete (YAY!), poor little Chicago finally caught, and Lily, down to her last chance before the one way trip to the auction barn, got lucky too. There are a number of others, Bubbles, E Train, Zinnia. Just a good morning all around.

Mandy is bred to Silky Cousteau. Blitzie is bred to Citation R Maple. We are breeding a lot of the first calf heifers to R Maple (who was big news many moons ago) because he throws smaller calves. Despite the fact that he was born in 1962 and by today's standards has a horrible proof we have never milked a bad daughter.) I was glad I had Alan's show cow, Bayberry checked, even though I knew she was open. She was in heat just a bit ago, but she had developed a cystic ovary and had to be treated yesterday. She went cystic last year too, and it took us months to get her bred. She is a big sweetie and I want her to have every chance to do well.

The best part of it the day was that when we were figuring up at the end we realized that two of the cows were bred by Liz back when the boss couldn't work because of his shoulder. She was only about three weeks into her AI course over at school and had to breed four cows. Three of them caught, but Hooter lost her calf a couple weeks ago. I think it is a tribute to her AI teacher that she did so well. (Just wanted to give credit where it is due after my diatribe the other day...he wasn't one of those guys.)


***Another ooh ahh bird sighting...the girls told me yesterday on the way over to the college that Tuesday night coming home from a late AI class they saw quite a sight. There were a bunch of little rodents, mice, voles or the like, in the middle of 30 A, down below the turn off for Corbin Hill where the state forest is. Just as they neared them, not one, but two snowy owls swooped down to grab a couple. Wow! I am so jealous. Odd for them to be hunting at night, but the weather was horrible...

Omen

I hope this morning is one for our luck on the Christmas bird count, which is coming up soon. The girls and I were walking over to the barn at about five minutes past needing a flashlight. We were traveling real slow and cautious as it is nasty icy under about four inches of mealy, slick new snow.

Just as we got about half way there this huge, ponderous, slow-flapping bird lumbered over the heifer barn roof, barely flopping along. I was hoping for an exotic owl of some sort until I saw the long, trailing legs. Of all things to see in December when everything but the river and the Schoharie are frozen-a great blue heron. I know almost exactly how low it was flying because it winged its way right past the tower on the house. That is 72 feet tall and the bird was halfway up the roof part, we'll call it 65 feet. What a strange sight for this time of year. We have counted only two on the Christmas bird count in all the many, many years we have done it. I am crossing my fingers that he flies up to the Mayfield South section of the Johnstown count and sits around waiting for us to drive by. We just love those "ooh, ahh" birds. (That is what you say when you see one.)

***Herd health today. Cross your fingers, if you will, for lots of pregnant cows.

How do you spell relief?

Headlights of the girls' truck coming up the icy driveway...home for the night.

Wood gathering

Southern style.

And northern style.

The boss cut this mostly dead apple tree down for me last week. Since we are expecting a major "snow event" in the next couple of days, I brought down all I could so it doesn't get covered with snow.

The lichens like it (click for closeup)

So do the cottontails

Now

'N later

This Problem has Legs

Because I simply must work on the Farm Side today...and because there are other irons tangling up the fire...I will share with you a math problem a friend sent us recently.

I didn't have a lot of time to spend on it, which is my excuse for not coming up with an answer. Ditto Liz. Becky didn't bother. However, Alan is like a pit bull when a problem intrigues him. He just works and works and works until he figures it out.

Which he did.

I'll bet all of you smarter than the average-type bear folks can too. Here it is.

Who can figure this out? (In school - this is called a story problem.)

There are 7 girls on a bus
Each girl has 7 backpacks
In each backpack, there are 7 big cats
For every big cat there are 7 little cats

Question: How many legs are there in the bus?

Actually, I just couldn't get past those backpacks...can you imagine the howling, and growling and yes, even caterwauling that went on within them? Glad I wasn't on that bus anyhow!

We never got rich and missed out on Disney World

Our Liz is about to graduate from college with a Bachelor of Technology degree. She has to finish an internship working on another farm and then she is done. Since she started college, four long and challenging years ago, she has wanted to come home and work into the family business with an eye to taking over. She has worked here on the farm since she was a toddler, including during all those years in college. (As have her siblings.) She has still maintained a spot on the Dean's List the whole time, as well as a membership in Phi Theta Cappa, and taken as many as 24 credits at a time.
Yeah, we're proud of her.


And yeah, we would love to have her come home to farm. (Any and all of the kids are welcome if they can work out a way to work together.) There have been plentiful times when we thought eagerly of retiring, but the place was kept afloat so we could take over and it only seems right to try to do the same for the next generation.


Wouldn't you think that the profs at an ag and tech school would be delighted to see her join us? Wouldn't you expect them to love to send young adults home to continue the family farm?
That is certainly what I expected.


However, for weeks, months even, Liz's teachers have been berating her for throwing her life and education away by coming home, especially since we are a small and not particularly outstanding farm. Discussion has become quite heated. All the many ways we might fail or she might fail have been pointed out. Her skill at breeding show cattle has been called into question (there have been several critters with the Frieland prefix that stood grand champion over the years-all of them hers). Her intelligence has been belittled. (That "dumb farmer" stereotype again). One teacher pointed out today that when she marries and has children she will want enough money to take them to Disney World and can't make it on a small farm.


And that, right there, just nailed me to the wall. Disney World! As if that were the gold standard of pleasure and achievement. The be-all-end-all epitome of American existence.

Although my folks ran an antique shop and book store when I was a young 'un, the boss comes from untold generations of farmers (we literally don't know how many). This farm itself is well over sixty years old and our kids are the third generation at this location. (The great grandparents had another farm on the other side of town.) We both grew up somewhat less than wealthy by conventional standards and never made it to Disney World. Can you imagine that? And then we went ahead and raised our kids the same way.

I know I should feel the depths of cultural deprivation over the Disney issue but actually I was perversely proud when Liz and Becky were in the lower grades and failed a test based on their cultural knowledge (they didn't know all the characters from the Little Mermaid or some other Disney flavor of the day movie.)


The boss and I both grew up showing at the county fair and thinking that was pretty big stuff. We have had visitors sneer at that, but darn, it really WAS fun. So we made sure our kids got to do it too.

When things got tight when they were small, instead of hopping on a plane for a warm climate and a theme park, we took "nature walk" mini vacations hiking around the farm. If one of us couldn't go their grandpa took them. They learned to recognize real birds and animals, to read tracks and know trees and plants. (Too bad about missing Minnie and Mickey, but they got to see robins and green frogs instead.) When we had time we took them hunting brachiopod fossils in Schoharie, digging Herkimer diamonds or hit the Old Stone Fort Museum or the NY State Museum. Or Blue Mountain Lake Museum. Or the Farmers Museum in Cooperstown. Poor deprived little things.

They missed out on jaded people dressed up as imaginary characters, and million-dollar thrill rides, and had to make do with piddly little tractor, horse and pick up truck rides (and cow rides sometimes). They had to suffer with just time with their folks and the grandparents...every day. However, they did get the chance to know that what they did every day mattered. Not only did their help mean a lot to us, but every time one of them picked up a shovel, taught a new calf to drink from a bucket, or drove the tractor out to rake hay they were helping feed the world.


To me, that stacks up pretty good against flying down to Disney World, but then I am not much of a sophisticate, so I could surely be wrong. And we certainly may fail, Liz or no Liz. Farming is tough stuff, no matter whether you have fifty cows or ten thousand. (The challenges are different, but I know I would much rather get up every morning and go out and milk our fifty than be the owner of a 10,000 cow place when the INS shows up and there is nobody left on the place to milk them at all.)


Anyhow, I personally can't wait until Liz is done with her education and home farming with us. If the farm fails, she has that degree to fall back on. If it succeeds, well, good, maybe she can afford to take her future children to Disney World.
If they even want to go.

Florida dairy closes

I thought that this story of a southern farm family's struggle to stay in the dairy industry was interesting.

How it went last year

Indoor lettuce

Seedlings

Indoor Lettuce

I planted a flower pot full today. Not much will make it to the table, as I can't walk past and not pick a leaf, but even a little is a wonder on a sandwich up here in the frozen north in the middle of the winter. I grew some in a cooler last year and we ate it for months. I use two mixes from Pinetree Garden seeds, winter lettuce mix and lettuce mix. I love the different shapes and colors of leaves that you end up with.

I am contemplating starting small flower pots of it and giving them as Christmas gifts to beloved folks who are impossible to shop for. Is this a good plan do you think?

Toots

Sorry about the not so great photo...the barn is dark and the flash doesn't make 'em look so great either.


A few more critter photos on the View today

Road trip

Just a short one...over to Altamont yesterday to pick up a beef we had processed. (Came out surprisingly good too, for an unfattened Holstein heifer).Roads were pretty bad, as it is really cold for so early in the year and spitting snow all the time.

We saw these Canada geese on the way home and stopped to take pictures. The silly things just walked away down the cornfield, even though I was quite close to them. Sure are a lot of them around for so late in the year. I see hundreds almost every day.




On the way home we ran along the river for a while. What a melting pot of water fowl lined the banks, littered the rocks and crowded every little left-over pool. Great black backed gulls, ring bills and herrings, millions of mallards, Canada geese, mergansers, plus hordes of crows. There were literally thousands of them.

Missing

Last week, against the wishes of certain people, (such as me and the girls) certain other people (who shall remain nameless) let the heifers back out on the hill. We had just gotten them in for Pete's sake, but they were tearing the wires off the tractor and getting in the way of feeding and barn cleaning. He brought them back down nights, but let them out days. Problem was there is a Jersey in the bunch who looks just like a deer (still deer season) and a springer that was ready to pop any day.

Of course the springer had her baby way out by the pond. And of course they couldn't bring her down because it couldn't walk and she was on the prod and yadda-yadda-yadda.

There are times you just keep your mouth shut and hope for the best, which, sadly, was not what we got.

Of course she came down without the baby. And of course when the kids and I went out to get it in off the icy fields it was gone. And of course there were calf tracks leading out of the pasture, through the fence, across two fields and down into a ravine. Of course they tapered off and vanished. Of course there were six sets of coyote tracks following them at a run, all the way from the cow pasture to the ravine. We let the mother out to look for it in case it was hidden, but she just wandered around mooing for it, with no luck at the actual finding part.

Alan kept taking relays of fresh flash lights out and tracking, but he just couldn't pick up the trail again where it disappeared in the ravine. He searched half the night to no avail. We looked for three days before we finally gave up and accepted that the coyotes must have taken it and dragged it away. They have gotten calves before, but I felt especially bad this time, because if only the mother had been left at the barn we could have gotten it in safely. Easily. I knew the boss felt bad too, although he would never say so, because if anybody mentioned it he just walked away.

Then night before last, I heard a little cry when I was walking over to milk. I couldn't tell if it came from the barn or down where the boss was down letting the heifers back into the barnyard from where they had been out on the hill. I thought to myself that it would be so wonderful if the baby had somehow survived and found the heifer herd, but I knew better. The last tracks were so far from the pasture, it had been three days, it is so cold and coyotes are so relentless.

I went in the barn and started setting up with a heavy heart. I just couldn't get the baby off my mind. The animals are our responsibility in this world and I can't help but take it seriously. Even though I had nothing to do with putting the mother back out in the field, I felt a deep guilt over it.

Then came the Christmas miracle. The boss walked in the door with a furry little black critter trotting at his heels. Somehow that baby had escaped the coyotes, found her way back across a good half mile of unfamiliar terrain, and followed the heifers to the barn. A little later she latched right onto a bottle of milk and wagged her tail with what looked to me like sheer joy at being warm and fed. She had never seen a person, but she just loved folks from that first second. She even climbed out of the pen where we put her so she could watch the boss work on the feed cart yesterday. He said she stood there right beside him staring at the motor he was working on, so close he could feel her breath on his hands. I guess he is forgiven, because if she can, she follows him like a dog.

We rarely keep Milking Shorthorn Holstein cross calves as we have a registered herd. However, the first thing the boss said, after I got over the tears of joy that she was found was, "She stays, she earned it."

Her name is Toots.

The ice one

Me zero

I was helping the boss drive the heifers out of the barnyard this morning, so the milk truck doesn't have to wait for the gate to be opened. I was carrying my empty coffee cup, four bags of wet cow washcloths and a fiber glass sorting stick. I took a step.
And crashed flat on my back on the icy hill, banging my head a good one and wrenching at least one arm. He said I was talking but my eyes were open and not looking like anyone was home.

All I can say is, the ice won. Bah.

It's senior picture time

Snow stories

This morning the boss and I got to regaling Alan with stories of winters we experienced as children and young adults. The years between the time I was about fifteen (and he nineteen) and the time I turned 28-ish included some staggering winters. There was a spell when I was living in one town and milking cows for a farm in another when the weather had to be experienced to be believed.

I had to be at work every day at five AM, so I left home around 4:30. That winter we had nearly a month when temps never got above twenty and at least a week of nights that reached thirty below. I drove a little Volkswagen station wagon sort of thing. It was an early example of front wheel drive and would go anywhere you pointed it. It was also a typical VW so the heater was dead. We used a little catalytic space heater to "warm" (warm being a relative term, resembling the comparison of scale of perhaps Vesuvius and a cigarette lighter, with "warm" being the lighter and comfortable being the volcano) it up and defrost the windows.


I would go out every morning at four or so and light the darned thing (with a match-it had an open, circular "wick" which was quite exposed), then go back inside for more coffee. If I propped it on the seat just so, it would sort of thaw a hole in the frost on the windshield so I could drive to work. It wasn't exactly ideal, but there isn't a lot of traffic at that time of day anyhow. I never missed a milking.

Then there was the blizzard that hit when I was living in the camp in Caroga Lake. (No insulation, one layer of simple board walls-it was a SUMMER camp after all). I don't remember exact weather statistics, but I probably was commuting to the same farm (I worked there a long time before I met the boss). During the night we got feet and feet and feet of snow, howling winds, temps way below zero...it was like living in Alaska. The little sheet steel wood stove in the living room (sole heat source) was a joke in the face of such weather. We didn't have running water though, so there was really nothing to freeze but us. Sometime during the maelstrom, while all occupants slumbered (including dogs) the front door of the cabin blew open. When we awoke in the morning we had to shovel two feet of snow out of the living room. (And you wonder why I refuse to get all excited about global warming.) At that point we accepted an invitation from some friends who had an apartment in the city and stayed with them for a few days.


The boss's stories of winter wildness included taking water upstairs at night so he could have a drink if he was thirsty and finding it frozen in the morning. Icy winds howling through the walls. Snow that the biggest tractor on the farm couldn't get into, let alone out of.


I have other memories of driving that same VW with that same stupid heater to that same job in an ice storm. There was simply no way the car could go on the roads themselves, which were like a long, black hockey rink. Still I had to go to work, as I loved my job and my employer's cows needed to be milked. So I put one tire on the snow bank and crept off to Johnstown where 150 Holsteins awaited. Never missed a milking then either.


We were nuts. We drove bad cars (I had one that you had to park on a hill to start and a truck with two leaky tires, which I swapped twice a day to get to and from work-I could change tires better then any girl I knew) and lived in frighteningly primative places. However, we were young, intrepid and didn't really know any better. And it was a real good preparation for marrying a dairy farmer. I fit right in from the day I got here.

C'mon fish, hold still for a second

Naughty

Kudzu


Or...could it be sunspots (or the lack thereof)

Meme from NYCO

This probably won't be much fun if you live down south, but NYCO cooked up a pretty good meme for those of us that live in the snowy regions.

Here it is, straight from NYCO with my answers below:

"Winter Questions:

I haven’t ever done the “blog meme” thing before (i.e., “Friday Five,” five questions that everyone is supposed to blog about on Friday - it’s a friendly way of getting blog traffic to circulate) but here’s some winter questions and answers. Feel free to tackle these questions on your own blog, and I will add a link to your post.

1. What’s the winter tool you can’t do without?

2. The winter tool you could do without (i.e., find unnecessary or silly)?

3. Your favorite music to listen to when stuck in the house in a snowstorm?

4. The winter sound you least like to hear?

5. Your driveway shoveling pattern: vertical (up and down)? horizontal (pushing from side to side)? Or any which way?"

Answers from Northview:

1) The Frothingham Free Library

2) Roof rake (our roof is about thirty feet high-at the bottom)

3) Emerson Drive, (of course)

4) The wind thumping and banging my bedroom wall and slapping the bird feeders around.

5) I hope and pray that my driveway is "shoveled" by a man with a skid steer. If not I rely on 4-wheel drive or hibernation.

Your turn-how do you handle the interminable days of winter?

***Update
Mrs. Mecomber and
Breezey have played too!
Loping Loubob as well!

Oh, kitchen, my kitchen

The fearful week (and four days) is done
Noses have weathered all attacks, the prize we sought is won
The smell is gone, the air is clear, and mama is exalting
While follow foods that are not tainted, the odor gone a faring

But heart, oh heart,
The grief that I have taken
While in the barn the kittens whine
Ousted from inside

Oh, kitchen, my kitchen, I am glad to have you back sir
Rise up, for you the cats evicted, for you the mom rejoicing

***to make things perfectly clear.....eleven days ago, Liz was given three cute (well two cute and one Hellcat) kittens by a dear friend of the family. They are more teen aged cats than kittens and for those long and miserable days they have lived in dog crates in my kitchen. Let me tell you, three cats in the kitchen smell...well, they smell real, real bad. No matter how often their little boxes are cleaned. Today they were exiled to their new home in the horse barn and I am a very happy camper. Very happy. Very, very happy.
However, Liz is not happy and thinks that I am mean as a box of rattlesnakes left on a hot sidewalk too long. Even so, it is nice to be able to breathe again.
(They only got to stay in as long as they did because the Hellcat one bit our friend and we needed to make sure she didn't have rabies.)

HT to Walt Whitman, who said it so much better.

Winter wonder-land (or why can't the calendar get it right?)

According to the calendar, winter arrives in this hemisphere on or somewhere around the 21st of December, close to the old Julian calendar solstice.


That same calendar is ALWAYS wrong and has been every single year of my life. Winter up here begins WAY before the 25th and ends when it gets good and ready. Believe it or not, we had frost the 8th of June this year, the latest I have ever seen. (There was ONE year, back when my brother was still in the service, when we had the oats planted by the end of March and all the fence built too, but it was such an aberation we are still talking about it.)


Wikipedia says this, "Winter is one of the four seasons of temperate zones. Almost all English-language calendars, going by astronomy, state that winter begins on the winter solstice, and ends on the spring equinox. Calculated more by the weather, it begins and ends earlier and is the season with the shortest days and the lowest temperatures. Either way, it generally has cold weather and, especially in the higher latitudes, snow and ice."


Say what you will about Wikipedia, they got that one right. In fact, it looks as if winter is throwing its snow hook our way starting about noon today. (Oh, joy.) Not to mention its ice. Rain. Sleet. Freezing rain. High winds.


I think I will hibernate.


Or, alternately, I will betake myself off to the grocery store for some dog food as we are out, and have five (count 'em, five), bottomless canine consumers, warn up the homemade soup from last night's dinner for the human contingent and pray for school closings, which will send the company of helpful and entertaining young adults my way tomorrow.


***Stormy day update, file under unbelievable: the tank driver mentioned in the post below turned the dial on the bulk tank washer backwards AGAIN today and broke it (these things are like a washing machine dial and can't be turned backwards. He has been picking up milk for decades and knows better). Last time he did it it cost us six hundred bucks to fix. Eventually we got part of that paid for by the trucking company. I doubt we will get them to do anything this time. The boss is so mad he is fit to spit.

Troy Stanley or Lee Eisneberg

All afternoon yesterday we listened to the hostage drama at a Clinton campaign office in New Hampshire. (The girls called me as they were leaving college, or I wouldn't even have known about it as the boss and I were busy battening down the hatches.)

All afternoon yesterday Fox called the alleged perpetrator Troy Stanley. This morning when I sat down to read the news headlines they are calling the guy Lee Eisenberg.. So which was it? And did he really only have road flares? And who is Troy Stanley? Is he upset over the apparent misidentification? Or is one just an alias for the other? Just wondering.....

***Update, a commenter has answered these questions in the comment section.

Busy, busy

*The milking machines waiting to be washed after milking yesterday*

The various weathermen and women in the area seem to agree that it is going to get cold and storm over the next few days. Consensus is rare among them, so we are hustling around today getting ready. The boss is feeding the cows up right now; all the heifers are down from the hill and hanging around pestering him while he tries to work. I suspect that he wishes they were back out.

*The path to the orchard, made by Becky and Jack, but used by me in my woodquests*

I have been up in the old orchard gathering odds and ends of dry wood off the ground and from the old apple trees, which seem to shed dead branches like a dog sheds hair. A couple of wheelbarrows full of that stuff and the stove will really get cranking....and the kitchen will get nice and toasty. As soon as the cows are taken care of the boss is going out to get us some serious wood (as opposed to the frivolous little stuff I haul in with my trusty wheelbarrow). I am afraid we are going to need it.

*The wimpy wood I find*

It is a fine day for working outdoors, sunny...temps probably hitting the low forties. It doesn't really feel much like November, although there have been plenty of gloom and doom days to remind us of the season. Tomorrow however it is supposed to be much colder with northwest winds and snow...naturally, since, Liz is off on a school field trip to Ithaca tomorrow. Her class is going to tour the bull stud at Genex, which should be interesting. (In fact I am kind of jealous.) The boss and I went, or tried to go, to Sire Power down in Tunkhannock years ago, but we got lost, so it was closed by the time we got there. Oh, well, maybe some day.

Northview girls

Frosting...the heifers are in from the hill

Liquorice ...(I think)

Mandy

Bama Breeze

***Notice that only Bama and Mandy still have ear tags, and all Mandy has is her official USDA tag (required for shows). They ALL had tags like Bama's when they went to pasture. The National Animal ID System, NAIS, will rely on ear tags to trace animals to their source.....what a wonderfully reliable system they are planning.

A couple (or three) links

Stories about the border opening.

One

Two (R-Calf

Three (completely unrelated, but kind of interesting)

Too good to be true

I don't think I have said too much about our ongoing situation with our milk truck driver. It has been just one of those things. Way back in the spring our regular guy got hurt and a substitute began to pick up the milk. (The milk truck picks up every other day here at Northview, which is pretty much the norm for all but the largest farms.)


We always got along wonderfully with our regular driver and his son-in-law, who was his relief driver. They were the kind of guys who glanced in the barn now and then and if they saw something amiss, they dealt with it. For example we left one day to go to the farm show in Syracuse. Chores were done and everything was ship shape when we left. We thought. However, Dale took a look in the barn and there were little twin heifers behind old Zinnia, who had calved early. He knew we were away and put them up in front of their mama where they were safe. It wasn't his job, but he took care of it anyhow.


Dale always picked us up at 9:30 in the morning. It was no problem to be done by then. (It takes at least a couple of hours to feed grain, set up the milkers and to actually milk the cows. By the time you factor in actually getting up, getting dressed, making coffee, letting the dogs out and walking to the barn, you have to get up pretty darned early even to be done and the milk cooled by then.)


At first the new guy did the same. We missed Dale, but what could we do? Then he started showing up at 8:30. Then 7:30. Now we were running into difficulties. The milk was still warm when he was pumping it into the truck. (Illegal and wrong.) Still, it was summer and with the kids home we could be done milking by then. So, of course, he backed it up to 6:30. Terrific. Sometimes if we have mechanical problems or a calf to pull, that is when we START! We were starting earlier and earlier and still not being done before he came in. It was pretty frustrating.


We couldn't wait to milk until after he picked up either. Before we can milk again after milk is picked up the tank has to be washed. It takes an hour, which made us too late to milk 12 hours later at night. There were any number of other issues, such as him hooking up the hose to the tank before the milk was measured, breaking the tank washer, and the milk being warm so we got high bacteria counts that we didn't deserve. Still, we soldiered along and compromised at being done at 7:30. He still pulled in at 6:45, but everybody just put up with it all.


Then Monday he didn't show up. He had been promising for six months or so that he would be done driving the first of December since he has a winter job. When another guy picked us up at 9:30 we were absolutely ecstatic. We practically handed out cigars. We figured he had quit early and we could go back to our normal milking hours of 6 or so in the morning and 5:30 at night (which is when we have been milking anyhow, stretching the days out very l-o-o-o-o-n-g.) Happy, happy, happy!


However, just as we were getting ready to put the milkers on at 6:37 this morning, we heard the rumble of the tanker truck down below the gate. We had to shut down, let him draw off the milk, and wash the tank, before we could milk. It put us hours behind and I felt like kicking the wall!
Seems he couldn't get up the driveway Monday because of the ice, so Tyler got the milk. (This is another issue if he keeps driving since the boss can't add another task, sanding the driveway, to our already crowded race to get done before he gets here.)


Woe is me!

Joni's idea

Was to show off some of her favorite Christmas ornaments. Seemed like a great plan, so here are a few of mine. I'd love to see yours too, hint, hint....

Not so wild horses

Made by my mom

Naturally

Here is why I hate corn pickers

This poor man amputated his own arm after getting it caught in a farm implement, which then caught on fire. Our corn picker sits up in one of our fields abandoned because it was too darned dangerous to run...

Rainy days and Mondays

Today is both. There is a fine scrim of ice on every bit of ground, which makes walking a challenge. The milk tanker didn't show up this morning and we are hoping he isn't off the road somewhere.

Yesterday was certainly something. First Nick and Wally got into a discussion through the kennel fence and woke me up way too early for a morning off. Then Alan set out to skin and cut up that nice little buck he got. To his dismay something was terribly wrong with it. Every bit of meat was full of holes and blood clots, essentially ruining it. What a shame! We figure that any one of four scenarios is possible.
1) It got policed in a fight with a much larger buck, which did an amazing amount of damage.
2) Hit by a car.
3) EHD
4) (Most likely in my opinion) Some idiot loaded it full of turkey shot thinking they could kill it with a bird load.

Whatever happened, we won't be eating it.

Then the kid brought down the Christmas tree (I use the term loosely). Last year he got us this tree. We teased him about it but we liked it. I expected something similar this year when he suggested getting another, so I said, "Yeah, go ahead."

About an hour later he dragged this thing in the house.

It is over ten feet high and set up it reaches half way across the living room (you can see how wide that is in the shotgun pellet pictures below.) I am not sure quite what to think of it, but looking on the bright side, there will be room for every single one of my many and various Christmas ornaments on it.... For all of Grandma Peggy's too.... And for all the ones that have been languishing in boxes in the attic for a decade or six.

Half decorated

Wow.....

13 Degrees This Morning

***Late this afternoon Daniel Boone got another deer, a small six-point buck. He was just climbing up into his tree stand with his gun already on the rope (and of course, unloaded-there has already been one death in NY involving a tree stand ladder and a loaded gun) when it walked by. He said it was quite a scurry to get down from the stand, untie and load the 20-gauge. Then he missed it completely. It obligingly gave him a second chance. Another head shot.

Hunting safely

These are our living room windows. We love the view. We don't love the shotgun pellet holes. The glass is very thick and we have been told it would be absurdly expensive to replace so the reminder of someone's vandalism and foolhardiness remains with us. This was done before the folks bought this half of the farm back in '62.

Taking mandatory NAIS to a whole new level.

Here is the story of a farmer who defied NAIS, so the state came in and RFID tagged his cows under a court order. (What part of voluntary did they miss?State troopers enforcing ear tagging rules? Good grief!) Although I do think we need TB testing, I have to say that I admire Greg Niewendorp for standing up to the government on mandatory RFID tags.

Here is a group that wants to make it easier for farmers to direct market to the public without jumping through all the hoops that government has put in front of small operators. I have mixed emotions about some of this, as we do pasteurize milk for a reason, but still it is interesting. We know of several small turkey farms around here that were utterly defeated in their efforts to supply folks with tasty, home-grown turkeys, because state regulations mandated separate stainless steel pans for every turkey and dozens of other rules intended more to stifle small players than to make meat safer.

Happy Thanksgiving

To everyone! This is my favorite holiday. It is all about family, friends and sharing....rather than parties and getting stuff. I like it!


****Photo by Liz, right out on the lawn

Twas the day before.....

Dish washing, yam boiling, celery chopping, pie crust all over the table, onions blending their fragrance (pungently) with that of the three gifted kittens in crates in the kitchen. Liz went down to Gordie and Marie's yesterday and brought home two short haired calicoes and a long-haired black and white tom. Can you imagine a farm running out of barn cats? Me neither, but we only have four old cats and the two little yellow ones I got at Wal*Mart last year left. (Speaking of the scents of Thanksgiving preparations, I just remembered why I don't like cats in the house. Yowsa, tomorrow will be better on that front I hope.)

Liz is cooking the dinner this year (she did last year too because I had the flu) but I helped with the shopping and am helping with the clean up. We hit the stores at 6:30 this morning to miss the crowds and it worked out well. However, we had a touch of excitement on the way home. We were just leaving Johnstown when something black banged off the windshield leaving behind a mark. It made an incredibly loud CRACK sound and scared the heck out of both of us. At first I thought it was a rock from someone's tire and I looked around for a truck or car, which might have thrown it. There was nobody there! Liz thinks it was a spent bullet and I suspect that she may be right.We were right next to an abandoned farm. We didn't need any coffee after that I can tell you!

Would you believe kids over at school were really giving her a hard time yesterday because she is doing the cooking? I don't mind a bit doing it myself. However, she asked a couple of weeks ago if it was all right if she did it. The kids all learned to cook partly from their late grandmother, some from me and some from my mom. They all like to. However, her buddies think it is cruel that we are letting her undertake such a big meal. She says if she had been born just a couple of generations ago she would be married by now and cooking for her own family and doesn't care what they think.

Gee, I'm glad she's not (married and cooking for somebody else I mean). It is nice to lean back and watch someone else doing all the chopping and rolling and boiling. However, it is back to the salt mines for me I guess....well, actually, the kitchen sink. I am waiting for the woodstove to get some more water hot for me and then I will tackle more of those darned dishes.

A little randomness

Grandpa's gold finches

Blue jay inspecting the lawn for errant sunflower seeds

Oh, deer

The final rule

Explained

The link above will take you to a question and answer page on the new rules for importing cattle from Canada to the USA. The USDA will now allow animals born after 1999 to be imported for beef and breeding purposes, plus allowing many more categories of beef products and by products. The coming weeks market-wise should be very interesting, as usually allowing more imports from Canada is rough on cull cow prices here in the US. The final rule also allows many more dairy animals to be imported, usually resulting in excess milk production and lower farm gate milk prices. This time, however, the Canadian Loonie is very strong vs. the American dollar. Things may not be as bad for US farmers as they have been in other years when the border is open (although conservative estimates point to 600,000 head coming south in the next year.)

I am not holding my breath anyhow. The border opens today and we already took a $400 hit on one heifer we sold last week....evidently buyers are planning on higher supplies and lower prices. (We were getting $1200 and got $800 instead for a breeding age Holstein heifer.) Farmers in Canada are already hurting too, due to the divergence between the currencies. I don't pretend to know what will happen in the next few months in either the beef or dairy markets....other than that food giants like Tyson and Dean Foods will prosper and we farmers won't get rich selling our products to them.

We will be

Processing venison today

Blissful joy, a morning off

I didn't see this today....this was actually taken yesterday.

As close as the kid got

Our one winged warrior

Is mostly back to work now. His shoulder will probably never be the same as there are muscles detatched from the bone that are not going to grow back. However, he is a typical tough farmer and just keeps going and going. He managed to get all the corn chopped and finished up Thursday. You can see in this picture from last week that his right arm doesn't work too well, but he gets things done some how...(he is bringing me firewood in this picture, bless his heart.)

Farming is different from most jobs in that respect. There are a finite number of people to do work that is absolutely unforgiving. Cows must eat, drink and be milked. The stove must have wood. Things have been kind of ugly....cows don't get bedded or stables cleaned until late afternoon and I do most of the former. Not so neat and tidy as it might be, but they have something to lie on at night anyhow. One side of the stable manure has been piled outside under the chute for weeks....that will get cleaned up pretty quick now that he doesn't have to try to chop acres and acres of corn with one arm and worn out equipment. Just yesterday, Liz and I helped him get all the fans out of the barn, move calves, change calf collars, build stalls, clean mangers and a half dozen other jobs that have gone begging until we had enough help and time to do them.

Now we have to rebuild the sawdust shed for yearling calf housing, tear out half of the old calf tie up and put in the new headlocks so we can catch the yearling heifers to breed them...oh, and get some Amish in to patch the roof if we can... rebuild the pig housing....get the five bred heifers and two dry cows down off the hill ....and on, and on, and on..etc.....

I am awful glad to have him done with corn and able to help in the barn all day....you just can't imagine how glad.

On another note, today is opening day South, deer season. Cows are all staying in the barn except the seven out on the heifer pasture hill and they have a lot of feed down here to keep them busy and close to the barn. Show heifers are locked in the barn yard. Horses are in the barn.....and my son is somewhere out on Seven County Hill with a twenty gauge and a dream.
I forgot to have him borrow a cell phone from one of his sisters, so I will worry and worry.
I trust him.
It is the poachers who will have by passed our no trespassing signs I worry about. The ones who hunt in full cammo and take sound shots and can't tell a deer from a billy goat or a Jersey cow. It is an insult to call them hunters. They are just idiots. I hope he doesn't meet any.

Still more company

I glanced out at the garden pond yesterday to see an odd creature leaping futilely against the side of it. It was the right size for a sparrow or chipmunk, but it just didn't look right somehow. I grabbed the camera and ran out in the rain to find this guy trying to get in out of the weather. I think it would normally have been an easy hop for so big a green frog, but it was COLD and he was kind of floppy. I took his picture and then gave him a helping hand over the side into the rain-dimpled water. He stroked swiftly to the bottom and vanished under a cinder block.

I just bought a brand new heater, so he should have a comfy place to hibernate this winter, along with the two itty bitty greenies and one large, fat leopard that are already there.

Deer on the side lawn

The kids got up to find this little guy munching on the raspberry vines at the edge of the lawn a couple of days ago. (I missed the whole show due to being over in the barn milking the cows, but I guess he hung around for quite a while.)


The video was taken through the living room window. ....the white blur when Liz pans the camera down to the bird bath is a hole made by some idiot's shot gun pellet some years ago....there are around fifty of them there. Notice that although he looks at the house quite often, he never flags his tail in fear. Notice also the amazing camouflage. The second he walks into the golden rod and wild roses along the horse pasture fence he vanishes. I think he spends a lot of time hanging around the house, actually...partly because of the hoof prints under the window and partly because SOMEBODY is eating all my lettuce.

***It could also be that he has read the game syllabus and knows that opening day of the southern deer season is Saturday and figures it is safer next to the house.

A real meme

Cathy, of Looking Up, who seems to be one of the nicest bloggers I have ever "met" (she toots her car horn when she goes by the farm with her family on their way to the coast) presented this nifty meme today. I want to play too.

Here are the rules:

"The first three people to comment here and then post the same message on their blogs will receive a small (real, not virtual) present from me!"

According to Cathy, these presents may be as small as a bit of foliage from the garden and it may take a while for them to arrive, but this just seems like fun. I have things, small, neat, things, which we dug from the ground or found or grew. I would be happy to share some of them. Good luck

***Update...C'mon, you know you want to play..leave a comment and I will send you a small good thing...really....

Dog Song

No, not the Gary Paulsen book of the same title (although it is a good one, if not funny like Wood Song).

This is an actual dog song I stumbled upon on MySpace. I can't remember how I became friends with the fellow who wrote and sings it, but I was clicking along yesterday, hit his profile, and it began to play. I stopped clicking...frozen...listening. (If you aren't a dog person don't bother.)
But if you are you will get it...and it will get you I promise.


The girls got it when I played it for them when they came home from school last night. (Mike got some big hugs I can tell you.) The only way I could figure out to link to it is to put it on my MySpace page....so go there, click on the music player and listen to "Stay," by Joe Hash.
It is the perfect anthem for all the old dogs out there, past and present, and all the dog folks who love them.

***(There are some fine dogs whose folks have links over in the side bar, such as Feather and Flounder, Lucky,
Shasta, Cubby, Sugar, Fat Buddy
plus
Dog blogs, blogs with dogs,
this is by no means all the dogs and dog folks, but you get the idea)

Do they know something we don't know?

Liz and I visited this farm up in Stone Arabia Saturday in order to purchase some straw for cow bedding. (The straw was terrible..stiff with mold, dusty, smelly and hard to shake out. We won't be going back.) The farm worker who loaded the truck spoke very little English...at first. Then when he saw that the old lady who came in to order and pay for the straw was accompanied by a kind of cute young blond, he perked up considerably. So did his command of the language.

After each bale he leaped out of the mow with tremendous enthusiasm, hitting the truck bed with a resounding thump. He would stuff the bale into the load, wink at Liz, and then hop back into the mow. In no time we were loaded and ready to roll. If I were going back I would take her along every time....great service and he was a really nice kid!

Anyhow, just above this field of corn stubble a mass of perhaps 200 snow buntings whirled like a flock of black birds. It was easy to see that they weren't though; their size and the flashing of bright, white wings made them unmistakable. I was quite surprised to see them, although that farm usually offers a few horned larks and other birds of the wide open spaces. It is very early for sb's to show up here, as you can see from the range map on the link above. Even on the Christmas bird count we have only seen a few over the years. However, there they were on a pleasant, sunny 50-degree day, taking to the air over the corn and seeming to enjoy it....So I ask again, do they know something we don't?

The finest things in life

Are sometimes round and crunchy.
(Imagine, every bite a cold, crisp explosion of sweet, tangy juice)
(Imagine dozens of them)
(Mine all mine)
(Well, sort of)

We ran down to Pines yesterday, since Bellinger's is closed for the season (Alan says he heard that they ran out of apples), and bought a whole bushel of apples.
28 bucks! (Worth every penny, but, dang!)

This is an apple household, make no mistake about it. We love 'em. We eat 'em. The photo above is the already much marauded-upon basket of fruit that we bought. See all the empty spots? These apples only came home at noon yesterday and already they are vanishing like Houdini.

We chose a mixture of Golden Delicious, Ida Reds, and both red and green Northern Spies. We are making our way through the Delicious first as they are not the best keepers. I turned control of the green Spies over to Liz, as they are my favorite for pies and she is the best pie baker (cakes are Becky's thing). The hard, crisp winter keepers, the Spies and Ida Reds, will mostly find their way into Apple Snacks, my favorite winter breakfast (or lunch, as far as it goes.) I am having one now.....ahhh........

A Coyote explains

A Coyote at the Dog Show offers his take on the blog readability tool. Works for me.