Asaki

Mrs. Mecomber gets to do the honors. Thanks again to everyone who participated in the naming of this baby.

Recipe for a perfect Sunday

Two books (top two on this list) I have been waiting anxiously to read BOTH came into the library and were just waiting for me to find them Saturday morning when Beck and I ran over to town. I know it was greedy to start the first last night and have them both finished by this evening's milking, but I really, really like JA Jance. What can I say? There are few better Sundays than the one I had today.

Keep the names coming

Pleas, please, please...they are great!

Name the calf

Time for a name that calf contest.
As always, all suggestions are welcome. Names submitted (in the comments please) are put into a hat, one is drawn, and the winner gets to name the calf.

Your exciting (????) prize is to have a purebred Holstein heifer go through life with the name you chose on her registration papers. Previous names chosen this way have been Hattie, one of our best Jerseys, Bama Breeze, Veronica and a couple of others I can't think of just now. This girl has potential as a show heifer so her name could be up in lights so to speak (well, really, just up in a little picture frame over at the show but....)

The particulars on this baby...her mama's name is Frieland LF Volcano. Her sire is a Select Sires young bull, Kingdom. This baby is a bit special as she is only the second red and white Holstein female we have ever had here at Northview. The other one is her half sister, Magma. You can see a rather bad photo of her here.

Have fun....the name chosen will definitely be one that you submit, as we are plumb out of names at this particular time. Happy naming!

If you don't like the weather in Upstate NY

Wait a minute....or maybe just a little more than that.....The first pictures, including the pink heifers, which is unedited except for cropping out the pink-for-minute heifer barn, were taken at 6 AM. At that time the sky was even pink in the west!

The last photo was taken just before ten AM. Same day. Almost the same spot as the first one.

Fiber Converstion Fire

The girls called from the road down just north of 20 and asked us to put on channel nine to see where the huge fire was. I looked out the window and was stunned. These photos were taken over several hours from the living room window....terrible! The smoke can be seen for many miles at least 30.

Another twenty-something and one fewer teenagers at Northview

Fittingly her gifts so far have been books, books, books and I hear tell there is another in the offing.

Almost a meeting

You will need to click to see how thick the snow was...

Liz and I ran Becky over to college this morning, after milking (and after the motherperson got up at four to finish the Farm Side for Friday), and then headed to Oneonta for a farm meeting (the boss stayed home to calve a cow.).

It was put on by our feed company.
With good speakers.
Brook's Chicken.
Great door prizes. We really wanted to be there.




We hopped on I 88. There was rain predicted. There was squally wind predicted. However, nothing that we heard prepared us. Or not enough anyhow. It was a boy who cried wolf sort of thing. We have canceled several tempting outings this winter because the forecasters called for blizzards and other apocalyptic weather conditions and nothing happened. We decided to ignore them (or I did...Liz wanted to stay home) and we paid the price. The wind was so fierce on 88 that Liz could barely hold the car on the road. We got off onto 7...not much better. We made it to Richmondville, called Becky and told her to skip class, picked her back up and headed home (with a quick detour to Wally World for dog food.)



What followed was 30 or so miles of the worst driving we have seen this winter. It was bad. I have pictures. I didn't take them until it had actually let up some.....The snow was horizontal! Now that we are home it is sunny again.....

****Update...to add insult to injury, not one, but two milk inspectors just stopped in to tell us that our milk hauler will be charging us another $300 bucks a month to haul our milk and we can't change haulers. Milk is about the only commodity where the producer pays the hauling to the buyer. (Everyone but milk buyers pays their own darned shipping and handling.) On the positive side (and there always is one) one inspector said that the barn looked good. Milk inspectors NEVER tell you that your barn looks good. (I think they just didn't want to get us any madder than necessary.)

Blond joke

Someone dear to us sent me this and I thought it very fitting for this weather so.....

As a trucker stops for a red light, a blonde catches up. She jumps out of her car, runs up to his truck, and knocks on the door.
The trucker lowers the window, and she says "Hi, my name is Heather and you are losing some of your load."

The trucker ignores her and proceeds down the street.
When the truck stops for another red light, the girl catches up again.
She jumps out of her car, runs up and knocks on the door.

Again, the trucker lowers the window. As if they've never spoken, the blonde says brightly, "Hi my name is Heather, and you are losing some of your load!"
Shaking his head, the trucker ignores her again and continues down the street.

At the third red light, the same thing happens again.
All out of breath, the blonde gets out of her car, runs up, and knocks on the truck door. The trucker rolls down the window. Again she says "Hi, my name is Heather, and you are losing some of your load!"
When the light turns green the trucker revs up and races to the next light.

When he stops this time, he hurriedly gets out of the truck, and runs back to the blonde.
He knocks on her window, and after she lowers it, he says...
"Hi, my name is Kevin, it's winter in Upstate New York and I'm driving the salt truck!"

Something's brewing

We crawled out of bed a little early this morning because Liz is going to help out on a Farm Bureau membership drive a little later in the day. We were nearly done milking when the sun came up. Its rising was at once ominous and glorious. At first there were bands of purple and sandy tan. Pretty enough, but in a Martian sort of way...the colors were simply not of this earth. Then the strange dullness slowly dissolved into a sea of red so bright that it shone right through the house from the living room to the rippled old glass in the dining room windows. There the red was exuberantly bubbled and wrinkled by the ancient panes until it looked like lava flowing down between the curtains.

The milkhouse wall was stained bright pink for a few seconds too, like a sunlit villa tucked against a hillside somewhere on the Mediterranean. I hurried back into the barn to call everybody out to see, but by the time I turned again the color was gone and the sky had faded all to grey. Because Liz was in a hurry to get Becky over to school (the latter is paying the former for chauffeur duties) the breakfast above is not what we are having today. However, a week ago Sunday was another story altogether. Anyhow, between the red sky at morning and the weather forecasts I guess we have a storm brewing. Sleet. Freezing rain. High wind watch. Bah humbug!

*****Visit Pure Florida today to see the kind of photos of Herkimer Diamonds that someone who knows what they are doing can produce. Mine are feeble by comparison.... even though the stones are just as bright and even somewhat larger.
It is kind of neat to walk outside with a flashlight here at night, as all the Herkimers and slabs of mica from Richter's Mountain sparkle like, well, like diamonds in the night....maybe someday I will get the knack of photographing them.

Reese Cates?

*****UPDATE: I now have much better pics of Reese here and here


Liz says so and he does look like his picture on his fledgling website. I put his picture up because I have had a number of hits from searches for pictures of him....so, here you go, folks.
Here and here are more pics of Reese

Also one of my favorite blogs has gone private access. Not sure what to think about that, since I am not one of the folks permitted to read it. Guess I will have to take the link down, but I really hate to do it. It was one I visited almost every day and really liked a lot.

More PBR Albany

Travis Briscoe won it all. There were 31 successful rides for an all time highest record and so many 90 point rides in the short go that guys with 90 points (6 of 'em) were fighting for third and forth place.
Amazing!

One real bad, heart wrenching wreck....Vince Northrup..that's why I don't go to more rodeos. I was praying every one of those guys from the chute, to the ride, safely off and back. It is just so horrible when they get hurt.

Liz's and my favorite, Cord McCoy

Another favorite, Kody Lostroh

Becky's favorite, Luke Snyder

PBR in Albany

(Or, watching your kid on TV is really cool.)

Photo stolen from Liz, taken at Vernon Downs last summer

The Professional Bull Riders Association came to Albany last night and brought along some great bulls and even greater cowboys. Such famous names as Travis Briscoe, Guillerme Marchi, Paulo Crimber (who danced and Liz has video) and Adriano Moraes were right here in upstate New York and riding their best.
Liz had a ticket for a seat not far from the chutes. At nine-thirty it was televised on Versus and of course we watched.

She really got lucky too. It was one of the best rodeos I have ever seen. Lots of good rides, (although nobody hit ninety), no really awful wrecks. My heart jumped right up in my throat though when Reese Cates' bull nearly flipped over forward (his face was digging into the ground) and Reese had to put his hand right down in the dirt to save himself from falling under him. Close one!

Cord McCoy, who is Liz's favorite, (and a really nice boy-we met him at Turning Stone) had a great ride for fourth place. She got to talk to him for a minute at the end which was nice too. (He encouraged her to buy a baby bucking bull though, which plumb makes me ner-r-r-r-v-ous....she is just the kid to actually do it.) I love to see Cord do well, partly because he came out of a terrible injury to do what he loves with a zest that is contagious. You never see him without an ear to ear grin.

Anyhow, all through the show we scanned the stands for her. We knew she was right down front and right near the chutes. Sure enough Alan soon spotted her..... taking pictures for BuckinJunction. I kept trying to watch for her too, but the action in front of the chutes kept distracting me.

Tonight the second go round and short go will take place (well, really this afternoon). Liz has tickets for today too.

And....(dum dad dum dum)..........One of them is mine...(we earned this trip by milking cows for five weeks without so much as a milking off when the boss was hurt....there will be no whining from the cheap seats). So if you watch Versus at nine tonight you can look about five rows back right by the chutes for the excited cow girl with the camera and the old lady with her hands over her eyes. See you there.

Iditarod

The start of the race is fast approaching, so here is a link to Cabela's Iditarod site. It is the one I use to keep track of things. I will put it in the blogroll until the race is done so it will be right here handy.

My personal favorite is Jeff King. He is an amazing innovator and this year is no exception. He will take to the trail with a cooker in his sled handlebars so he can have warm food on the trail. Cool...er, hot.... (BTW, to whom it may concern...King is 50).

Looks as if at this point there are 111 mushers entered, which will be a mighty large field.

Garth Brooks benefit concert

Liz and I stayed up past our bedtime to listen to the concert Garth gave to benefit California wildfire victims. We heard some of our favorite songs, but others were preempted for commercial breaks, which seemed interminable....as in one song, ten commercials. We are about to give up and go to bed when Friends in Low Places came on. We both stood there waiting to see if he did the third verse.

He did, so all was redeemed. It was worth waiting through all the commercials.
It made me sad to read that he really means to retire after finishing the series of benefit concerts. I hope the lure of the stage proves too strong though and he continues to perform at least occasionally. One of my dearest friends always meant to take me to see him, but passed away before we got the chance. I have always regretted that we didn't manage it.......Beaches of Cheyenne came out and I heard it for the first time on the way home from a dog training outing with her. I couldn't wait to ask her what she thought of it, as I liked it immediately. Sadly I never got the chance to ask that question either as I never saw her again. It was a very hard time...at that point in my life I had never lost anyone so close to me and the pain was darned near unendurable... that song will probably always bring me poignant memories. (and of course it was one of the ones they cut in half for commercials.)

Today was a good day though. We began the day laughing ourselves half sick over I don't remember what and ended up laughing over that third verse. I guess there are worse things than a day bracketed with laughter (even though in the middle of it we had to clean out a cave in of bridged feed in our grain bin, a long, miserable job, which involved hammers, mallets, screwdrivers, shovels and four of us...ugh.)

Gestation Stalls in Nebraska

Below is the text of an email I received today from Trent Loos. I was delighted to read that HSUS finally pitted their propaganda machine against the farmers and ranchers in a predominantly agricultural state. Usually they win dubious victories in states where there are few farms. Research has shown that pigs are not much affected by how they are housed but emotion will overrule science every time if the animal rights fringe gets into the deal.

"Victory was realized today for American consumers when science was recognized rather than rejected. Within 24 hours of introduction, LB 1148, which would have banned gestation stalls in the state of Nebraska, was withdrawn thanks to the charge led by the Nebraska Pork Producers.

Initiatives such as this have the potential to bring about unity within the agricultural community that has been needed for quite some time."

A personal thanks to Wayne Pacelle and the Humane Society of the United States for creating this unity opportunity."

Milking Shorthorn Holstein cross calf

Here is one we had born a couple of weeks ago. (I wanted to take his coat off, but it is pretty cold this morning.) As any of you who visit here regularly know, for the past three years or so we have kept a milking shorthorn bull to breed heifers. It has worked out quite well, but the boss has taken a good deal of flack from folks who are puzzled by our choice. It is not common in this area, although many people keep Jersey bulls and black Angus bulls for their dairy heifers. We have done so in the past, but wanted to get away from those breeds because of temperament issues (here in the east Angus tend to be mean as stirred up snakes) and the low value of half-Jersey calves.

Then I saw the our bull on the internet. I fell right in love with him. He was a beautiful mahogany color with little white snowflake-like spots all over him as a baby. It took nearly a year, but we got him bought and brought him home.

We just sold him a couple of weeks ago and actually got more than we paid for him. Now we just have to go up to Vernon and pick up the semen from him, then we can AI the pen of heifers we are breeding now. The calf in the picture was a terrific surprise though. Most of the crossbreds have been black or mostly black, with only two other red ones in all the time we had him. We had no idea that Licorice, his mother, was a red carrier, but it is kind of neat. We are keeping him and he will be raised for beef for our freezer.

Anyhow, I have mentioned the shorthorn cross thing in the Farm Side a time or two over the years....and, just the other day, the boss was driving by a farm in the area covered by the paper where they run beef bulls with the dairy cows (don't ask) and there, in place of the usual gigantic Hereford, was a milking shorthorn bull. Hmmmmm

We just had a crossbred heifer born this morning and she was up and walking around the barn when we got in at 5:30. Surprising since the boss checked at 11:30 last night and nothing was happening. The new one is plain black though. Guess Pop Tart probably doesn't carry the gene for red.

Tucker

I finally found the dog pictures I have been looking for. This is Tucker, a lab and junk yard dog cross we got for the boss way back before we were married. He will be featured in this week's Farm Side on Friday and maybe here too if I get a chance. He was a good dog. A very good dog...we still miss him all these years later.

Faded photographs

I have been looking for some specific photographs of a certain dog who used to rule here (he needs a nice Northview memorial post)....I simply can't find them, but here are some that I came across during the search. As any of you who know us will see..........we have aged.......

I am very nervous

We have to load the pigs today....I'll let you know how that turns out.....


****Update....here we go...

The bait

The arrangements for moving from home trailer to travel trailer.

Don't wanna

More bait

Done

Then, right across the driveway...

For some reason the pigs look small and cute in these pictures. Blame it on the camera, because really, they are much larger than they seem. Meaner too. They bite and try to knock you down if you are in charge of feeding...which we were when the boss was hurt. their tenure here has been fraught with pig induced peril to the point where they were the stars of two Farm Side columns when they got out and ran through the cows, down to the road....and just about everywhere else.

Today, two loaded quite well. The third...not so much. He wouldn't come out of the trailer for milk or corn or coaxing. The other two were barking and squealing up a storm in the front half of the travel trailer, which didn't calm him down either. We were under an unexpected deadline as the guys over at Nichols were only going to be there to take them in for an hour and we didn't know it until just before we started the loading process. I am very grateful for Martin Luther King Day, which, besides closing schools, afforded us tons of help, mostly used for gophering. (Gopher corn. Gopher string.)

Finally the boss tried the time honored method of moving a reluctant hog. (Gopher a bucket). He put a white pail over the pig's head and backed him out of one trailer and over to the other. Even that took a few interesting turns as the pig ran between his legs (big pig...almost a disaster), lay down in the pig feeder, and generally made his opposition known. Eventually we had them loaded though, along with more corn for getting them back off the trailer, the trusty white bucket in case they get stubborn and don't want to get off and some sand, since the driveway at Nichols is always icy. Now I am just hoping the trip goes well.

Irony

Does anyone else see the irony in a former gun-control advocate getting arrested for gun law violations? And check out his nick name...so perfectly fitting...

Dreaming over a lawsuit?

Mike

Or simply happy that the sun warms the dining room floor just there and he can steal Grandpa's old sweater and the quilted baby blanket from where they block the drafts coming under the hallway door and grab a snooze on a cold afternoon? You be the judge.....


****UPDATE on the sue-age thing.....monkeys can't.....yet.....

A man who wants to give animals the right to sue us

And has been mentioned as a possible Supreme Court nominee. Be scared....very scared.

Lawence Tribe

Sarpy Sam Obama Animal Rights

(How's that for a string of words?)

One of my very favorite bloggers, whose opinions I have come to greatly respect, has a rather frightening post today about Barack Obama's stance on animal rights. Sarpy Sam says it better than I can, but Obama's position illustrates a classic farmer/rancher dilemma. We probably understand our animals better than anyone who isn't a farmer or a rancher. After all, we live with them and their very lives depend upon our good care. We wouldn't work at such a challenging job if we didn't love them. Yet every Tom, Dick and Harriet in Hollywood and Washington wants to tell us how to do our jobs.

Kitties on the garden pond two by two

Wait a minute! There's Max, but where did Teak go?



******Update-there she is!

Red sky at morning farmers take....

Pictures

Not much

Because not much is happening of interest. It is getting cold again after our mini thaw. Another storm is predicted for tomorrow. It is winter after all.

We have been selling a few head to pay the property taxes, which tend to be the bane of any and all property owners in NY. So far we sold Rip Tide, a yearling heifer which developed the unacceptable habit of sucking other heifers (ruins the udders). Sometimes we put a prickly plastic tab in their nose, so if they suck they get kicked and stop. RT also kicked out behind real bad so....

Then there was Fitty (number 50, AKA Beech) Fitty kicked. Pinned people on the metal post in her stall to try and crush them. Killed her calves as soon as they were born if she got to them first. Had chronic mastitis (udder inflammation) so we fed all her milk to the pigs for three years. Got loose last week and tore up the barn and beat on baby calves (bad timing.) She still made it to ten years old, which is old for a dairy cow. Can't say as I miss being scared spitless if I got stuck milking her. (The boss usually did it, but he tends to wander off.) 187, another heifer. Had either an udder injury or some other serious infection and lost a quarter. Too bad, she was pretty gentle, and very well bred.

And by far the worst, old 49. Veronica. Daughter of Juniper Rotate Jed. Super high producer in her younger days, but almost 11 and not milking so great any more. One of Alan's cows, an old standby. A bit of a kicker but we all liked her. She loved the broom and would moo coaxingly at me whenever I was sweeping cows or currying them.

No one wanted to sell her but we couldn't get her bred this year and she was only giving twenty pounds of milk. If not for the tax man we would have made the not-so-businesslike, but after all this is our farm isn't it, decision to keep trying on breeding her. Let her hang around another year. We liked her. It hurt to put her on the truck and of course, she went sweetly, just walked right on the trailer. Alan swept her off and curried her a lot the night before and asked me to do the same yesterday morning. Of course I did and no doubt she was the best groomed cow at the auction barn. There are two more to go next week, Aretha, chronic mastitis, also feeding pigs right now, and 471, Marge, 14 years old and going downhill. (She could die on the farm and be buried here, but for the tax man.) Imagine selling SIX cows to pay just one of the two sets of taxes (that is just property taxes, school and county) on this place (and they will not pay the whole shot by any means.)

I wonder if the legislature in Albany, when they dump unfunded mandates on local governments and schools know (or care) that a nice old cow died early to fund their overspending. The other three would probably have been sold anyhow....maybe not Rip Tide (who will grow up to be a dairy cow on some one else's farm), but Fitty was long overdue before she killed somebody. Not 49 though. The poor old girl was taxed to death.

Live bucking bull auction

Going on right now (midday Monday). This is quite a thing to watch if you are a PBR far.
McCoy sale

Honorable fingerpain (no T)

You can't see the grooves that occupied these fingers last night, but they still sting a bit. Yesterday was our annual either too early for 2008 or just a shade late for '07 brother, sister and kids and cousins Christmas gathering. Part of the tradition is that next younger brother and I play some guitar. He is good, I am awful, but if I play real quietly no one says too much.

We played Leo Kottke's Pamela Brown
John Prine's Paradise
John Denver's Country Roads
Danny's Song

Mike played Amazing Grace.....I watched. It was beautiful. He is so good I get cold chills.

We played Coming into Los Angeles, which we used to play with the band. You would think I would remember the chords, but I had to watch his fingers and could not quite keep up.

Then there was LA Freeway...same situation with the chords. (I should really, really, really practice more, but every time I sit down with a guitar, people feel that if I have free time I should spend it talking to them rather than tuning it and learning new songs...so I have more or less given up.... whine, whine...)

It was a very happy time. There was talk of doing it more than once a year and I hope we do. He let me play his best guitar (mine stayed home as the neck isn't quite right. He plays a lot of songs with a capo....put a capo on mine and all she does is buzz). Because I was playing his best one, he played his 12-string, so his fingers were almost as bad off as mine. I have perhaps the best pair of brothers to ever be created. Dang, I love em.

Some cogent anti NAIS arguments

....are offered by these ladies. Cattle Network has run a long and aggravating series of pro-NAIS articles, mostly interviewing government folks who are paid to be in favor of it and folks from organizations, which have been paid or coerced to be in favor of it. The ladies interviewed in this other side of the coin rebuttal have made some great arguments here. Some of them are new to me even though I have been following this intently since it reared its ugly head.

Apple appreciation day

Looks kind of wild and wonderful doesn't it?

However, turn the camera less that 45 degrees and all you can see is traffic....trains, trucks, cars and in the summer really expensive boats.


Since the snow has momentarily mostly melted, the guys and I brought in wood today.
Not together. They worked all day getting a dead elm up out of the ravine between the house and barn. A good friend stopped by the other day to pick up some Holstein semen we were giving him to make room in the tanks for Promise. He took a look around and saw the massive, bare-limbed monster where it loomed dangerously between barn and house.

"Why don't you cut that one down?" he asked, "Right handy to the stove and all..."
The boss admitted that with his bad arm he was a little afraid to mess with it. Elms are treacherous droppers of huge, brittle limbs and will kill you if you aren't careful (or maybe even if you are.) This friend has a long history with logging and firewood and a really big chain saw. He made short work of getting it down, but there was no way to avoid it going into the creek.


I stayed away from that job and went up into the orchard instead to bring down pieces of a dead apple limb that Alan cut up for me a few weeks ago. They have been buried under snow, tantalizing me by being so close and yet so inaccessible. With a whole mess more snow in the forecast it seemed like a plan to get them in. I had already hauled down a lot before the snow flew and still scavenged three heaping wheelbarrows full from just one limb. The apple trees are part of an old orchard that we used to use as a horse pasture. I like it up there.

I have never seen a yellow bellied sapsucker, but they may very well have seen me.

The horse pond. We have always wanted a willow tree and this little shrub volunteered. Don't know if it is a black or crack willow but it serves the purpose.


If I had just a little more zoom and a bit faster camera you could see the gulls like paper darts that flashed across this dramatic sky. I am grateful to the apple trees. For branches to keep me warm, for looking so pretty even in the winter, and for an excuse to be out here all afternoon and still call it work.

Winter birds

This has been the best winter for birding in a long time I think.


The usual suspects arrive at the feeders every day. Lots of little birds of the sparrow, finch and chickadee clans. Jays have made a raucous comeback after West Nile disease decimated them a few years back.
Lots of red tailed hawks.
Not enough visits from the Cooper's hawk and we miss her when she isn't here to bomb the pigeons.
WAY too many mallard ducks and crows, going after the corn bags every afternoon.


Then for three or four days somebody was out in Grandma Peggy's little winesap apple tree making soft, purring calls that I not only did not recognize, but had never heard before. It is very hard to pick out birds on grey, cloudy days, and despite several efforts I never saw our murmurous singer. Then day before yesterday there was someone large and grey out in the young honey locust in the old orchard. At first I though he was a shrike, but he flashed black and white as he flipped down and picked up some large object, maybe walnut sized.


Wow, a mockingbird! I'll bet he was my mystery singer and is mimicking some southern songbird. We get mockers sporadically but it has been ages since the last one. Peg used to put black currents on the windowsill in the living room and they would come and eat them. In fact when we moved up here Liz found a mummified one in the closet of the room she chose (shudder). If this one stays around I will put out some raisins or currents for him. I think the big thing he picked up was probably a dried up old apple from the orchard, but there are lots of wild grapes, rose hips and other dried fruits around for his dining pleasure.


The best bird sighting came the other night when Liz and I were driving up the river on our way home from the Farm Bureau board of directors meeting though. With the locks open and the ice gone for the moment, the long, flat, stretch on Riverside Drive looked like a sheet of dark, polished metal as we slowly passed.

Then a softly glowing shimmer of movement caught my eye out on the inky expanse. I turned to see what caused it (Liz was driving.) For the entire length of the smooth part of the river, from the old insurance office all the way down to Dunkin Donuts (and maybe beyond, I couldn't see) a narrow necklace of gulls floated like a trail of feathers down the center. In some places the trail was only a gull or two wide, in others thirty or forty marked their places in the roosting flock.


Gulls look different at night. Ephemeral, like insubstantial like puffs of milkweed down. To keep their places in the constant stream of the flowing river, they leap frogged over one another, a handful at a time, skimming low up the river to land at the head of the line, then floating slowly back down. They were so incredibly lovely, adrift on that long, silent mirror, that it took my breath away. I am rarely pleased to be out late at night, but the gulls made me glad that I was.

***Alan saw a pair of something huge and white, with long, trailing legs, laboring up the river the other night. I suspect great white herons, but didn't get to the window fast enough to see when he came in a hollering. They come under the heading of maybe once every ten years or so birds and are a big event. I hope they come back by.

Amish corn shocks and other harvest icons

The dark building in the rear is our old hop house. It still contains the drying racks that were used to dry that crop

Amish corn shocks against the horizon one day this week

Under the influence of green cardboard

Something in the water...or in the cardboard, I'm not sure

Here at Northview, before our milk goes into the bulk tank, it runs through an inline fibrous filter that takes out any bits of straw or debris that may have been pulled in with the milk. These filters are 24 inches long and 2 1/4 inches wide and come in a green cardboard box, which holds somewhere around fifty of them. Said boxes are rife with potential, simply rife. They are nothing but trouble.

Last night, while setting up for milking, I found I could not get my fingers on a filter (the green box is stored inside a white metal box on the wall, (into which it just nicely fits), for purposes of cleanliness and keeping the milk inspector happy). Liz tried to reach one too and couldn't, so she pulled the green box out of the other box. Yep, just one left. We were all set just the same, since the boss had bought a brand new green box of filters, which was sitting on the windowsill. She plugged into the metal box. Then she set the empty green box over by the door to be taken to the stove, and warned me, "Don't let Alan see this, you know what will happen."

Well, yes, I did know what would happen...it has happened before, it will likely happen again, but in the business of getting started I forgot all about it and left the box right there. Sure enough, when it came time to tear down he spotted it. Immediately he popped the end over the top of his head and became, "Napole-ON" (as he pronounces it in a hokey French accent).
Why he thinks a two-foot long filter box on top of his head turns him into a famous, (but short), French dictator, I don't know, but last night he discovered a new phenomenon. When you hit six feet tall and you put a two-foot long box on top of your head, you can't stand up in the milkhouse.

Instead Napole-ON had to scurry around bent almost double. That didn't slow him down though. (Dang it!) He began to cavort with the box (taking up a lot of room like only a teenaged boy on a tear can do. They seem to expand to fill all available surface area and then some). Because of these windage and elevation difficulties he took the box off his head and became Bionic Man. With his bionic cardboard arm for swatting family members and making foolish he was invincible (and not so very helpful either). There is just no dealing with him when he gets his hands, (or head) or whatever, into a cardboard filter box. They make him crazy.

As a responsible parent I needed to do something, anything....to stop the insanity. I tried to rip the box off. (If you take the box away he calms down and will get back to feeding the last hay feeding of the day and taking hay over to the horses.)

I couldn't get it though. I just couldn't. Because of the empowering properties of the box, my advanced (and ever increasing) age and infirmity (not to mention the fact I was laughing so hard my stomach hurt), all I could tear away were little 2-inch chunks of green cardboard.

"Hee-Yah," he waved it tauntingly at me and ran out the door. Of course I followed and we did box battle beside the bucket rack outside the door. More pieces fell to my onslaught, but I still couldn't win the day...(mostly because I wound up lying over the bucket rack guffawing helplessly, with tears streaming down my face).

It is hard when you are laughing yourself sick to get someone to stop waving a box around and finish up feeding, but eventually that happened. Maybe he just got tired. Maybe whatever properties green cardboard filter boxes possess finally wore off. I don't know.

I swear though, the next time we empty out a box of filters I am going to take it right over to the stove and toss it in. Never again will I risk leaving it lying around waiting to transform my mild mannered son into Napole-ON. Never.

I like this lady

Meanest mom on the planet sells son's car.

More Thurwood

January 8, 1874

Foggy and warm and it rained a little and I went up to Dunckels and in the afternoon it rained and got windy and cold and that is all.
3 eggs for today

Here in 2008 at Northview Farm the weather fellas are also predicting a warm day. I am predicting more grey hair, as I take Becky out driving every day, praying as we go. She needs her driver's license. I need a tranquilizer.


When that is done there is the work on the Census of Agriculture, which we are required to fill out. It is where all those NASS numbers come from but it is HARD (warning pdf file) and it makes me whiny. It says that it takes fifty minutes per response. I don't know if that means per question...there are pages and pages, per page, yep, a lot of them, or for the whole questionnaire. All I know it that I worked on it all afternoon yesterday and it isn't done yet. Wish the government didn't expect us to do their bookkeeping for them.

We also got news that our USPH inspection is coming up, which requires that we offer for consideration a barn that is somewhere near as clean as the set of ER. (Check that link out and imagine complying in a 200 year old barn full of unhousebroken animals, and run by men of the "drop it where you use it" school of tool care. Thank God for Liz is all I gotta say.) We knew that was in the offing and have been working on it, but it is no fun at all.

And then there is the Top Scan thing from Homeland Security. Farm Bureau has been frantically working to get farms exempted from having to fill one out (we have fertilizer and propane and such on hand and may be terrorists or terrorist targets). Even with the information they are sending me in almost daily emails, I have no clue whether we have to fill one out or not. Or how.This sort of snuck in under my farm politics and regulation radar (I get perhaps fifty or sixty emails and newsletters a week on farm policy, agricultural news and commentary and visit many sites that compile such data. Never heard of this one until last week. Since the deadline for compliance, once you figure out whether you have to comply is January 22 that is cutting it pretty close.)

Tax time looms. (Numberwise I need you....He-e-e-e-el-l-pppppp!!!!!) The books must be put in order. New files set up for 2008. All my mistakes of 2007 found and fixed. Arggghhhh!!!

I envy Charlie. I don't exactly want to live without electricity. I would miss my computer. However, I already take care of farm animals every day and I already have to keep warm with wood and hard work. We already grow a lot of our own food, and I do know how to live without modern conveniences having once resided in an itty bitty cabin in the woods, minus most of them.
I would love to forgo all the above government intrusion into our lives and business in trade for the ability to just do the work....you know, feed the cows, milk the cows, grow the food. I'll bet nobody told Charlie how tight his milkhouse door had to be or how to turn his calf buckets upside down.

Coincidence?

I think I will put the same post here today that I wrote for my garden blog (not much to post about there this time of year). Over on Garden Records, however, every now and then I copy an excerpt from the 1874 diary of Charles Thruwood, a farmer from Fort Plain NY (just a handful of miles up the road) . Charlie was 21 that year and had a grand time voting for the first time, breaking horses and doing a lot of hunting, besides working real hard on the farm with his family. It is interesting and informative to compare what happened on a family farm in his day to what happens on one in our time.


Perhaps not surprisingly, although the machines may be bigger and the animal numbers larger, there is no question that the cycles of life, the seasons, and the land have not changed. (No matter what hype you may hear on the topic.) For example, last night our maple syrup guy, who taps our sugar bush woods, (and gives us wonderful maple syrup), stopped by to negotiate for this season's tapping arrangements. I am sure in a few short weeks I will be reading of Charlie Thurwood's families doing their sugaring off as well. We will see when the time comes if the beginning of the maple sap run in 2008 coincides with that in 1874. (We have owned this diary for a good many years and it often has before.) I generally spot the beginning of the run by icicles hanging from maple branches that get broken off along the road. These are formed by sap and are tantalizingly sweet. Alan and I often break off a couple and melt them for coffee water...just for the fun of it.


Here is the copied post.

"From the Charles Thurwood diary

A very foggy day and in the morning it rained a little and I done nothing but the chores and went hunting and Henry Meyers was here and at night Til and Charley Bouman and Dunckel and Ezra Dillenbeck was all to our house. 4 eggs

Here at Northview we are also experiencing a January thaw, which is much appreciated. Had a little rainy sleet Friday into Saturday, which finally made the paths fit for walking again. Interesting that 134 years have passed between these two farmer diary postings and yet the weather is nearly identical."

Bull Jacking in Nashville

I usually leave the rodeo stories to Liz (and she will probably report on this in more detail when she gets in from the barn...two new calves in two days, much excitement.)

However a story about some maniac carjacking a 28-foot trailer-load of PBR bucking bulls with the owner's wife sitting in the cab, and taking off in downtown Nashville was just too amazing to pass up. The bull jacker eventually ran out of diesel, but he ate Mrs. Newcomb's sandwich on her.

Imagine stealing a truckload of this!

Cory Melton signing autographs

Mike White rides one

***Photos from PBR Enterprise rodeo at Vernon Downs last June