East meets West

Or at least they holler howdy from the living room windows to the dining room windows.

Twins and tough calving

A couple of years ago we had an amazing spring with not one, but three pairs of heifer twins born here. (Guess the nutrition situation was especially good). Twins are not exactly aspired to by cow farmers as it is tough on the cow to carry two and the babies are smaller as a rule and less hardy. It came to me yesterday that this had been proved out by the six born that spring.

The last of the six calved for the first time yesterday and had a terrible time of it. The calf was by the shorthorn bull...we have had very few problems with his babies, but this bull calf was big and FAT! Liz delivered it and it was pretty compromised by the time she had it out. The poor heifer was just exhausted. The boss got a bottle of calcium on board and we got her on her feet, but she just didn't want to stand up and lay right back down. She was eating good though so maybe she will be okay...no way to be sure yet. She has a beautiful udder and is out of an exceptionally good cow so I am hoping.....

Anyhow I realized that only two of those six twin heifer babies are still here at the farm. One was injured kicking the skid steer bucket and although we kept her, she never bred so we beefed her a while ago. Another freshened with no openings in two of her teats...kept her too, but she never bred so she is also gone. Twin Rex daughters from my good cow Eland both were sold to pay taxes because they were absolutely insane and kept attacking the kids and the boss (can't really blame that on twinning but neither of them bred up quickly either). The only ones left here are the one that calved yesterday, Frosting, and her twin who has been fresh a few weeks, Poptart. Neither of them is particularly hardy or tough acting or looking. Guess I would rather get one healthy heifer calf than two not so rugged individuals.

Is there a relationship

Between the state of the rural economy and giveaway pens? I might be crazy, but I think so. (If you aren't an aficionado of farm shows, many dealers offer advertising pens to passers by as a way of getting their message out.) For the past few years milk prices at the farm level have been horrendous. 2935 dairy farms went out of business last year alone and we actually had pretty good prices then. However, many people just couldn't dig out from under the debt of the previous years, particularly 2006, which was a perfect storm of bad weather, low farm gate prices and high costs for inputs. During those years, exhibitors at the farm show became kind of sparse and hardly anyone had pens to hand out to visitors.

This year, after a few months of record milk prices, the farm show was back up to its original five buildings full of farm equipment and supplies. I also came home with a handful of nice pens that folks gave me as we wandered through. There is more to this pen thing than whether the pussy willow cup where we keep pens is full for the moment (a certain high school student feels that the pens there are fair game and it will soon be empty) or whether we buy a bunch of Bics at Wally World. In rural areas and even the cities that adjoin them, when farmers are prosperous, so are the many businesses that depend on them. When they are hurting so is the rest of the rural economy.

This doesn't just affect implement dealers and sellers of farm supplies either...farmers buy the same stuff everyone does.......except when they can't. I think the "gimme" pens, the crowded exhibits and the "sold" signs on a number of implements indicate a welcome up tick in the farm economy here in upstate New York. Sadly, milk prices are predicted to tank again this summer; fuel and fertilizer are at an all time high price. Corn seed is limited. Fertilizer supplies are limited. I wonder what the pen situation will be next year at this time.


When I asked to photograph this sign the lady in the booth graciously allowed me to and even put some peppermint oil on my hands for me. I smelled like a stick of gum all day. I thought Mrs. Mecomber would get a kick out of this.

Prototype Bobcat Skid steer from way back when

You have to look closely at this sign and use your imagination, but docking tails isn't the only thing you can use this intimidating device to accomplish. I missed it myself, but I guess the guys were all cringing and clamping their knees together as they edged away from this booth in a hurry.

Select Sirepower, the service we use most often

***See if you can pick out the baby goat in the top photo. Her owner said mama tucked the baby in under the hay feeder and lay down beside her when they first got to the show. Then she kept her snug and hidden all day. I wouldn't even have noticed her if she hadn't pointed her out.

New York Farm Show

At Syracuse today. I would give you a link, but the link won't work. See you later.

***Here are a few pictures from the show. I will have more tomorrow. We had a great time!

Alpacas of New York

The Caterpillar race car

Our feed folks were there

I use a currycomb on our cows...or my broom. On the big farms they get just a tad more high tech

Cows, Column, Accounts and Company

Are on the list for today. One milking down. One newspaper column down. Bookkeeping done and backed up. Depreciation list updated. Company to arrive later...hopefully by then the house will have reached the appropriate level of clean for this particular visit. (There are levels of clean at Northview, ranging from best friend clean...some surfaces are dusted and you can get through the dog hair without a guide....... to in-law clean...which is a height we rarely attain.) The clean required today is a fairly low level, somewhere around best friend clean. We aren't there yet.

Brought to you by ice

Still to go..a trip to bank and post office, picking up Becky at college and night milking (including remembering to turn on the tank). Night calf feeding. Nighty-night (which will be most welcome).

*****Check out Pure Florida for today...your hair will stand right on end

Sinopa and Max

Good morning

First coffee, sharply fragrant, (although just now it is all about the caffeine). Second coffee is never as good no matter what you do to it. First rooster crowing at something even though there isn't one single glimmer of light in the east...except what comes from the lights at the county jail. (Speaking of which, the penny just now dropped as I was writing, why we see UFO's down there all the time. Those weird lights in the sky are either helicopters searching for escapees they don't tell us about or dropping off or picking up. I can't believe it took me so long to figure it out-lousy sense of direction I guess...always thought the lights were the city.)
I also used to think that roosters had some special connection to the sun and crowed because they felt it coming up. Now I know that they crow at lights on the Thruway, the moon, flashlights and fireflies. Guess they just like to crow.

Even though it is pitch dark I can tell it is going to be sunny today, at least early on. On cloudy days I can barely drag myself out of bed in the morning, but this day I am wide awake already. We had a little sunshine yesterday (and by little I mean in thirty-second increments) and it was wildly invigorating. Whenever it peeked out I felt like cleaning the house from attic to cellar, starting my whole garden, and writing War and Peace (fortunately it only slipped out from between the clouds a couple of times). Guess that is why they call it spring...it makes you feel springy.

Still no robins although I thank the folks who have written or called to share theirs. There were a couple of pale Canadian birds about four miles down the road (right near the jail in fact) on Sunday. Wish they would take a tiny detour in their Northward journey and fly down here for a minute. It is Northview after all....they COULD stop by if they wanted to.

Energy IQ Survey

This survey astounded me...want your preconceived notions deflated like an overinflated balloon when bounced upon by a border collie? Then check this site out.

HT to TFS Magnum

Another beef recall

The largest in history. Strangely there is nothing wrong with the meat. Makes me glad we grow our own though (see post below). We know everything possible about what is inside our freezers, right down to the first names (and last) of the guys at the slaughterhouse, what their kids do for fun (motocross), where they live, and who the inspector who stands watch over them is. We have known him for years and that channel runs both ways...he has known us too. We know that they take care of our animals and of us...and I am grateful for it. Can't say as I am a believer in organics, BST-free milk or any of that hoopla, but locally-grown (and home grown is as local as it gets) looks better and better every day,

Overdoing it a bit

On the pork thing. Over 700 pounds. This is one of two freezers.....oh, cryovacced frozen pork chops for sale...and boneless roasts...and ham steaks. Four dollars per pound....

Friends and family

Sometimes winter starts to get me down...usually along about February. I know it is the same for a good many other folks too. I have one I-friend in Calgary who has been dealing with temps of minus forty and lower for over a week now. Other friends in other places have their share of weather and illness related woes too.


This week though people have done me such kindnesses that I feel as warm as if it were a humming June day with robins and thrushes singing the dawn chorus to the mornings and the garden springing up in green shoots like punctuation in the dark, rich earth.


First a dear friend stopped by to vaccinate kitties and to give me a beautiful little stained glass border collie, which somehow captures the very essence of border collie, crouched, intent and staring....giving the world "the eye." I hung him where he can peer down the driveway through the big front window, watching for whatever may appear there. He is so perfectly collie that I get a little thrill of delight every time I see him.....thank you!

Then another friend gave us all little boxes Valentine chocolates, literally a sweet thing to do...thank you too.

And last night, when we came home from the Farm Bureau meeting someone with whom I have conversed on the Internet since 2001 (and been shellacked by at Battleboats and Jamble many times as well) sent me a short video clip. Everyone was shouting around me (we are a loud lot here when passionate) about some horse they had seen along the road and I couldn't hear what was going on in the movie, but I could tell it was something special. Later, when all was quiet, I turned up the volume. To my throat-tightening amazement, the video featured his "bingo ladies" (he calls bingo where he lives) wishing me a Happy Valentines Day. Imagine a whole room full of people in a distant city, all of whom I have never met, getting together to do such a nice thing. I was at a loss for words....except thank you from the bottom of my heart. I have never had a nicer Valentine.

Last, but not least by any measure, when I awoke this morning (later than I had any right to having been up way too late at a the meeting) unfamiliar lights were shining over from the barn. Liz was up working on calving in Char, number 116, who is still, even as I write, taking her sweet time having her baby. She had been up at two and again at four and was still awaiting developments....thanks Liz for the extra sleep and freedom from worry. It is pretty special and will be missed.

How can I be gloomy? Thanks again to all the good people who are kind enough to think of us and help us get through the doldrums of February in such special ways.

PS...... I requested in the Farm Side this week that someone send us robins if they saw any. Before it even ran in the paper (it runs today) Liz spotted a huge flock down on 30A...so thank you too, whomever was kind enough to share their spring harbingers with us....we are most grateful!


****Update: Naturally it is a bull...check out that weird ear!



****Mrs. Mecomber sent me a meme. I will do my bit here

Out of Salt

Wow! This does not augur well for the rest of the winter. Another storm coming our way next week....I sure hope they have enough salt left to cope with it!

Bloggers in Agricultre

Linda, at Just Another Day on the Prairie, is setting up a site that will link to bloggers involved in agriculture. I think this is a great idea. I am grateful to her for doing the work of setting it up.

She has links set up now to join and to link to the site if you are interested in adding your blog or webpage to the group. This could turn out to be a wonderful resource for those of us in the industry!

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas

But we have indoor lettuce....finally

On the Menu for Today

ICE

Bareback reining with no bridle

I don't usually cry when I watch someone riding a horse, but I did when I saw this video



Sorry folks who still have dial-up, but this is one of the most amazing things I have ever seen!

HT to One cowgirl, who saw it first.....

Ice on the river

The river is high for winter and racing with ice floes. The only place I can get a photo is from the gas station in town, but you can get half an idea of how fast it is flowing. Usually this spot would be seething with gulls, crows, ducks and geese. Now there is only speeding water and blocks of ice

Bunch of birdbrains invades Philly High School

I would never advocate any activity such as this..I feel sorry for the chickens and the folks who have to clean up after them.....but I can imagine something similar happening around here.....Senior pranks have a way of taking on a life of their own. I hate to even mention them, because I have heard some awful things (second hand) that have been proposed...and thankfully never realized. It is scary what kids think up at that age.

I like the district spokesman's comment on the fines faced by the perpetrators when they catch them, "It's not going to be chicken scratch,"

Close call

Mom had a little get together to celebrate Becky's birthday yesterday. There was a wind advisory posted but it wasn't too bad when we set out. However, as we were tooling down route 29 right in front of the farm where I used to work (and where my little pick-up truck was once run over by a tractor trailer) a car suddenly screeched out of his lane and came hurtling down the highway right towards us.

180....Fishtail....360....looming larger by the second....I pulled over against the guardrails and watched him come. No where to go to get out of his way on the busy highway. Nothing to do but watch in horror as he flew towards us, out of control.

Then he spun one last time and nosed into the guardrails right in front of us.....now facing the same way we were.


All I could do was tell my phone-bearing offspring, "Call 911".

Liz did so and reached an operator who had a terrible time understanding where we were. It was hard to convince her that aid was needed in Johnstown, not at the home farm. The man who had nearly met us head on got out of his car and went over to the car that had evidently rear-ended him (we didn't see that part of it) calling on his own phone. I don't think anyone was hurt, but we could not stay on the side of the road where we had stopped even if we had been equipped to offer assistance. Traffic was simply insane. No one even slowed down, just sailed between the damaged cars at sixty or more. I needed to move my car so they would see what had happened and slow down. So we proceeded to Grandma's house.


It was hard to settle down and eat birthday cake. To see such a wreck at almost the exact spot where a tractor trailer once ran over the cargo section of the truck I was driving set my heart a-pounding for a long time afterwards. Then we had to drive home in a near white-out as the promised wind showed up with a vengeance (we were lucky and got behind a plow truck that was winging shoulders and spreading salt).

BTW, this is one person you will NEVER see in a moving vehicle without a seat belt. In that long ago accident, every single thing in the cab of the truck with me went flying off down the highway through my broken windshield. I never did find my hairbrush. There was nothing left in that cab when my poor little Chevy came to rest....Except me. I got off with a cut on my head and lost a few hunks of hair.
Which grew back.

There are no accident reports to be found on the net or in the local papers so I guess yesterday goes down as just another weather-related minor accident. It scared the heck out of me though.

TDS.net

50,000th visitor from Madison, Wisconsin...thanks!

Weather

As I click around my favorite blogs and talk to my friends at It's Your Turn this morning, the weather seems to be a common theme. While what is happening outdoors as far as wind and clouds and precipitation makes headlines on the news, it also makes inroads into our lives. Here in the Northeast we haven't seen the sun in so many days even the faintest glimmer in the sky is cause for rejoicing. I don't have exactly a full head of steam on cloudy days, which is why posting has been both lame and lean.


Out west many folks are calving cows. My heart goes out to them, having to be outside night and day in the kind of rough weather this winter has brought. Here at Northview we mostly calve indoors in winter and only let the cows have their babies outside in summer (that is when things go as planned, and Toots to the contrary). This does make life a little easier for us than if we lived in the west and raised beef. On the other hand dairy babies are nowhere near as hardy as beef calves and dairy cows are not generally as good mothers...if they had to calve outside I don't think they would do very well. Even calving indoors is tough enough because cows have to be checked on at whatever hour you think they might give birth. It's an inexact science, but after a while you get half way decent at thinking (sometimes even accurately), "yeah, she'll probably come in around midnight...." or, "Not for another few days.."


They still fool ya. Often. I have walked into the barn to find a calf toddling around and wondered where the heck it came from...or on the other side of the coin found a cow that had obviously calved and no baby. We spent the whole milking one morning looking for a little half beef baby that we finally found curled up all snug in a pile of feed bags behind a bin...those little beefers are smart indeed!

Right now I am dreading the first of March as if I was going to get an involuntary, no anesthesia, quadruple root canal and have to go on a 500-calorie a day diet, both on the same day. Liz starts her internship then. She will go to another area farm and do what she does here....plus probably learn some new things and have some fun. It will be good for her and is required to finish her last degree requirement. Still....we have just gotten used to having her home...helping. And more than helping, taking a hold and doing what needs to be done and doing it with the fresh vigor of youth and the benefit of a college education. Four months is going to be a long time to do all her chores. She has the cows up about five hundred pounds of milk every two days and doing good otherwise.

And worst of all, she willingly, eagerly, and with great enthusiasm, calves in the night cows for us. She is good at it and rarely needs help. I don't know how many babies we are expecting in March, April, May and June, but it is a bunch and I am not looking forward to a single one of them. I am getting too darned old for this.

From Linda and the Dennis Ranch

More on global warming.

HT to Just Another Day on the Prairrie and the the Dennis Ranch

A Valentine treat

As a treat for readers, Rosie, at Smokey Mountain Breakdown is posting a new short story each day in February. And what stories! Fewer than 1000 words...yet she sets the stage, develops the characters until you feel like they live next door, then brings the plot to a fitting climax. You are left wanting more and eager for the next day's offering.

Go. Read. It is like being given a wonderful box of chocolates.

With no calories!

Hi chickadee

Finally! Somebody filled the feeders!

More Herkimer Diamonds

Cammo

A team of white-throated sparrows, chickadees and some dark-eyed juncos were scouting the bushes near the house yesterday. It was a dull day and they are not so bright colored, so I could barely see them in the view-finder. I heard the first Sam Peabody call from the white throats the other day. Guess they are wishing for spring as well.

Research

I find the best stuff while searching for substantiation for my opinions for the Farm Side each week....trivial, pointless and highly entertaining factiodal-type stuff I mean. The wealth of information available on the Internet, free for the asking, simply never ceases to amaze me.

For example, how about a study showing that farmers are five times less likely than the general populace to develop lung cancer? The apparent reason is that us folks who work with critters all day inhale droplets of aerosol manure. That stuff, as we all know, is full of germs. Scientists say that they inoculate us against the dread disease. (Of course my father had another take on it. He said we were all full of..ahem...sorry, I simply can't quote him here on a family site. I'll bet if you know him, you can just hear him saying it though.)


I also discovered today that our own home place, Montgomery County NY, was rated the number two best county to live in, among the top 100 rural counties in the Northeast region by a poll taken by Progressive Farmer Magazine. How about that? I knew that it is pretty here, not too many earthquakes, tornadoes or presidential candidates, even though our government leaves a little (oh, heck a lot) to be desired, but that was plumb surprising. And cool. Home, sweet home!

Bucket List

One Cowgirl asked a bunch of folks to try this and it seems kind of interesting, so I'll give 'er a go.

What do I urgently want to do before I die...hmmm.....

1) Write another, better book. Murder Along the Mohawk seemed terrific when I wrote it, but it is pretty darned lame now. I don't care if I get a book published, I just want to find the self discipline to actually finish (another) one. I sure have started a bunch.

2) This is hard...I have done most of the things I really wanted to....not a big goals person. Getting Becky to get her drivers license comes to mind (Beck, are you reading this? You REALLY need to learn to drive. Sooner the better kiddo.)

3) It would be nice to go to the ocean beach again...maybe Venice Beach to pick up fossil shark teeth. That was the perfect outing for a born treasure hunter.

4) This is really, really hard. I started out life with the goals of marrying a farmer and having a horse. I now have a perfectly functional farmer, and don't really need another; I acquired the world's greatest horse when I was about twenty and am too old and lame to raise another. And I learned to relish, delight in, and treasure what I am doing today, every day (well almost every day...) when my best friend died before she was fifty. Time to play now, not when the bad news comes...sorry that I can't come up with more unfulfilled dreams, but I just don't have too awful many. Most that I do involve digging in the dirt for mineral specimens and finding birds and amphibians. (Just call me a happy camper I guess.) I would love to hear from any of you what your bucket list would contain though. It really is fun to contemplate.

Lobby days

Liz is off to the capital today to participate in PX Days, wherein farm folks become lobbyists and talk to legislators about our issues. It is a lot of fun and very interesting. Eye opening too sometimes when you get to speak to downstate legislators (for downstate, fill in New York City). They tend not to think quite like we do...to put it mildly. I would love to go myself, but I don't walk fast enough to keep up with all those long striding farmers...plus someone has to milk the cows and get Becky over to school.

Here is the agenda (pdf) If Senator Cathy Young and Assemblyman Bill Magee speak, it will be very interesting for her. They are very knowledgeable about farm topics and are the leaders of the ag committees in the legislature.

We got up (at four thirty) to barking dogs, rumbling thunder (the reason for the dogs alarm), and pouring, torrential, tumultuous, buckets of rain. I wonder if this bizarre and miserable weather is an omen for Super Tuesday. Hope I can get down the driveway to vote anyhow. We saw a caravan of cars with big signs advertising Ron Paul parked in Johnstown yesterday. I wanted to get a picture on the way home, but they were gone when we came back by. Too much traffic on the upside of the trip. Not many folks were paying much attention.....I won't say who I am voting for...so far only one candidate even has a policy on agriculture. That is McCain and he is agin it.

Milking Bayberry, his favorite cow

Meme for me

And for you if you want to do 'er. (I never tag)

From New York Renovator

Pick up the nearest book (of at least 123 pages).
Open the book to page 123.
Find the fifth sentence.
Post the next three sentences.

Finished this one last night between the end of milking at 7:30 and 11:30 a solid hour and half after I should have been in bed. (Do NOT under any circumstances start a Dean Koontz book when you don't have time to finish it. I had never read him before and didn't know.) And I did actually get breakfast before I started reading any of my three Sunday books....

"Some rocks directly below him, then the beach, the breaking surf. All of it fifty feet down. Too far for them to have jumped without injury...."

From Dean Koontz The Good Guy, Kill Me Instead

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.