New Chicken House

A story that began when Alan was nearly struck by lightning and bent the barrel of his brand new shotgun has nearly reached its conclusion.... He set a lot of stock in that gun (no pun intended) and felt really bad about bending it when he threw it away from him to roll down the hill and miss getting struck. However, he couldn't quite scrape up enough money to buy a new one.

Enter big sister Becky. She had the money and she hated hauling hay.
And she wanted a new chicken coop so she could have more chickens.
Therefore she bought him the barrel last fall in trade for taking hay to the horses all winter and for building her a chicken coop. I suggested that it would make more sense and be infinitely cheaper to clean out and remodel an existing building, instead of new construction, so that has been the plan.




For the past couple of weeks Alan and I have hauled out ancient harness, an old shop vac, campaign signs from the boss's tenure on the school board, brooders, a seat for a horse breaking fore cart and any number and variety of other trash and junk to make way for this....the ultimate low-cost hen house.



Alan scavenged the door and nest boxes etc. from my old hen house, wire from everywhere it could be found and paint from a long ago project. Lumber came from some we had lying around and parts of the same old chicken house.

Chick Pea, the Buff Orpington hen and Satan the evil-tempered Americana rooster aren't quite sure how they feel about it yet, but reaction is mostly positive. Now we need to find a few more hens and we will reach my ultimate goal in the whole affair...our own egg supply.

Swee-e-e-t

Our maple guy stopped by yesterday. Thanks, Steve!

It was a pretty morning too.

Hey (hey) You (you)

Get offa my pond!

Hmmmm.....I think I can.....

Yup, Here I am, right in the center of the pond, plumb handy to those yeller fish down there

They look tasty too!

Hey, come on up, the water's fine

Sinopa and Teak

The only smart-but thirsty-one (Max)

Wow

Had the morning off yesterday. Although Saturday isn't Sunday, it sure was nice. The guys went off for cow hay and to hit a machinery auction and to try to buy my Christmas present from the boss***, so we women had the day to ourselves. Liz kept the cows fed and I worked on the wood stove. There are times when that is a miserable and thankless task, but on a day like yesterday it beat housework all hollow.

Alan takes care of the stove for the most part, but he tends not to shovel out the ashes. Not something you need to do every day with an outdoor stove, but sooner or later it must be done. They were at least a foot deep.

These outdoor wood-burning critters are supposed to be inefficient, but if you burn them right when it is time to clean them out there is nothing left but incredibly heavy, dense, mealy powder. I swear every shovel full weighs twenty pounds. Yesterday there was a sluggish fire of gigantic maple blocks burning so I had to clean around that, and I was pretty pooped when I got done. However, the sun was hammering down hard enough that I soon shed my fleece vest. (You know you are a farmer when your vest says "Today" on it and rather than being a Zen statement it is an advertisement for mastitis medicine). It was actually warm enough for just a turtleneck and jeans, which is a mighty fine thing. After the shoveling I scavenged some apple up in the orchard and got that sullen fire fired up so to speak. (I didn't use any of my precious fat wood, as I didn't need to but last week I build a fire from scratch with it -just three little pieces that I broke off-and it was fantastic. I had a fire that was woofing and snarking up the logs in about five minutes! Thanks FC, again.)

It was a fantastic day to be out. Our resident mocking bird was hard at work teaching the cardinal how to sing his song. Clouds of blackbirds were nattering around in the box elders up by the old hop house. There were geese and killdeers and robins. Chickadees, titmice, and goldfinches. It was just warm enough to work hard, but cool enough to be comfy. The grass is actually turning GREEN! For the past two years spring has been so late that there has been no grass well into May. As we are buying feed seeing the land green up lifts my heart plumb up. No bugs yet either, although I slathered on plenty of OFF! to dissuade ticks from visiting my vulnerable ankles. I hope today is half as nice.




***The boss promised me one of those waffle deck plastic wagons for Christmas, but couldn't find one during the winter months. He is still looking, but they are just not in the stores yet. I love something like that for hauling wood and garden dirt and hay and all. Can't wait until he finds one!

Good Saturday morning

An animal disease lab

In the middle of animal country. That is what is being proposed here in the USA right now. (I wrote about this in the Farm Side a long time ago. Wish the paper was a free site so you could read it.) It seems absolutely nuts to me to put an animal virus research lab containing live viruses, with the potential to kill off every cow, sheep and goat in the country, in the middle of farm and ranch land. An accidental release of animal virus would most likely result in a devastating mess. During a simulation of what might occur should foot and mouth disease virus escape into the the American cattle population the end result was food shortages so severe there was rioting in the streets and so many cattle killed that the National Guard ran out of bullets."In the exercise, the government said it would have been forced to dig a ditch in Kansas 25 miles long to bury carcasses."

Our existing lab, Plum Island, which is located off Long Island, is said not to be secure enough so a new lab must be built. (We put men on the moon, others in orbit and we can't make our existing facility secure enough? Doesn't make much sense to me.) However, even if a new lab is required, putting it in Kansas (where last time I looked there are an awful lot of cows) seems insane. Great Britain found out just last year that accidental virus release can and will happen. I am behind those in Congress who want some more research done before this decision is finalized.

Alan passed his road test

Flowstone in Howe Caverns

Tripe rock

So we celebrated. Guess how.....

Update....Here is a clue ... this celebration included a fairly large amount of exercise of a sort to which I am not so very accustomed.

Update #2..Guess I will have to give the answer away. (I was sure someone would get it, either a local person or perhaps a science teacher from the far south. Steve figured out how to get the answer, which is located at this spot )
Now you can see the photos from which the close-ups were taken.

rBST-free milk and why you don't need to buy it

Here is a link to a great article by Dr. Terry Etherton of Penn State. 200 milk samples from across the nation...purchased from ordinary stores. Test them for hormones, nutritional content etc. and what do you find? No difference among the milks. An NO antibiotics in any of them!

However, take the time, do the math, see how much money milk companies are scamming out of the public and the farmers who produce the milk. You will easily see the driving force behind all the hype. Pay careful attention to the way big milk companies pay activist groups to take unscientific stands on food politics that benefit sales of their products. Here at Northview we receive a $.20 per hundredweight premium for not using rBST. The company we sell it to makes around $18 extra dollars for that same milk. Yes, those decimal points are in the right place. Twenty cents. Eighteen dollars. For something that isn't chemically different in any way when it arrives at the store. No different hormones. No antibiotics. Nothing different at all. Is it any wonder that farmers get mad about it?

HT to Trent Loos

Not content with breaking my headlight and crumpling my fender

The deer are now coming right into the driveway after my car (photos by Alan...out the living room window at three in the afternoon! The white spots are those infamous bullet holes.)

Did you ever think how spring would look

If every flying bird left a contrail like a jet? And if they were brightly colored? Birds like bright colors after all...
Maybe like someone had gotten crazy with the silly string.

And I forgot my fishing pole

A guy with the right idea

You know it has been a long winter when

You go out for a Sunday drive and complete strangers step up to your car to chat. We decided to try for duck photos, and although the best I could do was a couple of mallards in a ditch, we met so many nice people and saw so many pretty places that I was just delighted. Who needs ducks?



First we pulled over at the mystery duck spot where the beaver dam is and an elder fella stopped to invite us to hunt ducks on his land if we wished. It isn't duck season anyhow, but he was real disappointed to see the camera rather than something more lethal. I guess mostly he wanted to talk to someone about how the beaver dam on someone else's land had flooded forty acres on him and he wasn't too happy about it.

A blurry shot of the gorge (but didn't the bushes come out nice?) Still you can get a sense of how far down it is.

We chatted for a few minutes until another car came along and we had to get out of the way. Then we stopped to try to get pictures of this gorge. We were across the road from a house and the folks there saw us and came out to the car. Rather than chase us away, as we expected, they brought their digital camera to show us the pictures they had taken earlier in the day, after climbing down INTO the gorge. My photos do not give you the sense of how steep this is, but believe me, you could not pay me enough to climb down or back up. They were really friendly, just plain nice folks and we enjoyed chatting with them and seeing their excellent pictures...(much better than mine).

Photo by mom

Photo by Alan

It was the same everywhere we went, from stopping at Stewart's for coffee and having bystanders in the parking lot joking around with us, to folks in backyards waving as we meandered by taking pictures out the windows of the car. This is neither the South nor the Midwest.
This is NY.
Such friendliness is a wonderful and rare phenomenon here in the state that spawned New York City. It has REALLY been a long winter and I think folks are just plain sick of it and glad to share a warm, sunny delicious day like this.
And right now I am going outside to help Alan pull off some plastic mulch and reclaim some ground to plant beets and lettuce. See ya later.

Alan just had to take a picture of this...could it be that the General Lee has come north to hibernate, or perhaps to nest and lay eggs?

Cobleskill Dairy Fashion Sale

The destination for the day. (Same drive different parking lot.) You can view the online catalog here. It is pdf and takes a while to load, but it looks as if there will be some real fine animals there.

******Home later with lots of pictures. The sale has been held down by the old cow barn as long as I can remember, but this year they placed it up by the new barn. Wa-a-a-ay up on the hill. The new building is very nice and makes it much easier to display the cattle well. (The shuttle ride was something to write home about though.)


This cow caught my eye within a few minutes of entering the barn. I didn't even look at her pedigree because I had my driving glasses on. However, when we went outside a fellow we show against over at Altamont pointed out that he and his son had bred and owned her dam. They came to the sale determined to buy the young cow and did so. She was lot number 46, Pineyvale Power Tessy VG, and brought six thousand dollars. She is of an age to show against our Lemonade and there isn't much doubt about who would take home the ribbon in that match up. We have to content ourselves with showing home-breds, which isn't really a bad thing. We might not win as often but it sure is sweet when we do.






This heifer is pretty special too. Alan spotted her and dragged me over to see her right away. Lot number 10, Welcome Velvet Saratoga. She was offered for sale to benefit the Kristy Peck Memorial Scholarship. Ms. Peck, SUNY Cobleskill graduate, was killed when the Thruway bridge collapsed and the scholarsip honors her memory. Auctioneer Dave Rama began his chant as she walked into the ring,called one single bid of $4300. and banged his gavel down. I looked up in astonishment as we were expecting prolonged bidding on such a fine animal for such a good cause. However, all was immdiately explained. A syndicate, including the Rama family and a number of others put the heifer right back in the sale, thus contributing her first cost, with the second buyer, Ransom Rail Farm, taking her home for $3500.



Here is one Liz liked, a Roylane Jordan daughter, lot number 44. She brought $3100.


We didn't stay for the whole sale. The tent was cold, the seats were hard and we were hungry. Did we buy anything? Well, yes. Alan bought a hamburger and I had a donut. There were a couple of new little calves we would have liked to see sell. He might have invested some of his college savings on one if we could have stood to stay that late. However, they were way, way down in the sale order and the tent was cold and the seats were hard. Liz stayed so I guess we will know what they brought anyhow....probably more than we wanted to spend.

Hockey vs modern medicine

A certain young man who teaches me how to use my electronic gadgetry took a hockey ball in the mouth yesterday. (Of course he plays goalie) Although the kids he plays a pick-up game with every day after school wear protective gear, at the before school, under the eye of the coach game not much gear is available. When one of his good friends took a shot from about six feet out of the goal he stopped it, much in the manner that Mike might stop a Frizbee. I believe that it was unintentional on both their parts but....

He split both lips good.(or bad if you prefer) and by last night he still looked as if he had picked a fight with Joe Louis. It was a meaningful experience. He ordered himself some protective gear online after work, so he can be safer in the "supervised" games. (His buddies keep him outfitted during the pick up games, but someone he knows quite well had been suggesting to him that he get his own ever since he began playing hockey. However, since he can work her camera better then she can he figured he could wait on getting the hockey stuff. The hockey advice took on more authority after yesterday though.)

He was totally cool with being a wounded warrior and wouldn't even let the nurse call home when he went to her office to get the bleeding stemmed. And he is 18 now, so she wasn't required to do so either, so we knew nothing about his injury until after the afternoon game. There was no complaining, no whining or griping about how much it hurt either. He just trotted around all day with an ice pack and fat lips. Hockey injuries are honorable injuries it seems and worth putting up with.

However, he is no where near as sanguine about the three (count 'em three) shots he got for college today.

Funny how a tetanus shot is worse than a hockey ball shot every time. And those TB tests, Dang!

Whatsis ducks?
They were so far away that even with binoculars we couldn't be sure. Anybody?

Crazy

Photo by Becky

Is not exactly my favorite song, but it describes my life quite well. Up in the morning and out to the barn. Pulsator malfunctioned on two of my cows. Made us late for the tanker. Dale is nice about it, but we try real hard to be done milking by eight so he doesn't have to wait. Didn't make it.

Did make Farm Side deadline. Wrote about car deer collisions (amazing huh). You might be shocked how much damage is done by them annually. I certainly was.

By the time that was done, Liz was back from taking Beck to school (her "day off", meaning she works here instead of there). We hurried off for a serious grocery shopping trip. Cupboards were bare and have been, but last week's power failure made it impossible to shop then. Came home and did some high speed house cleaning. (About as effective as dipping out the Atlantic with a spoon during mud season, but you have to try.)

Then back to school to pick up Beck. I really hustled as her class gets over at seven and I have yet to get the headlight that the deer broke fixed. On the way home we saw these (and many, many other) deer. It is no wonder I hit one. There must be hundreds of them out feeding all hours of the day now.

Also by Becky

Then we spotted these little ducks in a small roadside pond. They looked so unusual to me that I turned around (to heck with the headlights) and drove down to take hurried pictures out the car window (no pull offs). I believe they are buffleheads (mon@rch, am I right?). If so they are only the second ones I have ever seen.



Home to find the rest of the crew still milking and our wonderful and highly regarded feed rep visiting to tweak the ration. He brought pizza and some neat things, including little mugs made out of corn plastic, which I will photograph later when time permits. He is a great guy; helped Liz figure out how to best handle a total rearrangement of our feeding as we have run out of both haylage and corn silage and are feeding straight dry hay, grain, corn meal and soy bean meal. (She has been doing a good job with it btw.) By the time all was done it was well after eight. Alan had some pizza, but we saved the rest for breakfast (LOVE cold pizza for breakfast) as Liz had made marinated chicken breasts over rice with broccoli, cauliflower, carrots and mushrooms and her pasta salad with lots of raw vegetables, which is always great. I am reading a really good book by Faye Kellerman, but I didn't get through two pages before my eyes started closing on their own and I gave up for the night. I sure will be glad when the internship is done and Liz is back home all the time.

My favorite road

(Except for the deer.)

Step off the world with me

There can be a car just below the lip of this hill and you cannot see it from the top of the hill even though it seems as if you can see the whole road. In fact there was one there when I took this picture.

Rolling, that is what we call 'em, rolling

This is Corbin Hill Road, our path to the college (and back) each day. These photos were taken on the hurry-up, through the windshield of the car (Liz was driving) so they aren't the greatest, but I think you can catch that driving-off-the-edge-of -the world feeling. I wish each and every one of you could experience the trip past beaver dams and lodges, muskrat houses, swamps burgeoning with newly arrived migrant birds and amazing sweeping views of the foothills around every turn. Today as we passed the field where we saw the bittern last year a rough-legged hawk made war with two ravens and a pair of red-tailed hawks over some carcass that had been flung from the road. The wild winds swooped them around like forgotten newspapers, wings and tails outstretched. Yesterday just a few miles from there a pair of kestrels were busy making little kestrels while perched on the telephone wire (not an every day sight). There is always something exciting to see (including some things more exciting than others, such as deer). Wish you could ride along is all...just sayin'. You would come away with a whole different picture of New York State.

Blue Morph Snow Goose

A blue one

The regular fellas.

Yum, yum

Yeah, they are eating corn out of just what it looks like. In light of current staggering fertilizer prices farmers are making sure their fields are well covered with this valuable organic resource. The geese and wild turkeys are simply delighted to indulge. When Beck and I went by this farm (same one as has the big sugar bush) on the way to school this morning the geese were right next to the road. Great photo opportunity, but she was barely in time for class so we couldn't stop. By the time I got back they had wandered quite some distance, so the photos are not what they might have been. Still I considered myself lucky that they stayed at all. Amazing number of snows around this year. Large flocks of them are sleeping in the cove in the river right in front of the house many nights. When the traffic dies down on the Interstate, it is simply delightful to listen to their sleepy murmuring.

It was a dark and foggy night

And as Beck and I negotiated the twisting, narrow Catskill foothills roads deer began to cross the road in front of us. They were crouched so low they were going UNDER the guardrails. It was very dark. Very foggy. I slowed down as much as I could, but there was a car flying at me from the rear. (Why don't people drive within the scope of their headlights? ). I wanted to come to a complete stop, but because of the rapidly approaching car I couldn't. For a second there were no more deer. Then one leapt out of the woods right into the side of the front fender. I couldn't even stop then because of the maniac behind me and had to pull ahead into the end of a little road a few yards down the road. I think he hit one too, as he stopped as well, but I couldn't see.

We are fine as I was going very slowly. I really don't know if the deer was fine because it was too dark and foggy to even see it. The car...mmmm not quite so fine. No high beam headlight and it is loose in its socket, so I don't know how much damage was done there. Bumper is loose. Hood is sprung a little. They make cars nowadays to crumple easily to absorb impact. Yup they do. I feel pretty bad about this particular little bit of crumpling. I am quite fond of this particular car as it is the first thing I have ever owned that does the driveway without getting me stuck about twenty times per winter. Bah humbug.

Busy, busy

Like this guy during a worm shortage...sorry