One of those days

Busy. Interesting. Springy.
Right after milking the boss left for the crop center to get a spreader wagon to spread some fertilizer, seeds (alfalfa, alsike clover, timothy, brome, trefoil, field peas and barley), which is how we plant our hay crop. As soon as he was gone Beck and I saw the heifers working the fence. We threw them some hay to keep them quiet as we didn't have time to do anything else with them.

I drove Beck to school and on the way home saw a massive column of smoke to the north. It looked like an F5 tornado looks on television with a massive, swirling base and a column of smoke that could be seen for at least thirty miles. I couldn't pull off anywhere to take a decent photo...these were from our front yard. It was a mill complex in Johnstown, just a tiny distance from where my great-great aunt used to live. Biggest fire there in decades. I give a lot of credit to firefighters who got it knocked down fairly quickly. Alan's school was filled with smoke and the pricipal took quick action to close air vents to prevent outside air from filtering in, He also called the fire companies about whether toxic chemicals were burning so he could close school if needed.




Although I couldn't stop to get fire pictures, I was able to pull off the highway to move this lady (I saw lady because she was probably a fifth of a mile from water and headed for the woods..going to lay eggs maybe?) off the highway.
Anyhow I carried her to safety . Another much larger turtle had already been hit and was struggling with a badly broken shell.


I believe she is an Eastern Painted turtle, one of my favorites. (Chrysemes picta)
She didn't seem too thrilled to have her picture taken, even though she did have all her bright red and yellow makeup on.



There were some little tennis ball-sized painted turtles loafing on logs at Lykers when I stopped, but they were quick to slide into the water...too quick for photos, (unlike the fish, which are still swirling around the culvert opening). Big bull frog tadpoles there too, also too swift for pictures.


Back home, there wasn't a person to be found. Liz was visiting her boy friend. The boss was still at the plant. There were no heifers to be found either. The yard where the four of them stay was bare and empty. I changed my shoes and headed out to find them, (flip flops being lousy for running after cows). Luckily I found them locked in the barn. Later I also found out why my garden pond was down several inches. One of them jumped the fence and drank until she looked like a barrel. Liz put them all in the barn after that. They need to go to pasture. Dry hay just doesn't cut it when there is green grass to gobble...and tasty garden ponds to tipple.

The boss planted his seeding and cultipacked one of the two fields. The second will be done today. I planted dahlias, lilies of the valley, cannas....wild flowers...and lots of other stuff and cleaned the stock tank and figured out how to teach Beck to drive without anyone being killed by the fact that she can't steer. Killing two birds with one stone, in fact...she will drive the garden tractor mowing the lawn. Alan is too busy to do his traditional chore...and she can't steer, throwing those of us who ride in the car with her into paroxysms of terror on tight corners. The lawn mower plan seems brilliant to me. She learns to drive, albeit on a small scale. Alan is free to drive bigger tractors doing bigger jobs. And I get my lawn mowed to boot!

Farm talk

I was invited recently to participate in a bloggers only telephone interview featuring John Phipps, host of US Farm Report, who authors the blog John's World, as well as writing for Farm Journal, AgWeb and Top Producer and Kevin Wenzel, Seeds and Technology editor for Farm Journal. As a small town small farmer with a smallish blog I was very flattered to be asked to participate in this discussion.

Other participants included:
Dan Owens of the Center for Rural Affairs, a policy advocacy group working to make the Farm Bill more friendly to family farmers. Dan enjoys an insider’s view of the emerging bill and writes for The Blog for Rural America.

Cindy Zimmerman of World Dairy Diary, AgWired, Domestic Fuel and Zimcom media

Dien Judge of Iowa Independent. His blog is Smokey Hollow

Laura Klein of Organic Authority.com

Tim Wiseman of the University of Kentucky Rural Blog

The hour-long round robin has been offered as a public podcast. You can listen to it here.

The conference was a lot of fun with interesting people with a lot of knowledge of the topic of Internet technology as it applies to rural life and farming. Wish I was a smoother talker, but I guess there is a reason I do most of my opinion-sharing at the keyboard. I have to thank Hughes Net for inviting me to join the discussion.

Spring is like a teenager

Finished with the yearly task of making sap for syrup the maples have painted on their crimson lipstick and are going all out in a reproductive frenzy of flowering. Willow tree cheerleaders toss their neon green pompoms across every breeze and eddy, putting on more leafy finery every day. It makes for a pretty fancy contrast. Pewter colored poplars are puffing pollen from kazillions of catkins, spelling out torment for those with allergies, but looking to me like stately candelabra of the forest.



Spring is getting itself fired up with as much enthusiasm as teen agers at a pep rally.
Yay spring...go...go...go!

Coltsfoot

Thanks

For everyone's kind words yesterday. It appears that I may have panicked too soon. Mike seems to be suffering from this, which although bad enough can be overcome.
Canine vestibular disease, a common problem with older dogs. Who knew? He could get better in time. I hope he does, although he has been failing overall for about a year now. I will take whatever I can get.

MIlk-it does a body good

Here is the kind of story I like to read in the main stream media...rather than blather from anti-food activists that is.

HT to World Dairy Diary

Mike

I think my Mike, my best dog, my main man, is having small strokes. Last night he got up from where he was sleeping beside my chair and couldn't walk straight. He had a hard time getting to the kitchen...and a hard time getting back in from the yard. He listed to one side and just had problems. Now Liz tells me he did the same thing yesterday. I petted him for a while and put him in his crate, where he sleeps....and waited for morning.

Now he is back to what passes for fine in his life. He can walk and eat and sleep.

He is, or was, the most brilliant dog I have ever had. I ended up with him through a bit of serendipity for which I will be thankful all my life. Knowing next to nothing about border collies I bought a pup from a breeder who trialed dogs at the national level. I picked out a little half black and white pup and waited for him to be ready to bring home. When I went to pick him up I was informed that he had already been chosen by a trainer...mistakes made etc...and I had to take a different pup. Later, more indoctrinated into the BC world, I learned that our Mikie had a gay tail, which is considered to signify the wrong attitude, and was probably rejected and my pup suibstituted. Thus I ended up with him rather than the pup I picked, as I was an amateur and probably not going to do much with him anyhow.

Lucky me. Lucky, lucky me. I accidentally got the best pup of the litter. Probably the best pup his father ever sired. Because I knew nothing about training I took him to a professional. I wanted to train him myself, but I wanted her to teach me how. I will tell you teaching a border collie to work with me is the hardest thing I have ever done. They come out of the box crammed with instinct and brains, but they don't necessarily want to do it your way. You have to learn to read stock, read the dog, figure out where you have to place one to move the other. They know more than you do. It is just hard.

Mike lived up to his gay tail too and had an attitude. He also was what is called a "line dog" with more instinct than you can imagine for stock. He wanted to work when he was just a tiny puppy. He worked anything and everything we pointed him at until he went blind about three years ago.

I could go on and on about what a dog he has been and not be bragging. ,he was simply great. The bad things he did, and there were certainly those, were my screw ups. Not that I didn't try, but it was like giving a kindergartener a Maserati and expecting them to drive it. The professional trainer who gave me and him lessons liked him so much she bought his father in hopes of getting another pup like him. No such luck. Because of a prostate infection as a young dog I had to neuter him. So no pups from him. Gael is his half sister by a different dog. Nick is her son, by Mike's father. Both fine dogs. Neither of them with that extra whatever it is that made Mike such a stock dog. Before we knew he was going blind he was so darned smart that he would work cows in the barnyard for me without ever coming out from under the tractors and wagons....he knew in his compromised state they could get him, so he kept himself safe from them. Once we figured out what was going on we let him gracefully retire.

Now he is almost entirely blind and profoundly deaf. He loves me dearly as I do him...follows me as best he can whenever I am in reach. He has to be in his crate when I am outside as he isn't safe in the barns and he frets and paces and drools if he can't find me. It is absolutely heartbreaking to watch such a brilliant dog try to function with hardly any of his senses. For a few years after he retired I used to let him stare and snap at the heifers through the fence...a no no for a stock dog, but it gave him pleasure and didn't hurt them any...just to keep his hand in so to speak. Now he can't even do that any more. He can't see them, and is afraid when he senses them.

I know the end is near. (My family kindly keeps pointing it out to me, as if I couldn't see.) Maybe it will be better for him. Maybe he will get to be somewhere where there are hundreds of compliant sheep with sweeping outruns and pearly fetch gates. Maybe there will be snorty heifers just begging for him to hang off their noses and shake a little sense into them. Maybe he can bust bulls and chew on steak bones every night. I hope so.

It won't be better for me though and I am just selfish enough to want him to stay.

Haunted Places

Sorry about the sparse editorial content here lately. Between weather good enough to get on the land and Liz's internship, time to write is sparse too (thank God for the camera so at least I have something to post). However, here is a link to a list of haunted places that my dear cousin shared. I am having a ball reading down the ones in New York State. Many of these have been familiar all my life, such as Cherry Hill, (the author of this book once came in my parents' bookstore) which has long been known for haunting. You can check out your home state for spooky places. Since our home, sweet home is probably haunted too and has long been known as the haunted house this seems a fairly fitting topic.

Home on a sunny day. The house seems to like us now and treats us well, but when we first moved here.....

Some beautiful writing

About the cycles of life on the Kansas Prairies. From Jeffro at the Poor Farm. Found Jeffro via People of the Gun and I am glad I did.

Brothers

(When I was younger I spelled that without the "r", but I have gotten plumb fond of them over the years.) Youngest bro and his sweet wife both work hard at their jobs as well as running their small farm. In their "spare time" they weave. Here are their looms

Weaving beautiful blankets on a barn loom

And rugs on another loom

And still another lovely machine....these are so beautiful that even aside from their function it is delightful just to look at them...the rich old wood polished by years of use, the colorful thread, the amazing maze of moving parts. Matt and Lisa both did a bit of weaving for us....amazing to manufacture useful and beautiful materials from just balls (or should I say cones) of wool and cotton. I have a wool blanket Lisa wove that I keep by my Sunday chair. It is real wool, warmer than anything you can imagine and pretty too. I never put it away even in the summer.

We will be going here soon

*****With poles and bait.
This is the end of the culvert between the two parts of Lyker's Pond.

There are Brown bullheads, sunfish and assorted minnows. There was a dense ball of them at least a yard across.

From evening into morning

Moon tangle

From the milkhouse door

Ditto

Tour de Cure

Once again, my handsome younger brother is participating in this wonderful event for the excellent cause of fighting diabetes. I support him each year the best I can and link to him in case anyone else can do so as well. He is a great guitar player, song writer, a fabulous drummer, good dad, husband and as good a brother as they make. (Not to mention a professional engineer.)
(My baby brother is a great guy too..I really lucked out in the sibling department.) Hope he does fantastically well in this endeavor again as he has every other year. Good cause, good guy, what's not to like?

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