What a night

The boss and I went to bed early last night. We were kind of tired for no particular reason. Around ten thirty Alan tapped on the door, "Mom, I think the library is on fire."

I jumped out of bed and we went downstairs to look out the big windows. It is hard to locate just what is where, in the dark, across the river. By the steeple of the Reformed Church I didn't think it was the library. (We LOVE our library and our library ladies and wish that no harm come to them.)

You could see that whatever it was, it was big. Lots of lights and just a little flame, but over a large area. Too much smoke that towered pink and red against the sky like something in Mordor.



We tried to find out what was going on, but couldn't. No news on weekends. I tried to go back to sleep. However Alan called me again a little later, "Mom it is really bad and I think it is Jing's building. Jing is his good friend, whose folks run a little Chinese restaurant in a building just up the street from where my folks ran an antique and book store when I was little. (They have since moved.) Jing's family are hard-working immigrants who have brought a good service here and are a real asset to our community. But whatever, fire shouldn't happen to anybody. By the time we got back down stairs flames were shooting skyward from a huge part of the block.

Then the phone rang. It was midnight. Our phone does not ring at midnight unless it is something bad.

Sure enough it was the sheriff's dispatcher. There was a cow in the road near here and she wanted to know if it was ours. At this point the girls got up too and we all went out to look for it. While I was talking to the dispatcher she said the police were afraid the whole block would burn in Fonda. Terrific. I grew up on that block and although it is nothing fancy, it used to home to our family business. Now our friends and neighbors live and work there.

It only took a few minutes to find the cow (a heifer that somehow got out of the pasture), thank the good samaritan who caught her and held her for us and put her back in the fence. Today we will have to find out where she got out. There is frustratingly still no news about how bad the fire was or how many buildings are gone. Dang weekends anyhow. No news crews on. We feel so bad for Jing's family and whomever else was displaced by the fire and pray that no one was hurt.

What a night. Ironically we discussed getting Chinese last night. We do every month or so and would have last night but everyone was too pooped to drive over so Becky cooked. I suppose Jing's family would have lost whatever money we gave them anyhow. There are still few news reports except that nine people were displaced. Just awful

Eight Belles

I swear, I am going to stop picking horses in the Derby. We have a family tradition of each choosing a horse through the year before the big race and cheering our choices on. This goes back long before I even knew the boss....Secretariat and Affirmed were both horses I liked back in the day. I picked Barbaro the first time I saw him in the newspaper. We all know how that turned out. This year Liz picked Big Brown and the rest of us didn't pay much attention. Then Alan and I both liked Eight Belles for first and Big Truck second when we saw the actual line up. And it happened again.

Plant sale at the college

Really BIG tomatoes

And squash

View from the ag side of the campus

Flowering crabapples

Merchandise

For Steve

Not for sale

It is still on tomorrow if you are local and want to go.

Don't mine for coal under your house

(Or barn.) Check out A Coyote at the Dog Show on the perils of said activity.
Chilling and funny all at once....

It's snowing out west.

Listen to some home grown bluegrass.

Do we need another mall?

Mon@rch never lets you down.

Field trip on the gulf

New Chickies

Goats and haircuts

Goats in Chairs

The sheer beauty of laundry (and yes I am serious)

Border Collie on a bus

Sarpy Sam
Jeffro

Why not? It's raining and cold and grey and gloomy. You can sit at your desk all warm and comfy and range across our great nation (and Canada) adventuring, dreaming, laughing and crying. If these don't keep you busy long enough, there are more great folks and exciting places in the blog roll. Enjoy!

Gambling addiction

Lykers Pond yesterday

I think every farmer has one. Every seed you plant, every harvest you begin, every calf you raise or cow you breed is a gamble. Yesterday morning we woke up to a killing frost. Laid the tulips right flat on the ground and turned the asparagus in the upper bed to limp green spaghetti. (Dang it, I love asparagus and this is the first year I could harvest that bed.) So of course I planted potatoes, squash and giant sunflowers yesterday afternoon. Last frost date here is the end o' May. (Last year it was in June.) They may send up thick green shoots only to be cut down like blades of grass in front of the lawn mower. However, they may also survive and give us early vegetables. What with paying over two bucks for a cauliflower the size of a softball the other day I want early vegetables.
So I took a gamble.
If everything freezes I can plant more.

I would be nervous if I were one of the big farmers though. They have hundreds of acres of corn planted in ground that is cold and wet....will it come? Probably. If it doesn't they are out big bucks. However, they have hundreds and even thousands of cows to feed and ditto that many acres to get over. they HAVE to plant early and hope for the best. We have all our grass seeding in and the guys are fitting ground for the corn. None in the ground yet though and I am not sorry.

Not a tall tale

Brand new driver's license hot in his hand he betook himself shopping for shells and a new turkey call. (Lost the old one). This super-duper dandy new call is better than the old one anyhow and he was good enough with the old one to call in turkeys and occasional trespassers who mistook him for a strutting tom. (Do you have any idea just how crazy a kid practicing with a box call can make you?)

He left this morning at daybreak, chose his spot and sat down on his little turkey hunting seat to test the new call. Soon some hens responded, coming so close he could hear the frost crunching under their little turkey feet. No toms though and that is all that can be taken here in the spring season.

So he moved toward where he could hear some toms gobbling. As he was walking a deer bolted out of the woods not far away, and curved away when it saw him. Before he had time to really wonder why it was running, a coyote burst out of the woods behind it. It turned toward him and began to approach. His mind was full of the six shots his twelve gauge holds, when it stopped just out of range.

And looked at him funny.

Real funny. As he puzzled over why it was peering at him in such a strange manner he heard a faint crunch behind him.

And whirled to find the OTHER coyote twenty or so feet away, crouched down in the grass, stalking HIM. He couldn't get the gun around fast enough to disabuse it of that notion. It ran off over the hill where it would not have been safe to chance a shot.

I thought it was only where there are no hunters that coyotes are getting just a little too bold. Guess I was wrong.

Deadline Wednesday

I never joined Wordless Wednesday, although you sure can find a lot of fine photography from the bloggers who have on that day. However, I gotta come up with 1000 words for the Farm Side today, so here it is....Deadline Wednesday.

Not much to say

My sweet old dog is blind, deaf and drunk all the time now. His old dog disease causes him to topple over often and at random. He is better in full light, but it is still getting dark at night around here, and even in the house he can't get around much then.
He is sweet about it.
I leash walk him and he appreciates the support of the leash and my leg so he doesn't tip over. He appreciates lots of biscuits and eating people food while the others scarf dog food too. Been a long time since he needed to be walked, but he has always loved the leash. Gael obligingly came in season just now. Very helpful. She is a terrible flirt, and despite being neutered he thinks she is just dandy. I have been keeping him in the kitchen, since it is hard for him to be in his crate and in his current state he isn't going to get in any trouble....except what she cooks up for him. Nick is miserable. He is intact. However Gael is his mother. The weather is cold and rainy or he would be spending some serious time out in the run. I feel like I am juggling dogs twenty hours a day with him inside.

We need to ship a couple cows today. I really hate selling the one, old Marge. She is something like fourteen (if it was daylight I would get out my pocket herd book and check). We had talked about letting her finish her life here on the farm as we all like the old girl. However, now there are those darned drags to pay for and she is only giving twenty pounds of milk and isn't bred and isn't going to ever get bred again...(just too old I guess). The other one is Soir Noir and although Liz likes her, she is the most vicious kicker we have. I have never put the milker on her...she hates to be milked and kicks so hard. She keeps getting mastitis and we can't use the quarter milker on her because she would kill us. I won't miss her.

I have to go wake everybody else now (except Liz who has already grained the cows, checked the two springers and gone to work.) It is a drive Becky to school morning and we have to get started. Have a good one.

The ride

I went along for the ride to return the pin, (due to certain guilt issues). It was gloomy, but spring is springing so enthusiastically that it was nice-ish. There was one place where the road is lined with stone walls and between them and the winding strip of blacktop someone has planted thousands of daffodils. They were in glorious bloom...couldn't get a picture though, sorry. These aren't great...poor light, moving car, but the green was just amazing. The latter road photo is the village of Ames and the building is the Ames museum.

When we got to the auction site the boss asked the man he borrowed the pin from whether he thought he would ever see it again. The guy said, "Yeah, I am a pretty good judge of whether people are telling the truth or not...and besides, you gave me your name."

Kindness

Yesterday the guys went to the regional junk..... er....I mean used farm machinery...auction. Before they left the boss put a draw pin in the back of the truck and tossed some hay on it so it wasn't obvious.

Way too trusting. When they went to hook up the small set of field drags they bought, the draw pin was gone. What kindness! Someone obviously forgot to bring one so they helped themselves. (At least they left the hookup for the horse trailer, which was also there under the hay.)

They were in quite a fix, many, many miles from home and too late in the day to go buy another pin somewhere. However, a complete stranger who was there working on loading machinery loaned them his so they could bring the drags home.

Of course now they have to go back up today to return the pin.
But what kindness, to loan something to someone they didn't know, whom they had no way to know they would ever see again.

However, there are rumblings that they want me to ride along when they take it back. It is cloudy and rainy and I get enough road travel on the daily college trip. It is cold. It is not a very interesting trip. Hmmm....how am I going to get out of this? My Sunday chair is calling, chores are done and I have a real good book. What to do, what to do...

DA Surgery

(And no, the district attorney wasn't involved.) My Citation R Maple daughter, England, has been not quite right since she had a calf a week ago ( black heifer we named Egypt). Yesterday, she was not eating or acting right and she had a tell-tale fullness in the big triangle in her left flank. We called our vet.

The doctor confirmed what we thought. A displaced abomasum, one of the cow's four stomach compartments, Sometimes that part of the stomach flips over and then the whole digestive tract fails. Surgery is indicated to empty excess gases, flip the stomach back up and sew it in place. The poor doctor injured her back the day before, so it was rough for her but she got it done.

England was still feeling pretty sorry for herself last night, but she did chew her cud a bit and eat a little hay. Hopefully she will be livlier this morning.

Liz is milking so I can have a morning off. In answer to a question from a friend, she will be interning until May 30. Most of spring...feels like years.

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?