More tales from the key drive

2004 Farm Side this time and much in the same vein as one a little while ago. Sorry about doing this but we are so insanely busy these days....that pesky internship will be over soon though.

Last night

Back in 2001 I told you about some types of cows that grace the average dairy farm, from Feed-Flinging Freda to Light Foot Lucy. Recently I realized that there are personality types among calves as well. You might notice this especially when, for one reason or another, (such as the regular stalls being full), there are baby cows tied in all sorts of weird and wonderful places around the barn. A very common and painful calf is the Knee-Buckin’ Biter. These little darlings know darned well that anything human probably has a bucket of milk secreted somewhere upon their person. KBB’s obviously believe that if they grab that human by the side of the leg, dig in their lower front teeth, and punch very, very hard with their flinty little heads, the bucket of milk will instantly be forthcoming. Actually the only thing forthcoming is the howl of pain produced by the poor human when their knee is chopped from under them while several precise curls of flesh are gouged away by chisel-like baby teeth. One of the twins that was born last week is a ferocious Knee-Buckin’ Biter. I have learned to squeeze around her, just out of reach of her eager mouth, but she nailed Ralph good this morning, much to his painful dismay.

Then there is the High-Kickin’ Heeler calf. A calf of this persuasion will stand quite still, calmly munching grain, as you walk by. Molasses wouldn’t melt in her mouth. Then just as you get almost past, but still nicely in reach, she will thrust both hind feet skyward, as if performing the Highland fling before an audience of thousands. Hoofs will flash past your head making you flinch in terror and manure will splatter all over you. And that’s if she misses. If she connects, well, all I can say is ouch.

More of a nuisance than a danger is the Rope-Chewing Chaser. These calves can’t seem to get enough fiber in their diet, no matter how much forage they eat. If they are tied properly with collars and chains they cause few problems, but woe betide the farmer who ties one up with some handy dandy bailing twine. Sweet little calfie-poo will gaze introspectively ceiling ward without a care in the world, all the while contemplatively chewing and eating the rope that ties her up, the one that holds her water bucket, and any loose twine she finds lying around too. Besides being the one that is running gleefully up and down the aisle every time you come to the barn, she is also the one who has all kinds of tummy problems caused by eating string.

There is a whole subset of calves that become apparent when someone begins training for the show season. First is the Thick-Headed Thrower calf. These little fools don’t seem to realize that the most pampered and beloved calves in the world grow up in a show string. As soon as a calf of this type has a halter placed on her noggin (which is apparently empty) and is asked to come along quietly, she revolts ala Gandhi.

She rolls her eyes, tosses her head, throws herself up side down (preferably in the gutter) and lies there as if taken suddenly dead. No amount of pulling or cajoling will induce her to stand up until she is positive that she has won the battle. Calves of this sort miss all the fun of going to the fair and being patted, puffed and coddled all together.

People-Pinching-Punchers are an alternative form of show calf. They are all too happy to move, but are lacking in both braking mechanism and spatial judgment. A PPP calf will squash you flat against a wall in the blink of an eye. She will also gladly drag you to the wash rack at a canter without regard to obstacles, such as people, baby strollers, Hereford bulls the size of semis, or mounds of hay bales belonging to someone else. PPP’s will clear lawn chairs and leap tall buildings at a single bound. Nobody likes them; everybody has them.

Then there are the Toe-Tapping-Topplers. These little sweethearts neither play dead nor run over your prone body (after they render it that way). Instead a TTT bides her time, strolling elegantly around the show ring, head held high and proud, looking like the star of the show that she knows she is. Then, just when the judge, (and all the spectators), are looking right at her (and you, of course), she steps firmly on your foot anchoring you solidly in place. She then nudges you firmly with her shoulder, dumping you neatly into the shavings in the ring. (At least you hope it is only shavings.) Every one laughs and you look monumentally silly. Your foot hurts like heck too.

The garden pond is beginning to shape up a little

Naturally, not unlike the Plain Old Polly milk cow, who does her job day in and day out without theatrics or fanfare, there is the Lovely-Little-Lady calf. LLL’s don’t kick, bite, or run rampant through the barn raising Cain. These ordinary critters stay where they are put, eat cow feed instead of body parts, and treat people with respect and affection. We have one of those right now; a KPat daughter named Frieland KPat Evidence. (We call her Evie). One of Becky’s babies, she stands tied on the corner of a busy walkway, right next to the curb where we like to sit while we wait for the last few cows to finish milking. We avoid tying calves there when we can, as they turn into KBB’S or HKH’s very quickly and make everybody miserable when they sit there resting their tired feet. However, Evie just eats, moves her fanny out of your way when you walk by, and lays her head in any convenient lap (if ear scratches are offered by the lap’s owner). Needless to say I wouldn’t mind having a dozen Evies. However, like all barns, ours is full of all the other kinds.

***Evie is out at pasture now expecting her first calf. She will join the milking string next month I think. However, as in a normal spring we have a barn full of KBBs HKHs and several sweet little LLLS, notably November, Simple Miracles, Egypt, Dalkeith and Asaki

Tales from the key drive

Here is yet another Farm Side from 2001. Seems I have to spend the milk check this morning. And Alan did get to read Last of the Breed in study hall after I had a long, intense (very intense) visit with his well-meaning, but very young teacher.

It was one of those days. First the car wouldn’t start so the kids had to walk to the bus. Horrors. All the way down that long, winding driveway with no warm car, no radio, no mother to referee their tribal warfare. I’ll bet they were permanently scarred. Because the car wouldn’t start I had to go right back over to the barn to finish milking and cleaning up instead of sloping off to Fultonville to “move”. We are, of course, still moving and probably will be for the next fifty years or so. Most days I go to town after the bus leaves and pack still more of my hundreds of books into cardboard cartons from the liquor store. This is a big improvement over scraping cow deposits off concrete if you catch my drift. Anyhow, the mood I was in when I got the call from school was not pretty. Especially since, after we pushed the car across the yard to get it out of the way of a truck bringing in concrete, it started just fine.

A stern voice informed me that one of my evil little brats had failed to bring a swimsuit for gym. Three times. I was horrified. That kind of malfeasance ranks right up there with armed robbery in my book. I pointed out (obviously wrongly); that I didn’t think that this was such a terrible thing. Swimming is supposed to be fun. Let the little wrongdoer sit on the bench and watch her buddies a couple of times and I’ll bet she’ll remember the suit next time. No such luck-she is going to be serving detention, and after school detention at that, for her outrageous transgression.

I had to laugh. What a truly horrible punishment for a farm kid. Staying after school. Wow, she won’t have time to water the horses or feed the sheep or turn out cows if she gets home late enough. Somebody else will do her chores for her and she’ll be forced to just sit there and read. Wanna bet that she forgets her swimsuit more often after this?

Same day. Two hours later. Another of my little monsters came home with the news that he will also be serving detention-the kinder, gentler, lunch commons kind, for bringing the wrong book to study hall. This is the kid we have been trying to convince to read for years. He rolled through most of Gary Paulsen’s survival and adventure stories like a rocket sled. Then nothing appealed to him until he stumbled across a Louis L’Amour novel that I had recently moved. It was a big, thick grownup book about the former Soviet Union. I rejoiced to find him reading it in bed instead of coming when I called him for supper. He hadn’t even heard me.

When he was punished for reading that same book, I was outraged. I called the school and demanded an explanation. I was informed that although reading in study hall was ok, specific books were required. He’d forgotten his.

And after all the school is trying to teach children about real life. What would happen if they grew up and went to a meeting and forgot an important paper? I pointed out that we were talking eleven-year-old here, not Bill Gates, but I guess he’d better start planning his corporate future. I became a little crazy.

Real life.

Come on, this kid lives on a farm. They don’t make life any realer than that.

Kids growing up on farms are smack dab in the middle of real life. They see it all from birth to death. Birth isn’t some sanitized Bambi scene on a made for TV movie. It’s pain and blood and triumph and tragedy. Real life, right there in living color.

Everyone on a farm is involved in the process of life. Mistakes have real consequences far beyond eating lunch in the detention room, for death stalks the barns and pastures as well. If you have a hundred or so domestic animals in your world, not to mention thousands of wild ones, some of them, sometimes, will die. And they don’t go away to Tarzan’s elephant graveyard for a tidy, sanitized little secret death either, they do it right there in front of you, sometimes right in your hands. This summer one of the kids’ calves was born with a congenital defect and choked on her milk and died right there in the barn aisle at feeding time. There were plenty of tears and sadness, but the rest of the calves still had to be fed, so everyone, children included, picked up the pieces and went on.

Old cows die too, or are sold. Coyotes eat the barn cats. Sometimes they eat calves too and chickens, bunnies or anything they can find. That’s real life. Unfortunate, but real.

Our kids are a part of our business as well. When times are rough they know it. When things go well they share in the joy. Their help is important to us and they know that too. If a farm kid forgets to water the horses, then somebody has to go out with a flashlight, couple up the hoses and do it in the dark. If they serve detention and get home late, then someone else feeds their dog or hauls a wheelbarrow of hay to the sheep. My terrible little book-forgetting boy sits down with me when I’m doing the farm bookkeeping and writes checks, addresses envelopes and posts the checks on the computer. He drives the skid steer better than I do. I suspect that these activities will get him ready for real life in a way that in-school punishment never could.

It’s an everyday thing for a farm family. Our life, you might say.

And it’s a meaningful life too. Full and rich and satisfying.

My farm kids may forget to bring their swimsuits to important meetings or take the wrong book to the pool, but they’ll do the real stuff well-they always have.

A guest

We have been waiting...and waiting..it is so darned cold this spring. Oh, yeah, we had that one week of seventy degree temperatures that brought out the flower buds. Then the cold came back and froze them. Since then average temps are about twenty degrees below normal. Hard on the bees, rough on the woodpile and not so popular with the hummingbirds.


Which have been so very late in showing up this spring. I have had the feeder out and been changing the food in it for over a month to no avail. I notice that the neighbors have theirs out too. Then yesterday, as we all sat in our Sunday chairs, a little female came to the big window and hovered in front of it as if to announce, "We're here!!" (I honestly believe that the hummers know who fills the feeders.)



She was gone in a flash, buzzing off to the front porch feeder. Then when I looked out through the porch doors this little guy was sleeping there on a flowerpot handle on the porch about three feet from the living room door. I think the hummingbirds may have had a rough migration or the cold and rain is giving them a tough time. Anyhow my photographic efforts made him buzz off to the mountain ash tree where they usually hang out (sorry about that).


However, this morning at just before sun up I looked out and there he was again, same flower pot, same pose. Poor guy looked about half frozen.




What an honor to have a hummingbird share our shelter. If I thought he would come inside I would prop the doors open. However, this time I won't disturb him, but rather let him sit there until the sun warms him...if it warms up enough today to do so.

***Sorry about the blurry shots, taken through both storm and regular door.

The coolest thing

Here are some folks moving their church and doing it in style too!



HT to John's World

Road trip once again

My Brand new chauffeur

Bought these to plant beside the front flower bed

Sat here for a while while the chauffeur loaded some hay.

The boss went out to plant corn yesterday and left Alan a stack 'o chores...go to Fort Plain Agway and get barn calcite. The cows are going in and out to pasture now. (You should have seen the rodeo the first day they went out...you simply wouldn't think that dairy cows could or would get up to such stuff. Made the PBR look tame. We don't want them to slip on the floor.) Then head up to the farm where we buy hay and get a load. Not any huge tasks, but a busy schedule just the same.

Anyhow, the kid asked me to ride along. There were any number of reasons why I should have stayed home. The house has been virtually entirely neglected the past few weeks while I have been helping with cows and playing in the garden. My beans need to be replanted as the first planting failed. Ditto potatoes. I could go on and on. But then, how many teen aged boys want their mother along when somebody turns them loose with a pick up truck and a tank of gas?

I climbed in, rolled down the window and away we went and it was so much fun. The sun was shining, it was just warm enough to feel like summer might be coming and the grass was green as Ireland. When we picked up the barn cal, Agway had some fat sassy marigolds for sale. I'd been wanting some for a certain flower bed so into the truck they went. Then there was the aquarium store in Canajoharie. (They have guppies you know.) The kid was delighted to stop in for me. Some women may consider diamonds a girl's best friend, but I am much more fond of sparkly little fish. We bought a pair with white shiny tails and a couple of black snaky patterned ones.

Then we headed off down the winding back roads to where we are buying hay from some friends. Everyone is planting corn apace and the fields look better tended than my living room rug, with the rows from the corn planter still stamped on the smoothly crumbled soil. Our friends live well back in the country, away from all the trains and the Interstate so it was sweetly quiet sitting in one of their back barn yards watching the swallows swoop by. (That is a small part of their place above...took the pictures out the truck window.) Alan hooked up the hay elevator and had the truck full in no time.

All too soon it was time to take our booty and head home. We spent the rest of the afternoon companionably working out in the yard....him tearing down the DR string trimmer that belonged to his grandma. Me planting marigolds and weeding. The dishes didn't get done. The lilac bushes didn't get planted. The DR still doesn't run. (Even after a new spark plug, a cleaned out fuel line, all kinds of priming and pumping and pulling on the starter cord.) Other than a stack of hay and a couple boxes of orange and yellow we didn't have much to show for how we spent our time when the boss came down (and of course HE got a third of the sixty-acre lot all planted.)

However, I couldn't have asked for a better day. The kid and I had a heck of a time...and all that other stuff can get done today....or maybe tomorrow.

***Not to mention, later on I ran in the house during milking to get some bread out to thaw and Liz was right smack in the middle of watching the Preakness. Got to see Big Brown romp as if he was out for a sleepy morning gallop. What a horse!

Saturday

Hal Ketchum

Thanks to brother number one Liz and I were able to get tickets to his concert at the Egg last night, sort of as an early birthday present for her from me. It was a great concert; we had a terrific time....but it was a little weird in a way. Most of the audience, there is no doubt in my mind, take the same multi-vitamin that I do...you know, the kind that are sort of grey only they call them silver. Add to that the fact that the Egg is a very genteel venue. There were ushers and rules and all that stuff. However, then you had to factor in that Hal and his band play very powerful rock and roll, blues-type country music. Everyone sat very quietly through each song as if at a performance of a nice Beethoven sonata.

Then as soon as each song ended the crowd erupted in whistles and screams and barrages of clapping. After the last song there was at least a five minute standing ovation (which achieved the desired result of us getting to hear Small Town Saturday Night, without which the evening would have been somehow lacking.) My favorite song was Past the Point of Rescue, which has always been one that I really liked even before I knew who Hal was. We also really like a new (to us) song, Yesterday's Gone.

It was a great night, worth the insanity of hitting exit 24 at rush hour (remind me to tell you about the loonies in 2 little cars that squirted through between us and four solid lines of flying traffic. . It was like a billion-dollar thrill ride in some macabre theme park. (Thank God for Lizzie's youthful reaction times.) I felt exactly like those folks you see in advertisements for the world's biggest roller coaster, white-knuckled-clingingto-the-door and all. I had my eyes shut most of the way. Liz wanted to close hers too.....however it seemed as if one of us should keep them open...and she was the one driving.)

Even the time we spent waiting for the show to begin was entertaining, thanks to some folks sitting behind us...we now know more than we could ever ask about how comfortable men's undies can be for women and several other topics that extended my cultural outlook immeasurably..

Guitar player Kenny Grimes

Bassist Keith Carper

***Pictures were taken with the little camera. An email to the Egg said some folks allow cameras, some don't. I figured the little one was more discrete in case Hal was a don't kind of guy. Of course he wasn't. Wish I had taken the big one...as you can imagine from the quality of the photos.

Here is a review
The reviewer kind of whined about Hal's story telling, but Liz and I loved it. He was so very funny. Little things like the wonders of modern technology in the studio and liquid song enhancement, along with tales of his youth here in upstate NY

Video from some other year at the Egg

Another shot, also showing drummer Nico Leophonte

****My humble apologies to anyone who read this while I was milking this morning. I got up at four to check a cow that calved last night and I simply wasn't in any way capable of coherent editing...not that I am now really, but at least I can see.

Nothin' much

Going on around here. Everything is turning green and it is most welcome. It is finally nicer to be outdoors than in, although today it is raining a bit. This morning when I walked over from the barn a robin was singing in the honey locust by the kitchen, a baltimore oriole from the box elder by the back door and there was a mockingbird on the swing set....not to mention a couple of titmice and a contingent of gold finches. As I said to the boss, we may not be have money, but we sure are rich. The wrens are back in the pillar on the front porch too. I treated myself yesterday and took the plastic insulation off the stained glass window doors so I can open them to watch them. I usually pull the plastic down in April, but it has been really cold this spring.




My dad likes to give me chairs. (And I like to get them.) These are two of several rockers and parlor chairs he has found and donated to me over the years. I love them all, but these two are particular favorites.


Besides their inherent beauty and sheer comfortableness, there is the sense of history about them. Antique Boston rockers...you have to envision mothers rocking babies, grandmothers with one foot keeping a cradle in motion, and both hands winding yarn....or perhaps a tired father holding an ailing little one and rocking him for comfort.


And then there is the fact that my daughters like to sit in them to talk to me. (They are right across from my Sunday chair.) That is why they are positioned as they are in this photo...the girls sat here to chat about their days and mine the other day. It was nice.

Lilac rustlers

I was supposed to write the Farm Side today.

And I honestly tried.

But the house is abuzz with everybody home.

And the boss offered to help me rustle lilacs.

I mean what would you do faced with such choices? I am just inside to now to see if you can root lilac cuttings with rooting hormone. Web research says yes, so I am gonna give her a go.

We also got some rooted suckers. We had to clamber down a challenging, brush covered slate bank over by the barn, just beyond the old falling down house where the boss lived when he was growing up. I am all scratched up but I'll bet it will be worth it.

He planted those lilacs for his mom when he was a little boy. The house down in town is surrounded by a number of them that I rustled back when we lived down there, but up here on the Dimond Farm side of the place there are only a few plain purple ones and a dwarf pink that I brought up (all frost nipped this year). We are hoping some of the ones we brought out of the jungle are the reddish ones that were Grandma Peggy's favorites. There are some spindly peony bushes over there too, valiantly sending up buds, despite being shaded by dozens of invading honeysuckles and box elders and who knows what all. I think I will see if Alan will dig those for me.....and maybe get a piece of the forsythia the boss planted by the foundation when he was just a tyke....

Farm Romance

Another old Farm Side column from 2001. This is for Liz who is over at school, bored and needing something to read. (Love ya kiddo!)

At nearly eleven one night, on the way home from a milk-marketing cooperative meeting, I was restively dodging deer and drunks and desperately anticipating the toast that was to take the place of my long delayed dinner, when my attention was riveted. In the middle of a feverish mulling over of PPD’s, hauling and handling, and distances from distant cities, a catalog of one hundred ways to inject romance into your committed relationship assaulted my overtaxed brain. A dreamy couple on the radio suggested strewing a path of rose petals through the house leading to a romantic, candlelight dinner. This almost caused me to drive into the Erie Canal. Maybe I’m too practical, but my first thought was, “Where the heck would you get rose petals?” The second was that anyone who wanted to strew them on my floors in a discernible path would have to shovel out all the dog hair, sand and other debris that was strewn there first.

Then, if I attempted to serve a meal by candlelight, my significant other would fall asleep with his head on the table and catch his hair on fire. Just how romantic is a fire extinguisher anyhow? This is Spring Work time. He starts his chores at four thirty and gets done long after Liz and I finish milking. His idea of a romantic meal would probably be a McDonald’s fish fillet served on the fender of a tractor with a side order of bug repellent. Or maybe a citronella candle would seem more intimate than a can of Off! .

The radio show had many additional suggestions for spicing up a stale relationship, but, as I said, the marketing data I had been asked to digest in place of dinner had overheated my tiny brain. Therefore I went online and found Gregory G. P. Godey’s book, 10,000 Ways to Say I Love You

Here is suggestion number two. “Sign your letters ‘forever and a day’.” Since most of the letters I send to and receive from my spouse are instructions about farm work, this could be interesting. Here’s a representative sample. On a Post It note stuck to side of bulk tank: “Ralph, the vet said that number 39 had a retained placenta. You’ll have to pill her,” (the vet did NOT mean by mouth), “ The repair shop called about the tractor. They say it will be fixed as soon as possible. But they have to order the parts, Forever and a day.” Yeah, or at least it will seem that way.

Suggestion number 8, “ Place a heart-shaped sticker on your wristwatch to remind you to call”. Yeah, OK, if I can find my watch under the assorted, encrusted barnyard material. And call whom? The trucker? It would take more than a sticker to remind me to call him during the early morning, pre-school-bus feeding frenzy at this place. Try a note covering the entire computer screen-that might get my attention.

Romantic suggestion number nine: “Squeeze into phone booths together”. Now why would we want to do that? And where would we find a phone booth? Besides, we have a pickup truck and three kids. That can cause all sorts of close encounters. With a few sandwiches and something to drink in the cooler, pile children on your lap or have them sit on tires in the back among the fence tools, gas cans and bales of twine. Bounce frantically up the lane to wherever you are working. The kids can have a picnic while you chop hay and he hauls loads to the barn. Now that’s romance.

Which brings us to “His and Hers”. Our romantic list maker suggested “His and Hers” everything, from towels to Porsches. I’m happy with clean towels that I don’t have to pick up off the floor before I use them. Who cares about the monogram? What good would a Porsche be with our driveways? One trip and it would be marooned until July. I was thinking maybe “His and Hers” shovels. Then maybe I could find mine when I want to scrape off on my side of the barn. But then again, I tried “His and hers” screwdrivers. You’d be amazed how fast a man gets accustomed to shocking pink and florescent orange tools, when he can’t find his and hers are right there in the toolbox. My little pink-handled screwdriver is in the milkhouse right now, 1.2 miles from my toolbox. The big Craftsman ones that he bought me as a romantic Christmas gift are either on tractors or lost in the sand behind the toolshed. An orange-handled hammer that once belonged to me has been turned over to cow barn use, provided the old, loose-headed one in the kitchen stays in the kitchen.

Suggestion number 17, “Shoot your TV”. Now that I could really get into, as long as they leave my computer alone. I have yet to find anything romantic about John Wayne’s gravelly voice interrupting my sleep at some ungodly hour because the boss and/or the kids fell asleep in front of the infernal tube again.

“Get a bumper sticker that reflects his view of life”. Now there’s a suggestion. As long as he considers Border Collies to be the world’s smartest dogs, that is. I’ve got another good bumper sticker that reads, “Cow Dog Cadillac”, but there isn’t room for it on my bumper. Do you suppose that means that it’s time for a new car? Hint, hint.

Then Mr. Godey has a list of gift suggestions. He recommends all sorts of items from books to perfume and wine. As far as perfume goes, I figure all a farm wife really needs is a dab or two of WD-40 on her wrists and she’s good to go. Any parts manual will do for a book, or in our house, one of Horace Backus’ Holstein books always supplies smiles.

As you can see, romance on the farm just does not compare to the city version. We don’t have time for such nonsense. However, on the other side of the issue, we have sunrises and sunsets that rival drive-in movies for romantic value, birds that sing every chorus you could wish for, a family that shares our every activity and a sense of humor that allows me to write stuff like this and stay married, right honey? Honey?

Those were sure the days. If one of the kids sat on my lap now....but we still have a lot of fun together and farm romance hasn't changed a bit...now where is my WD-40......

More on the DFA fund transfer issue

From Dairy Today.

Other links: Dairy Alert
Letter (pdf) from management

Winding down way too slowly

Liz's internship that is. She will be done with being gone most of the time on the thirtieth of this month. Milking other cows, feeding other calves, driving strange machines, mixing feed and working harder than we have ever asked her to. Plus graining our cows, as she gets more milk out of them for less feed than anyone else even when she leaves a feeding list. Becky tried for a while, but we went through five tons of grain in ten days. Ouch. The boss did it for a while too, but we dropped several hundred pounds of milk. I know she is looking forward to the end too.

She has done a good job and the kind folks who took her as an intern keep joking that she has a whole month left or teasing me about keeping her. Even though I see her for a snatch of minutes every day I miss her with a gnawing ache.We all go about our business, but we don't laugh as much as usual. Normally some silly darned thing gets us going a couple times a week...like Napoleon...and we laugh until we cry. (In fact there has only been one liquid through the nasal passages incident among the offspring in months.) I keep hearing that it is all normal for kids to leave and this is a good way to start the process slowly. After all, her friends have interned in places like Utah. At least we do see her every day. However we are all so darned close that when anyone is gone there is a wrongness about the house. An empty place in the completeness and complexity of things. And she is just so darned tired I worry every time she gets in her truck to go.

We are going to have a celebration on the 31st, a lovely Saturday, complete with her regular morning off back. Pizza, favorite soft drinks, any extravagance I can think of. Then I hope normal will take over, although maybe the old routine is gone forever. Or maybe it will be better than ever.

Clan Montgomery and how to tell boy cats from girl cats

My mom and dad
Happy Mother's Day, mama!!!

The camera wanted to get a picture of my folks and they were right down in town for Heritage Day, so it led me down there yesterday. I was hoping they would be in full Scottish regalia (my dad cuts a fine figure in a kilt) as they often are when representing Clan Montgomery, but alas no kilt.




Which brings us to how you tell a boy cat from a girl cat. (This is much simpler than most folks believe btw.) Simply give the little critter the remote control and watch its reaction. (This one is obviously a boy don't you think? He hogs the remote even when there isn't any baseball to watch.)

And please excuse the blur. He doesn't ever seem to sit still.

Independent dog

A dog lucky enough to own one of these doesn't need his owner any more....except to pay the electric bill and run the can opener...(or maybe this little dog can run the can opener too.) This is certainly something border collie owners could get behind. Mike, for example, could have really used one in his younger days....back when he wore out several cans of tennis balls in his spare time.
HT to NY Cowboy

Growing lettuce indoors

Seems that Northview and my Garden Records blog both turn up often in searches for growing lettuce indoors. (I don't have time this morning to lookie and linkie, but if you want to read former posts on the topic a quick blog search will find them.) I will briefly repeat what we have learned about the topic, so searchers don't have to search further when they land here..

To simplify things: You CAN grow lettuce indoors. Easily. Very, very easily. Just sow some seed in a flower pot or almost any other container (we have even used a Styrofoam cooler), keep it moist until it germinates and either put it in your sunniest window or under a grow light. You can cover the pot or container with a bit of plastic wrap to help keep things moist until the seeds start to grow. (It will consume a pretty good amount of water once it is growing well too.) Then just wait a few weeks and your crop will be ready to eat.

We started doing this a couple years ago, just as an experiment, and have eaten lettuce all winter ever since. Even though it is summer now, I am starting some in hanging baskets to give away. I think a handy basket of lettuce right next to the back door beats having to walk down to the garden every time you want a sandwich, even if you grow lettuce there too.

I grow all of mine, even in summer, in cut off plastic barrels, keeping it clean, relatively slug-free and sorta-kinda-half way out of reach of marauding bunnies
. I wish indoor lettuce searchers good luck and lots of lovely salad!

Stuff

We have lots of white-crowned sparrows. They are amazingly tame! (Wrote that wrong the first time, which is what comes of blogging before coffee.)

And Alan's big brother took him to a ball game this weekend (ballgame photos by Alan, who took the little camera along)

I think he said that is the new Yankee stadium above

Gold finch afternoon

Just for fun

Here is part of a Farm Side column, which ran back in January of 2001. It is still true as far as I can tell. I have never done this before, but I thought that it might be fun.

There’s One in Every Barn. Light Foot Lucy, I mean. She’s a six or seven year old cow who has parked in the same stall and been milked twice a day every day, 305 or more days a year since she was two years old. But just try walking into her stall without announcing your presence with a “Hey, girl” or, “Easy girl”. She will jet propel you into the next decade on the end of her hoof. It will hurt. It doesn’t matter if you just stepped out from beside her after putting the milker on her next stall neighbor. Step back in beside her without announcing yourself and–wham- you’re outta there. She also has very ticklish teats and gives a tap dancing demo every time you prep her. Chances are she’s allergic to the stable shovel too and indicates her displeasure by kicking it whenever you scrape off behind her. However, animals like her invariably give too much milk for you want to sell them and they always have their yearly calf, so they linger forever. Everybody on the farm is relieved when they take their yearly “dry period” vacation. Hey, cows get six weeks off every year-it’s written right in their contract. I wish I had someone negotiating a deal like that for me.
Then there’s Feed Flinging Frieda. Frieda is always another high producer. At least she doesn’t kick. Instead she eats continuously and always has an itchy backside. Since she is so busy filling her face, she has no time to reach around and lick her itchy spots. So she throws food at them. Only a cow would imagine that chucking a mouthful of haylage on her back would alleviate that troublesome itch.
Our current flinger’s name is Silverwing. You can spot her from the other end of the aisle. First of all, there is nearly always a cloud of feed seething behind her as she grabs a bite, swings her head at her back and then grabs another bite. If you miss that part of the performance, the four-inch pile of hay on her rump is a dead give away. She looks like a walking haystack. Her manger is always bare first, since most of her dinner is on her back, in the gutter or down your neck. We just love her.

Another favorite of mine is Cathy Crowder. Cows of her persuasion stand politely against the far side of their stall to let you in to work. They then wait until you’re bent over prepping their neighbor to discover a succulent nibble of feed in the manger on the other side. They forget all about your presence, swing their massive ribs or rump against you, squashing your tender anatomy onto the stall divider. If you squeal, slap at them or (heaven forbid) swear emphatically, they panic and jump up and down. After all, they totally forgot that you were there, so your reaction comes as a complete surprise. You haven’t lived until you have been crushed by a bouncing creature that weighs over half a ton. If you’re really stupid like I am and always react by swearing or slapping, you learn to crawl through the front of the stall into the manger real well. Sure can’t get out the back. It must be quite a treat to see a fat, ungainly woman squirt out from between the stalls like toothpaste out of a stepped on tube. Nobody dares to laugh though. They know Mommy better than that.
The Grass is Greener Gertie is only a problem in the summer. There could be grass up to her elbows, a feed wagon full of green chop, a cool, clear pond and several shade trees available right there in the pasture for her lounging and feeding pleasure. She would still rather find her way over, under, around or through the fence to find something unique to eat. Her great, great grandmother is undoubtedly responsible for the old saying.
Then there’s Plain Old Polly. She’s not an All American, nor does she give one hundred pounds a day. Day in and day out she moves over, stands still, renders up her daily portion of the milk check, and stays clean - on the right side of the fence no less. When the 4-H leader or the guy from the bull stud strolls through the barn, looking for stars of the show ring, she is passed unnoticed. The vet doesn’t pick her our as too fat or two thin. She never gets mastitis or gets loose in the stable at night to run around stomping calves and gobbling up all the grain. Every year she has a calf, often a heifer, who grows up and follows the same path. I wish we had a hundred like her. Actually, most of the cows in the barn fall into the Plain Old Polly class, but rest assured it’s the Frieda’s and the Lucy’s and the Cathy’s and the Gertie’s that get your attention.

Morning hush

After the weekend we had it was kind of nice to step back into our normal routine. I guess Fonda is open for business again but Jing's family's building is mostly gone. When we were kids we used to walk past it and make faces, which were reflected back by the polished black marble store front (long gone). In those days it was Maze's Hotel, and housed a bar and restaurant. They made pretty good steak back then.


We will sure miss the Chinese restaurant. We only bought Chinese maybe once every other month, but still, four of us are downright fond of egg rolls and wantons and such (the boss has other tastes). I hope maybe the folks who ran the place can start up again. There are several decent vacant restaurant buildings in the two towns. (Lots of vacant buildings period...not exactly a boom town or towns.) Maybe one of them will suit.


I have been eagerly awaiting the return of the white-crowned sparrows. However, it seemed as if they were kind of late this year. Then this morning their calls were ringing all over the backyard and a couple were fighting under the bird feeder. They love to nest in the box elders and I love to hear and see them. The cat bird is back too. I think it is the same sorta tame one that lived in the yard last year. I was walking over to work yesterday and he came right out of the bushes to talk to me.

Name The Calf...

It's actually Liz posting this. But Mommy said it was okay. I'm doing a 'Name the Calf Contest' over on Buckin' Junction. This one is a black heifer calf in desperate need of a "D" name. And I am plumb out of ideas!

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.