More Key Drive Stuff

I have to work on this week's Farm Side this morning, so here is an oldie from '05 I think. The pictures are from last night's storm and the small truce that followed.

Some jobs seem so simple. Like greasing the elevator. How hard could it be? You just take your trusty grease gun and a tube of grease and go for it. It is recommended that you don’t wear a white suit or high heels, but other than such obvious exclusions, anyone can do it.

Of course the implement in question here isn’t the kind of elevator that carried passengers from floor to floor in old fashioned department stores, or the sort that is used to stockpile oceans of grain out on the prairies.

Instead, this elevator is a long, metal, skeleton conveyor that carries bales of hay across the haymow and dumps them where we want them. It hangs from the roof of the cow barn inside the mow and therein lies the rub. That roof is high. It is dark up there. There are bees, wasps, hornets and various other vespids. The roof isn’t just high; it is really, really high. Not quite as high as the Eiffel Tower, but a lot too high for the comfort of the acrophobics among us.

It hangs from chains so if you place our 32-foot wooden ladder between the ends, it just reaches. However, the whole affair sways alarmingly under the weight of whoever wields the grease gun. Of course the ladder in question is a big beast that is not tossed around casually too. Liz and I helped the boss put it up once and I can assure you from a personal perspective that it really isn’t a whole lot of fun.

That is probably why a significant amount of time elapsed between the day that someone pointed out to the hay crew that the bearing on the end of the elevator was squeaking loud enough to be heard over the milk pump, (which sounds a lot like a souped up Harley), and the day that they actually trekked up into the mow.

On the way up the first ladder, the boss repeatedly inquired of the chief assistant, “Did you check the grease gun?”

“Yeah, of course.”

“I mean, did you really check it?”

“Yes, dad.”

“Are you sure?” and so on.

Once up in the mow, the staggeringly heavy ladder was maneuvered into place between the rails of the elevator. It takes a man and a boy to hold it still, which presented something of a problem for the greasing gang, as one of the above is required to climb up with the grease gun leaving either/or but not both at the bottom. With it finally secured (secured being a relative term here, as in secure as compared to hanging from a spider web over the Grand Canyon) they began to debate who was going up the ladder to do the dirty deed.

Eventually the chief assistant was chosen for his relative youth and agility. He went crawled up about half way and complained, “Dad, hold the ladder still, it’s moving.

“Dad, it’s really high up here,” and so on, until the hay boss called him back down, and with grease gun in hand, climbed up under the roof to do the job himself.

Of course, you already know where this is going. When he stuck the gun on the grease fitting while clinging to the top of the massive, swaying ladder at the top of the dark, scary hay mow ceiling, among a few thousand cranky yellow jackets and a couple of drowsy bats, there just one single squirt of grease in it. Not enough to do the job. Of course not. How could there be?

When they came over to tell me the story, they quoted the actual words that were uttered at that juncture, but I will spare the tender sensibilities of Farm Side readers. (Trust me, you would rather not know.)

This time, after climbing carefully back down the shuddering ladder, the boss himself filled the gun with a spanking new cartridge of grease. Then the assistant was sent up the ladder (in no uncertain terms) to do the greasing.

When he got up there, rest assured that he pumped the gun until grease flew in all directions. It darned near dripped on his daddy’s head. For some reason he wanted to do a very thorough job so that he would not have to do it again for at least a dozen years or so. He looked real happy to have his boots on solid ground and the ladder put away again, I’ll tell you.

They are over there unloading hay right now using that very same, extra-well-lubricated, cross-mow elevator. And if I hear the end bearing squeaking again I am just going to keep quiet and hope it bears up under the strain. Some things just aren’t worth the hassle.

Have you ever heard of

Chick Sale? I grew up familiar with some very strange things, including this particular character. (I actually own a copy of The Specialist.) I also lived in a primitive cabin once, where I could truly identify with this fellow.

(A new outhouse can truly be a fine thing....and having a charity build one for you...priceless.)

Pete Hardin makes the NYT

I met Mr. Hardin a few years ago at a dairy meeting and found him likable and fascinatingly well-informed about perhaps the murkiest topic in town, milk marketing. He is well-known in the dairy industry for thinking for himself and for not bowing to conventional wisdom just to run with the herd. He also has a lot of theories about the tangled web of milk marketing and pricing that many people pooh-pooh, because they at first seem so outlandish. (Like water buffalo milk in imported milk from India.....) However, pretty much every time you read something in his publication, The Milkweed, you later find out that it is true. Now he is featured in an article in the New York Times.
If you have the remotest interest in what is and has been going on in the dairy industry for the past decade, (much to the detriment of most dairy farmers), read this article. It simplifies some very complicated issues impressively well. Milk pricing laws and formulas, the way it is marketed, and the structure of the big so-called "farmer" cooperatives are staggeringly complicated...about as transparent as a puddle of crude oil. It is amazing to see a publication like the Times reduce these topics to a comfortably clear denominator.


Here is a link to one of Mr. Hardin's articles on the situation (caution large pdf)




It is a relief to see these issues, which have supplied farmers with a nightmarish dilemma of where to sell their milk when the big boys come to town, and how to make a living on less than the cost of production, brought to mainstream attention. Maybe it will do some good.

My favorite flower

Or at least in June it is. Doesn't look like much does it? However in this season the wild grape flowers perfume the whole valley. I can't describe the scent. It is sort of sweet like you might expect the air in a candy factory to be. Yet it doesn't just smell like hot sugar. It is...well.....flowery... too. I wait all year for the first breeze laden with it to come floating through the milk house window. We could be miserable with roaring heat, drowning in humidity, worried about fifteen different things and the wild grape flowers will wash it all away in an instant. Nice......

Dansville Tractor pull

Mr. Determination

Alan came home tired and sunburned but grinning and happy with his big outing. This is the only picture he took for some reason, but it catches the action of one of the big rigs I think.

Milk snakes and gorgeous mornings

We have gone from frost nine days ago to temps in the mid nineties. It takes some getting used to. so I guess we will just get used to it. The corn loves it anyhow, and what with all the frigid weather, it needs it. Cows don't like it much. We have been keeping them in nights and feeding them hay, because the pasture they are on has temporary fence. (Not to be confused with permanent fence, which is, in theory at least, more reliable.). However, last night with every fan in the place running full speed they were panting and hanging their heads. We took a gamble and let them back out. I went over with the boss and Liz this morning, to help get them back in even though it is my morning off, because the two-year-olds have yet to learn where their stalls are. They didn't bother much though, for which I was most grateful.

Yesterday must have been milk snake day. Liz caught the itty bitty one above yesterday out on the bridge between the farms. It was so cute and perfect, right down to the egg "tooth"
Some of the photos I took actually show the tooth, but are otherwise blurry, because I was in a big old hurry to get Liz to let the little thing loose again. The boss thinks he turned a nest of them out when he was moving earth getting a lane ready to put cows in another pasture.


Then last night, while we were finishing up Alan caught a great big one in the same spot. The second one was as long as my leg from knee to ankle and as big around as a finger. When he let it down and it poured itself away over the ridges and bumps in the barn yard its beauty was amazing and indescribable. Milk snakes are my favorite of the slithery clan. They remind me of the Oriental carpets my dad used to get in the antique store sometimes when I was a kid. Wish I could have photographed the big one, but we were getting done real late last night (dump run, house work, fence building, Liz made spaghetti and homemade bread and garlic bread, shopping for a new string trimmer to get weeds out of the fence...all in all a long, busy day) and I needed to finish helping with the cows.

Then this morning the sun came up amid solid HHH. The weather is going to be a major source of misery for the next few days, but it is still pretty. Alan has gone to the big tractor pull in Dansville today with his big brother. I will worry...it is my job. He will have fun...that is his job...and he took the little camera so hopefully he will have some nice pictures of the big rigs for you tomorrow.

Got water?

Weather fellas say two or three inches yesterday morning. I say I hate it when it thunders when we are milking. So much metal around. And nervous cows. It knocked the power out for a while, which is why there was only a wimpy post yesterday. When the lightning started making the lights flash on and off I just unplugged everything and went to the barn...




I am having algae problems in the pond so I changed the fountain. We have been hearing toads every night and I thought they were here.


However, thanks to having to reset the bedroom digital clock late last night....by guess and by gosh......


And getting it wrong........ so I got up half an hour early and went out with the dog in the not quite dawn.


I discovered that they are instead down in the heifer barn watering trough. Chlorinated water. Emptied and refilled every couple of days. Heifers snorting around in it.....Hmmm.......




They don't know what they are missing.

Argentine food crisis

Kinda, sorta big news, but I don't see anything about it in the mainstream press.

Revenge of the Lawn

It is funny where online research will take you. I am always on the lookout for ideas for my weekly newspaper column, the Farm Side. After over ten years of writing it, sometimes not repeating myself is a challenge. Lately I have been mulling over the recent upsurge in home gardening and massive sales of garden seeds and trying to think of a way to get a column out of it. A post Nita wrote on the topic, which reminded me or WWII Victory gardens, was all the stimulus I needed. This week I actually got busy with it and it will run Friday (unless the editor vetoes it or something).

I learned so much while writing this one! I was constantly calling in to the boss, who was reading in the other room. Things like, "Did you know that Sears sold 325,000 pressure cookers in 1943?"
Or, "Did you know that we in America plant three times as much ground in lawn as in corn?"


Here are some of the places I visited in my search for data to back up my positive thoughts about gardens and my somewhat less than positive feelings about lawns.

Victory Garden

The Murder of a Garden

Landscapes and the Law

Garden on Trial

Lawn Nation (if you click any of these, click this one...amazing!)

And, last but not least, Revenge of the Lawn (which will tell you something about my reading tastes in college.

Tai Chi for cows

I'm sorry, but this is just nuts. If we started doing Tai Chi in front of our cows, I'll bet they would run for the hills....and I wouldn't blame them one bit!

And something I have learned after years of living in the country.
No matter what
No matter when
No matter how
If you think you are alone and you do something silly
Funny looking
or just plain stupid and wrong
Somebody will see you....even if you are in your farthest, remotest, plumb hiddenest field..
They will pop out of the bushes or come up the driveway or fly over in an airplane taking pictures.
(We have Murphy's Law out here in the boondocks too you know).

Tai chi! If I tried it, I'll bet it would be all over town in an hour and not because the cows told on me either.

Iris

At sunset

Road trip

.The Mohawk River from Dunkin' Donuts

Ran errands again with the girls while the boss spread fertilizer and disked it in. I don't know if he is going to plant corn tomorrow or try to bale some hay or both. We barely see him since Liz is home and he can do field work whenever he wants to.

Making cheese at Palatine Valley Dairy (where we stopped to pick up a Semex Jersey stud book....(don't ask).
Naturally we bought some cheese too. How could we not?

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Fun with French Fries

Note to boss...never bet against the cheap help (who are the same folks who spend the week at the fair with the show calves every year).

Yesterday Liz just had one of those feelings....something wrong with the heifers and dry cows. She went out to the pasture where they are stationed and sure enough River had had a calf and had pushed him down in our deepest ravine (which has a creek at the bottom.) Liz got them both out and came on down to report. Calf was a week early, tiny (you can pick it up under one arm) and a bull. Oh well.

Anyhow, while we were bringing him and his mama in to the barn we decided to bring all the close up dries in too and get them up to speed on grain feeding. (We have a serious selenium deficiency in the soil in this area and they can get some in the cow grain we feed. Selenium is a major aid to successful calving and the passing of the placenta afterward.)

After that nifty little rodeo concluded we were admiring last year's show heifer, Blink, who was running with them. Liz and I were joking about how she probably could walk right up to her and feed her French Fries. She loved them SO much last summer. The boss thought we were nuts and bet that she couldn't.

Well, now, it just so happened that we had French fries with our party dinner the night before. And it just so happened that we didn't eat them all., So....nothing would do, but Liz run over to the house and grab a handful to test the theory.

Blink was a little hawky after running wild since last fall. She let Liz get semi, sorta, kinda close and then stretched her neck out very, very long to sniff.....very long, giraffe neck...standing on tippy hoofs, ready to bolt away with her tail up.

And then she scented the French fries. Out came the tongue, down went the heels, and she gobbled them all up like the fair was yesterday instead of last year.
We roared with laughter.
Too bad we didn't put any meaningful stakes on our bet though.

Thunder boomers, koi and calf relocations

The first right while we were milking last night. Nothing serious, just got us wet with a good rain. We needed it. One upshot of that was a toad serenade last night. (I think they were partying down in the garden pond.) Amphibians, except for red backed salamanders, have been mighty scarce this spring. Dry weather I guess. Anyhow, it seems wonderful to me that something as homely as a toad has such a lovely song.

Actually right from the get go we had an amazing day yesterday. Thanks to Teri at Farm Life we discovered Craigslist. Now we check the local farm and gardens listings several times a day. Thus we discovered that someone over by Mariaville Lake had baby koi for sale for two bucks each. We all made the trip over and bought seven. However, the nice lady whose front yard pond is apparently teeming with little orange, silver, white and black fishies, threw in three extras.

Now if they will just stay IN the pond. We have had a terrible time with koi jumping out in the past. I am hoping they grow and thrive.

Only four of our old gold fish made it through to warm weather, although they all survived the winter. They contracted a terrible bacterial disease just as the weather warmed up though and died in droves. I am sure we would have been fine, but the spring fed watering trough where we have kept most of them for the past twenty years or so dried up and we had to put all those fish in the garden pond last fall. Not good. Way too crowded.

This is Carlene. We needed to get this door open for ventilation
so we needed to move her to a big stall

Then we went out to help the boss clean the barn. We took calf registration photos, cleaned stalls and moved some older calves into regular stalls. One the was tied in front of a door we needed to open to get some air into the barn. It was so much more comfortable last night with it open.

Carlene's other side. These photos will go on her registration papers

At night we had an "end of internship and two kids graduating" sort of party with pizza, calzone, grinders, French fries and the new National Treasure movie. (Grumpy old party pooper mom read a John Grisham novel, but stayed in the vicinity.)

It was nice. A really great day. I feel lucky. Maybe it is was the koi

This is the herb garden, honey locust tree
and part of the flowers around the garden pond...which you can't see.

World Milk Day

Is today. Kicking off June is Dairy Month! Yay!

James and the Giant......

Errr.....I mean Becky and the giant......egg. This egg was laid by Chick Pea, Becky's Buff Orpington hen. She only lays about one a week, but these massive double yolkers max out our old fashioned egg scale. On the electronic scale they each come out to 3.7 ounces, a full 1.2 ounces larger than a jumbo egg.

Song Sparrow Saturday

The internship is over. The kind folks who hired Liz for it had one of their official farm sweat shirts made for her, so now she can represent two farms, as her big brother made her a shirt for our farm for Christmas. I know she will miss them, but it sure will be good to have her home. Regular mornings off this weekend and next week we tackle our calf placement issues.

Rippling grass and chilly temperatures

Yesterday the wind was rippling the grass in the old horse pasture like hair on shaggy dog's back. It whirled and swirled and changed colors until it was almost iridescent as the grass showed its pale green stem sides and then its purplish seed heads. I spent a few minutes on my sitting porch (a very bare and bereft sitting porch as the plants are still all indoors due to threat of frost) and watched the wind tease and tug at it. It was a never ending spectacle punctuated by the zig zagging of the mockingbird and a few passing starlings and I liked it. So I took some pictures and you can kinda sorta see what I mean.



Alan says we did have frost in spots night before last so I am glad the plants were tucked into the living room or covered with towels and doggie blankets (I even put my favorite polar fleece work jacket around Grandma Peggy's old snake plant and then put that on top of the scion of Grandpa Lachmayer's old snake plant. I should have brought them both in but it was getting dark and I was getting about done with what I could do in a day. Anyhow they are both fine as is the ancient burros tail, which spends every summer in the honey locust, which I completely and entirely forgot (smart, real smart).



***Update, Alan was right about the frost. One of the water cannas on the garden pond took a hit. Just the edges of the leaves were burned brown, but it sure must have been cold to freeze it inches above the water. Wow!

In just one night

Liz was home to milk last night because of a day off. With an extra person to milk the north string we were able to let the boss have the night "off" to use the skid steer to clean the yearling pen. (It is bedding pack, but it was pretty bad). Alan milked the east and part of the west strings so the milk line didn't flood out and drop all the machines on the floor half way through. We have an inch and a half pipeline and cows that need two inches. In summer when they are on grass and really milking heavy it is a nightmare getting the milk through the line. Becky was able to just feed the calves and go cook dinner for us.

Thus we were done half an hour early. So we put Bama Breeze and Chevelle out in the pen with the six already there. That cut Becky's calf watering work load a bit. And dinner was ready when we got in from chores.

It was very, very nice!
(And I look forward to more of it, greedy old me.)

Anyhow, it was still daylight when we got in...to find a freeze warning had been issued. I have been checking the forecast several times a day as I have all my house plants out and much stuff in the ground. At four in the afternoon two stations were calling for about 44 for the overnight temperature. And then they changed their minds. Anyhow everybody pitched in to help me get stuff in and covered, but of course, I forgot stuff. Don't know if it actually frosted, but it sure tried. Crazy weather. All my life and I suspect all my parents' and grandparent's lives (after all they are the ones who taught me to garden), Memorial Day has been considered a safe last frost date here in upstate NY. Now last year we had a freeze June 8th and it is this cold the last week in May this year. Global warming is making it darned cold here is all I can say.

Two more days

I can't resist the way the sun hits this door and mirror every morning...
just at this time of year.

On Friday, Liz will be done with her internship and finished with college....except maybe they want her to fill in on Sunday (we hope not) and she has to do a presentation in the fall. It has been a long three months. Our corn planting is behind because the boss has to milk when she doesn't. If he is in the barn milking he is not in the field planting. (That and he broke the gang bolt on the disks yesterday, which doesn't exactly help.) She and I are eager to get some calf housing units built and to move some babies around, get things cleaned up and just generally take a hold and do better.

Anyhow, I sure can't wait. This will be the first fall in many, many moons that somebody has actually not had to go back to school. Every year we get a great routine going over the summer. We work well together and play a little and end up with a great sense of satisfaction at how life and work and family are going along. Then comes school, everybody leaves and it is down to me and the boss and whoever can fill in when they aren't in class.
The fun kind of goes out of everything then and it is all work and no play.
This year Beck and Alan will both be in college, but at least Liz will be staying home.
I think it will be nice.
Heck, I know it will be nice....now if we had them all home, oh, heck guess I shouldn't get greedy.

Been saying this all along

Foot and mouth plan used flawed study.

I have been writing in the Farm Side about this since the short list of possible sites was first announced and they were all inland. So have some other bloggers and a few news folks. I still can't believe that our trusty government wants to put a lab exploring deadly and highly infectious cattle diseases right in the middle of cattle country. Can anybody say disaster looking for (and finding) a place to happen?

Blog friends and poultry

I can't tell you how much I value the online community. Folks that I have met through blogging and other online activities have offered friendship, a sympathetic ear when things are hard, perspective when things seem hard but really aren't, and a never ending wealth of humor and great photography every day of the year. The whole family has had the opportunity to get to know what every day life is like all over the USA and Canada and to enjoy wildlife, ranch life and ordinary life of all kinds. Folks I have "met" here at my desk in the dining room have been kind enough to help me with every kind of thing from starting fires with wet wood to doing a better job of taking pictures myself (I found the button, Steve).

However, I have never, until Sunday, actually met a real live blogger. A while ago though I mentioned that I was having a hard time finding chickens. Since Empire Livestock closed the small livestock section of the Tuesday auction it is hard to just pick up a couple extra hens. When I said something about this phenomenon on a blog I regularly read the owner offered to give me some chicks.

I didn't have the slightest trepidation about saying yes. You can tell from her writing that this is a very special lady and I couldn't wait to meet her in person. Sunday I dressed in my best farmer chic (blue cotton work shirt and jeans worn so thin and soft they feel fuzzy) and Alan, Beck, the boss and I headed out. We met at the Tractor Supply near the kids college. There we found out that Teri is every bit as nice in person as she seems on her blog. And the chickens are the cutest things you can imagine. Becky has taken right a hold of caring for them and keeps them in this cage in the hen house days and in a box in the kitchen nights. They are probably fledged enough to be out all the time, but with chickens being such a scarce commodity we are taking no chances with them. It is interesting to sit in the kitchen at night and listen to them twitter to themselves as they fall asleep. With papa wren on the front porch singing his babies to sleep and them in the kitchen it is sort of like surround sound with birds.


So thanks, Teri, for the poultry, it was super to meet you. And double thanks for the introduction to the local farm version of Craig's List....(now there is an addictive pastime! The boss and I went through all the ads yesterday morning and just had a ball...) It was real neat to actually meet another blogger. Maybe someday I will get to see others in person....you never know.

More Tales from the Key Drive

First and foremost, Happy Birthday to Paintsmh, our especially wonderful Lizzie person! Yay, Liz, have a great one kiddo!

This one is from '06

Getting ready for the fair in some ways resembles a landslide on a jagged mountainside. It starts with a single pebble click, click, clicking as it falls. It is hard to believe that it will soon obliterate every other aspect of farm life, taking on the semblance of an all-consuming pile of quicksand.

The earliest event in the fair-ward journey is no more earth shaking than that first pebble. While we are milking, someone asks, “Which do you think looks better, Medina or Mendocino?”

A discussion of the relative merits of two calves begins. It is not too heated as it is long before the fair; no one needs to decide anything. Yet.

A totally irrelevant picture

Then as the weeks roll by the rumbling of the avalanche grows ever louder as fair preparations threaten to take over our lives.

The trucker must be called and decorations planned, purchased and assembled. Once chosen, calves must be trained to lead, bathed and clipped. Oh, and hopefully registered in time for the papers to be back before the show. In the case of Mendocino, who was selected over Medina based on pedigree (daughter of Fustead Emory Blitz, bovine equivalent of Orlando Bloom and Johnny Depp rolled into one), greater height and sharpness, wider chest floor and the all-important fact that her mother is Lizzie’s favorite show cow, bathing takes on epic magnitude.

She is nearly pure white, not an auspicious color for a show calf. And not to put too fine a point on it, she is a hawg. Show her something brown and she will lie in it. She will dabble her tail in it too and paint her sides as far north as it will reach. (Of course she has a long tail.) If she can’t find something brown to lie in, she is a determined do it yourselfer. So every day, I say to the calf washer, “Throw that Blitz on the wash rack and let her soak while you’re clipping the other calves. And give her some bedding for Pete’s sake.”

This is futile as she eats any and all bedding, then looks around for more.

There is an intense competition between proponents of the little brown cow and fans of the big black and white ones here at Northview too. And of course sibling rivalry must contribute to the thunder of the developing landslide. Thus Alan snidely calls to Liz as she scrubs on Hazel, this year’s Jersey junior heifer calf, “Rub harder, maybe you can get all that brown off.”

He also takes me aside and suggests (quite loudly of course), “I know just what to do for Liz for Christmas this year. We’ll get some black and white paint and paint all her Jerseys. Then at least they will look like real cows instead of pasture lice.”

I shake my head and wonder at the wisdom of a lad who insults his sister’s favorite cattle while she has a fully charged water hose in her hand. Especially in light of the fact that the fair starts next week and she has a driver’s license and he doesn’t.

Ah well, as the number of days between now and truck-in day decrease, the spirit of cooperation increases, out of dire necessity if nothing else. There had been a vociferous battle, with many verbal stones thrown, over whether Alan’s two-year-old heifer, Bayberry, would go to the show or not. Like many boys he has sometimes used the necessity for him to go to the fair to care for his critters as an excuse to hit the midway with his buddies. This leaves big sister with his cow to work with along with her own. Not a popular phenomenon. Threats and imprecations are uttered on this topic.

Then terrible weather intervenes. There is no way Alan can go to the fair every day to pamper a cow. He can get over there for show night but otherwise he is needed at home to make hay. If the sun shines.

His sister has the choice of taking Bay herself or not having enough milking entries to qualify for Premier Exhibitor or Master Breeder.

Bayberry is going. Liz even rubs liniment on her sore stifle every day. (Poor thing slipped and fell a couple of weeks ago.)

As fair time approaches even the house begins to show the effects of the uproar. There are artificial maple leaves, fake wheat and a bunch of other funky stuff sticking up out of the mismatched sock basket and surging up from the cushions of the couch as if growing there. A crisis emerges when it is noticed that the stall sign for Liz’s Jersey aged cow, Dreamroad Extreme Heather, reads Dreamroad Extreme Heater. However appropriate that might be this summer it must be changed.

Of course an ever-helpful sibling suggests taking off both “H’s” and calling her Dreamroad Extreme Eater.

At least this year Liz is clipping at home, where it is quiet and the electrical outlets work. She was raving today about how nice it is to have the calves all done except for their ears (had to make a trip to town to get new ear clippers yesterday). I point out that I have been suggesting that she do them at home for at least ten years now. She doesn’t want to hear it.

A new dilemma arises. It has rained three days out of the last week. The oats that have been carefully saved in the field to provide bedding for fair stalls are still standing. It is too wet to mow, let alone bale them. Ditto the special second cutting field set aside for show cows. And the first cutting.

Frantic discussion of where enough bedding for ten head and good stuff to feed them can be found before next Monday ensues.

As piles of sand and gravel from the clattering landslide rise high enough to cover my ears, I pray for sunny days. Soon. Oh, and a little extra patience wouldn’t hurt either.

Yet another, equally irrelevant picture, taken at the same time.

*******Thankfully, our first fair isn't until August this year. Neither Bay or Heather are in the running to go. Bay's not bred and Heather lost a quarter.

As per request

****** Tomorrow I will tell you about actually getting to meet another blogger...first time ever and way too cool!

Yesterday the garage sales

Today the dirt. My goal in accompanying the girls on an expedition to the village wide in Tribes HIll was flower pots.

We got this picture from the driveway at one garage sale.
The Mohawk River at Amsterdam.

It was achieved. Now all I need is to go get dirt. I mix composted oats from the great oat fall with sand and composted horse poo. Makes a decent mix and the price is right.

My porch deer

Elvis

Behold-the box

Behold-the boxer

You can see why we named him Elvis. He always has to have center stage.

Senior moment

Who is that handsome boy playing tympani?

And singing in the chorus?

If you don't know, don't feel bad...evidently the band director doesn't either. There are three sections in our high school band, concert, wind ensemble and jazz band. It is a time honored tradition at our school for seniors to be acknowledged during their final concert. In fact Alan wanted to drop band this year and fill that slot in his schedule with something more useful for college. I encouraged him to stay in so he could enjoy his moment of glory as a senior with 8 years of percussion behind him. He did so.

Then last night, the director who shall remain nameless, gushed all over how wonderful the seniors in jazz band were. Raved long and loud about the seniors in wind ensembles. They took bows and got buckets of applause and I am sure were delighted with the attention they received.
And then, completely, totally (and unfixably-this is their LAST ever high school concert after all) forgot the three seniors in the concert band.

We waited and waited for their special moment but, oops, no such luck. They just filed offstage unnoticed. I won't get into the way this particular director has taken what used to be a fun music program and made it technically excellent, yet miserably boring, (instrument of torture comes to mind) for the audience. He likes that weird kinda music and he is the boss. We can suffer through a few hours of really painful music a couple times a year; we are after all adults and all....but to slight kids who have been in band for so many years, since before he was even hired. Well, to me that is inexcusable.

The highlight of the night was wonderful though. Alan's good friends' younger brother (you didn't hear about the helping with the sneaking of a piano into their house for him for Christmas this year because I had to keep Alan's part in that operation a secret for obvious reasons) COMPOSED one of the numbers last night! And it was awesome! One of the two best pieces all night. Lively, dramatic, exciting! (Everything the rest of the program wasn't...no slight to the kids, they play very well. It is just the directors taste in music that hurts.) The young composer got a standing ovation and he richly deserved it!
Then he went on to accompany the mixed chorus on piano completely from memory! Wow!

Anyhow, here is MY salute to 8 years in band. Hey, Alan, we won't forget and you or Anne or Rickie. As always you looked and sounded great last night. Good job!

Thank you key drive

For saving me on days like this....yesterday the crop insurance auditors (and the Farm Side deadline); today the last high school concert, a bittersweet milestone on the map of family life. This is a tribute to my late mother-in-law, which I don't think I ever actually published. I believe that I wrote it in 2002. She and I had our differences as any two cooks in one kitchen and women on one farm will do. However, I loved her and found out just exactly how deeply when she passed a way. Living here in her house a day never goes by that I don't think of her. I hope I somehow measure up to what she would have wanted...so here's to Peggy, one of the greatest women I ever met...

She was born in the town of Stark in the year fifteen. At first she was so tiny that her daddy, Frank, carried her around the house on a pillow for weeks. Her family wondered if she’d make it at all.

What an illusion that frailness was. She started helping Frank on his farm on Fiery Hill as soon as she could toddle. Milking cows by hand and doing fieldwork were as natural to her as breathing. When I met her she could still push her head into a big Holstein’s flank and make the milk fly with her small but purposeful hands. On Saturdays in spring she had to lead the big buckskin, Dan, pulling the cultivator up and down the rows of corn.

Later she told me how hard it had been to trust the horse not to squash her. She was fearful that his big black hoofs would stomp down on her bare feet and crush them into the hot dust of the cornfield or that he would drag the cultivator through the tender new corn. Still the work had to be done no matter how scary it was. She loved to ride him though, steering him with the driving bridle.

Dan was one of Frank’s fine workhorses, probably more a carriage type animal than a big, heavy horse like you see charging around the show ring today. He was so slow and deliberate in his tread that he never tipped over a stalk of the precious corn. He never did step on her either. She talked about him seventy years later as if he were still waiting out in the barn.

She started school in a one-room schoolhouse, when the teacher came to board at her home when she was three. We have a picture of her, bundled in a thick black coat, much shorter than the other students, but smiling hugely. She always loved to learn. Her education spanned eight decades and encompassed everything from gardening to a knowledge of politics as broad and deep as any scholar of the art. (There are those of us who learned to do our homework before we got into a political discussion with her. It was the only way to avoid walking away muttering and wondering what hit you.)

Frank was a renowned horseman in that area. His teams were called upon when no one else’s horses could get loads of ice or lumber up Fiery Hill. Whereas other farmers had to couple two or three pairs together, Frank could get the job done with one pair of his horses. We have a picture of him driving his yoke of oxen and, so in step are they, that it appears that there is only one ox, the off animal’s legs being totally hidden behind those of the nigh one.

Sadly, Frank was the one who was frail in reality and he died when she was twelve. As often happened in those days, the family was split and she was separated from her mother and sisters. She was sent to live with an old friend of the family who needed extra care, then later found a home with a woman who owned a diner in Booneville. She loved that restaurant and remembered the people who worked with her there very fondly. Roy, the irascible cook dominated the kitchen like a king and kept the girls on a run. She gave him his comeuppance one day when he bent over to check something in the oven as she pared potatoes nearby. She reached out with the razor sharp paring knife and nicked every stitch in the back seam of his trousers. He laughed and gave her hell.

There were some famous patrons among the simple farmers and loggers at the diner. Walter Edmonds, author of Drums Along the Mohawk and Rome Haul, was a regular summer customer. She said that he loved the strawberry shortcake and often stopped in for some during the season.

The loggers came in hungry for fine food after months in logging camp. Hobos were never turned away without a hot meal and a sandwich for the road. There was even a special, substantial dinner that was laid out for any itinerant who called at the back door, with lots of hearty bread and potatoes and gravy to stick to the ribs.

The good cooking she learned at the Brown Derby never left her. She could turn out apple pies with crust as moist and light as the early morning fog at the beginning of a perfect July day. She taught my girls and Alan to cook too. It’s scary. Liz is fifteen and teaches me new recipes. They even inherited her special ability to never use one dish when two would do. When they finish in my kitchen I start looking for the tornado.

She married a local dairy farmer in forty-three and later had two sons. They set to farming with a determination few today could imagine. They raised strawberries and pigs to pay the mortgage. Then they bought a second farm next door. When milking machines came in, her husband milked his string with the new invention while she milked twelve cows by hand-twice a day. Even when her hair was snow white and her steps had slowed enough that toddling grandchildren could keep up with her, she could still send streams of milk drumming onto the floor when she hand-stripped a cow.

At eighty-three, she was still milking cows. Even when she slipped on a grape dropped by an errant grandson and broke her arm; she went to the barn and washed cows with the good one.

She wouldn’t stay in the house in any weather. Snow, ice, it didn’t matter. It was a good thing that the old dog, Beethoven, would let her use his fur to pull herself back up when she fell, because there was no getting her to quit.

Last September, just eighteen months after her husband passed away at ninety, she had a massive heart attack. Nine months later, she died on my birthday, July 4th. It’s pretty empty in the old farm kitchen now. There is nobody to tell me how to grow cannas or cook ham or stuff zucchini. I miss her more than she could ever know.