Meeting

NYS Commissioner of Agriculture, Patrick Hooker, who made the meeting possible.
He is truly one of the good guys.

Through the kindness of a friend I was able to attend a listening session on dairy issues in Syracuse yesterday. Though the matters discussed, such as who pays for the hauling of milk, volatile milk prices, de-pooling of organic milk leading to unfair price advantages for those outside the pool, raw milk sales and the rampage of some entities which are called farmer cooperatives, but which are really just more of the octopus arms of gigantic businesses engaged in making money off farmers were important, attendance was dismal. If there were half a dozen farmers there other than the presenters I would be surprised. However, there were plenty of activist groups, including the Consumer's Union there and lots of lawyers in suits eager to tell our state offcials that farmers should pay for hauling or else.

The low attendance was pretty disappointing, If we don't speak up for ourselves, who will? (Of course, chicken heart that I am, I didn't present, just took lots of notes and a few photos, with plans to say my piece in the Farm Side Friday.

John Bunting

I was delighted to hear John Bunting of the Milkweed speak. The five minutes allotted was way too short in his case, as he spoke of price manipulation on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, which is far too little reported or discussed.

In the case of the guy from New York Dairy Foods, a so-called full-service dairy trade association......well in his case, it would have been nice if the moderators had held him to his five minutes. He launched into an impassioned tirade about why farmers better keep on paying their own hauling that had me and my companion ready to walk out. Vermont had the courage to enact legislation forcing processors to pay their own hauling. Then guys like this one and "cooperatives" like Agrimark convinced the legislature to postpone implementation until NY makes a decision. Now these guys are lobbying hard to make sure they get their way here.


I also got to meet Nate Wilson, a farmer from Chautauqua county (I thought I got a picture of Nate for you, but somehow I didn't). He has a cogent argument for why processors own the milk as soon as it is pumped out of the farm bulk tank, so they should be paying the freight from that point on. If you have time read his remarks in the Post Standard, linked to above. They make a lot more sense than the processors yelling that if they have to pay for hauling they won't pick up small farms. In NY at least most farms are small farms....and they can pass their costs on, where farmers are forced to eat them. I had found Nate's letter online when I was researching last week, forgot to bookmark it and couldn't find it again when I was working on the Farm Side so I was pretty tickled to meet him.

The meeting was stimulating, interesting and worth attending, even if the turnout was disappointing. Still it was good to come home......

Home, sweet home

From the key drive

More vintage Farm Side from 07. I called this one...

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Dances with Barn Cats

Here in tropical Fultonville we have discovered a phenomenal new reward activity— taking the kids to the movies. It’s astounding. They can milk the whole string, feed the calves, scrape the floors, toss down hay, take out the feeder wagon and get showered and dressed in under two hours if we tell them we are going. I love it.

After a highly enjoyable viewing of Pirates of the Caribbean (The Black Pearl) about a week ago I had a revolutionary idea. What if movies were filmed with farmers in mind? For example, Kevin Costner might star in Dances with Barn Cats. Our hero could be struggling through his milkhouse door, calf pails on one arm and a half a dozen nipple bottles dangling from the straining fingers of the other. Suddenly a calico cavalry would arrive to twine around his legs, yowling melodically. The resulting shuffle-stomp, as the farmer strives to maintain his balance in a veritable sea of cats, would be poetry in motion (especially from the viewpoint of his chortling children). We could watch in fascination as man and feline stagger along the almost endless prairie of the aisle behind the cows, until in final triumph he manages to pour some milk in the cats’ dish, ending hostilities and silencing the howling horde.

In the farmer-friendly comedy/thriller, Pirates of the Cornfield (the Black Squirrel) we would find handsome Jonny Dep battling for possession of thousands of ears of sweet corn. Instead of the horrible fleshless zombies from the real movie he would be facing raccoons (with rings around their eyes, just like his own), turkeys (with beards to match his), white-tailed deer, and a rare mutant black squirrel, who leads them all with a sort of depraved charm. His trusty John Deere would give new meaning to the word, “swashbuckling”, as he races to pick corn faster than the varmints. Instead of falling dramatically into the ocean for a grand finale, he could disappear into the corn stalks like the ball players in….

Field of Sheep. In this rustic attraction, we will observe our hero trying to build a sheep farm near a large town in Iowa. He will be ridiculed and harassed by his urban neighbors as he fences pastures and builds a lambing shed. His family and his banker will scoff at his efforts. Instead of Moonlight Graham, his county extension agent will help save the day by demonstrating that sheep make good neighbors. His local Farm Bureau will take the place of the antique ball team in convincing his opponents.

Agriculture will prevail as he overcomes restraining orders, animal rights protesters and the Environmental Protection Agency to build a farm near a town. In the triumphant ending we will see him delivering lambs in his brand new lambing shed as his neighbors, won over by careful public relations work, watch in awe. If you build it they will come.

Our next farmer friendly movie will be Lord of the Strings. This three-film epic will gradually reveal the many ways that bale strings can be both the bane and saving grace of the farmer’s existence.

The first section of the story will find our faithful farmer repairing fence with a length of pinkish orange plastic twine that he discovered after tripping over it where it was buried in the lane.

During the second portion of our action thriller he will save hours of time bringing a new calf in from the field with a bit of hay rope, rather than going back to the barn for a halter or the calf crate.

This Christmas the third segment will be released and we will discover what other revolutionary use he has found for this ubiquitous farm tool. Rumor on the Lord of the Strings website says that it may be erosion control on creek banks.

Here in the real world of Northview Dairy, far from Hollywood’s glittering lights (but real close to those of the Speedway), we recently had a close encounter of the marsupial kind. It is still causing wrinkles in the fabric of our family life. Last Saturday along about nine PM, Liz’s dog, Gael, began to yip in her crate. I roused myself from a piteous stupor in front of the TV (I was sick) and ordered our eldest to take the darn dog out.

Suddenly shrieks erupted from the area of the back porch. The rest of the crew raced to the kitchen. They found Liz on the porch standing on the seat that the boss bought last spring for the skid steer (no, it hasn’t been installed yet, something about having to take the whole cab off to put it in). The seat was on top of a trashcan where the kids keep ball gloves and the tie chains for the show cows (don’t ask me, I’m not a kid). Liz was sort of hovering near the ceiling in a gibbering frenzy, so incoherent that it took several minutes to discover what had happened. Seems that just as she stepped outside a possum that had been raiding the cat dish ran over her bare feet. To hear her tell it the wretched thing was the size of Moscow. “I could feel its claws right through my socks,” she wailed.

That was about the last time she spoke to any of us because we had the audacity to find the whole episode funny. The more we laughed the madder she got.

She then turned to her friends at school for a bit of sympathy over her traumatic experience. Surely they would understand. Of course they did. Now whenever she walks down the hall, someone is sure to point at her feet and cry out, “Possum.”

Busy week

Not two sides of the same calf...nope these are two different bull calves, one a Citation R Maple out of Liz's show heifer Blitz, the other a Rain out of my Bubbles. If we weren't so busy I would advertise them as potential oxen. They sure are a pair. Wish they were both heifers...oh how I wish!





A baby Holstein/Milking shorthorn heifer calf. Born yesterday and up trotting around behind mama in a few hours. Wish they were all that easy.



By Myrik out of my dear little Etrain cow. This is what I did yesterday...watched E and then pulled this huge heifer, then took care of both later in the day. I am thrilled to get a girl and so far E is doing pretty well. We are working on names. In the hat so far are Texas, Email, Pizza, Flamingo and a couple others that are funny as heck and begin with e (this is my e family and we are scraping the bottom of the barrel for names...thus the potential for names beginning with other letters) but are simply not suitable for this particular blog. If you have any preferences among these potential names, or others as far as that goes, let me know please.

TNT Hattie, one of Heather's three milking daughters. Hattie is far and away my favorite Jersey on the place. Not that we are friends or anything, as she would love to hook me with her head when I lock up her stanchion (I think she thinks I want her grain). She is just a pretty, elegant, little thing and I like to look at her.

Sorry posting and writing are sparse, late and lame. These are not all the calves we have had in the past couple of weeks with more to come and problems too numerous to mention. Some years things work out well and you feel lucky and all. And then there are the other years....like this one.

Redneck traffic jam

In upstate New York

Dreamroad Extreme Heather
the lead cow

Trucker fuel price protest

This started about a mile from our place. I was going to drive down and get a picture for you, but the stuff with Camry kept me here.

Some days just get out of hand

Fox tail fern

Last night we worked through supper time. This morning we worked through breakfast time too. It all started when Liz's show heifer, Blitz, started to calve just at the beginning of milking last night. She was still at it when Alan, Becky and I came to the house when we finished chores at about eight-fifteen. The boss and Liz stayed with the cow. It was a real good thing that they stayed. They did need to intervene a little as the calf was a great big boy, but both mother and baby came through fine. (Alan mowed lawn through the whole affair, although he did get to meet the police officers at the end. Yes, I did say police officers. And they were the nicest, most helpful, thoughtful, kind and dedicated to their job officers you could imagine too.)


As I peacefully waited for the soup to reheat, a little worried about Blitz, but aware that she was in good hands, Liz ran in to get the phone to call the police. Seems some very strange characters showed up between the two sets of barnyard gates and got their van stuck...half in and half out of the manure spreader shed. So the boss closed the lower gate and sent for reinforcements. They were scary guys I'll tell you. Several police cars and a tow truck later we finally came in for supper....at like ten thirty. Didn't get much sleep either as the creeps with their belligerent ways scared the heck out of me. We have been through this before. Our driveway is deeply rutted, there is a sign at the bottom that says it is a farm. These weirdos claimed they wished to come up to view the sunset. They were both guys. With a pit bull. A big one. They were not a bit nice.




Then this morning one of our two-year-olds, Camry, didn't come down with the cows. The rest of the crew (I started milking alone as it is tanker day) went to find her. She was having problems calving and either the other cows rolled her down the hill or she scrambled down herself because she was in pretty tough shape and the grass was matted down in a long aisle leading from her up the hill. They lost the calf, sadly, but Camry may make it. She is at least sitting up now and was holding her ears up when we went back up to check her after milking. Meanwhile we were late for the tanker, although not too bad, and really late getting in. We went out again so the boss could bury the calf before the coyotes come and we could doctor on Camry a little more. I hope she makes it. She is wild as heck, but she is out of a good Mansion Valley Delaware cow and by Ocean View Extra Special. She is a real pretty little thing. Any how, I hope she gets up pretty soon. We left the rest of the herd in the barn for an extra hour so they won't bother her. I also hope to never see those guys again. They just radiated something that scared me....a lot. Mostly Liz, but sometimes other ones of us, go out to the barn often at night to check the springers, of which we have at least seven right now. If the boss hadn't been out there with her last night, I hate to think what might have gone on.


***I did get to take some pictures between coming to the house and returning for the fun with freaks follies.

Hmmmmm

Look what we found while building the calf pens

Actually we knew it was there.

Actually it is right in the way of our future building plans.

Actually it is an old Farmall C the boss bought to run the hay elevator back in the day. Right now, it is a very heavy (and not so very decorative) yard ornament. It belongs to Alan now.


Someday, it may run again. Some day when the men have the time and energy to drag it up to the work shop and tear it down and do the engine over.
And put in a new radiator.
New tires
New rims.
Or maybe not.

Happy cows, (although not from California)

New calf pens

Lately we have had SO many calves in the barn. They were tied everywhere they shouldn't have been, from in the manger, to in stalls that should hold milk cows, to all over the north side walkway....just everywhere. Years ago we built some free standing pens outs of cattle panel somewhat like these. As far as growing calves they turned out to be fantastic. The calves we had out in them that summer grew like crazy and wound up large, productive milk cows.



However, having never done anything like this before that first year, we made them too small. Too hard to get into. Too hard to clean. We had to feed and water the calves inside them, which led to spoiled feed and dirty water. And messes from them spilling the water.


We had to tear those down to clean them and we never rebuilt afterward However, the idea was there. The place was there....although it all looked like this.




So the boss cleared it off with the skid steer. We bought some new cattle panels on sale. We bought some new t-posts, not on sale. We all went out with cable ties and baling twine and old canvas (and my wood canvas, which may be a bit of a problem) and we built these and populated them with about half of the calves we need to get outside.

Honeysuckle

We have enough panel to build at least two more and enough calves to fill them. However, the guys are going to put the post pounder on and use some old locust posts we have lying around. The t-posts are just too darned expensive and not made nearly as well as they used to be.

This boy is pointing to his custom sun shade, which he swears will stand up to the wind

Whadda ya think? Will it? Or won't it?

The calves are delighted to be out in the new pens and run and tear and eat through their new feeder and drink their nice clean water. We are hoping to be able to clean these properly as they are much bigger than our originals so we don't have to tear them down every year.

She looks contented to me...in fact they both do.

Crazy game

Unique
I was able to play all the way through it, but not without plenty of mistakes..ended up with fifty thousand some odd points.

HT to John;s World (John finds a lotta good stuff)

The next step

(Please don't berate me about driving posts like this. He's a guy...what can I say?)

Happy Father's Day,

Dad and one of his nifty grandsons

Dad, we love you

And to the boss, ditto




Don't look so happy, we'll get done eventually, lol

Oh, what a beautiful morning

Mackerel sky...not long wet, not long dry

Reed Canary grass, at least a foot taller than I am already.

Brome grass sporting beards of pollen

I think it must be almost summer

****And coming soon to a farm blog near you...what the heck is going on?



****This project is what the boss is looking so chirpy about in the above picture. It was HOT out here and he was getting a heck of a nasty sunburn.

Chicken bomb

I can NOT believe this.
One question comes to mind.
Why?

Fog horns and a butterfly

We don't live on a bay or a coast, just a medium sized river. However, if our cows had horns, this morning they would have been fog horns. The air was crispy cool and sweetly fresh when the sun was just starting to come up. We had to go out early to get the cows in as it is tanker day and for the first time this season we put the cows out in the Dimond farm pasture at night. They have been going there days, but we haven't trusted them out at night in a field they are not so very used to. However the pasture they have been grazing nights has gotten depleted and needs a rest. Milk production has been suffering because of it. This morning they came happily when called, ready to be milked I guess, but for some reason most of them were bawling as they wandered down the lane. It was cool enough that puffs of steam billowed as they bellowed, like big bovine steam engines. It was a strange sight.... long, narrow cow heads pointing in every direction, muzzles open wide, like trumpets at a jazz festival, with unlikely clouds of warm, moist, and suddenly visible air crossing above them. As happens all too often, I wished I had brought the camera. There is no fence on part of the lane they must use to get to that field, so four times a day I get to stand by the horse trailer and "be" a fence. I make a darned good fence too and so far none of them have gotten by me....not that they have tried very hard.


The butterfly above got caught between the screen and the stained glass door the other day. I only noticed it because the Sassenachs were harassing the house wrens again and I went out to chase them away. The wrens nest in the porch pillar every year and we get a great deal of enjoyment from them. Amazingly they know we aren't going to bother them and pretty much ignore us when we go out to chase the English sparrows out of their nest hole. I think the latter want to kick them out and the male tries to get into the nest about fifty times a day.

As I was opening the door I noticed the butterfly fluttering against the screen (which doesn't open). We couldn't reach it so Liz stuck the fly swatter in front of its feet until it finally climbed on. It paused for a fraction of time while I took a picture, then floated away down the hill. There seem to be a bunch of these around this year as I see them in the upper garden where I have been planting this week. I believe it is a Milbert's Tortoiseshell. In the course of tracking it down I FINALLY found a decent butterfly identification site, after looking for a couple of years for one that is easy to use.
I have never seen so many butterflies as there are this year so it is going to be wonderful to able to come inside and look them up.

So it begins

The first show calf of the season gets her first bath and leading session with a trip to the house as a reward for getting kind of cold and wet. Don't worry, she was warm and fluffy in just a few minutes.




This is redneck graduation present calf, November

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.