For rent

Upstairs apartment. Downstairs is occupied by noisy wrens so bring your earplugs. I was taking this shot of the robin (I think, since no one lives there any more) nest atop the pillar where our house wrens nest when the mockingbird stopped by for a short serenade. He landed right on this old chair, but he saw me and flew quicker than I could click.




I think I have seen a major benefit from the occupancy of the wren family. (Besides the delightful all day serenade that is.)
Wrens makes nests of assorted short sticks.
They nest in cavities.
They don't like company.
Thus they fill all the cavities in the area with sticks to keep out riffraff neighbors. Although this shifted our favorite chickadees from the sitting porch to the honey locust I think it also shifted all the starlings out of the eaves. Before the wrens they found every little crack or crevice and built their messy nests and raised their raucous babies there. This year there are none for which I am very grateful.





How about this thing on my sitting porch? It popped up over a very short time...like one day it wasn't there and about three days later it was. It is right over my lake chair where I like to sit when I get time. Liz is allergic to various vespids so it has got to go. I am going to bring the garden hose down from the calf pens and get it taken care of soon.


Here is a video from last year of the wrens feeding the kids. Liz took it and I posted it then, but I think it is worth a revisit...and the little ones haven't hatched yet this year.....

The graduate

Can you guess whose truck this is? He drove himself so we could arrive later.

Yep, this guy

Impromptu music stand

Ditto ....an interesting stand for the cymbals in the cramped space allotted to the band

Laughing at an honor student's speech


Singing in the chorus





Done! Turning the tassel

Graduation day

The youngest Northview kid comes to the end of his public school career today. In August he will be moving on to SUNY Cobleskill to begin studies in fisheries and wildlife. I am pretty excited about that and can't wait to learn vicariously about fish and snakes and deer and such. It has been that way with both the girls. They learn amazing and interesting stuff and they share....as someone who dropped out of college I treasure all that vicarious knowledge. Fisheries and wildlife is going to be icing on the cake.

Anyhow, I have been much asked over the past week or two how I feel about the graduation of our baby.... Melancholy? Sad and depressed? Really proud? Getting old in a hurry?

To the first couple I have to say, not so much. The end of high school in itself is actually going to be something of a relief. The boss was on the school board when it voted not to reinstate the infamous bottle bombers to the football team. It was not a popular decision and we always felt that the girls suffered for it. By the time this kid came along it wasn't so pronounced, but it was there in the background for years....a sad commentary, but there it is. There were and are many fine teachers who disagreed but rose above it and I salute them....like them in fact and will miss them. And there are some pretty silly things going on in schools today, such as making the kids drive around to places like the welfare office so they can learn how to sign up....I don't hold much esteem for that nonsense either and won't be missing it.

As for the real proud part, we are sort of equal opportunity, real proud of all the kids, pretty much all the time, type parents. Along with loving the kids as expected, we like them. They are fun to be around, interesting people. Growing up has made them more fun and more interesting then ever. They all, each and every one of them, have much to teach me, both what they have picked up in school and how to live better. As another blogger said last week, they are truly much better, more finished, mature and thinking people than I was at their age (or at many ages later too). Graduating is rather just another expected step in life. I am more likely to feel real proud when the kid comes home and tells me one of his friends came to him for advice on some thorny, adulthood-approaching-in-a-hurry problem, and he offered a truly helpful and mature answer than about being done with school.....or when he takes a hold and gets things done unexpectedly and well (thanks for chopping out those paths, buddy). Or when he comes home from driving with his newly-minted driver's license and tells me about some wise driving decision he made. Everybody pretty much graduates from high school. Not everybody grows up to be somebody you like to be around and want to spend more time with.

I will miss hearing about the hilarious antics of the Spring Sports Club though. That is a pick-up sports league some of the boys invented in order to play sports, mostly hockey, without the hoopla that goes with the parents and coaches getting involved. They played every night after school, policed themselves and each other and had a heck of a time. That makes me real proud indeed, as well as reminding me of some of the things my next younger brother and I got up to....we were an independent pair too. There was that underground newspaper we ran off on the mimeograph machine in the parents' cellar....and playing the fish cheer when our rock and roll band was invited to perform for a school assembly (quite an honor that, and WE sang it right....can't say the same for our classmates in the audience.) Inevitably I will see less of the kid pretty soon and I will miss him like only a parent can imagine. He claims to be my favorite, and although parents aren't allowed favorites, and darned well better not have any, he certainly is my favorite son....and he can claim to be one of my favorite kids...one of three can't be that bad can it?

As for the getting older fast...been there, done that, and got three tee shirts. I can still hobble around though so I guess it's not too bad.
I hope he has a great time in the either way-too-hot or way-too-cold auditorium today.
And that college is all he wants it to be.
That he is ready to take life by the horns and make what he wants from that too.
Good luck Alan
Your mama loves you!

Strawberry rhubarb 3.14159

Another good thing about June...
(It's Dairy Month, but it is also berry month)

And....does anyone have any idea what this flower is? Alan's best friend's mom gave me one years ago and I shared with my folks. Mine died a long time ago but I liberated this one from their lawn last fall. It is finally in bloom and I am hoping you can help me with an identification. Otherwise I am going to have to keep calling it **their last name** flower...which confuses folks mightily.
Thanks in advance.

Spelunking for linkers

Been splunking around lately trying to find the nice folks who link to me so I can add them to the blogroll. If I missed you and you would like to be added, please drop a note in the comments.
Thanks

Recipe for

Summer

Wish we were here...but we were just at the station pumping gas
when this pretty boat went by on the river

We were going here instead...the three Northview girls can pick like crazy. Eight quarts in under an hour.....just four miles down the road with three left turns . I was gonna make jam, but ran out of time, so I froze most of them.....except the ones for strawberry shortcake. We couldn't get any whipped cream over in town, they were out.
So we had Philadelphia vanilla ice cream instead....oh, and we didn't have the ingredients for the sweetened biscuits that go so well with the berries...so Becky made these little shortbread cookie things......wish you were here.

Happy Birthday Brother

I really, really, really, really LOVE it when you catch up and are the same age as I am for a few days every year.
Love,
Sis


PS, Hope your day is filled with love and fun and music....personally I am going to go picking strawberries

Fuel prices and futures trading

Just received this press release....

Agriculture Committee Reviews Trading in Energy Markets

WASHINGTON - Yesterday, the House Agriculture Committee held a hearing to review trading in energy markets. The Committee has
jurisdiction over the federal agency responsible for preventing fraud and manipulation in oil and gas futures markets.

"A growing number of people believe a flood of speculative money into energy futures is driving oil and gas prices higher and
creating instability," said Committee Chairman Collin C. Peterson. "The Agriculture Committee has legislative jurisdiction over the
Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and futures markets, and we intend to examine the issue of energy market trading
thoughtfully and carefully next month, separating the facts from the rhetoric. I look forward to future hearings in July to examine
the legislation that has been introduced and to get all points of view in order to address possible manipulation or excessive
speculation in the energy markets."

"Yesterday's hearing was an important step in addressing our nation's energy crisis," said Committee Ranking Member Bob Goodlatte.
"The Committee needs to continue to rigorously investigate the impact of futures trading on energy prices and we need to do so
quickly. I believe increasing domestic supplies holds the greatest prospect for relief from high prices. America's farmers and
ranchers are hit disproportionally hard by high energy cost and they need relief now."

The Committee heard testimony on trading in energy markets from Walter Lukken, CFTC's Acting Chairman. CFTC is the chief regulator
of commodity futures and options markets. The conference report on the Farm Bill, now signed into law, reauthorizes CFTC through
2013.

The opening statement of Chairman Lukken is available on the Committee website at http://agriculture.house.gov/hearings/index.html.
A full transcript of the hearing will be posted on the Committee website at a later date.

Same sky, different day

Taken from the same porch as the photo in the last post but early this morning

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)