The best laid plans

Last night's sunset

Of mice and mothers...gang aft agley.
Or to put it more plainly we got everything done that we undertook yesterday except any corn. The weather men sprang a frost warning on us so the afternoon was spent dragging house plants indoors and finding canvases......oh, and saying hasty prayers that the corn would be spared so we can finish freezing what we can and giving the rest away to friends and relatives.

A Mennonite conveyance

We did run up to the Farm Progress Show for about an hour. It is so close it is hard to resist.

A not so Mennonite conveyance

In the end I don't think it froze or is going to between now and daybreak. A fuzzy, wet fog came in and the crickets are still chirping vigorously. I hope I am right! The "new" tractor, which is actually second hand is quirky in its starting. The dealer came down yesterday morning and got it going....just tightened a loose wire. Then yesterday afternoon after starting up fine all through mowing hay and drawing down loads it froze up again. Going to call them as soon as they open this morning. I am sure they will make it right, but it certainly is a pain to be stalled again. Haying, between breakdowns and horrible weather, has gone very badly this summer and we are way, way behind.


Some farm land....taken through the windshield while going about fifty, excuse the lack of clarity

Another busy day ahead

Farm Side deadline.

Farm Progress Days
Corn
More corn.

So here are a couple of shots I took for a few of you while we were over at the fair last week.

For Steve
(The White is no more, having taken a one way ride on a large flatbed just yesterday. Its spot in the line up has been taken by an actual honest to gosh JOHN DEERE! I have always wanted one.)

For Nita
I loved this calf instantly and asked the girl attending them about her. She was born a week before the cut off for one of the show groups but they were honest enough not to change her birth date. We don't change them either (witness the August 30th calf named Trent) and we get a lot of flack for it. Believe it or not this beautiful baby was sired by a herd bull used for clean up! There were more Guernseys at the show than I have ever seen before and they were really, really good ones. Lots of strength and exceptional depth and correctness. This is not exactly Guernsey country and it was good to see them.

For FC

For anyone who can spell and likes a good laugh

For Teri

And speaking of corn

This is outrageous!

Corn

A Teri chicken...isn't he a cutie? And tame as a kitten (thanks Teri)

The sweet corn is finally ripe...... and there is a lot of it. Thousands of fat, golden, ears, row on row, as uniform as peas in a pod. It is tasty too.( I know because we ate a LOT of it yesterday.) Posting may be a little on the light side as Liz and I endeavor to freeze enough for winter......we like corn....we really like corn. This may take a while.

We started yesterday afternoon and got a few packages done. I even did some after milking last night. I am happy to report, (while still somehow maintaining a certain level of tastefulness), that a time-honored method of raccoon prevention seems to be working. Every day, all summer, while we were milking or the guys were working on our assorted broken down tractors and machinery, when nature called they were called to duty by the evil motherperson.

Make like a dog I told them. Mark the boundaries of the corn as our territory. Tell the thrice-damned varmints where to get off. I repeated the story of Farley Mowat and the wolves and the tea pot in Never Cry Wolf.....And like the yeomen they are, they rallied despite certain misgivings on their part (they are after all guys and although the corn field isn't exactly a porch, it is an outdoor venue). I am sure they got tired of hiking up to the corn patch but there was little complaining.

Nothing else has ever kept the coons away and they got most of our corn nearly every other year. It was like a desperate race trying to beat them to our crop. This year there are a few bird ripped ears, but no coon damage so far so I am real thankful for the menfolk. It was kind of above and beyond the call of duty. Wish us luck today.......

RCMP Musical Ride

An unexpected benefit of our Vermont visit was a chance to see this incredible drill team perform. While we waited for the concert to start they did their various maneuvers right in front of the grandstand. We took pics and video of course.





This video is very short

RCMP Musical Ride


It was interesting to learn that all the riders are full fledged police officers who rotate into the ride for three years, with one third leaving each year and one third beginning their stint. We had great fun watching them. In some formations the inner horses would be barely moving, merely pivoting in place while the next rank trotted and the outer horses cantered. Truly impressive.






This one, taken by Liz is both longer and better

Vermont State Fair concert

The girls got their pictures taken with everybody, I swear. That is Caleb, Trent's bus driver, on top. On the bottom is Emerson Drive's bass player, Arlo Gilliam, who was out in the crowd between shows and was kind enough to allow a photo. I did not get my picture taken with anybody....I was behind the camera (and quite happy to be).


The fairgrounds was beautiful at night and I took some video of the lights of the rides as they moved against the sky.


E-Drive and the night sky

Liz's story

Here is Lizzie's tale of how she ended up with all access passes and getting to talk to Trent.Tomlinson





And here is a picture of the calf she named after him.

Trent Tomlinson and Emerson Drive

At the Vermont State Fair...which is a really neat fair, not at all huge and crazy and intimidating like the NYS Fair.

Froggie pause

During the great laundry epic.....

Spending the week catching up

Last night's crescent moon

And recuperating from the fair. The boss is having serious tractor troubles....again. There is talk of trading the White 2-105 in for something that isn't thirty or so years old. It has been leaking hydraulic fluid into its transmission for the past week or so. They have changed seals and pumps and tightened this that and the other thing to no avail.

Liz has most of her fair stuff put away (hallelujah). The little chickens have been moved to the chicken house so the kitchen smells much better although I miss their cheerful clucking. Alan is over his fair food excesses and is eating again. (It was hard to cook with the main eater off line...that corn dog he bought at the carnival caused considerable consternation here at Northview.) After only one week in archery class Becky has gone from putting arrows in the ground in front of the target to nailing the center ring more often then not. Now if only the horrible bruise on her forearm would fade. Her baby brother is going to take her shopping for an arm guard and loan her his compound bow.

Tomorrow the girls and I are venturing to the Vermont State Fair to see Emerson Drive again. I guess that will mark a fitting end to summer for us.

Is the moon dancing or am I just a tad unsteady?

Google Chrome

I tried out the new Google Chrome broswer today. It didn't take me long to find things that don't work as well as I would like them to. One is setting the font for blog posts. I like the way Ariel and Ariel Narrow look and I type almost everything in one or the other of those fonts.

Chrome is not happy with that and keeps changing the font setting here to "Font". If I wanted font I would leave it in font.
Dag Nab It.

I can highlight and change things to Ariel and after a while it will stay there, but seems to me there is still some work to be done. . .

Now that I have uploaded a couple of photos I discover that I can't cut and paste to move them around in the post. Irritating. After I finish writing this I will edit in Firefox.

Other things that bug me include the tab bar being above the bookmarks bar. I keep clicking the wrong thing.
And where oh, where is the edit menu so I can edit things?
Are there any other skins?
I like skins. I like colors like green.
Blue is boring....just ask Microsoft. They like blue.

I have four tool bars running in Firefox all the time and use them all. Can't seem to find that feature in Chrome if it exist (btw I am editing in Firefox now).

So far I infinitely prefer the versatility and tinkerability of Firefox. It is easy to customize it so it works and looks just like I want it to...not to mention how easy it is to have spell check running all the time. (My spelling needs the help.)





Time will tell how Chrome works out. I will certainly play with it some more. However, so far it seems too weird for my admittedly habit-bound tastes. We will see....

End 'O Fair

Thanks to the incredible generosity of certain dear family members and friends last night I was able to stay home with my feet up rather than trundle over to the fair to truck out cows and decorations and such. Only if you show cattle will you know just how sweet that was.

Anyhow I missed some potentially troublesome excitement. An especially valuable heifer, calf of a costly clone cow, disappeared. Just vanished. She was tied to the side of the huge double-decker trailer that was to haul her home one minute and nowhere to be found the next.

Panic, quite understandably, ensued. Security was summoned. Even Becky was sharply questioned, until someone who knows her well pointed out that she was one of us and they had just helped the kids and the boss load the trailer with only our own cows. I could have told them that she is about as likely to snaffle up an extra cow as she would be to run barefoot through a freshly spread field....Josh Bernstein maybe, but certainly not a cow. Not exactly a fan of the bovine our girl.

It was a worrisome situation and I hope by now the missing calf has been found. Most folks thought that in the hustle and shuffle of trying to load dozens of cows and get them out of there as fast as possible she was probably stuck somewhere in that huge trailer in the wrong compartment or with the wrong family's cattle. Several groups were being loaded at once and it was very dark. Later in the morning I will call the folks who own the farm where she is housed and find out whether they found her or not...

When the boss was just a kid of 15 or so and won junior champion with a calf he bought for fifty dollars, a number of calves at the fair were stolen in the night. He doesn't think the owners ever recovered. I hope this story has a better ending

***Update...the lost is found. Somebody had loaded her on the trailer. Right trailer, wrong section....she was in with another family's cows.

A Marriage 57 Years Young

Happy fifty-seventh anniversary to my folks, who chose to spend this benchmark in their marriage panning for gold quite some little distance from here. I hope when we reach that milestone, if indeed we do, that the boss and I have that much sense of adventure left. Right now dragging myself over to the fair seems like more than I want to undertake. Anyhow..... Congratulations Mom and Dad on making it work in a big way!' Love, from your oldest "kid".

Say it isn't so..Lynn Johnston says goodbye

In today's strip
This has been my favorite cartoon for more years than I can believe.

But we still will be able to enjoy her work.

Here is where everybody's stories are concluded. Isn't it fitting and fun that April ended up as a veterinarian for the Calgary Stampede (we kind of like rodeo here, even if we pronounce it with an "e")?

10 Sarah Palin facts

From Cattle Network

Still another day

Does anyone know this guy?

Cows did terrible...worst show ever. Fonda has always been a tough show, but wow, the judge sure hated our cows. At least Hazel won her class. Ouch.....we still love them though.And after all, we do this for fun, right?

Thursday

I finally managed to make it around the fair.

Even though the fair is in full swing

The sun still rises

Fonda Fair Day Two

I never made it over...so much to do with all the kids gone. I did housework and laundry and built a good hot fire so everyone can have hot showers. Fed all the calves and heifers except the pen calves in the barn. Fed Pecan who stays in the barn because once we let her out we can't get her back inside. And milked. And cleaned calf stalls.

Liz had some problems when someone's kid punched poor November in the eye and refused to stop hitting and leave the barn. Everyone had gone to dinner or something and she couldn't find anyone to help her, but finally repeated threats to get security got them to go...but not until they had given her a good dose of verbal abuse. They saw nothing wrong with hitting the poor calf. It is a rare occurrence to have fair visitors act in such a manner but it happens...and it always seems to happen when you are alone. Years ago we took a small baby that had no chance of wining, but loved people and was cute as a button, over to the fair just for fun. She was Becky's and Beck was small too and needed something little and easy to lead. She loved people so we tied her on the end of the string so kids could pet her. One night Ralph stayed to watch all the cows while there was a meeting up in the main barn and the same exact thing happened. He is a burly, rugged, intimidating-looking guy (nobody ever budges in line in front of him) but I guess the folks had been in the beer tent or something. Poor little Juniper Heart! It was years ago and it still gravels me that some rotten little brat would beat on her and his parents stick up for him and think it was fine.

Frontier Net was down a lot yesterday so things are kind of behindish...sorry about that.

Fonda Fair Day One

Veterans, Mandy and Lemonade

The cows are in, vet checked, every little ear tag read and recorded. They are washed and full of second cutting hay. The babies were funny at first. They have never been off the farm before and were terrified of everything.

Been there, done that....Hazel

Everything.

Other cows. Kids wanting to pet them. Wheel barrows. Announcements on the loud speaker. Us. Each other.
Even food when we tossed them hay.

About an hour after we got them there, while the boss and Liz went home for the big cows, and I stayed to keep an eye on things, they began to tentatively nibble single stems of hay.

By noon they were brave enough to lie down unless kids tried to pet them. By three they were looking for me to bring them new hay every little while and not kicking when I cleaned up behind them. By the time we went home last night they were settled in like veterans, ignoring the commotion around them and sucking up the bovine life of Riley like it was their due.

Mmmmkay, guess this isn't so awful after all....Neon Moon

Wait a minute, I guess it is.

Meanwhile, as soon as Hazel, Lemonade, Mandy and Blitz came off the trailer, they sauntered into the barn, stepped up into the stalls and began to gobble that yummy hay. No opening day jitters for them. They are veterans and they love shows.....and after a long day of tending to their every whim and picking up every drop of cow poo almost before it hit the floor, I can see why.

The view from where I await the cows' commands

Fonda Fair Day Minus One

Setting up the decorations and bedding up the stalls. Liz, the boss and I went over today to work on that and I took my photos over and put them in. I don't expect to win at all. The competition is extremely vigorous....but I needed a pass and I had to enter somethings. Cows will be trucked over tomorrow.

Joe Hash

Joe Hash is one of the many wonderful musicians we have discovered on MySpace. He also wrote Stay, a song for anyone who has ever loved an extra special dog.

I have found so much music that I love on MySpace that Ialmost never listen to the radio any more. I just find artists I like, buy their songs from ITunes or somewhere similar, and listen to them on my IPod or burn CDs for the car or the barn sterio. I happened upon the Roosters in just that fashion and found my favorite song, Kill the Mullet, which as it happens is not about a fish.


Joe Hash sings "The H Word" at The Moonshine Café

Trent Loos has some good ideas

Here is a link to one of his columns

"The basic message is: Animal agriculture provides the essential nutrients for humans beings, and this is how it works. ..."

College starts today

The fair starts tomorrow. No zucchini so I will be skipping that class. I don't think I am going to cut down my giant sunflowers either......so I guess I will be just taking over some photographs....of frogs and toads, amazingly enough.

Hoping to get time to help Liz get her decorations up today. She was out in the barn until about 10:30 last night clipping heifers.....guess she is done with them anyhow. Figuring on missing Becky and Alan a lot today, but I guess I have to get used to it.

And all I have for you is this little sneaky snake Beck caught yesterday. I have never seen as many garter snakes as we have this summer. This one is slimmer than a pencil and about as long as the worn off stubs of them that I keep finding in Alan's pockets when school is in session. As little as they are they will hiss and spit and strike at you just as if they had something to back it up with. (The snakes, not the pencil stubs...the latter just make a lot of noise in the washing machine if I miss them.)

Sleepy Sunday

Moose like sprinkers too.

HT to Windyridge who saw it first. I found this video too amazing to pass up