Campus Visit

More on the View at Northview.

An interesting story about the huge springing lion mount (top) in the college mammal room. One day when Alan was first in fisheries and wildlife he was looking for the room where his next class would be held. He walked into what he thought was the correct room. It was in total darkness, all blinds tightly drawn. Since he was the first kid there he reached over and turned on the light. ....and there was that guy right in front of him.

Oops wrong room! (The thing is mounted so it is right in front of the door!)

Pocket Door Key

Ed was very close with his guess of a skate key. This particular key goes to the double door to the parlor.

A New Blog

With all that has been going on lately I have failed to get something done that I really wanted to..

And that is to share a delightful new blog with you. Southview Farm is written by my sister-in-law, Lisa, who is married to my terrific younger brother Matt. You can spot him in the comments every now and then as Mappy. (When he was just a little guy that is what our wonderful Lithuanian landlady called him. He calls me Fred. ....It's a long story). You can see him at his weekday job in today's post at Southview.

Anyhow, check it out! Matt and Lisa are the weavers who made our wonderful rugs, blankets and towels and they have an assortment of interesting animals, day jobs and good kids. You will see fish and looms and horses and lots of nice photography.

********As soon as we get in from chores, which I am leaving now to pursue, I will try to get a picture of yesterday's puzzling object in its usual place. I just thought the patent date was neat, as it gives an idea of the possible age of this old house. (Trust Alan to find something like that.)

******And check this out too! As we pursued a home for our milk last week and this, I kept hearing rumors about what is going on in Maine. Now we find out that it is true. After what we have been through my heart just aches for all these farmers. Meeting organic standards is challenging and costly. These farmers who just got dumped by the people who buy their product have worked long and hard to obtain the organic designation. I hope a solution is found for them and quickly. Milk is a perishable product so hours and days matter immeasurably to these poor folks!

Wordless Wednesday

Thank you

Thank you all for your prayers, kind comments, letters to senators and just plain caring.
The prayers worked and your kindness helped us get by.

Late last night a complete stranger called and offered us a market for our milk. He came in today and talked to us, and although we will be making less money, which is not such a good thing, we now have a market.

Hopefully at least, if nobody else runs around behind the scenes messing it up.

I have never been lied to in my life, like I have this past week. People that we trusted knowingly mislead us. Not a pleasant lesson, but I can't thank you all enough.

The Milk Situation

People are asking what is going on.
So far nothing.
Dozens of phone calls
No answers.
It is looking very bad.
And we are looking for a used small milk tank truck
Anybody know of one for sale?


Update**** Despite feeling somewhat like a steamroller has come through here, there is a positive side to our current nightmare.....
And that is you...the people reading this, who have made us feel cared for with your kindness and concern. Your emails and kind words in the comment section help us get through the anxious days and sleepless nights. I can't tell you how much I thank you for that.

We have also had some state officials and Farm Bureau people pulling out all the stops to try to fix the situation. I can't thank them enough for their efforts to save our cows. I hope we don't have to sell them. If we do, we have promised the kids we will hang on to a few of the show cows.
Anyhow, my deepest thanks.

Homework

All photos by Alan

From our fisheries and wildlife guy.....Homework was never like this when I was in school. The best assignments I can remember were bringing in frog eggs (and that may have been a voluntary assignment) and writing stories. We sure never got to trek out into the wilds of a farm, armed with mom's camera and a turkey call, to count birds and photograph amazing snow geese and deer and strutting tom turkeys.

We did do some amazingly cool stuff in school though, back in the day, stuff that little matters like lawsuits would certainly prohibit today. Like along about fifth grade, Mr. Davis, our science teacher, took us both to Howe Caverns and down into a wild cave. Can you imagine taking fifth graders into a wild cave today?

I can remember wading down the stream that ran through the center of the wild cave, in soggy, totally inadequate boots, hoping to see bats and marveling at tiny limestone formations that popped out of the walls and off the ceilings and floors everywhere. We had to clamber down a rope from a parking lot to get into the cave....through a sort of well cover, culvert thing with a huge concrete cap that was lifted aside....I can't see that being allowed to day, but that cave has its own photo album in my mind and the pictures are as sharp and clear as if it were yesterday.

Friends and I did quite a bit of spelunking in the college days and I am sure the interest was spawned on those fifth grade trips. I am too old and lame and not exactly skinny enough any more to belly crawl through dark, sleek, wild places deep underground, but I am glad I had the chance once upon a youthful time. And I am glad my mom didn't know about those unsupervised and probably ridiculously unsafe 20-something trips. We gave her enough grey hair as it is.

Here and here are some pics Alan and I brought back from last year's trip to Howe Caverns where we went to celebrate his successful road test. Here are more.

Speaking of teachers who truly inspire students, this fellow taught all three of our kids over the years, and he is one of the two or three best teachers any of them have had. Although he has surely earned his retirement, the school will be lessened by his absence next year.

Sunday Stills....Animals of Husbandry

More entries

Things We Thought We Cared About

Don't seem to matter much today. It is 2:30 in the morning and I can't sleep. Over the past week the cooperative we ship milk to changed where it sells our milk. In the course of the contract negotiations they neglected to make sure that they set it up to have a milk hauler for our farm milk. Everybody else got a hauler because everybody else is on the flat and can have a tractor trailer pick up there milk. We alone need a ten-wheeler because of the hill. A giant cooperative is refusing to let our milk leave the farm, on the same truck it has always been on.

So all week no one came to pick up the milk. All week we were assured that this was all getting solved. Finally yesterday we had to dump the milk. And finally yesterday we learned that nothing is solved and there is just a standstill in the negotiations, which we have had no part of.

If we don't have a hauler in the next few days we will have to sell the cows or send them somewhere to board at someone else's farm or some other desperate measure. None of these options would allow us a milk check, which is what we live on and pay our bills with. Plus the boss's entire lifetime of breeding cattle and the kids lifetimes and half of mine will simply be gone. Our lives will be gone, because everything we do every day, every habit, every joy, every pain, is wrapped up in those cows.

You find out just how much you love them when you look at them and think about putting them all on a truck and watching them go.

On another day I would have been happy to see that NYRI is a dead issue and our neighbors won't be getting a monstrous power line through their backyards. Today my heart and soul are sick, especially for Liz who loves her cows like children. I am happy for them in a vague way, but I can't feel any delight.

If you have any ideas let me know...or at least pray for us. I spent three hours on the phone yesterday and won't know until at least Monday if any of my frantic calls will bear fruit. I am going out now to check old Zinnia who took it in her head to look like calving last night....

Fly-Tying-Crocus-Sun Dog

Equals spring in the wilds of upstate NY. (Although I guess we may get snow)

And a Butterfly Too

Thanks to Tom, in the comments, we now know that this is an Eastern Comma Butterfly

Photo by Alan from the fence trip Saturday.

I Am Terrified!

Update***Here is more on this topic. Guess I am not the only one concerned by it. Google isn't too happy either.

I am sorry that I am not writing about animals and spring time and the good stuff that is (or should be) going on. That is partly because serious problems are flourishing like fungus and there isn't much fun to talk about. However, there is also the fear factor about where this country is going.....There is so much insanity popping up in the news, all day every day, it is like watching the first Gulf War unfold on television. Or the second. It scares you silly, but you can't walk away from it.

Talk about shock and awe! Here is a Senate proposal (that will probably pass unfettered) to give a government official the right to shut down private Internet networks if they think a cyber attack is under way. Right now, thanks to a conspiracy that the media has virtually admitted to, to publish only positive materiel about liberal causes, the regular news is worse than useless. Most political dissent takes place right here in the blogoshere. I try to discipline myself to mostly write about farm stuff, but this is too much. I personally rely on this medium for nearly all my news and commentary. Without it I would be blind.

To give the very people I am worried about the power to legally shut off the information faucet is appalling, egregious and wrong.
We just watched a Senator have his conviction thrown out of court because of prosecutorial malfeasance. What is going to happen to us peons if they close our conuit to unfiltered information? I really am frightened by the prospect. The time to stand up and scream for our right to freedom of information and freedom of discourse with the people we talk to here on the Internet is right now, today, before this bill is shoved through like it was good for us.

I am not a baby who needs Washington to secure my computer for me and I suspect you aren't either (notice that they screamed about what Conficker was going to do to us for a couple of days and then slipped this in as if they were saving us from a fate worse than worms?) However, the same people who think they have the right to decide what eat think so.

Call your Senator! Or send him an email. While you still can!

Wordless (because I have to write the Farm Side) Wednesday

The Maple Rent

Was just delivered. (Three lovely gallons of grade A dark amber maple syrup)

"Wrecking Ball of a Budget"

I love this phrase from the New York Post, from an editorial piece by Fred Dicker.

"The wrecking ball of a new state budget, approved in Kremlin-like secrecy by the troika, also ranks as one of the biggest betrayals in process and substance by a governor in New York history."

Read the whole story here.

NY has traditionally been one of the worst places in the country to do business. In just the past couple of decades excellent manufacturers of gloves and clothing have been forced out of business or hustled off to foreign lands by the tax, spend and hire your family, friends and neighbors mindset in state government. However, this budget and the secrecy involved in the budget process (the minority party was barred from discussion) set new standards in legislation. Too bad they are lower standards rather than higher. I read somewhere this morning that the budget is predicted to cost every tax paying family $5000 dollars in new taxes and fees. Now that is what I call sharing the pain.

Cuban Agriculture vs. the USA

Carpe Diem has some interesting information comparing agriculture in Cuba to that in the good old US of A. Let me tell you...right now we have it good, but that could change and fast.
Here is the whole story. Read it and be afraid....



What does this have to do with the USA? Read this one.

College Wildlife Class Project

I really hope that isn't "our" grey fox! Most of these pics were taken yesterday as Alan and his class partner crawled around the farm in between rain showers taking photos of animal signs for class. Others were taken during the fencing trip. As you can see we have lots of wildlife on our place, and they spend their time eating each other and generally having a great time. The guys saw nine tom turkeys in full strut mode.
But I really hope that isn't our fox!
Or her pups.....

Sunday Stills...Landscape

Everything is pretty brown here in the Northeast, although a few more sunny days like yesterday and that will most likely change. Here are a couple views we took while building fence in the heifer pasture yesterday.



For more Sunday Stills.....

Souvenirs of the Fencing Expedition

Click for a better view

Video on The View

Fencing

I am hoping no crisis occurs today (it has been an entire week in crisis mode it seems) to stop Liz, Alan and me from getting at the heifer pasture fence today. The boss is going bargain hunting over at McFadden's spring auction today so he won't be here. Wish he was handy with the camera so he could take some pics of the marvel that is that sale. It is one amazing farm machinery auction with hundreds of tractors and implements and probably thousands of people. Quite a sight to see, although not at all my cup of tea.

And I was wondering and pondering this morning as I made my first cup of coffee and looked into Grandpa Lachmayer's eyes in his photo by the stove.....do he and Grandma and Great Aunt Lulu and Uncle Mack play pinochle in Heaven? Do they sit around a small, square table, laughing and slapping cards together and talking about the huge McGivern/Lachmayer clan? They used to get a real bang out of playing cards at camp when we were kids. Although the game still makes no sense at all to me and certainly didn't then, we felt secure hanging around under the card table with our toys or petting Great Aunt Lulu's funny little Boston terriers and pugs. Can you remember back when somebody else was the grown up and you could rely on them to take care of the hard decisions for you? And make lunch (even if you hated egg salad)? And keep an eye that you didn't go astray? I can remember always being desperate to get outside and catch frogs in the tiny rivulet that flowed across in front of the camp.....they must have hated to see me coming.
Sometimes I miss that sense of being cared for.

10 by 10

Here is a tag from Ed at Thoughts From the Road. Tenth folder/tenth photo. Thanks Ed.

Farm Food Formula

I learned to make spaghetti sauce from a series of experts, including grandmas, mama and a Sicilian family when I was in college. I have had a lot of practice. The other day I made a batch with some fresh sausage from our piggies and hamburger from our last beef. And the Italian seasoning I was forced to learn to make when the kids began to cook everything from eggs to steak with the stuff. It turned out rather well (if I do say so myself). Been too busy to bother with pasta so we have been eating it on bread. Not all bread is created equal so....

Alan and I begged Liz to make a batch of her super/wonderful.really, really great, homemade bread.

And she did.

Put them together and what do you get?

Sheer bliss....of the culinary kind.

Never Mind the Sheep

The bottom line is the dogs.
This is one of the most popular YouTube videos this week. Although I am sure folks just love the coolness of it, I got cold chills watching the border collies working. What incredible work by the stockmen and stock dogs involved in producing this video of Welsh farmers making pictures with sheep, dogs and LED lighting. Wow, just wow!!!!






Here is a story about the making of the video. Training a sheep dog, or in my case a couple cow dogs, is among the most rewarding and difficult things I have ever experienced. Worth every minute of it though. The way I felt coming in after successfully doing almost any job with the dogs, even moving a few heifers to the barn, is about as great a high as any other superlative I could even imagine. Nothing in my life, except maybe parenting, has offered the same frustrations and thrills that working with my dogs has given me. And this video is about as far beyond anything I have ever experienced as the NFL is beyong tossing the ball around on the back lawn.

HT to Kim Komando

Kind of off topic, but I just read that Dan Seals passed away. I have enjoyed his music since he played with John Ford Coley many moons ago. Everything That Glitters is one of our very favorite car singing songs. We drive the boss nuts singing it four or five times before we move on to the next song. The music industry has lost a real talent......

Farmer in USA Today

HT to World Dairy Diary.

Here is a story in a major newspaper, about the current dairy price situation. I think it contains some very telling statistics, especially that, while the price paid to farmers has declined by about 50 percent, the cost of milk in the store has only dropped about 2.4 %, with the cost of a gallon of milk only falling 14.7% in the past 12 months.

When the boss took those calves over to the sale barn the other day, he stood among three or four other dairy producers there to take their shellacking on calf prices because they simply have no other choice. They weren't anybody we knew, as this is still a farming region, although that may change. As they commiserated about trying to get by these days a kind of frightening statistic appeared. ALL of them are selling their cows in the next month. Every single one of those other dairy farmers, or dairy farmer kids are going out of the dairy business. Some of them figure on changing over to selling hay. I wonder who is going to buy it.

And just to add to the excitement, the VP of our milk cooperative showed up yesterday with the news that we are going to be shipping to a different market now. No idea how that is going to work out, just another challenge in a bowl full. Time will tell.

71

Here are a couple more shots I took when looking for one for Sunday's post.

Went out at four to check cow number 71, Cisco. She is bred to Silky Cousteau and the boss thought she would calve last night. Not yet, but soon I think. I gave her fresh straw and gave the springers and fresh cows some hay while I was out there. Chucked some wood in the stove on the way in. A big hunk of log tried to roll out the door on me when I opened it, but I caught it with the shovel. Burning good this morning, house is nice and warm..

Roosters were in full flap and crowing up a storm, despite the fact that the only light was from the stars, my flashlight, and cars on the Thruway. Silly birds. Liz thinks somebody dropped us off a couple of ball bearing mouse traps last night. There was a big orange cat and a small black one on the porch when she came in from checking the cow before bed. This winter, what with coyotes, owls and all was really rough on the barn cat population so I guess I don't mind so much if they stick around.

Issues with Dogs and Other Stuff

Due to a faulty thermometer and a few other significant details last year we are calving our cows like ranchers this year...all in a bunch. Dairy and beef are very different in how the calf planning works best. On a dairy we want cows having calves year round so there is a fresh supply of milk on a more or less constant basis. That would be terrible on a ranch where animals are managed in groups. Having them all come at once is a nightmare on a dairy. Just now when prices are so low most of our cows are dry or drying off. (Yeah, the average dairy cow gets a much longer vacation than you or I do, somewhere around six weeks a year. This is called the dry period. All the cows do during this time is eat and rest.) There are twenty cows due to calve in in June and four more this month. And a large bunch in April too

So far there are three on the ground, all bulls, which is not a happy circumstance on a dairy farm. Normally bulls are sold to be raised for beef for between sixty and a couple hundred dollars. Now farmers are often getting bills for the beef check off and auction commission and no money at all for their calves. You used to could count on calf and beef checks to beef up the milk check. Not so much any more. Liz isn't getting much sleep these days what with checking the barn nights and milking and chores take an hour extra on each end of the day....so if posts seem sparse....

Then there is the dog thing. Mike has always been top dog. Nick has always put up with it. Now Mike barely knows he is a dog or even where up is. I guess that left the field open for some social engineering on the canine end of things.

Anyhow the other night Alan bought us Chinese. That is a huge treat around here. We were just opening those wonderful little goldfish cartons and checking out the lo mein and wontons when Nick suddenly lit into poor bumbling old Mike with the intent to kill. At least he is well trained enough to listen to me when I screamed at him to stop. He ran and hid in his crate.

Poor old Mike never knew what hit him. His tongue was bleeding and he had a small puncture on his face, but seemed quite happy to suddenly be invited to share the bounty from our favorite Chinese restaurant. We gave him a tasty batch of rice and mushrooms.

About twenty minutes later he started wheezing. He was not in the least distressed by the rattling gasps that accompanied every attempt to slurp up another grain of rice off the floor (he is not a tidy eater) but we were majoryly concerned. (It was by this time about nine thirty PM, due to the other issues mentioned below.)

It was decided that his old collar was distressing him because of swelling from his Nick bite....and we couldn't unbuckle it without causing him still more distress. Thus Alan cut it off with his ceremonial Buck knife. As soon as it was gone the old man was fine and went back to rice hoovering very happily. The next morning he popped out of his crate as happy as ever. However, the dog routine will have to change now, as I can't trust Nick and they both live in the house. So it is one dog out and one dog in and the cat out and the cat in and I feel like a pet traffic controller.....only Gael requires no extra attention, well except for her trash collecting route but we won't get into that.

Then last night the heifers that are pastured behind the barn found an open gate and went roaming. The boss got them back in while we milked, but it was worrisome. Nothing worse than cattle wandering around at night.

Basically this has been a crazy place lately and blogging is falling by the way side. Lovely things are still happening outside, with stars gleaming like cut crystal at night and sunrises that could fill in for windows in the world's greatest cathedrals.....I just don't seem to have time to do anything about them..

Eagle Nest Cam

Live video from an Eagle nest in Oklahoma.

Thanks to a very excellent friend for this.

Sunday Stills.....Lines

I put this one off all week. I am not such a linear thinker I guess. I like the juxtaposition of lines from these roofs on our old house. She is a little shabby around the edges but still a grand old lady.



More Sunday Stills

Revised Birthday Post

It has been pointed out to me that I had better recognize this 19th birthday or else!

****Really, we were just joking around about putting his birthday on here. He knows I love him.
This is my special boy and they have been 19 wonderful years...literally, years full of wonder, watching a fascinating person evolve from a red headed baby with bright blue eyes.

His early years were a harrowing struggle for him and for us, as he had asthma so bad life was a constant terror. (Not much different with either girl. They all have asthma and common colds still cause uncommon and sometimes dangerous problems.)

He barely grew at all until he went on a nebulizer program at 2. Holidays in hospital cafeterias were the norm for me. He, or sometimes Becky, was upstairs in croup cribs, which looked like cages for zoo lions. Many were the nights I somehow crawled inside those cage/cribs and spent the night cuddling and listening to my little ones struggling for breath and praying my heart out.

Thank God for a great pediatrician, the right specialists and the simple act of growing bigger lungs so they could breath. Thank God for great kids who make every day an adventure. They mean the world to me. Happy birthday kiddo, many happy returns.

Neighbors

I think this pair of Canada geese has plans for the heifer pasture just behind the kitchen. They make a lot of noise and fly whenever we go outside, but they seem to settle right back down in the same spot. As long as they don't actually bite me I am good with it.

Farm Income Available to USDA

I can see the reasoning behind this, but it feels wrong and intrusive. Even if you are upfront and honest in your dealings it just has a snoopy feeling about it.

Birding Between the Lines

Only on Christmas Bird Count day can I set aside farming, writing, housework and being mom to just go out and bird watch. All day and with complete focus. The rest of the time it is a part time task sandwiched in between real work. That has yet to stop me from enjoying watching and listening for the birds around us.

Even though I was still pretty sick with this nasty thing we all have, something half way along the road between just a cold and not quite flu, yesterday was a spectacular day for that between the lines sort of birding.

I was doing dishes, so I looked out the window over the sink (one of the finest household features a woman can have) and there was a herd of turkeys scuttling around the horizon on the heifer pasture hill.

Out to fight with the stove. Certain sick male people let it go completely out dead. It is somewhat challenging to light large, green, wet rounds of wood (the splitter tractor is dead) from scratch. However, I used the intervals while I was waiting to see if it would take a hold to wander around listening and watching. Over at the side of the lawn was a flock of passing goldfinches so large that their calls were loud enough to drown out even the Thruway. They were creating such a din I thought they were Sassenachs (English sparrows) but instead there was this huge flock of dim brown/grey/green not changing feathers yet finches.

I happened to look up toward the pasture and our resident red tailed hawk was lazily swooping over the horse pasture, not bothered much by a pair of bedeviling crows. A speck over the river was at first dismissed as just his mate hanging around hunting half-heartedly, but something made me look closer.

A bald eagle, sailing the sky like he owned it, heading north to the big lakes on a tilt of a wing as if they were just an acre away instead of half way to Canada. I know there are places where eagles are as common as crows, but in Upstate NY they are still a thrill. I was duly thrilled.

The whole day was like that. Pine Siskins and house finches joined the gold finches in emptying the feeders in record time. I didn't have time for the camera, but they kept the hours full of interest.

Finally, at day's end, as the pear tree and the big spruce were making pen and ink drawings against the peach glow of a watercolor sunset, I leaned on a fence post up in back waiting for the woodcock. Milking was done and I wanted a few minutes quiet before going indoors. There are no mosquitoes yet. It isn't quite freezing so such waiting is possible and even pleasant.

Geese were everywhere, racing up and down the valley debating with their haunting bugles where to settle on the river for the night. Although the woodcock didn't show up until this morning's dog walking session when he was competing with a robin for backyard performing rights, it was a sweet and peaceful time. I watched until it was too dark to see their silhouettes against the sky.

Three geese came up from just behind the fence to the heifer pasture and flew so close above me that I ducked. I could hear the air rushing through their feathers as they flew, like someone opening a rustling curtain in the sky.

This is a fine time of year. I like it.

Sick Puppies

That is us. The boss brought this bug home from the farm store along with some nuts and bolts and such. Then he very generously shared. We still have to work and all but we sure ain't doing any more than we have to.

JournoList

There has been a great deal of discussion over whether there exists a left-leaning conspiracy in the main stream and not so main stream media. Check this out and see what you think.

An alternate title might be, Hen Fruit on the Pysiognomy

Killdeers

From a dearth to a dozen in just one day. They were screaming around the lawn when I took the dogs out under the notdawn moon. Wonderful!

*** If you have a minute check out the video of our mockingbird on the View. He isn't quite the virtuoso he will be later in the summer, but he is still pretty cool