Sunday Stills...Food

For more Sunday Stills

Monster Storm This Weekend

Or so the weatherman says. We are not supposed to get much here but wind and small accumulations, but our friends and neighbors to the Northeast may really get nailed. (Deb has a new farm website here...it is pretty darned nice.)

Anyhow, those of us who did chores this morning got in extra bedding and got the first feeding done early and the boss sanded the driveway for the milk truck. (Our hill is wonderful in flood times, but we pay the price in winter when the ice comes. I am glad we have a good guy to bring in sand for sure.) The boss leaves a skid steer bucket load by the back steps for me and I dump on some salt and take care of my walkways over here by the house with it. This year some enterprising soul left a bag of feed grade salt on the porch so I am using that.

It has been so cold already this season that the guys have stapled plastic up over windows we never have covered before. It certainly helps with the indoor temperature.

Lately I have been brushing my old cow Beausoleil after milking. She is such a sweet old thing....if she had her way I would just stand in her stall and brush her maybe twenty hours a day. Alas I am only good for a few minutes worth, but she and I are pretty good friends just the same. There isn't a drug on the market better for stress than brushing a nice old cow.
Stay warm!

*****If you get a chance today, go see Linda. She has some REAL cowboy poetry that will make you glad you are warm and cozy.

2010

Sometimes a piece of yarn is a mighty fine thing

Good morning all, and Happy New Year. Not much to say yet, beyond those things.....
I hope for all of you and for our nation and our struggling world that this just-born year with the neat name...twenty-ten, I like that...will be better, kinder, sweeter in the savoring, than this one just past was.

Good things happened last year though, in between the struggles and problems. Mom made it through chemo and is her wonderful self again...and maybe it is good that all of us learned to appreciate just how wonderful that self always has been. She is such an enthusiastic, upbeat, happy and loving person, always able to see and enjoy the bright side of every single thing in life. We have been so darned lucky to have her as our mom all those years, anchoring, negotiating peace and making really good soup. Nowadays, I at least, know just how grateful I need to be for that.

Brotherly peace and love found our family this year in so many ways...... I will be grateful for that forever I expect. I wish that my whole life I had appreciated the folks in my family. They sure were and are good folks.

Scrolling back through the photos here on Northview this past week in the course of writing my year end retrospective for the Farm Side, I got to see and remember just a little of the amazing beauty that was put on parade for us day in and day out. I hope this upcoming year I remember to stop and savor all that a little more, in between worrying about bills and breakdowns.

Thanks for visiting! Best wishes to every one of you from all of us at Northview Farm

Happy New Year!

Fireworks for you!

Outdoors

Smiling up at the eastern moon
A sky the color of butternut smoke
Geese on the river
Talking in tongues
And the chores in the rear view mirror.
Nothing more to say and nothing more to ask for....a good night....

Oh, wait, it was certainly a fancy moon, what with the way it was shining through those thin clouds of ice and snow and glowing brighter than the ball in Times Square, but who knew that it was a blue moon too? The boss's dear aunt, who is in her nineties but sharp as a tack and sweet as sugar, called to remind him. I was glad....sometimes you need to look at the moon.

Cold With Possible Irruptives

Yep, it's winter. Not my favorite season. Barn has flooded three times this week because of sump pump failure.

Hope they got that fixed finally. I am sure the men hope so more than I do, as they are the ones who have to pump water out of one gutter and into the other...Alan got kicked pretty good working behind one cow named Baha. Don't know what has gotten into her lately but she sure has turned miserable. Liz got kicked too, in the knee just like Al.

What is up with these cows? Really I think they just don't like this kind of weather either. They are inside a fairly warm barn and have what they need to eat brought to them, but it is still probably not as comfortable as when it is say, fifty degrees, which our milk inspector says is a cow's favorite temperature (I lean towards 70 myself.)

Anyhow I am working at grinning and bearing it, as there are plenty of people who are experiencing much worse weather than we are....it is winter after all.

The cold sure does bring in the birds. I think I saw a red poll day before yesterday when I was on the phone with the milk inspector (discussing Liz's upcoming trip to Iowa). I didn't have my glasses on so I am not going to be betting on it yet....but I think so.

I won't lie. I am real nervous about that trip. It is an honor to be chosen to represent the entire Northeast region of the National Farmers Organization and I am excited for Liz. What an opportunity!

On the other hand, guess where she has to change planes.
And January is winter there too, with all sorts of accompanying weather possibilities. I will be glad when it is done and she is home and regaling us with stories of all the goings on.

Well, time to milk the cows and then polish up my own year in review essay for this week's Farm Side. Stay warm if you can.

Horses for Lisa

Our bird counting peregrinations take us past a pretty horse farm with neatly trimmed barns and long, white fences....and horses, beautiful, playful horses.

These Percherons were playing, leaping and rearing and spraying snow everywhere, like a beer commercial or some other exciting thing. Alas, this was the best I could do....






The sunset was pretty cool too.

Our Bird Count Totals, Day of the Jay

No "ooh-ah" birds this year, although I guess team Mayfield South counted the only horned larks. There was a neat little flock of them feeding in the up and down way they have near a horse pasture we passed.

We saw:

1 sharp-shinned hawk
7 Red-tailed hawks
1 Unidentified hawk species...see below




4 Downy woodpeckers
1 Hairy woodpecker
6 White-breasted nuthatches

6 American goldfinches
1 House finch
1 Northern cardinal

1 Mallard duck
4 Unidentified duck species...probably more mallards, but they got behind a tree in high speed flight
134 Rock pigeons

7 Ring-billed gulls
167 Starlings
14 Tufted titmice

157 Common crows
19 Dark-eyed juncos
14 House sparrows (Sassenachs)

4 Tree sparrows
137 Black-capped chickadees
55 Mourning doves

24 American Turkeys
25 horned larks
And 97 Blue Jays

I doubt that 97 is the highest count we have had with jays, but it is certainly the most in a while. They were everywhere in flocks of as many as 25 at a time. Guess they have recovered from West Nile and are having a good year.

It was certainly a weird day. We have been counting MFS for a very long time, probably over twenty years. In that much time you learn where the birds are likely to be, droves of chickadees on Maloney Road, lots of everything good on Ashler Road if it is passable, etc. Yesterday, the good spots were virtually all bereft of birds. Instead we found them in weird places, like a large mixed feeding flock in the parking lot of a tractor trailer place where we have never seen a single bird before. Strange...also strange is not seeing a single Canada goose. There are still hundreds of them down here on the river just a few miles from our territory.

As always it is fun to get out with the family and count the birds. The brothers and I are the second generation to work this territory and we all three of us have kids that will probably keep up the tradition in the future. I for one am grateful for those sharp young eyes when they ride out with us.

Dave Barry

Year in Review

HT to Jeffro, whom I thank with much gratefulness.

It's better not to hike the Appalachian trail....just sayin'....

Help! What Hawk?

Sunday Stills...Odds and Ends

For more Sunday Stills....

Christmas Bird Count Today

The forecast is very mixed, with the potential for rain, freezing rain, flurries or sun...
or even all of the above. Here's hoping it is halfway decent and that we see the great blue heron that was just down the road from the folks' house on Thursday.

Had Christmas with the family yesterday and had the best time. There is just nothing like folks...and your own folks are the bestest folks hands down.

Hope you all had a great Christmas...will report on the bird count later.

A Quiet Christmas

With partying today...weather permitting.....

Merry Christmas from Northview Farm

We thank you all for making our Christmas so much more and are all wishing you much love and joy ....... friends and family together in heart no matter how great the distance may be.

Pizza, Pizza, Pizza

Liz makes the dough (she also took the pic above)

I make the sauce.

Here is the recipe for the dough. Liz puts in more garlic and honey and leaves out the onion powder.

There is a Ball Joint

On my kitchen table. It looks sort of like a heavy, black, shower head, but is proving much more troublesome to add and subtract from a certain Dodge pick up truck.

Yesterday a friend of the kids' spent his whole day helping in the attempt to remove the old one so that this new one could be installed. So far with small success. (Until he is better paid, I fed him...cookies...sweet and sour maple venison as per the earlier recipe, homemade applesauce and a pile of potatoes....best I can do....we are in the process of inventing a cookie recipe these days. We started out with the three-ingredient peanut butter cookie recipe given to us by a dearly beloved, really nice family member, who is at least as sweet as his cookies, and added oatmeal one time...chocolate chips the next...and yesterday a handful of coconut.....not bad so far. I'm thinking raisins for the next experiment.)


Here's to a better day today.

PS to all you kindly commenters....any time, any time at all..we do food fairly well and there is certainly plenty of the other side of the equation as well.

The Things You See

In a simple farm kitchen

DELAP Payments Processed Yesterday

I spoke to a friend at the local USDA office yesterday (she was kind enough to call me so I could put it in the Farm Side) and she said that they had processed these payments. They will be a welcome stocking stuffer (so to speak) for the nation's dairy farmers. The payments were calculated based on milk production between February and July of this year. This number will be doubled and paid at a rate of thirty-two cents per hundredweight.

Although there is no question that this is more than welcome, milk prices were $5.55 lower for that same hundredweight of milk than last year, meaning that hauling out of this hole will be a long process. (I heard estimates at a milk cooperative meeting I attended that said that it will take three years of twenty-dollar milk to even pull most farms even.) Prices have shown some slow up-ticking over the past two months, with class 3 hitting around $14.85 for December milk, which well above the low for the year. However, the all milk price for the year, according to Bob Cropp, will be.$12.75, still far below the cost of production.

Here's hoping the national and world economies recover enough over the next few months that folks can afford dairy products again....and that the big guys pay attention to the anti-trust investigations that are occurring and let some of their record profits trickle down to the folks who produce the products they peddle.

Macro Monday

With the same theme as last week's Sunday Stills, which I missed...this is one of my favorite Christmas ornaments and one of only four on the tree...so far...this one stays downstairs on the China closet door year round as I can't bear to put it away.

For more Macro Monday...

Thank You

Called brother and sister in law this AM to talk about some hay they are bringing us for bedding for the bossies. Something Lisa told me then has us all full of wonder and amazing joy (and kind of choked up also). Someone, we are not to know who....but someone that we have "met" here at Northview Diary...and in their home as well I'm sure.... somewhere away from here, but close in the way of hearts....bought us eleven more bales of haylage for the cows.

I am afraid that I don't know how to say thank you well enough. Actually, I barely know what to say at all....I am so overwhelmed by such an incredible kindness. The hay Matt and Lisa brought us during that terrible storm last week already got the cows up two hundred pounds of milk. a pick up (and we even haven't fed three bales yet) which sure is moving in the right direction. They love it and jump right up and start mooing as soon as we start to feed it. It means a lot to us that they cared to bring it to us....We are so lucky in the people around us and the people we have met here.

We have come to care for our blog friends as if they were family in a way...as if they lived next door, or down the street or across the river. We talk about their lives when we are working in the barn....their trials and joys...grand kids, horses, dogs and gardens...snow storms and sunshine, a world of wonderful folks at our fingertips. Politics and doctor visits. Snow storms and sunny Florida beaches....all enrich the fabric of our daily lives.

They...or perhaps I should say you...are an important part of our world. One of the best parts. I can never wait to get on the computer when I come in to see who has said what or what is going on. You are great folks and I am grateful for you.

This is more than we could ever have imagined though...

To the person who bought us these bales, thank you, God bless you, we are more grateful than I know how to tell you...Your caring means the world to us this Christmas, here's hoping you and yours have a wonderful one as well.

An External Combustion Engine

Is not a thing to be wished for.




And Tupper Lake is a long way from home.

***We made it home all right, but it was a trip from Hell. Becky is home to stay and I am more thankful than you could possible imagine that I never have to make that trip again...especially with a car that keeps catching on fire whenever you stop.

Sweet and Sour Maple Venison

Compile in a good heavy pan:

4T cooking oil
2T butter
1 large coarsely chopped onion
1 large clove garlic finely chopped
* Optional: a little lovage if you have it/celery if you don't

Saute until onions begin to turn clear

Add:

A couple of pounds of venison stew meat

Saute until brown

Toss in:

Italian seasoning to taste
*Optional: A little more garlic
* Optional: A tiny pinch of salt

Dump on:

1/4 C vinegar
1/4 C maple syrup
1/4 C Ketchup

When all ingredients are nice and brown and bubbly and the house begins to smell really, really good,

Add:

Two or three cups of water.

Seal the pot tightly with foil or a good, tight-fitting lid, and cook in a 325 degree oven until the meat is fork tender and succulent.

Around here that is for about as long as milking and chores take.
Anywhere normal it would probably be around 2 1/2-3 hours, more or less. Take care that it doesn't cook dry as the "gravy" is the best part.

Serve over rice or potatoes.

****This recipe is a happy accident I came up with the other day while working on 1001 ways to cook venison when your freezer is full of deers and you are out of beef. We really liked it and hope you will too.

Hmmmmm

DELAP Payments Being Sent

According to NY Farm Bureau USDA has said that payments will be mailed by December 24th.


Below is an earlier press release on the topic.

USDA Announces New Dairy Economic Loss Assistance Payment Program to Provide Financial Relief to Struggling Dairy Producers

WASHINGTON, Dec. 17, 2009 - Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack today announced the implementation of the new Dairy Economic Loss Assistance Payment (DELAP) program. The 2010 Agricultural Appropriations Bill authorized $290 million for loss assistance payments to eligible dairy producers.

"Through this program, eligible dairy producers will receive economic assistance that will help stabilize their operations during these tough economic times," said Vilsack. "I have personally heard from hundreds of struggling dairy farmers from all across our country who have been hit hard by declining prices over the past year, and now, we'll be able to offer them help."

Milk prices declined substantially through early-to-mid-2009, with the national price for milk averaging $16.80 per hundredweight (cwt.) in the fourth quarter of 2008 and averaging $12.23 per cwt. in the first quarter of 2009, a 27-percent decline. On average, the price U.S. dairy producers received for milk marketed in the summer of 2009 was about half of what it cost them to produce milk.

"The dedicated employees of the Farm Service Agency deserve a great deal of credit for acting quickly to provide this critical assistance to America's dairy farmers," said Jim Miller, Under Secretary of USDA Farm and Foreign Agricultural Services.

Eligible producers will receive a one-time direct payment based on the amount of milk both produced and commercially marketed by their operation during the months of February through July 2009. Production information from these months will be used to estimate a full year's production for an operation to calculate the payments, using a 6-million pound per dairy operation limit.

Dairy producers who have production records at the USDA Farm Service Agency (FSA) county office because they participated in another FSA dairy program do not need to apply for the program. FSA will use existing production records for February through July 2009 to calculate and issue their payments.

Producers who have not provided production data for those months to FSA, and have not already been contacted by FSA to provide such data, have 30 days, until Jan. 19, 2010, to apply. FSA officials estimate that more than 95 percent of eligible producers will receive benefits without having to fill out a new application.

A national per hundred weight payment rate will be determined by dividing the available funding of $290 million, less a reserve established by FSA, divided by the total pounds of eligible milk production approved for payment. Based on current information, FSA estimates that 875 million cwt. of milk production will be eligible for payment. The reserve will cover new applicants and appeals. The expected payment rate is approximately $0.32 per cwt.

To be eligible for DELAP, the dairy producer and the dairy operation in which the producer has a share:

• Must have produced milk in the United States and marketed milk commercially at any time from February through July 2009;
• Must have milk production data for those months;
• Must certify to all milk production produced and marketed by the dairy operation during that time.

Also, any dairy producer who has an annual average adjusted gross nonfarm income of more than $500,000 for calendar years 2006 through 2008 is not eligible for DELAP.

For more information and eligibility requirements on the new DELAP program, please visit your local FSA county office or www.fsa.usda.gov.

Better

Got nuttin' today. It is 8 degrees and sunny. The world is coated in an icy shield about three inches thick. Went back to wearing old sneakers to work as it is impossible to walk in hard plastic. It is good to see the sun shine just the same.

However, other folks have done better than I and have had interesting things to say this past week...

Liz has a good solid list that will help you know whether or not you are a dairy farmer.

Willow Witch has a story that will bring tears to your eyes and shivers up your spine.

Lisa is finishing up the barn loft.

Wish Linda a happy blogoversary.

If you drove one of those wonderful muscle cars...or just wish you had, go see Jeffro and dream of joys gone by.

Tomorrow Alan and I must go to Potsdam to bring Becky home....wonder what the Dacks will have to show us this time.

A Real Farm Take on FarmVille

This gave me a chuckle, but it is quite true. The farming games are a lot of fun and I play them too, but they are pretty far removed from reality (which is fine...they are games after all.)

Hope and Change

The dairy industry is changing rapidly these days, and in fact many days I feel as if it is changing right out from under us. I put a post up here on the Dairy Economic Loss Assistance Payment Program or DELAP a couple weeks ago, with a link to what was known at that time about this bail out for desperate farmers.

I soon started getting a few hits a day as people looked for news on the much needed assistance program. And since that day no more information has emerged...or not that anyone can find...and each day I get more and more hits from all over the country as farmers try to find out what is going on with it.

With all this change there seems to be little room for hope. Even if the government gets its payment into the hands of farmers really soon nobody is making enough to pay the bills....milk costs around seventeen bucks to produce and we have been getting ten all year. The price is up to thirteen now, but that isn't going very far to make up all the losses. We are all discouraged and grateful for any shred of good news that might come our way.

Yesterday we had another lousy day with a visit from our milk inspector to deal with some equipment malfunction that was damaging our milk quality. We pride ourselves on receiving quality premiums every month so that was a blow.

After a long day of coping with that and all the usual other stuff I stood outside the milkhouse door with Alan during the last few minutes of chores. I can't remember just why we were standing there, but we were right beside my shorthorn, Broadway's, stall.

I glanced over and noticed a curious bulge waxing and waning along her right flank. She is a bit of a skittish young lady so I had to be very slow and careful to lay my hand there (she milks off the other side and doesn't worry about what I do over there). I stroked the wiggly bulge. It thumped at me and slid around under her thick, red skin. Every touch of my hand elicited a more than equal and opposite push or shove in the other direction.

Then I had Alan put his hand there and pet her side a bit. You should have seen him grin as the bulge danced against his hand. At that point, big old BW started swatting at us with her tail so we stopped bothering her, but it is nice to know that there is a lively calf in there waiting to be born next February.

Hope. It is still there I guess, in the future, and in the next generation of cattle with which we will mingle our lives and dreams. I hope B-Dub, as I call her, has the calf all right....don't care if it is a bull or heifer; we will keep it either way as we need a service sire for heifers. Hope we are still doing this when she has it and haven't had to sell them to pay the folks to whom we owe money....

Milk Truck Roll Over

Right across the river. The boss's dear aunt heard about it on her scanner and gave us a call. Not our truck and no one hurt, but much excitement in the little village of Fonda.

Wordless Wednesday

Looking Forward

Becky will be coming home this week. I am looking forward to it more than you would believe. It just can't come soon enough.

Maybe Facebook Likes Me After All

Check it out here

"We’re all big fans of strong bones at Facebook and we will soon revise our promotions guidelines to lift the complete ban on dairy and simply prohibit giving dairy away as a prize."

"

What Do You Give

BEFORE the storm yesterday

The girl who has everything....except enough feed to go through the winter?

It has been such a bad year here. The boss was still haying two weeks ago as we had rain almost continuously since last May....and still there isn't enough out there in the ag bags...now we have snow and there will be no more.

So my dear younger brother and his kind wife bought...and delivered...eleven huge bales of baleage for us yesterday. It was snowing and then freezing, soaking rain, and Lisa is sick with a nasty cold...but they still worked out in the weather to get that feed to us. They also took the time to drive back home...and they don't live close by any means...to pick up Matt's homemade, but really cool three-point-hitch fork lift attachment when our skid steer proved unequal to the task of unloading. So Alan got them off Matt's friend's trailer after a while....

Last night Liz and Alan and I tore open a bale and unwound it and fed a couple of wheelbarrows to the girls.

They devoured it. I went around after milking and fed an armful to each of the high producers and they devoured that too.
I was happy to know that they had that good stuff to fill them up.

Thanks guys! What you did was well and above and beyond the call of duty. I am very thankful and so are our ladies. That went right to the top of the list of the best Christmas presents ever!

Sunday Stills...Technology

For more Sunday Stills....

Went Looking For This

For you and for me too....Yeah, it's just a dandelion, but wouldn't it look good right now? Especially if it was surrounded by knee high green grass? Balmy spring breezes, birds singing......

I know I'm whiny, but it sure is cold. The guys worked three hours yesterday fixing the reverse curve on the stable cleaner, not a fun job in the best of weather, but brutal when it is so cold with the wind a'howlin;. It meant they never got in to sit down for more than maybe fifteen or twenty minutes all day. The heifers are in so they are another job to be added to the list. Never got the last field of corn in, although maybe we will get a short thaw so they can get it.

Anyhow Liz made them some venison and rice for a really late lunch (like maybe 4PM) and then made us all grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup for supper after chores (we usually get in around 8). That meal is not exactly punishment, what with her homemade bread and the award winning cheese the milk coop gave us for Christmas....and even a cup of humble Campbell's tomato soup is pretty darned good with a little rice thrown in and some Italian seasoning. Pretty welcome when you are cold all the time...

Hope you are all staying nice and warm.....me, I am wearing so many clothes that if I fall down on that relentless ice out there I am just going to roll away...so if you don't hear from me, check the bottom of the hill.

More Melamine in Chinese Dairy Products

Story here

And it appears that suing someone who causes you harm is a bit harder there than here.....

Facebook Hates Me

After all the time I waste playing there, making money for them.

Below are some of the site's rules, which are posted here

Section 2. Prohibitions

You may not publicize or administer a promotion on Facebook if:

2.1 The promotion is open or marketed to individuals who are under the age of 18;

2.2 The promotion is open to individuals who reside in a country embargoed by the United States;

2.3 The promotion, if a sweepstakes, is open to individuals residing in Belgium, Norway, Sweden, or India;

2.4 The promotion’s objective is to promote any of the following product categories: gambling, tobacco, dairy, firearms, prescription drugs, or gasoline;

2.5 The prize or any part of the prize includes alcohol, tobacco, dairy, firearms, or prescription drugs; or

2.6 The promotion is a sweepstakes that conditions entry upon the purchase of a product, completion of a lengthy task, or other form of consideration.

I cannot imagine why dairy products would be classified under the same heading as gasoline and gambling....well, I suppose gasoline is sold by the gallon too, but still. They don't ban other drinks

I am not pleased with them! I won't say that I am going to quit playing Mafia Wars but....

I Would Love Your Thoughts

On this strange story: Men Spray Paint Cows.

Hey, Copenhagen

Gotcher Global Warming right here. Yeah, as we read about naturally occurring gasses, (essential for all life on earth.. like the CO2 that keeps all the plants we depend on for...well for everything...alive and thriving)..... being regulated by a greedy bunch of money-grubbing hypocrites, all in the name of Anthropogenic Global Warming (try typing that before you have finished your first cup of coffee) it is not warming here. We have had a cold, miserable summer. One of the coldest Octobers on record. November was warmish, but alas it is over.

Today NY has a storm. It is not in any way, shape, or form a warming storm. (Maybe we are just not global enough.) Traffic, what there is of it, has slowed to a crawl, even down on the usually speedy Thruway. As I lay under about six covers, including three knitted afghans, this too darned early morning, thinking about getting up....but procrastinating, even though it is milk tanker day, the room was aglow with reflected light. Um....unless there is a really big moon, and right now the moon is smalling down pretty quickly, that means lotsa snow. I came downstairs and plugged in the coffee maker...Houston...we still have power. However, it didn't look too pleasant down across the river. The sky is pink from the lights in town bouncing off a curtain of snow. It is frigid.

And indeed Gael would not go out to tend to Mother Nature. Just stood on the porch shivering and glaring at me...well, alright, but you'll be sorry later.

Yeah, we gotcher Global Warming...it is falling all over the ground and piling up on the trucks and fences.

It is also here, where my good friend Earl needs a Zamboni for his kitty dish

And here, where one of our lovely Lindas has been without power and is freezing at around 35 below in this "warmest decade on record" weather

And here, where our other delightful Linda is also experiencing something less than toasty, sunny and warming

And here, where if you click on the picture of Loveland Pass, as seen through the window of a tractor trailer, your heart will probably leap right out of your chest like mine did...well almost....seriously, hop over there and click on that picture...

They have Global Warming down in North Carolina too.
Pennsylvania
Knoxville Tennessee
SoDak Maine

If that nasty little conference in Denmark got to experience a big, fat, weeklong blizzard it would be poetic justice, which is about the only kind we are likely to see within ten thousand miles of it.

Big Storm

Predicted for tomorrow. Not sure which thing to do first to get ready. Hmmmm

Stop Exhaling

Stop now!

Frosting...no Pumpkins

Saturday we had a weird little storm. It snowed most of the afternoon with an inch or two of accumulation. What was odd was that it stuck to everything.
And stayed.





On Sunday morning it was still glued in place on every tree and wire. That is a very unusual phenomenon. Normally you can expect either wind or rain when the snow sticks like that and it usually arrives very quickly after the end of the snow.





Although I am no fan of winter, it was amazing to look out the big windows Saturday evening and see the trees over in the town across the river, coated in white and lit up by the street lights. It may be trite to say it but it looked like a Christmas card.
PS, this post was written and scheduled before I read about the accident below.

I Heard This Happening

Weezer tour bus crashes. Heard a lot of sirens and all this morning early. Had no idea what was going on and I had forgotten it until I read the news.

Not music I listen to, but Alan likes them. Glad the injuries weren't serious.

Here is an update from the band website.

Exclusively for Dickiebo

Sunday Stills...Pets

This is an oldie, but a real favorite of mine. I had a picture of the cat all ready to go but he is on a certain list that precludes me glorifying him just now...the little stinker.

Top pic is Liz and Foolish. Foolish is a milk cow now but still pretty gentle.

And here is that rare creature....hardly ever seen...a border collie hibernating. Dear old Gael (who has NEVER bitten me)...in her usual pose this time of year. She likes snow about as much as I do...not much that is....



For more Sunday Stills.....

What Not To Do

If your gentle, amazingly well-behaved house cat goes tearing out the door to fight with a barn cat when you open it to let the dog in..(he has never, never even tried to go outdoors before.....)

Well, the thing not to do is to go out and try to get him back. The &^%^^&& cats rolled right across my leg, biting and clawing. I finally had to separate them with a canoe paddle.

So I am all clawed up.
Nasty. Painful.
I shoulda left the little stinker out there.

Are You a Redneck If.....

You bring in the little solar-charged yard lights that you got for your birthday?

And put them in the houseplants in the big front windows?

Kinda like all season Christmas lights....

Really economical ones........

This Oughta Raise Your Eyebrows

John Bunting had this today:

Organic Foods Made in China

Oh, yay. I don't see much point in organic myself (sacrilege I know, but there it is). However, with all the fine quality control that particular nation exerts over its dairy products and food ingredients, I can just imagine what their organic standards are like. I think if you pay a higher price for a premium product you probably ought to have some assurance that you are actually getting it. Doesn't seem to be the case here.

Oh, and it is pouring this morning, torrential, all-consuming, all-soaking downpours. I haven't even had the doggies out yet. And dag nab it, the boss just fixed the driveway the day before yesterday after the last set of monsoons took it out. I know even though the sun isn't up yet that it is gone again.

Nippy

The musical brother and me at that family get together a while back
Photo shamelessly stolen from niece's Facebook

Gettin' nippy here in the North Country. All was frosted this morning, with the heifers blowing smoke rings as they huddled against the south wall of the barn soaking up thin, early sunlight.

Sure pretty like that. When it is sharp and cold you can see for miles and hear the geese calling about that far too. The moon was so bright on its way down this morning that you could see that it was not just a round, flat disc in the sky, but rather a big, fat, sphere. Wish I had had time to go back in for the camera, but the cows were waiting, along with Liz who went out early to get a good start on the day.

Missed some amazing shots on the trip to take Becky back last Sunday as well. The mountains around Indian Lake were covered with a thin coat of wet, icy snow. It was grey and cloudy, but narrow spotlights of sun brought them into blazing focus, with threads of fog flowing off them and merging with fuzzy-edged snow clouds like chilly silver. On the way home it was actually snowing up there and it was like a curtain going up and down as they came briefly into view and than vanished in whirling clouds. The mountains never disappoint us it seems, although we still haven't seen a moose. We keep staring into every bog and swamp and tamarack-spiked little black lake, but alas no alces alces to be seen.

DELAP

Dairy Economic Loss Assistance Payment Program

Some fairly fresh info HERE.

And HERE is some PDF governmentese on the situation. There is real desperation in the dairy world despite some minor (but welcome) increases in the farmgate milk price.

If I Haven't Had Much to Say

Things have been so crazy here..... Just no time to get it all down. Been fighting for three months with the ISP/cable/phone company over some incorrect billing they perpetrated on us. Got to the point of contacting the Attorney General and the Public Service Commission over that situation.

They turned off all our stuff Sunday, which was nasty.....thank God Liz has a cell phone... I guess that situation may be, possibly, could be, I hope, I hope, resolved now. I would not be exaggerating if I told you that in the past three months I have spent at least five hours on hold and been hung up on disconnected more times than I can count. Had I not carefully written down everything that was promised to me when we first took the deal to get the service with the speedy birdie logo, and logged the time, date, content, and the name of the employee I was being bamboozled by for every one of the multitudinous, increasing acrimonious calls I made, I would have been left paying twenty bucks more a month than I was promised.....and as far as that goes I still don't actually have a corrected bill in my hand....

We took Becky back to Potsdam to finish out the semester Sunday. Bringing her home and back took two whole days. I own a run down little cabin in the Adirondacks, no power or running water and not on any lake or anything...just a little shanty stuck in the woods. Alan and I both had that odd tingly, spidey sense that we should visit on the way home Sunday. So we did.

The cabin isn't really ON the way home as far as that goes, but we wanted some balsam fir boughs and there are firs there so....we took the long, winding, miserable run across the Bleeker Benson road and stopped in.

Good thing we did. Somebody had broken out one of the big back windows to get inside. Alan climbed in too as we didn't have the keys with us. No sign of damage and nothing missing that he saw, which is amazing. It has been burglarized before and usually the results are somewhat different.

Have I ever told you about the time thieves broke in and stole all the light bulbs and every other thing that wasn't nailed down? They also took one of those huge, cabinet style record player, stereo, radio sets that were popular along about in the late seventies. I am talking FURNITURE here. I'll bet it weighed as much as a Volkswagen. It was up a cramped and nervous-making narrow little open stairway, in the loft style upstairs bedroom. We would have moved it out ourselves but for the daunting thought of getting it down those stairs.

That and the fact that it hadn't worked in years.
(Thanks guys for getting it out of there for us.)

This time Alan picked up a few things that were lying around that had been left behind, including a nice old iron frying pan, which I will use to cook out at camp (Pecks that is) next summer. He will have to get back up there with his buddy and board up the broken window....oh, and we did get some fir boughs.

More Horses in Strange Places

Sunday Stills....the Letter T

Trotting

For more Sunday Stills

Linkie

If you are reader who links to me...and I don't link to you...and you would like me to link to you, please leave me a note in the comments and I will happily rectify that situation.
Thanks

In Retrospect

This is about how I felt after dinner yesterday.

I hope you all had as good a time as you could yesterday, with family, friends and a fine festival of foodiness.

And thankfulness.

We did...we have so much to be thankful for and yesterday was no exception. Thanks go to Liz for cooking a fabulous feast all by herself. How many 23-year-olds can cook and serve an entire traditional Thanksgiving dinner? Six pies...including a mince pie just for me because I am the only one who likes it. I will freeze individual slices and have pie for a long time to come....plus peach for Alan and apple and pumpkin for everybody. And she got the dressing just right and made a lot of it, without frying the microwave like I did a couple of years ago. The turkey was just right too....and the potatoes and every other thing as well. She worked at it for three days.....I am so proud of her....and it all was so very good.

I am thankful that our Breezey 375 is home. It feels complete and right here now. And she is a great help in so many ways. We missed her a lot. It is going to be miserable to take her back on Sunday.... Can't wait for the next break.

And I am thankful that those &%#** Jersey heifers that jumped the fence didn't get any farther than the 30-acre lot before Alan and his friend happened upon them while out hunting and brought them back in.

I am also thankful that the friend, who lost his very expensive cell phone way up in back....way, way, way up in back under the power lines....was able to find it, after his dad gave him a firmly worded ultimatum on that topic. (Along the lines of get back there and look for it and don't come home without it. lol) They looked and looked (finding in the course of the search my gun sling, which Alan lost a couple of deer hunts ago) and finally stopped to talk. Alan asked the friend something about looking for the phone, the esteemed young friend looked down between his feet...right where he was standing...and there it was! I suspect he was even more thankful that I was.

We had a wonderful day yesterday...food, family, friends and peaceful contentment. (Not to mention Sunday chair naps for the old folks.) Today it is back to sweating the finances and trying to do right...but the interlude was fine and I liked it.

Wishing

All of our friends and family, across the river,

across the country, around the world and around our home town

a very Happy Thanksgiving.

One of the things we are most thankful for is all of you.

Have a great day.