Sunday Stills...Numbers

Pi

(And crow pi at that...or maybe pi in the sky)
For more Sunday Stills

Happy Sunday, Mom and Dad

Seeing Red

Got a real surprise yesterday. My Holstein heifer, Bama Breeze, was bred last year to our milking shorthorn bull, Promise, and finally calved. Not only did she have a lovely little heifer calf, but it was bright, carrot red. We have never seen any red in her family before, not a single sign of it, although she is sired by our O-C-E-C Lindy Fred bull, who is out of C Stewart Haven TT Fallon, who was a Triple Threat daughter (he carried black red). Not sure where it came from as the gene for red coat color is recessive and can hide for generations. Anyhow, she was supposed to be sold along with a package deal of several other shorty and Holstein calves, but all that red makes her a keeper.

Springishnenss

Banks of ice pile up along fast-flowing freshets of frigid melt water. Early on they took the form of fancy fans, frozen flat above silently gushing streams, but with the sun comes strength. The water undermines and smashes them, then piles them up for later melting. By mid-afternoon all evidence of their existence will be gone, only to form flat fans again as night comes down.

This is a season for getting up early. In the almost-morning, before the sun began its carving and cutting of lingering snow, the moon tangled itself in the branches of a straggling spruce, pulled free then sailed off toward the silvery horizon.

As early as then the chickadees and cardinal were calling, and not long later the white-breasted nuthatch tuned up with a sound as jungle-like as Tarzan. It is teetering on the edge of migrant time;Alan saw a robin and a bluebird yesterday on Corbin Hill Road, and geese are gathering in dozens, hundreds, soon-to-be thousands. They stop in all the un-gathered corn fields to glean and gobble before heading on for the tundra...or for the banks of the Mohawk, depending. I can't wait until the river thaws enough for them to sleep in the cove across from the house at night. They giggle and whisper all night like a lullaby in wild-part time and my sleep is smoothed by dreams of flying.


And it is good to see the sun.

I Was Wondering What to Write this Morning

And then I read our morning paper. This happened right down the road from here.....May I assure you, any map would tell you that we are nowhere near Canada but....

Liz on Lobby Day

Finding Friends in Far Places

I get great joy from writing Northview Diary and interacting with the people we have met through it. People have done us astonishing kindnesses that have truly changed our lives and shared our triumphs and tragedies. The world has so much more meaning when it is shared....

Now someone very sweet has sent me the loveliest gifts, a beautiful piece of her handiwork and some delightful seeds for summer gardening....(the cheerful cow is actually on a background of snowy white)

Thank you Dani, with all my heart!

NY State Retirement Home for Cats

Referring URL		http://search.aol.co..._it=keyword_rollover
Search Engine		search.aol.com
Search Words		n y state retirement farm for cats
Visit Entry Page		http://northviewdiary.blogspot.com/

How did I ever turn up on this search.....and why on earth were they asking?

Wordless Wednesday

Farm Bureau Lobby Days

Liz's Roylane Jordan Daughter, Gypsy

In Albany today. A chance to sit down with legislators or their staffs and discuss farm issues. I went for the first time well after I turned thirty. Liz is only 23, but she is there today, and this is not her first trip.

So, what do you think? Are we doing our kids a favor raising them to understand the affect of regulation on our lives, to comprehend the issues and to take action by showing up and speaking out, lobbying, attending meetings, joining organizations?

Or would it be a far, far kinder thing to let them stay fat, dumb and happy and let someone else do it?

I don't know. Sometimes it is a misery to be involved in the political side of farming. Downright painful and overwhelming and leaving behind of a feeling of total helplessness.

Sometimes there is great satisfaction. Yesterday a nationally-known figure, whom I won't name, because it is just better not to, used something I sent him in a certain campaign. (This would only be recognizable to me and three or four other people....) He didn't acknowledge me and it was better that he didn't. However, I plumb chortled when I saw it. Yeah! Sometimes you can make a difference, even just a tiny little bitty one.

So is it right to raise your kids to kick upstream like questing trout, despite the pain it might cause them, or to let them drift unknowing in the warm, soft waters of ignorance and uncaring? What do you think?

*****I know we will be missing Liz. With Alan in college just Becky, the boss and I will have all the chores. To me it is worth it though...

Seantor Darrel Aubertine on Dairy and the Farm Labor Bill

If you are interested in dairy and farm issues or especially if you dairy farm in New York, please take a few minutes to watch this video of the State Senate hearing yesterday on the farm labor bill that is being debated in the ag committee. Senator Aubertine clearly understands the problems facing dairy farmers today and he speaks well on them.

As a dairy farmer I am personally very grateful.

Drug Gangs Farming Our Public Land

This makes me just plain mad!

Farm Labor Rally in Albany Today

Don't Plow Us Under....Read about it here...

Dog Days of Winter

Nick

Waiting for a word

Kennel time,

And Chick


Waiting for a seed

Sunday Still....Fruit

For more Sunday Stills.....

Storm Related Disaster

The kids know the first farmer with the collapsed barn in this video. This storm has been truly horrible for a lot of people. Some other friends of theirs that they show cows with have been out of power for days and don't know when they will get it back.

Could This Be Fame?

The National Farmers Organization recognized one of our own this week.
Way to go cow girl!

The Snow Baby

Milking shorthorn heifer calf, by the Select Sires bull, Poker, out of Broadway

Snow Baby

Mockingbirds are tough folks....
click on this one if you want to see some of the heaviest snow I have ever experienced

We got a whopper of a snow storm yesterday. I don't know how else to describe it. Hard snow all day and slashing rain and sleet far into the night. The roads were so bad it took Alan half an hour to get from the school to Ice Cave Road. Church Hill was closed in town. The S-bend on Grovenors Corners Road was impassable without four-wheel-drive and there were police at both ends dealing with the cars that couldn't make it.

I would have hated to be an emergency responder person or a plow driver. They must have all been worn out half to death last night.

So, of course, naturally, inevitably, Broadway decided to finally have her nearly two weeks overdue calf. Of course she waited until night milking.

As soon as we could feel feet we could tell that it was coming breech. When a calf is born hind feet first there is some real urgency in getting it delivered in a timely fashion. When the umbilical cord is pinched or torn when the belly passes through the cow's pelvis, (a normal thing in a frontwards birth), the calf's head is still inside the cow. When it instinctively gasps to breathe it gets a big lung full of amniotic fluid instead of air, as would be the case if it was in the right position. Not a good thing.....

And getting a quick delivery done was made just about impossible by the size of the calf. It was HUGE. So big that after waiting in vain for hours for something to happen, when Liz and I tried to pull it we couldn't. Had to call the boss. Normally the calf's head acts as a wedge, widening out the birth canal and making room for birth to progress. In a breech birth, you have a couple of long skinny legs, which do not serve that purpose, then a huge fat butt, which acts more like a cork than a wedge.

This calf had a fanny the size of a month old calf. It was a lot harder pull than we like to see, but we got it in the end.
Incredibly it is a beautiful red roan heifer. After such a hard birth I didn't expect much, but it is standing up this morning, all spunky and lively. Momma likes it just fine.....and so do we. We will try to get some pics for later, although it is going to be a busy morning dealing with the aftermath of the weather.

Major Snow Storms Real and Imagined

The big news this week in this section of Upstate NY has been the two snow storms....one finished up its work yesterday, leaving us only a couple of inches (which is fine with me) but lambasting some of our close friends terribly.

The roads were appalling, but there was no reason that they should have been. When it is 36 degrees and snows, you will get a nasty frozen slush on the roads...unless they are properly salted that is. Then they should just be wet. Guess budget fun and games has that whole salt thing in abeyance, because Alan had the worst trip home in his college career Tuesday night and there was only an inch or so of wet snow to be found.

Now we are supposed to get another whopper today.

Unless we don't.

The weather oracles seem to have no clue whether there will be lots of rain, lots of snow, not much rain, not much snow, some of both, some of each or a balmy 80 degree day a la Bahamas (I am voting for that).



Meanwhile the kids are trying to get trips to the state Farm Show in Syracuse planned, but with such a shaky, iffy, useless questionable weather forecast they are hesitant to go.

I don't blame them. I would quite like to go myself, but with things as they are these days that ain't happenin'.



Meanwhile, C'mon spring...(or Bahamas vacation) We are ready! (I think I will make out a seed order today........)


****Update: Joated nailed it and it is nailing us!

MoreThanAMillion Dollar Cow

HT to Dairy Herd Management for this pair of great links.

Here is the story of a $1.2 million dollar show cow.

And here is Popular Mechanics breakdown on the ...er....mechanics of a big bucks bovine.

Wordless Wednesday

A Sweet Story of Cows and Neighbors

Rosemoon, of Moon Meadow Farm, was the first blogger to link to Northview, back in August of 05 when this undertaking began. Since then we have followed the story of her family, their farm animals and wonderful gardens with as much interest as if they lived just down the road, rather than in a far southern state, (where in theory it should be warmer than it is here).

Alas our southern neighbors have recently been battered by horrific storms and ice. A little while back their good family milk cow, Maude, fell on the ice and nearly died. You can read all about it on Moon Meadow Farm, and here is another story about it, and how neighbors and friends rallied to help save Maude. Farm people are good people no matter what state they live in.

All through Maude's ordeal, it was frustrating to be so far away and unable to offer tangible help. Every farmer dreads a down cow, it is so hard to deal with a critter weighing upwards of a thousand pounds that can't stand when it needs to. It looks as if this story is going to have a happy ending though and I am glad....

A Kalf Named Cevin

This is the new baby, as promised.

And a few of the other girls

Macro Monday

do click

For more Macro Monday

The Things

Visited the brother and sister in law yesterday
and the wind was darned near blowing this chicken away! Thanks for a great time guys!

Up with which I have to put.....including kids and stubborn cows

Exhibit A) One of them (kid, not cow) practicing calling coyotes while using MY computer...IN THE DINING ROOM. If you have not heard a predator call go here.
After suffering through that, bear in mind that my personal distressed rabbit uses no call, but sounds much more like an actual rabbit than the guy in the video. I thought turkey calls were bad but....

Exhibit B) Large people playing catch with a seventeen-pound bag of dog food...in the kitchen.
Okay it didn't break, but it could have. What was up with that anyhow?

Exhibit C) Cows that won't have their calves and get it over with. I did both last-at-night and first-in-the morning checks and dang, my eyes feel like a sandbar. And no babies yet. Broadway looks as uncomfortable as heck and seems a little off, but she is eating and getting up and down fine...and NOT having that baby despite being more than ten days overdue. Now Magic is bagged up and about ready, Cider is getting there and Armada is going on the night check list...all I can say is ARGGGHHHH,,,

And last night I was just falling asleep when a bunch of coyotes tuned up, really close...close enough to be heard inside our room, which has a lot of plastic on the windows, and over the din from the Thruway, which offers a never-ending counterpoint of humming, roaring and rumbling. The boss jumped out of bed and went out on the landing to see if he could see them, but despite a small moon and a scattering of stars he couldn't see anything but darkness. I suspect they were on the creek between the house and barn. It serves as a highway for everything from the fisher to beavers to foxes and those pesky brush wolves. It was a while before I fell back to sleep....

At least this morning is dawning clear and pretty with the eastern sky peaches and fire against the deep, dark blue of the zenith. The early barn check offered a river of crystal stars pouring across the sky like liquid diamonds.... and no snow or mud to trudge through, just frozen bare dirt. It has been so cold and windy for so long that five degrees felt warm.

I may whine about all this cow and kid stuff, but putting up with it all is always worth it.

I rest my case.....

Sunday Stills...the Letter G

Green

Gold


Gael

For more Sunday Stills.....

Barn Check Bears Fruit

Heifer calf by Lancer. (Whoo hoo) She was walking around the barn when I got there this morning. I gave her to her mama and bedded mama down with fresh bedding and fed her...(and fed Mandy and Blitz and my shorty an extra forkful of hay). She is licking it off now...when it is dry to her satisfaction I will probably give it a calf coat. It is fairly warm out today and it probably doesn't really need one, but anything to give it an extra edge.

Now if the shorty would just have her calf.....and Magic.....

Still More Yellowtail Wine HSUS

Lest you think that you can't make a difference...

And a post about the true grassroots nature of the anti-donation uprising.

Horse Camping Follies

Some years ago, my late, great saddle horse, Magnum, and I participated in a three-day trail ride and camping trip into the Adirondacks. If there was anything you could do wrong horse camping, we probably did it, but we also had a memorable time....trout fishing...horses jumping into the middle of the bridges on Route 30 (in heavy summertime traffic) up along the Sacandaga Reservoir, early bear season and all.

The first night we got permission to sleep across the road from the old Atomic Gas Station up in Mayfield. We went down a tiny access road almost to the lake, picketed the horses along the edge of the road, and quickly collapsed into our sleeping bags, exhausted from a whole day of riding, and the excitement of broken bridles, horses leaping into the center of highway bridges, etc. etc. Back then, there were no boat docks, camps or development there, just a wild little corner of the lake and lots and lots of real big trees. (In fact, when I went down to the edge of the lake early the next morning I saw the first common mergansers I ever saw, a mother and a row of fluffy little grey and red babies.)

Anyhow, we were tired enough to fall deeply asleep, there among the rocks and trees, just a few yards from the swishing of the traffic on Route 30. It is amazing just how well you sleep under those circumstances. A few hours passed.....

Suddenly the night erupted in a cacophony of horsey squeals and an incredible string of vehement oaths.

Seems a couple of guys were on their way somewhere after closing time at the local bars. Having imbibed heavily, they needed to relieve their discomfort so to speak. Thus they parked their truck along the edge of the little access road and walked down over the bank to the woods.

It was dark

They were drunk.

Thus the fellow in the lead didn't see or smell or hear my friend's gigantic chestnut mare until he walked square into her hindquarters.

They didn't linger but hied themselves back to that truck and drove off with screaming tires. I wonder what they thought they ran into down there beside the lake.....

No Link Between Saturated Fat and Heart Disease

Or at least that is what this study says.

Meanwhile I am going to slap some pure, real, golden butter on my toast this morning and relish every bite!

Back to Barn Checks

After a couple weeks of peace after Etrain had that gigantic bull calf, it is back to O'dark-thirty in the morning excursions to the barn to check springers....springers are cows that are close up to calve. Right now there are three, my milking shorthorn, Broadway, a tiny little black Holstein named Magic, and arguably one of the nastiest cows we own, a largely-white daughter of Four-of-a-Kind Eland. We like our Eland daughters as a rule, but the less said of Crescendo the better. Still good or bad, loved or dreaded, they all get the same care and that means barn checks.

I can't tell you how comfy my bed was this morning. Soft, warm, peaceful...well except for the wind howling that is. And you can easily bear raging weather from the depths of fifteen quilts and afghans (well, maybe not fifteen, but you get the idea.) It is not quite as easy when you know you have to go out in it.

But I did. I had been dreaming of shorty calves all night. Milking shorthorns are not the most highly thought of in the dairy cow line...by some folks anyhow. However, we really like them. Our shorty steers grow up quite thick and sturdy and the only heifer we have milked so far, Broadway, gives as much milk as a Holstein. I value my B-Dub as I call her, and even if I didn't duty was calling loud and clear.

Sometimes a nighttime/almost/sorta morning barn check offers an unexpected beauty, clean white snow, sparkling stars, dazzlingly clean air blowing by, any of the other features of the thick of night may be present. This morning the sky was a muddy grey, the snow was worn out from yesterday's traffic and I was afraid of the damn fisher, which has been tracking up the creek every night.

Still I got er done and am back in the house, comfortably accompanied by that wonderful first cup of coffee. Everybody is fine, no calves yet though, so unless they all have them today I will be doing this again tomorrow.

Have a good one!

Things from Florida

A person from the exclusive, two member, best brother in the world clan and his lovely wife sent us oranges this week....the real kind. The ones that taste of sunshine, sharp and tangy and yet fulsomely sweet. They were so welcome. I was literally wishing for fruit, nibbling leaves off the indoor lettuce and wishing for fruit...when the boss came over from the barn with them. (For some reason known only to themselves UPS left them on the milkhouse step.)
Paradise..that is all there is to it.....thanks bro!



And as I was watching the feeder yesterday I realized that among the white-throated and field sparrows there were a couple of white-crowned sparrows. A few minutes later I heard part of their distinctive call. Usually they are here for a week or two in April and then are gone. Nice to see them.

What Farmers Contribute

This is a neat little movie with some figures on what America's farmers produce that astonished me...and I research agriculture every day and read dozens of newsletters each week.

Coopers or Sharp Shinned

You make the call.. Coopers have white at the end of the tail and a big head...this one has no white, but the tail is very worn...head seems smallish....but it is a pretty big bird like a Coopers.


***Verdict is in. Retriever Farm's husband is a biologist and he says sharp shinned. It was picking Sassenachs out of the wild roses today and Alan said the same thing. Thanks everyone.

More yellowtail HSUS

This time from the NY Post. The reaction to the wine company donation to the animals rights organization has gained real traction in the past week or two. I think at least a few folks are finally getting it.

Sunday Stills...Valentines Day

......I want to dedicate this week's Sunday Stills to my incredible parents who will celebrate 59 years of wedded devotion in September. I love you guys! Thanks for the shining example of what love is.

A geode, with crystals, a long ago gift from my parents.
See the heart?
Do click

Details, details

And some gifts from Liz's Valentine and mine, the Stewart's coffee and gumdrops are hers...and my Valentine has been getting up first and making me a cup of coffee and turning on my computer all week....thanks guy.....


For more Sunday Stills....

New York Farmers are Bloggers Too

If you want a glimpse of New York agriculture as seen through the eyes of the people who live it, there is no shortage of options.

You can visit The New Farmer's Blog for some useful thoughts on frugal menu planning and interesting discussion of farm issues.

Or Teri's wonderful Farm Life, the story of a little different style of farming, an often comforting, yet also thought-provoking view of just what its title says.

Or Putting Up With Annie's Crap for a dose of wry humor and real life farm stories

John Bunting's Dairy Blog for in depth insight into milk pricing and the convoluted challenges it poses for the dairy farming economy. Today he writes about the dismissal of the NFDM casem
yet another outrage in a seemingly never ending saga of unfairness.

Liz's BuckinJunction, which is often about rodeo, but is also a journal of farm happenings....and Maqua-Kil Farms her other farm blog

And not least, my lovely sister-in-law, Lisa's story of happenings on their little piece of NY farming, Southview Farm

Red Tailed Hawk

The boss called my attention to this visitor. He was being mobbed by a couple of crows and landed quite near the house, so I grabbed a couple of pics through the window.

Zac Brown Band and PeTA

Read about it here:

"Dear PETA -- Plants are living creatures too . . . Bacon had a mother, but so did Pickle. It takes life to support life -- welcome to the planet," the Grammy-winning group wrote on their Twitter page.

I Got To Do a Guest Post

Over on Breezey's blog, Books! It was a terrific amount of fun to write and I hope you can take a minute and cruise on over.

It is about one of my very favorite books of all time, Suds in Your Eye, by Mary Lasswell.

Potential Change in Milk Cooperative Law

Bill passes to give farmers voice in cooperative voting.

Bloc voting has not worked out at all well for dairy farmers under the cooperative system. It is too easy to sway a handful of representatives to do whatever coop management wants done.

On the other hand here is a piece on the other side of the story. We don't want to throw the baby out with the bathwater, but work certainly needs to be done on the way coops function today.

The national issue and the state one are not identical, but you can get the idea of what is going on with the issue from the two stories.

More Maple Venison

I love to cook using foods that grew on the farm. Our own beef and pork and vegetables from the garden are a given, but there is special value in the wild crops that grow on their own as well. We love wild game, especially this year when it has been our main source of protein, and the maple syrup from the sugar bush on the Northwest corner of the place is incredible. And there are a lot of ways to use it besides drowning pancakes.

Up until this winter we didn't really know how to use venison. Alan usually gets at least one deer. He is a good hunter and a good shot, so the meat is much better than that from an animal that was wounded, chased over five or six miles, and finally dispatched after an incredible amount of stress. Still, it wasn't beef. Stew and steak were about the best we could do and it turned out edible but not wonderful. I always cooked it like beef, which resulted in something that was okay, but not as good as beef.

This winter, the winter of no beef, necessity has become the mother of invention. Thus we are inventing recipes for deer (and goose, grouse and cottontail) because we were sick of eating leathery stuff that tastes like hooves.

One thing we never succeeded with before this year is roast venison. Every way we tried to roast deer before either turned out dry, stringy, and gamy or rare. I will not eat wild game that isn't completely cooked.

Enter the wonders of maple syrup. The Iroquois who lived here before us paired the two in their cooking and they sure knew what they were doing. Once we took a lesson from them and added maple syrup to most of our recipes, venison has become a delight rather than a chore.

The other night I decided to make some roast venison for sandwiches.

First I sauteed chopped onion, garlic, lovage (for which you can substitute celery) and Italian seasoning in a thick pot. When the onions began to soften I tossed a couple of slabs of venison, cut for roasts, on top and gave them a good browning, turning them occasionally with tongs.

When the outside was brown I added a cup of vinegar to the pot and boiled the whole shooting match for a bit. Then I poured maple syrup over the roasts.
Thickly.
Don't be afraid that wild sugar will make your meat taste sweet. It doesn't, but rather adds a smokey, savory flavor that is incredible, something like mild barbecue, but not at all acidy.

Next I added enough water to keep the meat from drying out, maybe halfway up the side of the roasts, tucked the pot tightly closed with foil, and roasted in a 350 degree oven for as long as it took to milk and do chores, (maybe a couple of hours out in the real world).

Most of the water cooked away and we ended up with venison that was as tender as the finest beef, succulent and juicy and amazingly flavorful. We made sandwiches on nice, fat hard rolls, then used the leftovers in a rice casserole, with zucchini from last summer and some really, really good rice we found over at the Dollar General in Fonda. I wish we had cut a lot more roasts instead of the stew and steak we did make. Next year........

The Fisher Returns

This time there were no close encounters of the uncomfortable kind, but there are tracks up the creek between the house and the barn. I think I want to get some batteries for my real bright flashlight and stop going back and forth with the little dim one I normally use around the house.

Is It a Very Strange Love Affair

Or is it hate? (hard to tell with a cat.)

(Especially a warped cat. And Elvis is warped...hates all other cats with a killing passion. We think he is channeling a dog...Maybe an 80-pound pit bull rottie cross with issues.)

Anyhow, I went out in the front hall the other day (it is part of the house that is closed off for winter) to find Mr. Kitty himself glaring at me, with that half/guilty/half go-to-Hell look that cats have, as he mauled this kitty.



He had to sneak upstairs through two doors that are kept closed and get up on the saddle rack in Liz's room to get it.....we are perplexed......how did he pick out a cat from all the stuffed animals available...and what is he thinking? Maybe I don't want to know...

Sunday Stills....Salsa or Hot Sauce

For more Sunday Stills.....

Winter to the South, Robin to the North

Seems as if a lot of this winter's worst weather has hit folks well to the south of us. This weekend's nasty blizzard is no exception. I feel real bad for the people getting nailed, (but I have no desire to have them send our weather back). I think that the storms are actually targeting AlGore, and a lot of innocent people are getting caught in the crossfire.

On the happy side of things, I was trudging to work the other morning, looking down so as not to land on my fanny on the ubiquitous ice, ice and more ice, when what to my wondering ears did appear but the musical chirp of an out of season robin.

I looked up quickly, despite the ice, and there he was in the old elm above the cow stable, red as a fiery sunset, and launching every now and then into about the first three notes of his summer :cheer-up-cheerily song.

It is not all that unusual to see robins up here in the north even in the depths of the cold. A few winter over across the river from us every year and we can generally drive over to Route 5 to see them tearing up the staghorn sumac if we want to. It was sure nice to see this guy right here at the farm though....

Meanwhile, if you are in the path of the big storm, stay in, stay warm....and keep it there.....

****Update, check out the comments! Our Florida friends say the snowbirds are heading back north...no, not the folks in Bermudas and Hawaiian shirts, the robins and blackbirds. Can't wait until the get here!

Did Obama Really Abandon NAIS

Or is it going to spring up again in some other form?

"After concluding our listening tour on the National Animal Identification System in 15 cities across the country, receiving thousands of comments from the public and input from States, Tribal Nations, industry groups, and representatives for small and organic farmers, it is apparent that a new strategy for animal disease traceability is needed," said Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack. "I've decided to revise the prior policy and offer a new approach to animal disease traceability with changes that respond directly to the feedback we heard."

The framework, announced today at the National Association of State Departments of Agriculture (NASDA) Mid-Year meeting, provides the basic tenets of an improved animal disease traceability capability in the United States. USDA's efforts will:

• Only apply to animals moved in interstate commerce;
• Be administered by the States and Tribal Nations to provide more flexibility;
• Encourage the use of lower-cost technology; and
• Be implemented transparently through federal regulations and the full rulemaking process.

Yellow Tail Wine and HSUS

Have you heard about this wine company's $100,000 donation to that anti-agriculture, anti-meat, anti-dairy organization, which has proudly announced ,

"We have no problem with the extinction of domestic animals. They are creations of human selective breeding."

Yep, Yellow Tail gave a boat load of money to HSUS, supposedly to rescue animals, but we all know that it will be used to lobby voters in places like Ohio, where despite farm groups setting up an animal welfare board, they are still putting their own anti-agriculture legislation on the ballot.

Yellow Tail has a Facebook page where farmers, ranchers, and just plain folks are letting them know just how appalled they are. You can too, if you want to.
I did.
You can "un-fan" them after you let them know what you think....of course it is said that they are deleting aggies' comments and/or ignoring or misinterpreting them as in favor of their foolishness, but I guess anybody dumb enough to send money to HSUS is probably too dumb to read real well either.

****I gotta tell you, I am everlastingly in awe of the power of the Internet... Where else could farmers share their opinions in such a powerful manner?

Growing Onions Indoors

Every day Northview gets a number of hits from people looking to grow lettuce and carrots indoors. We have done both with good success and in fact found the task surprisingly easy.

This year we tried a new "in house" crop. Walking onions, or top onions, (those big eclectic critters that perpetuate themselves by growing little onions on their tops and dropping them to root and grow new plants), thrive in a number of large clumps around the yard (will share if you are local and want some).

Thus last spring I planted some in an ordinary dollar store hanging basket in plain dirt and let them take care of themselves all summer. Last fall I brought them in, fed them a little fertilizer and stuck them in the kitchen. No special lighting, they aren't even in a window, no special care. (Although we do dump the coffee grounds in the pot when Liz makes "real" coffee).

They have thrived and we have had all the green onion tops we could use. Last week during the thaw I spotted a handful of last year's top bulbs that had melted up out of the snow, so I started a second basket. They sprouted brisk growth in four days and will be ready to join the ongoing harvest in another week or so.

I have always gone outside whenever the snow was low and chopped off a few stems, but having them flourishing indoors is wonderful. Soup, stew, whatever, it just looks (and tastes) better with little green rings of fresh onion floating on top.

We also added a bucket of parsley to the pot of chives that has been spending summers out and winters in for years. We solved the problems we have had with the parsley bringing in a healthy crop of nasty insect pets like white flies and mealy bugs by letting it freeze good and hard and then bringing it in. Not a bug in sight and lots of tasty green for cooking.



If any of you have other ideas for growing food plants indoors I would sure love to hear them. It is terrific to cook with fresh vegetables and herbs that don't cost the earth because they are out of season.

Milk Fever + Monster Big Calf=

Almost no sleep for anyone.

Etrain started calving at the end of milking last night. Liz spent several hours in the barn waiting for something to happen....

She and Alan gave E a bottle of calcium sometime between ten and eleven. (I went out but by that time the clock was pretty blurry.)

Calf was upside down first time Liz palpated her. Cow thrashed around for a while and got it mostly straightened up. Ralph and Liz finally got the head and legs just right somewhere along towards midnight. Darned cow wouldn't lie down though, which is less than desirable for all concerned.

I suggested everyone adjourn to the house for a little while and turn off the lights so maybe she would lie down. Liz went out maybe fifteen minutes later and the old girl had managed to get herself in trouble. Liz let her out of her stall and pulled the calf...a monstrous bull that looks about six months old already.

Etrain wouldn't even try to get up and was trying to prolapse. Ralph sewed her up and we administered more calcium, oxytocin and an anti-inflammatory drug.

And we waited. She lay there alternately taking great interest in licking her calf and eating hay and drooping down into a frightening stupor. Still wouldn't even attempt to get up.

Around two-thirty they sent me to bed so I could get up and take care of her this AM while they slept in a little.

I didn't figure she was ever going to get up. She looked pretty forlorn, down on calcium and exhausted from trying to have that beast of a calf (which by the way was up and trotting around the barn begging lunch off anybody who was willing about ten minutes after it was born.)

As soon as I got up this morning I dragged myself into my barn clothes and shuffled on over to the barn for maybe the twentieth time in 24 hours. The boss's flashlight, which I stole again, made the new-fallen snow sparkle like diamonds. I didn't care and thought so out loud. E is one of my very, very favorite cows. If you search this blog you will find many pictures of her and stories about her. She is a real pet, which is not the best way in the world to manage cows if you want to hang on to your heart all in one piece. It is an unwritten law known to anyone who keeps livestock that it is never the bad ones that something happens to.

I didn't know what would be waiting for me, but I sure didn't expect what I found. I have no idea how she got where she is, because I don't want to wake anybody up to ask...however, she is lying on the grates over the stable cleaner, yards and yards away from her stall.
Chewing her cud.
She had to have walked there somehow, as her butt is facing down a narrow aisle where there is no possible way anyone could have put her.

At least she isn't dead. And I really, really hope she can walk by herself. Otherwise milking and cleaning stables is going to be real interesting, as stepping over a thirteen-hundred-pound cow filling the entire walkway to overflowing is going to be a bit of a challenge.

Wish me luck...I am expecting another long day.

*****Update: Thanks for all your kind thoughts. Although E is by no means out of the woods yet, Liz reached down a few minutes ago to see if her back end was warm (cold fresh cows are cows likely to be suffering from milk fever) and she jumped to her feet and moseyed away. She needed another bottle of calcium early this morning, so we may have more episodes, but my dear big girl is back in her stall, eating like crazy and mooing and cooing over her gigantic baby boy... I am delighted. I suppose it is a fool's errand to get so attached to a cow, but I sure hope she makes it.

Chicken Rescue

I am sorry. I don't mean to be hardhearted, but this is just nuts.

Chickens Rescued in Drug Raid Headed to Sanctuary. Flying to Indiana and driving a thousand miles in a rental van to rescue 40 scrawny chickens makes about as much sense as.....

"Chickens are delightful animals...." said one volunteer.