C'mon along if you do. Alan needs to get some grass for the calves in the barn and he said we could ride along if we want to.
The grass is right up in the Thirty-Acre Lot, but we will go way back behind Seven County Hill, all the way to the back of the place just to see what we can see.
Wow, there are more bobolinks this year than I have ever seen before. There must be a dozen in this field alone.
And Red-winged black birds of course.
One of my favorite views looking north from the Sixty-Acre Lot
Some ground planted to sorghum/Sudan grass. it is just coming up, although you can't see it here
The Hickory Tree, for which Hickory Tree Field is named
Good thing the cows like dandelions. Case 930 the mowing trator
Here in the Northeast, in spring, the landscape runs to trees....lots and lots of trees. This is the view looking north from the sitting porch, the neighbor's Norway Spruce and some Northern sky in the evening.
As Alan was leaving the house yesterday on the way to an afternoon of that most sought after, beloved and popular farm job, picking stone, I asked him to take a minute to remove the plastic covering from the stained glass doors. I am too short to make a good job of it and I wanted to let the spring breezes have a free romp through the house.
I was out hoeing onions near the back door when he returned.
"Well, that was an adventure," he said, while wiping off his arm.
"What happened? Bees?"
"No I pulled the plastic down and a bird landed on my arm and pooped all over me."
"Starling?"
"No, baby robin...they have a nest on the pillar. I put it back up there"
The little darling stayed all day, chirping so sweetly. Such marvelous music from a barely fledged infant. Alas it was gone this morning, but I think the folks were caring for it down in the lilac bushes.
It joins a full complement of spring birds, except my beloved house wrens. Haven't seen or heard a one yet. But we have: Lotsa robins, starlings, catbirds, common yellow throat, yellow warbler, phoebes, willow flycatcher, white-breasted nuthatch, chickadees, barn swallows, cardinals, rose-breasted grosbeak pair, Baltimore orioles, Ruby-throated humming birds, Sassenachs, crows, grackles, northern mockingbirds, song sparrows, kestrel pair with babies in the heifer barn, chipping sparrows, gold finches, red-winged black birds, cow birds, chimney swifts, rock pigeons, mourning doves....just off the top of my head. We are much more blessed in the bird department than we deserve.
Have a good one. Haying starts today, provided the machinery all starts today.
As I mentioned in the previous post, Becky's show cow Lemonade, or Lemmie for short, had a heifer calf yesterday. It was the first purebred Holstein heifer she has ever had, after a series of bulls, and was sired by Roylane Jordan, a significant bull of the breed. The baby has the potential to really be something special and Lem is pretty special in her own right. (in fact she was sired by Ocean-View Extra Special.)
So we were thrilled. Mom is fine. Baby is fine. All is good.
But then there is the other cow that was kept in the barnyard with her and helped her in the great escape yeseterday. Cow #156, Consequence, or Connie. Nobody liked the way she looked yesterday so we gave her a pre-calving bottle of subcutaneous calcium. Last night we kept her down in the barnyard with Lemmie again (with a much reinforced gate situation).
This morning Liz found her rolled into a dangerous position and unable to get right...cows can die if their organs press on their lungs and heart....so she and Alan and the boss rolled her upright. She promptly gave birth to a tiny, healthy, bull calf. Obviously a twin. They tried to get another bottle of calcium on board, but she was having none of it and could run faster than they could, so they let her be. Lemmie took possession of baby number one while Connie got down to the business of having the second.
I just went over to check on her progress and found her with a huge ball of placenta-wrapped calf behind her. Sadly the calf was born dead. I am pretty sure that it had been dead a while before birth and was twisted up in the uterus behind the healthy calf. It was not stretched into the normal "diving" position for bovine birth and instead had legs stuck behind its head and turned every which way. No wonder she had been looking ill and more uncomfortable than is normal even for an extremely pregnant cow.
At least she has the live calf to fuss over and was able to stand and walk around. When we go out to milk, hopefully the whole bunch of us...minus Liz who is working at her new job...can get her in the barn and given that calcium. That is how it is with farm life...and all life I guess...you get the joys but they tend to be balanced out by the other side of living. I am going to focus on the Lemmie's new heifer, which Becky has named Lipstick, and get on with spring time. After a bit, Connie will get on with things too....poor old girl.
Morning milking, column deadline, Two springer cows in the barnyard ready to calve Phone rings BF's grandparents truck broke down Bringing it here so the boys can fix it Phone rings Liz checks springer cows They are both missing Broke down the gate and headed for the pastures Phone rings Power company calls from the front yard driveway and comes to check wires that they messed up last week While the GP's are still here Power lady needs to see the boss, But, of course he isn't Here that is Kids find cows and Lemmie has a heifer Power company leaves And the milk inspector gets here At the same time Traffic jam in the driveway Introductions all around and around and around Inspector wants his wooden critters Glad I have some done Bye, bye to four bunnies and four duckies.
Truck is finished, calf is a nice one, everybody goes home and the phone stops ringing. Throw together some meatballs and sauce for spaghetti Milking time again
***This is not by way of being a poem, but merely a list of the busiest day in recent memory. In between the boss ran for parts and ran for hay..twice..fixed the gate that the cows broke down.
Over at Carpe Diem blog. Author Professor Mark Perry pointed out the incredible increases in productivity among dairy farmers since the twenties.
Some of the comments are plumb interesting (if sadly uninformed) and well worth the time it will take to read them.
It simply amazed me to discover that we give cows huge doses of estrogen and that, since milk production has increased three times or six times or whatever, their udder size must have increased in similar proportion (good thing this isn't true or they wouldn't be able to walk).
I subscribed to the comments just for the entertainment value. Give 'em a read if you have time.
We are gradually getting everybody turned out. Lots of excitement today turning my sweet little Etrain's daughter, Email, out with the big girls. Email is nothing like her gentle-natured, pleasant, mother. She kicks with the back end and hooks and swings the front end at you if she thinks she can get you. Nobody is very fond of working around her....
She had the idea that she is pretty hot stuff in the bovine world too and fought with just about every cow in the herd. Most of them are bigger than she is and almost all of them are tougher. I suspect that by the time they come down tonight she will be pretty tired.
Much to my surprise I discovered that I was a finalist in a photography contest. I had completely forgotten that I entered and couldn't even remember what photo I submitted.......The final winner will be decided by voting. If you wish to place a vote for my entry you can do so here. There are a lot of really nice entries and I am tickled to have a photo chosen to be among them....mine is almost at the end so you will get to enjoy them all.
You can vote once per day until June 4th. I would be most grateful and I thank you in advance.
The weather is as perfect as weather can be...cool mornings with clear, bright, peach gold sunlight. Blankets of silver dew shining on the hillsides. Webs of glistening fog floating in the hollows.
The hummers showed up at the feeder less than a day after I filled it. They are very tame and I am thinking probably the same ones as were here last year. I feel bad if I accidentally scare them away from the sitting porch....no wrens yet, but I heard a cat bird. Watched the kestrel hovering over the long lawn, Maltese cross in silhouette. It is so good to finally have them back.
Cows are content with the new green grass and long days of grazing on it. They come in with udders full of milk, then rush back outside to fill them up again.
It is the best time of year and I won't let it be spoiled for me....planting potatoes today if all goes well.
We are hemmed in by race tracks here at Northview, with Fonda Speedway to the northeast and Glen Ridge to the west (it is not quiet on Friday and Saturday nights in summer....)
Last night the kids went to Glen Ridge, which is not too far from our west border, but a heckuva long way from the barn or house, both of which are on the east end of the place.
Out in the parking lot they saw a little yellow cat scavenging around for lost French fries and road kill hot dogs. They watched it for a bit when suddenly it dawned. That was OUR cat, Kashette! (Now we know why she has been gaining weight.)
While they were trying to puzzle out ways to bring her back home in the BF's pick up truck she vanished and they didn't see her again that night.
This morning she was right back on the porch waiting for her drink of milk. Probably needed to wash down all that salty race track food. Alan picked her up to pet her and she smelled like hot dogs. Wouldn't that have been a puzzler if they hadn't seen her out on the town?
We had been noticing a huge increase in drug arrests in the area over about the last year. I for one have been glad to read about them. It is pretty sickening when you sit on Main Street in the tiny little town across the river, waiting to pick up an order of Chinese food, and watching a kid that goes to school with your kids dealing drugs on the street corner. No sense turning them in...you have no proof and they have been in and out of jail a dozen times. It doesn't seem to change anything. However, eventually that one stopped his activities...pretty sure he is in jail again... and dozens of others started showing up on the front page of the paper with mug shots accompanying the story, which makes for real good reading.
I thought this story about some of how they have been catching them was really cool.
Went to a meeting last night and heard that it is time to start cutting hay if you want optimum nutrition. That is no doubt true in terms of numbers on a feed analysis sheet, but there sure was some head shaking among the farmers sitting around the tables. Guys who do a lot of baling pointed out that you would have quite a time drying it.
We may not rival Tennessee for wetness, but we have had a real mess of rain in the past few weeks. Thanks to the couple of weeks of warm weather early, we have a lot more grass than we did at this time the past two years, but taking a tractor into a tender hay field would probably leave ruts that would last for years. We sure need a little dry off.
I planted peas yesterday and some more beets. The garden has been coming on very slowly. The radishes just got their second set of leaves and they have been up for at least a couple of weeks. A lot of corn around the area has been frost damaged pretty badly, but the crop specialist says it usually comes back even if it is frozen right off to the ground.
Cows are going out on a new pasture this morning. They haven't been in it for a couple of years...thanks to absurd amounts of rain...and I am hoping they remember where the fences are. Cows will run through even a very strong fence sometimes if they aren't familiar with it but will stay inside nothing more than a few loops of wire if they know where it is and they aren't hungry.
When are the folks who keep reintroducing this ridiculous bill going to figure out that a political career in Queens, the Bronx or Brooklyn does not prepare them to understand the economic realities of farming? (Other than maybe Old McDonald's). Although it would in no way affect our own farm, as we hire no outside labor, many fruit and vegetable growers would be devastated with little benefit to workers.
However, to people used to politics as usual it looks so good on paper (and in the paper, of course). Pedro Espada the Senate Majority leader called the earlier bill, "my legacy." Guess he still wants to leave upstate with a nice legacy of economic problems caused by the failure of someone from the Bronx to "get" agriculture.
The "new" bill, introduced bySen. George Onorato of Queens, (a farm district if I ever saw one), changes a couple of words...and I do mean a couple...from the original bill....
One of our favorite bloggershad a go round with the tree cuttin', line clearnin' fellas just a little while back. They are much noted for their enthusiasm and lack of common sense and respect for property and they did not do right by her.
Over the years we have had plenty of fun with them too and wouldn't you know it, they got us again this year. We have power lines across the front (and the back and the middle) of the place. The one line runs along the edge of our front pasture fence and our maple woods. The boss was out fixing up the fence yesterday so we can turn cows in there, and lo and behold, the fence was cut, the wires pulled back, brush was piled all over the fence, and a little ravine with a small "sometimes" creek in the bottom was so piled with cut brush that he couldn't walk in it.
So he called 'em up and they called back and left a message and so began what I know from past experience won't amount to anything but aggravation. When they moved the road they took out dozens of good trees and just took them away. When we complained they brought us back some junk wood....oh heck, I could go on and on. Nothing will come of this except that he will move the darned brush himself and fix the fence and next year they will do it all again....bah
Liz and Becky both took off farm jobs over the past couple of weeks, which kind of leaves everybody scrambling to get things done, but we are getting it done. Glad they started in springtime like this when I can conjure up at least a little bit of energy to take up some of the slack. Writing projects are finding themselves kind of on the back burner though...sorry about that.
Yesterday we shipped a cow and a steer over to the sale (with special thanks to my brother and family for the loan of their bigger truck). Alan stopped on the way home to pick up the check rather than waiting for it to be mailed. Cow brought almost sixty cents a pound, which although not spectacular is better than it has been. We are wondering about the weigh scale over there though. We sent one of the biggest cows we had a couple of months ago and got paid for an eleven-hundred pound cow. We kinda wondered where the rest of her went. This cow wasn't near that big and weighed the same, leading me to wonder...not for the first time. We got cheated by a trucker a few years back, who switched the auction tags on our big cows with his little ones, until we caught him and fired him. Reason why we truck our own despite our lousy trailer and having to borrow a truck (as soon as Alan gets a tire on his he can go back to hauling for us.)
Then the boss and I trimmed a hind foot on a lame cow, my old Citation R Maple, England. She had been getting progressively lamer and needed a pedicure and some medicine and a nice, thick bandage. He did the real work while I just held the rope that held her foot off the floor. Unlike horses, most cows will not hold their foot up while you work. However, she was quite blase about the whole affair and continued to eat hay while we worked. When the trimming was over she was standing much more comfortably. Since we have been feeding this product our cows have had amazingly improved foot health, and I think the last cow we had to trim was this time last summer, when this same one got her feet done before. We feed this too, in our trace mineral mix. It is such good stuff for those living on this selenium depleted soil that I take a human version of it every day with my own vitamins. A proper balance of minerals and vitamins as important to cows as it is to us, so we have to use carefully formulated feeds for them.
Despite the freezing weather, which may not bode well for the apple and peach trees, the flower gardens are a delightful tapestry of texture and greenness. I love the way the spears of the irises offer spiky contrast to the fringed lupines and the tassels of the tiger lilies. The many varieties of variegated hosta turn the bed into a painting in green, with just a few flower highlights to set it off. (Thanks to the God Awful winds there isn't much left blooming.) Liz BF mowed the lawn again and he is a plumb adventuresome lawn mower person. There is smooth green grass in places that just used to be brush. Thanks guy....
Birds are busy, grackles like fighter planes seeking everybody else's nests like Darth EggVader. Mockingbirds fending them off like angry bomber bees. Chimney swifts came back the day before yesterday, but although other folks have swallows I have yet to see one. The kestrels are sitting on eggs, and the Mrs. sure doesn't want Mr. joining her under the eaves. She sends him packing no matter how hard it is raining. Due to lack of youthful farm help I put the cows up the lane yesterday and enjoyed a short interlude with a questing robin. No matter how common they are I love the way they tamely come close and sing as sweetly as the thrushes they are. This one was foraging almost at my feet and I spent a few minutes just watching him. It was probably the most peaceful moment of the day and I thank him for it.
Anyhow, what with a fence yet to finish, finances requiring daily management by the bookkeeper (yeah, that is me, alas) garden to plant, and so on etc, including hay starting as soon as it dries out and some crops left to plant. I apologize in advance for missing some days here. Hope spring is treating you right.
We almost lost this lovely old girl at the end of winter. She stepped on one of her teats, got an infection, and was very, very ill. Good advice from our favorite vet and diligent nursing by Liz saved her life and she even came back in milk. Now her milk feeds all the baby calves and the cats.....She is Liz's dear old show cow, who won junior champion two years running when she was a baby. She is such a pet and likes to stay in the barn so sometimes Liz has to pull her out by her neck strap.
To my magnificent mom, who could always do anything. She and my dad have led a life of adventure, from running an antique store, adding a bookstore (the treasure cave or chain gang of my childhood depending...) to hosting the Clan Montgomery tent at Scottish games from here to Colorado. Touring Scotland, England and France. Carving fabulous art work from birds to King Tut, painting, digging incredible minerals, cutting stones, making jewelry...you name it...where their interests took them they followed. I have a lovely lost-wax process silver ring my mom made me with stones my father cut....one of my greatest treasures....An intricate quilt mom sewed with all my animals depicted it, that, although it is worn from keeping me warm for decades, is never put away.
Five days after radical cancer surgery Mom was panning for gold in the Carolinas....why ruin a good vacation over a little thing like a major operation. She is tough as a railroad spike, never mind your paltry little nails......
At least in part because of all those fascinations and wonders (and others too numerous to mention, from square dancing, in costumes mom designed and sewed to learning about area history from hunting fossils and Indian relics...even the whole bird watching thing) my two brothers and I are never bored. When you have parents that open your eyes to all the marvels of living in this world, up close and personal, you don't need television and you do revel in living in it. (In fact it was Mom's relentlessnagging gentle pressure that got me to buy a computer and go online in the first place.)
So thanks Mom, for being all that you are, for marrying Dad almost sixty years ago, and for following his passions and yours wherever they led.
Hope you have a wonderful Mother's Day and many more to follow.
And Happy Mother's Day to all who read who are mothers and to their mothers and all the mothers everywhere. This is your day. Enjoy the flowers and the cookouts and the company of the ones who love you....
***This whole affair is an incredible story of the wonder that it is the Internet and the people who communicate on it.
Our Florida blog friend, Sandcastle Momma and her family are responsible for the video of oil being soaked up by hay, to which I linked last week, as did several other bloggers who were astonished by such a simple, yet effective idea.
Thanks to the efforts of the good folks involved the story gained enough attention and impressed so many that the concept is going to be actually used on the beaches there.
Here is a good storyon what is going on and why. This situation is affecting real people and real families.
Even if the suit succeeds it will be too late for many. Here is the auction listing for the family dairy farm of one of NY's handful of dairy bloggers and an online friend of ours. It is already too late for her and her family to recover from 18 months of prices far below the cost of production, and my heart aches for them. (Wish they lived a little closer so we could go to the sale to lend moral support if nothing else.) If you click on the farm name on the listing you can see a pdf of their cattle and machinery. They have some really lovely cows and it must be heart breaking to have to sell them.
Tomorrow is the Stamp Out Hunger Food Drive. Learn more about it here.
To help feed America's hungry, simply leave non-perishable food items in a bag at your mail box for pick up by your letter carrier . The NALC hopes to break the billion pound mark this year for the 18 year history of the food drive.Even during the deep gloom of recession, last year's drive produced 73.4 million pounds so they will probably reach that goal. One of those dearest to us is a letter carrier and he is proud to do his part for this important campaign. (A we are proud of him for doing it.) He tells me that a marvelous and amazing amount of food is picked up each year, with one family leaving four or five bags of groceries at their mail box....what great folks live here in America.
**Donate items like canned meats, fish, soup, juice and vegetables, and pasta, cereal and rice. Please do not include items that have expired or are in glass containers.**
I read this quote from him a while back, lost the bookmark, and have been looking for it ever since. It is a big thought, but I think it might just be a true one. Worth pondering anyhow. Read the whole thing here. It is well worth your time.
This is the part I was looking for:
"On Dirty Jobs, I’m no expert, and I’m even less of one here. But I have a theory, and it goes like this – all jobs rely on one of two industries – mining and agriculture. Every tangible thing our society needs is either pulled from the ground, or grown from the ground. Without these fundamental industries there would be no jobs of any kind. There would be no economy. Civilization begins with miners and farmers, and polite society is only possible when skilled workers transform those raw materials into something useful or edible."
Yup, going out to take pics in a few. We have all kinds of old odds and ends we don't use any more...nothing a dealer will take on trade in, but one man's trash and all that. Plus a tractor with a bad engine but a good loader. We shall see......
Things are just plain ugly...... I got the sad news that one of my blog friends and their family are selling out just yesterday. And alas there is still no sign of improvement on the horizon. We are looking for change, but nobody seems to know where to find it.
I was going to do Wordless Wednesday today because I am supposed to be writing the Farm Side. However, a blog friend in the sunny South posted this incredible story and I wanted to be sure you had a chance to read it.
Once again, my handsome, wonderful, slightly younger brother is riding in the Tour de Cure. It is a terrific cause...I hope you will support him if you can. Thanks!
Each mile I ride, each dollar I raise will be used in the fight to prevent and cure diabetes and to improve the lives of all people affected by diabetes.
No matter how small or large, your generous gift will help improve the lives of the more than 20 million Americans who suffer from diabetes, in the hope that future generations can live in a world without this disease. Together, we can all make a difference!
We were given a handsome male guinea fowl last week. Seems he was a trouble maker in his old home, always fighting with the other guineas and the family roosters. Here we are giving him his own harem in hopes that he will produce many more like himself...he is a lovely solid purplish-grey, I think considered a royal purple. Or maybe not..the color chart is kind of confusing. Anyhow he is a beautiful bird and we are tickled to have him.
A collage of baby brother and his handsome son mining for diamonds.Click for detail.
A vug, an opening in the limestone that they were mining, stuffed with lovely crystals on matrix.
My brother, his lovely wife and their family treated me to a mining expedition yesterday at Crystal Grove Campsite.
My usual method of digging for Herkimers is to take a garden trowel or even a spoon and scratch around in the tailings. However, they bring a pickup truck full of tools and indulge in hard rock mining. (Trust me their way is better albeit a lot harder too.) Although pickings were a little slim yesterday, they found some incredible clear crystals (not pictured, but I'll bet Lisa will have pics later) that seemed to roll right out of the ground as bright as shining ice cubes. It is a real ooh ah moment when a nice vug opens up and spills its treasure I'll tell you.
Matt dug for hours, processed probably about a dump truck load of rock, which started out as blocks about the size of an old-fashioned TV and ended up smaller than a bread box...some much smaller. I'll bet he is hurting today, but he found some nice stuff. And thanks guys for sharing such a great day with me.
We didn't find these, but the people who did kindly let me photograph them when they brought them over to show off. They are the size of a fist, but don't have the usual amazing clarity of gems from this site, as they are much cracked by winter frosts.
When this challenge called for knobs and switches and things that control non-living objects I was stumped for anything fun. Oh, we have keyboards and tractor controls and stuff...but they just didn't flip my buttons so to speak. Then this morning I remembered that this old house has knobs and switches and controls...many of which don't do anything any more...that are kind of cool...so here they are.
To grass now. A few of them have been going out since the weather allowed, but now all but a few heifers who will be phased into the group will be outdoors every day. The pics above were taken in the pasture when we were finishing up the fence.
Alan cut this big wild grape vine off the fence the other day...an amazing amount of liquid pours out of it.
Here he is enjoying a drink from a freshly cut one. He says it is the sweetest, clearest water you can find.....I cannot attest to that, as I didn't try it.
Looking North from the Thirty-Acre Lot
Case 930 the mowing trator
Big doings across the river
Posts
