Amazement

Visiting the folks is always a great source of it. Becky bought this violin from her grandmother, who gave a short demonstration.

This instrument has tone and volume like you would never imagine. a note sounded from its strings made you feel as if you were in a concert hall.... I tried it at home and alas could only squeak.

Herkimer diamonds

Daguerreotypes.

And books, always books. We looked at several really cool ones........and that is not to mention all the wonderful love they hand out so freely. Sure was good to see them.

The Water is Already Clean

Farmers doing enough to keep the bay clean

According to this article, water leaving NYS for the Chesapeake Bay watershed ALREADY meets EPA standards as per their own monitoring stations. So why do our state's farmers have to make more expensive changes in the way they grow our food?

It is a lot like the whole thing with exhaust coming out of tractors cleaner than the air that goes in under new regulations. They are out of control and have totally lost contact with reality....

Jay Walking

Or scarfing sunflower seeds as the case may be.

Sunday Stills...Coffee and Tea Cups

For more Sunday Stills.....

We have quite a selection of old tea cups. Some belonged to the boss's late mom. Some have been given to me by several wonderful folks, including my own dear mother. These are just a couple of them.

Update: And here is my good friend Dickiebo's idea of a Sunday Still

Feral Hogs in Montgomery County?

Not feral, just some piggies we raised a couple of years ago

Or just one that jumped out of somebody's pig pen up in the Town of Glen? (Doesn't matter too much, because that is one of the ways populations of the nefarious things get started.)

Anyhow, Alan saw a loose pig yesterday, rooting around in the field of a farmer we know up there, not somebody that has pigs as far as we know, certainly not inside any kind of fence...

If you are missing a white pig with spots and a lot of hair, give us a call...we are in the phone book...and he can tell you just where he saw it.

Meanwhile, we are hoping that it isn't a symptom of a population of them getting started up here. They are already a problem in Pennsylvania and the NY Southern Tier.

They are bad, bad, bad I'll tell you. They ruin crops, kill birds, eat pets, carry a whole laundry list of livestock diseases and do all sorts of other nefarious damage. One of the kids' college friends got a good paying, full time job down in Texas doing nothing but shoot hogs, all night every night...and probably didn't even make a dent in the population.

As they trickle into NYS, probably from Pennsylvania, the DEC is asking that they be shot on sight, according to the article in the Evening Sun and what Alan has been told by DEC officers when he was in the Fisheries and Wildlife Program at SUNY Cobleskill.

Read more about feral hogs here.... and here

Here is a video

Frosty Mornings on the Farm

Milk Mustache

Accompanied by something of a real one

And the woodshed, the mustache guy single-handedly built for us.

Winston

Another calf born yesterday. It was an amazing morning with geese ringing up off the river through the fog like rather noisy ghosts, lower than the roof of the house and just barely visible, (but eminently very hear-able), and the air the color of a million-dollar pearl.

This has been the week for unexpected visits from assorted folks, from dear friends to the milk inspector. They are all good folks and we love to see them, but we sure had to scurry to keep up with things. The boss is working on getting in some firewood, and finishing up a couple of bits of hay. Hopefully the rain holds off a few more days. It sure is soggy out there.

Liz went up and got the new mama and baby while we were milking and brought them down. She decided to choose a name for the new one that fit the day in a proper way. This may be the first heifer ever named Winston, but she is a good 'un and we are glad to have her.

We had a real nice little half-shorty bull born the other day too, to Alan's Bayliner who is an own daughter of Whirlhill Kingpin, a bull from the sixties, which is quite an accomplishment. Bayliner is from Bayberry, so she is a half sister to my favorite cow, Broadway, dam of our shorthorn show heifer, Rose Magnolia. Alan named him Barbossa, which seemed pretty fitting as well.

Looks like another sunny day on tap for today, so when I get over the jet lag from being up until after midnight after a late and extremely exasperating meeting, I will be looking for a reason to work outdoors.....

Funny Stories About Cows

This is Neon Moon, not Stockwell, but you can get the idea.

Been getting a lot of hits from that particular search and it got me thinking. How about the guy who leaves his wife in the hospital the morning after an emergency Cesarean delivery and goes to the auction to buy a cow? Just for fun?

It made me plumb irrational I'll tell you. There I was in acute and lasting misery, all alone with my big red-headed baby boy and there he was having a ball and not even missing us. He didn't even call. Dang!

Well, the Good Lord got right back at him for that egregious transgression I can tell you. And the punishment went on and on.

We named the cow Stockwell after the folks we purchased her from (although she was registered and came already named, that name has long been forgotten). She was a really nice black one and milked fairly well, although she was quite light on her feet (she kicked like a twenty-mule team). Of course his mom and I were the ones that milked her most of the time so that wasn't too much of an issue for him.

However.....there was that whole jumping thing. You have heard of the Maryland Hunt Cup? Well that darned cow only lacked one requirement for participation...the whole actually being a horse thing...other than that she would have fit right in.

I won't say she jumped like a deer because she jumped better than any deer I ever saw. Walk right up to a stout, tall, corner post, and, from a standstill, fly right over it, land on the other side and get right to dealing with the other side being greener and all.

She was ALWAYS out. Never there when you wanted her to milk. Somebody always had to go bring her in separately....ever single day, twice a day...and that somebody was NOT me. I had a new baby and all....geez....

Still she was a good cow so we kept her. I don't remember what bull sired her first heifer calf, but she was long and black and elegant as well.

We didn't notice anything too unusual about the young 'un until she was a yearling and moved to the heifer barn. That was when, rather than going in the stable like we wanted her to, she jumped the gigantic concrete watering trough with a single bound. That thing is huge! Bam, right over it without touching a thing.

She showed the exact same propensity with fences as her peripatetic mama too...saunter up to the corner, pop up into the air and stroll away.

The boss had enough of chasing them one day, threw them both on the same trailer and hauled them over to Little Falls where the auction was at the time. The men hanging around there were so astonished that he was selling a pair of such beautiful cattle that he got all kinds of offers before they even went in the ring. I think the auction company owner ended up buying them for a real decent price.

Meanwhile, I gloated.......I still do. Forgiveness is a fine thing and all, but I guess I never have quite forgiven him.

A Child of the Fifties, Sixties and Seventies

It is great to see Facebook filled with flags and notes of remembrance for our veterans. It was not always so... Sometimes change is good. Thank you to all who served and to those who do so today. We pray for your safe return to your homes and families.

Wordless Wednesday

The Dog and the Dynamite

Can't seem to find a picture of Beethoven,

so here is Tucker, his mentor (taught him to eat rocks) and partner in crime.

****This post is for Jinglebob, with apologies to those of you who have already heard it.

See about ten years ago the state made a real mess rebuilt the road from here to town and did town over too.

It was pretty ugly. Businesses went out of business because folks couldn't get to their doors over the holes and mud and destruction. We lived down in town then and came here to work each day. During that time, getting there was a lot more than half the hassle fun

The project took about half of our front pasture for fill under eminent domain, which required that they work right in front of the driveways. Some days between the flag men between here and home and the workers in our yards and roads it took an hour to travel in either direction...a mere mile.

At the time we had the huge monster of a dog described in the last post. He was a friendly sort and loved the excitement. After a while the workers came to like him too and fed him sammiches and played fetch with him.... but that was later.

One fine morning the boss and I headed home for breakfast after chores. The foreman of the job warned us as we went down the barn driveway that there would be a short delay due to them having to blow up more of our pasture. Okay, that would just about leave us time to run home and eat and get back to work. So we threaded our way through the mile of traffic cones and bull dozers and dozing flag folks, ate and headed back to work.

Alas, by then no traffic was being permitted up this side of the valley. 5S was closed. The Thruway was closed. Nothing was moving. People were fuming and thumping steering wheels in grid lock that would have fit in fine in Los Angeles. We joined the parking lot.....and we sat and sat and sat. Time moves differently in a car while waiting....we waited a very long time.

Finally, hours later, we were permitted to return to the farm.

And there we heard....the rest of the story.

Seems the construction fellas put their charges out, all along the cliff in the pasture, in order to blow up more of that good old slate and dirt that used to grow grass for our cows.

And seems that our 120-pound big black dog went out and sat down on one of the charges, calmly contemplating the view out over the river. He had hung around cows long enough to learn how to ruminate real well. He ruminated while perusing his domain.

And every time one of the workers went out to try to shift him, he raised his upper lip and rumbled.... just a little. (He was one of those "smiler" dogs who grins at you, showing lots of fang. It looks like snarling to some.)

Stalemate.

Very long stalemate.

Time is money so eventually the head guy, who was a bit of a dog person, went out and took the old boy by his collar and led him out of the way.

Boom! And all was well....well except for the pasture, which is now mostly located about a half a mile away under the new road.

We had a good laugh, over it, although we didn't get much done that day (neither did they) and I got a good column out of it.

When the old dog passed away the boss buried him out on what was left of the bank where he stopped progress......and several dozen construction workers...and an Interstate and a state road and a couple of busy farmers....dead in their tracks.

I always admired that dog....

On the Porch this Morning

Chickens stealing cat food. How handy that I just happened to have Nick in the house. Nothing like a border collie for removal of unwelcome poultry.

Found old Stormy dead there when I took him out for the first time. Not a tragedy or anything, just one of those things. She was not a pet by any means, just a scruffy old working girl, retired, long, long past her ratting days and it was just time.

In a way it was almost a relief. No one has any idea how old she was, but she wasn't a young cat when the boss's mom passed away and it has been nine years since then. If I had to guess I would say thirteen or fourteen at least. It is a lucky farm cat that avoids milk trucks and foxes and coyotes, owls and clumsy cow feet for that long.

And she had a kind of on and off relationship with good health, and was probably the ugliest cat we ever had. She also had a long history of stealing kittens from her kin, Wild Thing, who vanished this summer. Wild Thing also stole from her so there was never any knowing which one actually owned what kittens. They hardly ever raised any anyhow, being absurdly inbred. I don't think there is a single cat left now from that era. You see, we never knew it until just before he died, but a dog we used to have, a big homely behemoth in black, named Beethoven, used to kill any new cats that came to the farm. Strays or drop offs, I guess they were intruders in his mind.

We NEVER saw him do it, but every now and then we would find a cat corpse in the barn or out in the field. They looked untouched. We worried about disease...but we never knew what was going on until he was gone and suddenly the "disease" was too. Thus our barn cats had no outside blood for at least ten years, and were all grey or black, wild as heck, and dumb as rocks.

He also caught wild turkeys, no small accomplishment for a 120-pound dog. He would start a flock flying, usually downhill as they are heavy birds, run like heck to the bottom and grab one when they landed. He ate the whole thing, feathers and all, which resulted...oh, never mind what it resulted in, trust me you don't want to know. Woodchucks held no fear for him either and he dispatched them with a snap (maybe he thought they were cats.)

He was the guy who held up the road repair job by sitting on the dynamite too, but that story has been told before so I won't go there again. He babysat the kids...wouldn't let them go down the slide until he thought they were old enough, and walked grandma to the barn and back every day, letting her use him as a prop and helping her up if she slipped. A good dog back in his day.

Anyhow, sorry about the ramble......have a good one.

Winter Weather Advisory

It was pretty nice out yesterday and early last night. While I was out serving as a fence, little Keebler came out to be made much of, purring like some loud and buzzy insect and snuggling into my gloves. The stars were bright with a few thin, dark clouds slumping across them. (It wasn't like the night before when I kept snuggling up to the tractor, which had a still kinda, sorta warm engine from feeding and saved me some misery.)

A couple of hours later a cruel wind whipped up and lashed any thoughts of warm and fuzzy right off the map. Now there is a winter weather advisory.

Sunday Stills...Mealtime

This was a hard one on such a crazy busy week. We had good meals, but nobody had time to mess around taking photos of them. After chores, we just ate dinner and went to bed. Thus you will not be seeing the taco bowls, chuck roast, homemade applesauce, green and yellow beans, etc. Nope, just a quick snap of the inside of the cupboard.

Three foods: peanut butter, cereal, craisins...yup, I think I nailed it.

For more Sunday Stills.....




Update, last night's dinner in all its glory. To make sure I got enough foods in the photo I added some nuts and tortilla chips to my pizza, and, of course, nature's most perfect food, cold, sweet milk.

Waiting

Do click...

Rainy Days 'n' Brantas

Canadensis that is....down on the Mohawk.

Fencing in the Rain

Drowned turkey feather, empty acorn cup. Last dandelion, crushed by passing hooves. Ten dozen hungry robins flying by from Canada, females pale as Creamsicles. Their calls ring oddly across the rolling grass, just a tad different from our New York version....enough to sound like non-robins though.

A mockingbird on top of the hill has no time for them and chivvies them mercilessly to and fro, proud of himself and telling us all about it. Cheek! Chinnnkk! His efforts are plumb futile; as one flock moves on to the neighbor's woods, another flows in from the old pasture lot behind him. There are hundreds of them and only one of him.

A flicker flicks from tree to tree, ruby rose hips hang, all crystal shiny, each with its own rain drop. (Love/hate going on with those darned multiflora roses. In June the whole valley smells like a shady lady's boudoir when they come in bloom. The rest of the year they drag down fences, tangle unwary feet and take over pastures like they owned them. I'll bet we cut a thousand of them today and there are a thousand more waiting for tomorrow.)

The rain was soft; the grass made me think of movies I have seen that featured Ireland...what was that four-hour-long job from years ago? Oh, yeah, Barry Lyndon. Saw that in a theater in 1975 and never forgot the lush, green, green, green of Ireland. The movie was kind of boring, but I just watched the sets and sighed at the beauty....That is how the fields looked today. The clouds were high, despite the rain, so you could see the mists rising from mountains that are usually hidden by them.

Asparagus berry, filling in for a rose hip...didn't take the camera out in all that rain

We spent several hours out there fixing up what the deer had done, cutting roses and raspberries and getting way past wet.

I was glad I went though.

There was a lot to see and hear and so much going on out back behind the hill.

Ran out of day before we ran out of fence though so the cows will have to stay in tonight.

They won't mind.

Tractor Troubles

The 4490 has ongoing engine troubles again...worst tractor we have ever owned and that is really saying something. Now the John Deere 4430 has two bad batteries and a fried alternator. That's all she wrote for tractors. Something is going to have to be fixed first thing this morning so we can feed....About five minutes past getting that great news the heifers tore down the pasture fence and took a stroll. Had to put the cows in a different field, in the dark last night....and they didn't want to go.

Excellent Post on Missouri Prop B

Here

Around the Farm

Alan built us a huge wood shed all in a week, all by himself....cut the logs for the poles, set the poles, built the sides and roof and roofed it with used tin that blew off the barn roof before that big project. Must be seen to be believed, pics to come soon. Now we just have to get some wood in it.

Becky and I got the garlic planted yesterday, the latest yet, but more than double the usual size plot. We dug out the entire bean patch and put in garlic. Liz brought home a bunch of left-over bulbs from an Amishman she visited in her travels and I decided to plant them all, along with some of my own seed stock from this year. We love garlic and I always run out of home-grown long before I run out of winter. Hopefully next season will be different.

It was a great day for getting out and planting, colder than was comfortable, but you warm up quickly when digging. The ground was muddier than it should be, but it has been muddy all fall pretty much continuously so I am not going to worry about that.

On the phone half the day yesterday too, but with the owner of a bull we are trying to get bought rather than with politicians. (BTW, tried the Kim Komando pound sign thing...works on some calls, not on others). We looked at nice shorthorn bull a couple of months ago and then didn't hear anything for a while. Now we are back to negotiating. Hopefully we will wind up with him, as he is real nice. Alan and I fell in love with his dam from the moment we saw her out in the free stall at their farm. One of those cows that just jumps right out at you, all angular and sleek and correct.

Today, I figure if the phone rings it won't be a robocall. It is cold enough that it is probably clear out, so maybe we will get one more good day to get stuff done before the rain comes back.

Have a good one!

Hanging on by a.....

This little poplar tree is a favorite of mine, a volunteer that popped up next to the driveway a few years ago. It probably will have to come down soon, as a poplar in that particular place is not ideal but I will enjoy it while it lasts.

Anyhow, its lovely yellow leaves came down in this weekend's storm...all but the one on the very top. Yep that is the only leaf on the tree. Some days I have a lot of fellow feeling for the thing. Wonder if it will still be there this morning when the sun comes up.

Milking Shorthorns High Average

At the Fall for Colors Sale

Tomorrow It Ends

After tomorrow, (in theory), the robocalls and other assorted political annoyances will stop for a while.

I don't know about you, but I sure am ready.

Yesterday an already contentious election season turned plumb ugly. Due to certain circumstances, which I will be nice and not discuss here, I missed my morning off. Thus I wasn't the chirpiest bird in the flock when I came in from chores.

However, I did such computer things as my messed up computer would permit, sat down in my Sunday Chair, and fell asleep, while reading a wonderfully mindless book. I was dreaming peacefully...pleasantly....ahhhh....can we say bliss? (Visions of Bejeweled Blitz danced in my head....and I was winning too.)

BRINNNGGGGGGGG...the telephone rang. My heart changed gears in less than a breath and began to pound like Bill Kreutzman's drums.

It was for the boss who was also nodding happily in his chair, enjoying Sunday football (entirely ignored by me, thanks to my Peltor ear muffs, which are real marriage savers, thank you NYCAHM.)

Becky grabbed the phone and carried it in to him. He answered...and it was an individual stumping for Susan Savage, for whom we weren't all that likely to vote in the first place. He was outraged and let the caller understand that in no uncertain terms. Sunday for Pete's sake! The closest thing to a day of rest that we are going to get and certainly not the right time for political harassment! (It is a shame that you can't slam down a portable phone). Neither of us managed to fall back into dream land. He went out to mow some hay and I waited for my heart to resume its normal sluggish Sunday rhythm and resumed perusal of my novel.

*****We interrupt this blog post to interject the darned near unbelievable. I was proof-reading through the above making sure it read as smoothly as I wanted it to, when the phone rang. Believe it or not it was someone ELSE from the Susan Savage campaign. It was nice to talk to a real, live person so I could tell her just how happy we were to be awakened from our Sunday snooze yesterday. ARGGHHHHH

Ah, I feel better now, except for the sky-rocketing blood pressure....those calls work just like a gallon of coffee or a four pack of AMP and so much cheaper too. Of course we do not nap on Mondays, but dang!

I am so ready to stomp down to town and vote on those lousy new voting machines tomorrow, confident that by Wednesday the ringing of the phone will announce one of our itinerant children or a beloved mother or brother or good friend, not some soulless creep from some political campaign.

Sunday Stills....Halloween

Boo!

For more Sunday Stills....

Lucky

Is a Holstein heifer by Chilton out of my Trixy family. Yesterday morning she had a heifer calf by our milking shorthorn bull, Checkerboard Magnum's Promise. I was thrilled to see red when Liz brought her down the lane and a heifer to boot, happy dance indeed!

I am going to get Liz to tattoo her right away, because she is virtually an exact duplicate of several other daughters of the same bull. I would love to get them all in halters and line them up for a picture. Maybe next spring...even the half Jersey looks amazingly like the others.

If it weren't for size you wouldn't be able to tell Northstar from Rio from this new one, whose name is Laramie.

NY Farm Bureau Circle of Friends

With election time drawing near, I would like to point out the names of local government representatives who have acted with the state's number one industry in mind....agriculture that is.

Here is a link to this year's NY Farm Bureau Circle of Friends

Note that longtime senator, Hugh Farley, made the list, as he has for as long as I can remember.

So did Assemblyman George Amedore.

When we had our milk marketing issues a couple of years ago, and lost our milk company, both men put staff on the job of finding out what we could do to fix our terrible situation. George even called me personally and we talked for an hour or more on farm issues and what was going on in Albany. They both listen when farmers explain our issues and seem to understand how our business works.

Senator Darrel Aubertine also made the list. He is not local, but he has worked hard for ag in the state. Raised on a dairy farm himself and still raising his family on their diversified farm, the man gets it, as so few do.

Bird IDs Needed

Common or arctic loon?

Could these be smews?

Surf Scoter?

A good friend photographed these birds at Low's Lake, NY. Can you ID?

Factory Farm Yes or No?

Here is an amazing discussion of the topic: A Tale of Two Farmers

Good Thursday Morning

With Liz away in Pittsburgh we are somewhat short handed.
We are gettin' it done though.

The boss is fixing up the barn for winter, replacing stall dividers that the cows tore out, putting in windows etc. We fixed up the water hose too, where that idiot trespasser with the trailer tore holes in it. It wasn't leaking too bad for a while, but went completely south this weekend.

Frost last night, trucks are coated. I took the camera to the barn to try to take advantage of the incredible light. With the sun so low in the sky and sunrise so late it slants like a big spotlight, picking out all the subtle colors of the oaks, poplars and sumacs that still have leaves. I didn't get too many as I had to work...sigh....but I will look at them pretty soon and see if any are worth saving.

Cows are getting so shaggy. They do not look one bit like their elegant summer selves. Even Mandy is growing a thick warm coat. I hope this doesn't promise an extra cold winter, although if it killed off the darned ticks I would put up with it.