Quiet in the Valley

My favorite gold finch picture ever.

White-crowned sparrow, still here with friends

Why are the seeds below the perch?

Somebody needs to fill this feeder!

It is so still this morning. The smoke from the stove doesn't know which way to go. Few cars and trucks on the Thruway, you can hear them creaking in the cold, only a crow or two and one lonesome chickadee calling. I believe the river is finally frozen over, as I haven't heard or seen a goose in days. Bet they are down by the bridge now.

There were quite a few birds around the other day though....and while I was out sneaking around photographing them, the kids were photographing me through the window. Hopefully no one knows how to get that pic off the phone though.

Ethanol and Northview Farm

Read about it here. And, no, the article is not about us. We have fewer than a tenth that many cows. However, ethanol production and subsidies here in the US of A have raised our grain prices about double what they were just a few years ago. Believe me, it hurts to pay using milk prices that didn't rise comparably.

Sunday Stills...Macro Shots

I took these shots of cactus fruit for a post I am going to do on propagating sunrise cacti.

Do NOT step on this puppy barefoot!

For more Sunday Stills .....

Cold

It is just plain cold.

Cold like a shell

Cold like a mountain.

Cold all day and cold all night.

Oh, the stars sparkle, and the sun puts a glitter on the snow like a kid gone crazy but the cold drives you inside

Where it is less cold, but still cold.

Blankets on all the chairs, long johns, sweats over your jeans over your long johns and still you are cold.

Four shirts

A vest

An over

shirt

Still cold.

Wool socks, yeah, real wool

Still cold.

The wind was pushing the smoke from the stove north last night when we came in.

Does this mean south air and a warm up?

I hope so.

Whine over

We return you to your normal programming, thank you.....

Fox Hunting

All the excitement of riding to the hounds, minus the foxes. Guess all the fun of fox hunting wasn't about being blood thirsty and evil after all....the accompanying video is great fun and well worth the watching....almost like being there only you don't have to personally get wet.

Red Neck Tractor Pull

I don't post too many videos because I know they are hard to load with slower connections. However, this one, of the famous pulling tractor, the Supernatural, was simply irresistible! Do watch...all the way to the end. It is just too cool.

Ladies Who Lay

Can't Complain much about the weather...cold and blustery here, but we are warmer and have lots less snow than many of our friends to the west and north. Thus we will keep our whining confined to the kitchen when we are layering on the wool socks and vests and over shirts, because compared to Alberta and SoDak we have nothing to whine about....but it is still miserable to get dressed for the weather we do have.

Once you actually get out in it, it isn't all that bad. Kinda nice this morning really, after the sun came up. I caught the idiot rooster WD yesterday and put him in the coop. The head guy immediately started pounding on him, but I think he will be okay.

Found the first egg of the year when I went out to feed yesterday. Delighted that the ladies decided to start to lay. We only have four hens, but eggs are most welcome.

The lonesome and amazingly tame white-crowned sparrow is still showing up at the feeders. Today he brought three friends. One of them is quite inventive and figured out how to get its great big self balanced on the tube feeder while snatching a seed. Pretty funny to watch.

Once again I am having computer difficulties, so posts might be late or absent, and comments answered more sporadically than I like...please bear with me, I am trying to get things straightened out.

Word For a Wintry Wednesday Redux

Thickory

Word For a Wintry Wednesday

Smorgasbird

An Addiction to Chewing and Swallowing

Mike Rowe on agriculture.

Jury Duty

Well, my number didn't pop out of the selection thingie, so I only got to spend three hours warm, comfy, and fascinated by watching the jury selection process before I came back home to our cozy little iceberg on the hill (it was fifty-two indoors here yesterday). I was very well impressed with the way the whole affair was run, by the kindness and clarity of the court officials in caring for potential jurors and explaining what would happen, and by how very interesting it all was. If I was retired I would go watch the whole trial.

Thieves

Broke into one of my favorite blog folks' Jeep the other day and did some nasty damage.

Some other creeps came across our posted property line RIGHT IN FRONT OF OUR LIVING ROOM WINDOWS, cut down Alan's tree stand and stole it. It had been there for years...the first one we let him put up. I wanted to be able to keep half an eye on him when he was first out hunting alone, so it has been there at least 6 years. They had to come right up almost to the house to get it and spend a goodly amount of time getting it out of the brush around the tree. Must have done it while we were milking because otherwise I would almost certainly have seen them. I must look out those big windows a thousand times a day.

And the dogs would have barked.

Guess that is what you get when they put up a housing development right next to you.

Sunday Stills...the Letter W

Weaving...a Christmas present from Lisa

Winter!

More Winter

Winter friends

White

For more Sunday Stills......

Well, Duh

See this silly rooster? (Yeah, those are snow flakes blowing past him.) Liz' boss gave him and a couple of his brothers to us a while back. They were enthroned in the nice little chicken house Matt and Lisa gave us along with our old hens. Daily corn meal, table scraps and fresh water. Shavings on the floor, warm, and cozy, and nice for a birdie.

So what did he do? Try and try and try to get out until finally one day he evaded my hand and made it. Now he sleeps in a box elder tree with Mr. Fluff and wanders around in the snow all day. I feed them both next to the coop and he steals cat food but...... Sooner or later I will catch him, if the fox doesn't get there first, but I am calling him WD. (And not 40.)

Grace had her baby, a lively heifer. It was running around the barn when we got there yesterday (after all those barn checks). It would be nice to think we could make fewer extra trips to the barn, but now we have to start watching Zobaba, Booth and Magic, who are all due to calve in the next week or so. Then in February and March, watch out; sleep is probably going to be kinda scarce.

Have a nice, warm day!

New NY Commissioner of Agriculture

Looks like it. I hate to see Patrick Hooker go, and hope he finds another great position in ag leadership. He has done a great job as commissioner.

That being said, if he has to leave, Darrel Aubertine is a great choice as a successor. A sixth-generation farmer, he has been a tremendous pro-agriculture force during his tenure as a state senator and assemblyman.

Harbingers of What?

"This is a good time of year to be snug in the barn," Rose Magnolia

Yesterday we put the heifers up the hill so they wouldn't repeat Tuesday's adventure when the milk tanker picked up. (Someone insisted...might have been me.) While I was standing in the snowy sunshine being a fence, I bird watched....one of the best perks of this job is being able to bird watch while working....chickadees in the calf yard, starlings down in the barn eaves, tree sparrows and dark-eyed juncos working through the bushes. A gold finch sitting boldly in the tip of a box elder branch, soaking up the sun much like I was. I glanced up at a flock of what I thought were starlings, winging west in a hurry.

Wait a minute! White britches, russet breasts, chocolate brown bodies hurtling by...a whole double decade of winter robins right over my head. I thought I heard one in the honey locust last week, but I dismissed it as a downy woodpecker. I know quite a number of them winter over up here in chilly northern climes, but I am always delighted to see them.

Chasing, Not Amy, Nor Rainbows

The week in review...so far anyhow..it is only Thursday. Cold but mostly clear. A few lake effect flurries mornings, soon gone when the sun comes up. Coyotes howling right nearby most nights or so it sounds. The dog hustles to get back in the house then I can tell you.

Liz passed her milk inspector test...good job kiddo.

The white-crowned sparrow is still here and waits in the lilacs for me to put down seed on an old platform feeder, then hurries right out to eat. Geese and ducks still filling the open water, although I heard very few yesterday. I hope they aren't leaving...they are good company. They sing my lullaby each night and I will miss them when the river locks down for the winter

Some big dairies selling out on the west coast. Milk are prices high world wide, with supplies tight, except here in the USA or so they are telling us. I think maybe two people in the world actually understand what is going on with milk pricing, but I am pretty sure we are being cheated by players a lot bigger than we are...

Chased heifers with the car Tuesday. The men took the stock trailer through the gate and left it open for the milk truck. Five springers there, but they stay up the hill at a feeder and never bother....until Tuesday.

I could see they were feeling riley and wild so, since it was noon and I had not had time to get breakfast, I hurried over to the house for a piece of corn bread, glass of milk, and my book (the new Kathy Reichs, which has a mistake in it...just ask Becky, our McDonald's guru) planning on taking all back to the barn and watching the gate until the milk truck came.

We don't like our driver to have to get out of the truck to open and close the gate.

Well, I just about got back to the fence when Monday, dang her midnight-spotted hide, threw up her head and raced down the hill through the gate. I set my breakfast in the driveway, grabbed my keys and ran for the car to go down the house drive and up the barn one to head her off.

I got there in time mostly because the little snake went up the old pasture lane instead of down the road. All the others followed her and one of the black ones was down on the ice and had trouble getting up.

I won't bore you with the details of how I got in front of them to get them past the car, while making them think I was behind them too, so they would go back up the hill, but I got it done.

They went up and lay down among their feed tires, happy as clams. I watched the barn cats from afar while they ate my breakfast, and listened to my stomach singing four part harmony as if I was a cow, until almost two. That was when the tanker left and I could close the gate.

Just about then the men came back and apologized for leaving me in that fix.

I was nice about it even though I had been planning on writing the Farm Side while the house was quiet. There was still some cornbread left and since it felt more like lunch time anyhow I had it with homemade vegetable beef soup. I am sure the reason it tasted so good had something to do with how late it was.

However, the word is out. On tanker day those five heifers either go in the barn or up in the hill pasture.

Period.

Mamas Don't Let Your Babies

Stay up all night texting girls from mid-western states (and west coast states....and New York State....and all over heck......)

Slow Dog Crossing

It took me a long time to finish this dog. Holidays and all. However, I started hearing noises about getting it done and so I have. Hope the customer likes it.

Belated

Here is a Christmas song, sent to me a little while ago by a friend, which you should really check out. Computer problems kept me from playing it until now....be patient when listening..these are so much more than they seem at first.

Straight No Chaser

Oh, boy, here is another fantastic one....I am going to see if I can buy this for my iPod.

****Thanks Jean!

It was Embarrassing

Corn bread and chuck roast from the steer

To watch Elvis the cat attack Nick, my good dog, and thoroughly school him, until he left his breakfast (which did not consist of the stuff pictured above) and ran and hid in his crate.....

First stalking him with glowing yellow beacon eyes.

Running at him like a puma.

Then buffeting him with giant paws, tipped with freshly-sharpened claws.

Cuff, cuff, cuff, until cowed and thoroughly policed, the poor guy ran for cover.

Danged devil cat. I should have named him Fluffy...then maybe he wouldn't have been so full of himself.

Poor gentleman dog, who knows the cats are off limits to him. I was THIS temped to say the magic words.

Get the kitty.

Sunday Stills....Best of 2010

This seems to be my favorite from last year's Sunday Stills

For more Sunday Stills....

Happy New Year

(It is easy to see why, when we think of Heaven, we look up)

To all our good friends around the town and around the world. I hope that 2011 is better for you in every way than 2010.

I hope my job description doesn't change in the coming year. Yesterday was a typical day for requests..."Mom, do you know the vet's phone number?" (Just for some paper work).

"Hey, could you come out and hold the gate while I clean the pen? Those heifers keep running up the hill on me."

"Mom, can you get some sawdust out of my eye?"

"Where are your safety glasses?"

"Well, they were down at the house."

Yes to all. And yes, yes, yes to a life that leaves me with the kitchen counter next to the sink containing, at last count, 1 Bobcat oil filter, 1 chainsaw wrench, seven flashlights, a hole saw blade, shear bolts, lag screws, washers, 2 sets of side cutters, more screwdrivers than I care to count, the grain scale, rulers, shot gun shells, .22 shells, a basket (large) full of assorted parts that somebody might need someday, and some flower pots and matches. Just to name a few.....

There are easier ways, but I doubt that there are many that are more rewarding.

Hope yours is rich and full and fine.

Down on the River

This is a terrible picture I know, but if you click, all that darkness, just above the highway is geese, filling one of the last pools of unfrozen water. They sleep there every night and shuttle over us all day long. I looked west from the river bridge at dusk the other day and they were swirling above the pool like a tornado vortex all made up of geese.

Another dark time barn trip. Still no action on the calving front; a few cows scramble to their feet to see if I have any grain hidden about my person, but the rest of them just look curiously at me.

Down on the river out there in the dark, oh, my. Ducks all up and down the broken pools in front are cackling like crazy witches, QUACK, QUACK, QUACK, QUACK, QUACK, QUACK. The same pattern every time, but not the same duck....there are a lot of them, all doing the same thing. I looked here and came to the conclusion they are probably hen mallards. There are certainly enough of them around and the volume descends properly.

They are very loud and the calls come, one at a time, from a long stretch of water. It is something I have never heard before. They were yakking it up when I headed out to the barn and still at it when I returned.

Took a few minutes to walk down on the front drive and listen between the traffic. What a wild night, with that great big ducky party town, right in front of the house. The geese bugling gently as they keep their places on the relentless water are melodious and kind by contrast.

Sun

It is warm enough to shed all jackets and sunny. Been out doing small animal chores and feeding stuff with no hat, no gloves, just soaking up the sun. Thank you to all our friends to the west for sending us this wonderful weather!

Calving

On a dairy farm it goes on all year to some extent, but since we graze our cows in summer, we have a lot of our calves between the end of one year and spring of the next. It has begun.

It is a dangerous time...the whole having babies and being born business is fraught with many hazards. We do our best to keep them safe, and that includes checking the barn late at night, early in the morning, middle of the day....seems like all the time. Things happen though and sometimes not for the best.

We moved a heifer indoors to calve last night, and I got up about two hours before I wanted to so I could check her. She is fine so far, but I suspect that within a few hours she will have her first baby. Lots of trips to the barn today I guess.

Cows Save Farmer's Life

Read about it here.

Christmas Bird Count

Common Redpoll (Photo by Alan)

If you click you can see that the air is full of water

from these Mallards taking off out of the fish hatchery

We have been counting our little section of the Johnstown circle for many, many years. My mom and dad began, then asked me to join them, then the brothers joined in and now our grown children come along when they can. This year because the count was on a Monday there was no one available except Alan and me. They weather mages were threatening terrible weather.

However, even in the scant light of O'dark-thirty this morning, it was easy to see that we didn't get any snow at all...lots of wind, but not a flake.

All we could say was YAY!!

Since we don't get milkings off on Monday we had to do chores before we left and got a late start. Didn't matter atall. Before we even got to Mom and Dad's we saw a gigantic flock of crows and a big mess of pigeons and turned up the road to count them. There were at least 105 crows in the flock, and fifty pigeons.

While we were at it, we counted that whole road and were followed down to mom's house by a very nice lady who wondered why were looking at her yard with binoculars. See, we knew the folks who used to live there, but unbeknown to us the house had changed hands. Fortunately the lady was a dedicated bird person and glad to know what we were up to. We got that bird count sign on the car as soon as we got to the house though.

It was a surprisingly good day. We missed a lot of common birds that we usually count, but saw some good ones. A solitary red poll...a mess of cedar waxwings...mallard ducks at the fish hatchery. All in all a pretty good day.

(and some huge trout).

Our Numbers:

132 American Crows

1 Common Red Poll

4 White-breasted Nuthatches

15 Blue Jay

27 Mallard Ducks

93 European Starlings

30 Mourning Doves

231 Rock Pigeons or rock doves or whatever the heck they are calling them these days

2 Tree Sparrow

2 Brown Creepers (we walked into my aunt and uncles woods specifically to look for these and found them almost immediately...thankfully, because it was frigid!)

3 Red Tailed Hawks

29 Cedar Waxwings

18 Gold Finches

91 Black-capped Chickadees

6 Tufted Titmice

2 Northern Cardinals

11 Dark-eyed Juncos

1 Hairy Woodpecker

10 Downy Woodpeckers

3 House Finches

26 House Sparrows

Hope You are Safe and Warm and Out of the Weather

Looks like this storm is walloping a lot of folks on the East Coast and I do hope you are safely out of it.

Our Christmas bird count is today.....don't know why it had to be on a weekday, but it isn't me who gets to decide. Still pitch dark out here and will be for quite a while yet, but it doesn't look like we got any snow. Yet. Howling a gale, but no snow.

No idea what to expect in the county to the north, but I do know I wish the count had been yesterday. Birds were out in huge numbers, emptied the feeders shortly after noon. Saw a sharp shinned hawk while filling the stove....probably lured in by the throng at the feeders. I think we have the largest population of chickadees I have ever seen and the white-crowned sparrow is still hanging around. Tons of gold and house finches, titmice, juncos, field sparrows, tree sparrows, and the other usual feeder birds each day.

We will be starting latish on the count, because this is not our morning off, but got to get milking in a minute. Stay warm!

Sunday Stills....Hats

This was a surprisingly hard one. There are lots of hats around, but no time, no time. Here is a hat from the archives, of which we were pretty proud. Now the kid is one semester away from finishing college and moving on to yet another hat.....somewhere with a full time job (one that is not farming, that is)

For more Sunday Stills.....

Merry Christmas

To all our wonderful friends, family, and everyone who stops here today. Hope you all have a wonderful day of peace and joy, which are the best things that there are.

****Update, we already have our first Christmas present, a heifer calf by Woodbine Ellason was born to Blink, the French Fry cow.

Starlings

Thanks to Ellen for posting this.

This is Just Cool

But probably wouldn't surprise most border collie owners. Ours have all been so intuitive and observant of our actions that they never cease to astonish us.

The world's most extensive animal vocabulary belongs to a border collie. (This kind of "research" has got to be fun. Around here we call it "playing with the dog.")

Nick's favorite commands by the way are "all right" and "eat your food". (I suspect he would also love to hear, "get the kitty", someday, but that is not likely to happen.

Is This Hawk Shivering?

I think maybe, but he is hanging around just the same. Hope you are all enjoying a fine Christmas Eve and have a wonderful day tomorrow. Here at Northview the boss is filling up all the feeders with extra haylage, the chickens have fresh shavings in the little coop Mappy gave us, the porch kitties are enjoying some of the stuff they stuff inside turkeys before they send them out (the heart and neck are boiling nicely on the stove) and Nick had three big biscuits instead of one this morning. Thank you to everyone who sent us good wishes or lovely Christmas cards. You are wonderful and we are very grateful.

Oh, and I got a Christmas present yesterday...well actually I got several, but some were more welcome then others. I love, love, love the Norfolk Island pine. I have four now, getting bigger and bushier and adding lots of green to my jungle in the living room. And the tube feeder to replace the old one that I dropped last week. I am delighted as are the gold finches and chickadees.

Thanks guys!!

However, as to the summons to jury duty. Cmon, it's Christmas Eve, couldn't it have waited?

Eh, I am not too worried about it though. I am too darned opinionated to ever get chosen. And if I do, well, it pays a lot better than dairy farming.

Have a great day!

Randomly Yours

Winter

Yep, the white-crowned sparrow still hasn't read the manual on migrating in a timely fashion

Feast to Famine

First we had flooding. Too much water in the barn. We water flowing in the mangers, sopping cow beds, endless sweeping and shoveling and running of the gutter chain.

Then last night we had none. I was watering pen calves while milking; Becky was watering indoor babies, when it just died out without a whimper. We had heard sirens. We wondered.

Shortly after the water went off the lights did too. Milkers stopped, instant darkness, even the cows jumped. And of course we still haven't been able to replace the generator cables.

After we got the machines taken off the cows and hung up and everything shut off (I just happened to have a little flashlight in my pocket and the kids had cell phones, which serve in a pinch) Alan went down street to find that this had happened. (I feel so bad for the poor folks involved, to have such a thing occur so close to Christmas...or any time really. Such a sad thing for them.)

Thanks to the wonders of those cell phones and Alan having friends on other farms around the Town of Glen, we soon knew that it was a widespread outage.

We went inside and sat in the house in the dark, talking and debating what to do. Most of the cows were milked already because Liz needed to get some rest, having been up all night Monday taking her boyfriend to the emergency room (he is out of danger, but pretty uncomfortable). She had finished most of the boss's cows too, so there were only about thirteen head left to milk. It was tanker day though and the tank had not yet been turned on, so if the outage went on for more than a couple of hours we were going to have to dump the milk.

We heard through the grapevine that ten PM was the earliest power would be restored...this was at about seven-twenty.

So we decided to go to the barn, feed out some hay (grain is moved into the barn with an auger...electric of course...and the girls hadn't had their evening feeding) and start hand-milking the high producers. We would have to throw away the milk, but we didn't want them to be uncomfortable for any longer than was necessary.

I was standing there in the dark in the kitchen, fishing around for a wool sock under a chair, getting ready to do all that, when, squeaky-squeaky, flash-bang, the furnace fan began to rotate, the lights blinked on and all the clocks in the kitchen began flashing the wrong time.

There was no need for a food court. The four of us (we sent Liz to get that sleep when we saw that it was going to be a late night) burst into the farmer version of the Hallelujah Chorus.

We could milk. We could feed. We could cool the milk and wash the pipeline. We could eat dinner, only an hour or so late and get our own sleep.

There was plenty to be joyful about and we were. With all the machines on my line, we finished milking the cows in about twenty minutes, fed them some extra just because and came indoors to computers and warmth and glowing light bulbs, which we purely do not appreciate enough.

Flooding

Yeah, we were wishing Noah would bring by some equipment on Saturday. We had the annual family Christmas party in the afternoon, so of course when we got to the barn that morning we found a flood of biblical proportions. Lucky, who is indeed lucky, all things considered, broke her water bowl right off.....which left water, for which we are incidentally required to pay at double the local rate, flowing freely.

Apparently all night. One stable cleaner is level so the water can be run right into the spreader.

The other goes up to go out and water, although it wonderful stuff in the right place and time, refuses to flow uphill. There was so much water that both our little sump pumps turned up their toes. Alan rebuilt one several times before it finally gave up completely.

The women milked while the men moved water and wet, ruined feed and calves that needed new, dry stalls.

Despite all we made it to the party and weren't even the last to arrive. It was nice. Got to meet the new baby and hug everybody at least twice and eat more good food than should be legal. The barn is still soggy and now the spreader has ice in the bottom and won't run, but we will get through this, don't worry. Better days are coming. Here's hoping that seven day forecast has a few hours well above freezing in store for us. Otherwise we will be piling the you-know-what for a while.

Sunday Stills...Holiday Decorations

We barely have any Christmas decorating done this year, so these were pulled out of the china closet for their close up.

For more Sunday Stills....

Christmas "Shopping"

Is just about done.

The Basics of Apple Jelly

A sink full of pink ladies and granny smiths, with a gratuitous red geranium reflected from the windowsill.

Merry Christmas, Have a Hot Shower

Year round!!!!

***I could sing the Hallelujah Chorus myself right now! We were looking at either spending thousands or taking cold ones!

Missed

I was out in the sunset.

Camera right in my hand

Right there in my hand, turned on and zoomed out. Set on C where I often have it.

I failed just the same...missed completely

Too slow, too dark...too bad at aiming.

Thirty or so snow geese, honking softly, quieter than the ubiquitous Canadas, right behind me, the setting sun reflecting off the flashing white of their breasts as their wings beat black, pink, black, like traffic signals from the basement cat.

They were the exact color of flamingos, but seriously less elongated, like somebody washed them in very hot water. It was about the coolest thing in the world.