Dawn Walk

This week's Sunday Stills got me thinking of sunrises and landscapes. When the sun started peeping out yesterday Nick and I ventured to the top of the heifer pasture hill with the camera.

There was not a lot going on bird wise..robins, killdeers, crows and assorted black birds, titmice, song sparrows and such.

The mist was rising off the grass though, the river was reflecting softly, the dog was being a good boy, and the sun put on a fine show.

Shadow farm wife with shadow farm dog

Sunday Stills...the Four Points

North

South

East

West

North, South, East and West. Took these while out in the early morning walking down the driveway and waiting for my ride to the meeting last week.

For more Sunday Stills......

Herd of Chickens?

Ooh, he has us all gathered together here....what will we do?

Crow, what else?

Holding

Where the woodcock was

Sorry about the light posting lately. Combination of it is nice enough to go out and work and nothing we are doing is all that interesting. After a long winter with a lot of snow there is much manure to move. Moving it is a necessary and valuable activity, but, let's face it, it is neither pretty nor interesting.

However, this kind of weather takes the curse off almost anything. Until the wheelbarrow broke, I was shoveling horse poo in large quantities yesterday....and liking it. (I kept wondering what those little black parts I was finding on the ground were....hmmm.....then the whole wheel assembly fell off, making the answer to that question perfectly and painfully clear.)

If I changed this to a bird and frog blog there would be much more to report. Alan is pretty sure there is an indigo bunting in the hedge row next to the house. He has very sharp eyes and I trust his judgement. Frogs are migrating nights down on Corbin Hill Rd. He keeps stopping to move them out of the road and I keep praying he doesn't get himself hit. The garden pond is still just a dank, dark pit full of winter debris, but I will be fixing that any day now...just got to dig out the pump and filter.

Meeting was good...another indication of how much farmers care about their critters...lots of good programs to help one do a better job. NYSCHAP is one fine example. NY is lucky to have it. Hope it continues to survive budget cuts.

We are still having enormous bull calf after enormous bull calf. Usually for some weird reason we get a lot of bull calves from bulls we buy from the stud and many more heifers from the bulls we draw ourselves. This year...nothing but bulls. I think we have had four or five heifers all together and we lost one of them. At least Liz's best cows had girls, so we have Bling and Chrome, and Becky has Testify. I will be glad when the brunt of calving is done with though, pasture is up, and the cows can go outside to stay for the summer. Can't wait to build the fence.

More Tainted Chinese Milk

With deaths

Still More Morning

Morning

I take a lot of photos of this big spruce on our neighbor's lawn. About twice a week the boss looks out the window and says, "You know, that tree is just about perfect."

I guess it is and photogenic too. About two seconds after I took this the woodcock blew out of the bushes right at my feet, which made me very glad I walked down the driveway instead of driving.

Spilled Milk

The EPA wants everyone to cry over it.

Farmer Scholars

Farmers are the studyingest and meetingest people you could imagine. Far from the overalls, straw hat, and dangling stalk of timothy stereotype that is usually portrayed about them, they have to know a lot to do what they do. And they have to keep learning all the time. Farming changes as constantly as the weather, new rules, new plant diseases, new production methods are coming along all the time. To keep up with the industry farmers need to keep learning.....I have never met one who didn't subscribe to enough trade publications to cover the living room floor an inch deep every month and they go to meetings too.

There are meetings about growing corn, meetings about when to cut hay, meetings about nutrient management, meetings about every aspect of animal care, crop production, feed preservation and political meetings too. There are meetings about milk marketing, and meetings about regulations, and meetings to go to Albany or Washington to try to explain the realities of agriculture to city legislators.

Nearly all farmers that I know go to some meetings. Late fall, winter and very early spring are the times for meetings in this climate. Once the crop work starts forget about trying to drag even the most studious of farmers out of his fields. There is work to be done.

Tomorrow I am off to a meeting and will have a report for you when it is over. It will be a good one I think and I am lucky enough to be going with someone really cool. There are some great speakers scheduled and I hope to learn more about a subject that needs to be on the list of every farmer, pet owner, or person addicted to chewing and swallowing, as Mike Rowe says....animal welfare.

Waiting on Water

My friend Linda, in Colorado, has an interesting post about waiting on water out in her area. There they rely on irrigation to provide moisture for their crops.

Here we are also waiting on water, but we are waiting for it to go away so we can get going. There are fences to build and muck from winter to clean up and land that is waiting for the plow and disks. At the rate it is raining I guess it will be waiting a while. It was almost dry enough to work before the weekend, but then the monsoons set in.

Anyhow, it sure is wet, and I am glad that it isn't snow. You do appreciate your boots in this weather.

Trying not to be Greedy

For spring. But it is hard not to be. Went out to check cows in a soft, early morning rain, an Irish rain, not enough to even wet my pull over, but wet enough to hear.(The kind of rain that just might bring on the new grass....I look every day at the hill behind the house...is it green yet? No but soon.)

Wet enough to get the robins going out there in the dark.

And going they were, dozens of them everywhere around, north, south, east, and west, and all points in between. Killdeers too, and four...at least four...song sparrows. The phoebes showed up at the creek day before yesterday, but either they don't like rain or they sleep late. They are not calling.

No woodcock either, although we have heard him a couple of times. I like to think of him out there in the short grass part of the pasture, trotting around on his stubby little legs and shouting imperatives to his lady. Then tumbling sky-high, all whistle and flute, only to drift gently back down and do it all again.

Just a couple weeks ago there were barely any birds and they surely were not singing before dawn. I took a little walk this morning though, just my Hall's cough drop and me, listening for more...new...better...different. Who else is back and taking up territory? Yeah, I am greedy for more spring no two ways about it.

No calves this morning and the sump pump the guys rigged yesterday did its job pretty well, so the flooding is negligible. Thankfully.

We are hoping for some decent weather to get some fencing done and some manure on the fields before the serious spring work begins.

One of my goals each summer is to learn a couple new bird songs. I am not good remembering sounds in that fashion so it is a challenge, but one that I much enjoy. Last year I got indigo bunting and Carolina wren......Who will it be this year?

Barnyard Math

Take one pair of pea fowl in a coop near the stove

Plus one bright, breezy spring day. It is really nice out.

Which makes them cheerful and talkative (pea fowl sound just like what you might get if you crossed a provoked pig with an amorous jackass).

Add one boss man splitting kindling so the old lady (who has cleaned out the stove) can build a new fire.....

And what do you get?

Whack....SCREAM....whack..SCREAM....whack..SCREAM.

Every time that ax hit the wood, the male shrieked as if he had been hit. It was funny as heck. Of course when the sun is shining, the air is full of spring and the sky is afluff with poofy clouds, it doesn't take a whole lot to make me laugh.

Breaking up is Hard to Do

Breaking down ain't much fun either. Mom posted a litany of stuff at their house that has recently passed on to its reward on Facebook yesterday. Pretty awful. By mid afternoon we were in the thick of it too. Computer monitor died. Alan moved the office one out here. Broke my reading glasses, which I need for computing, in the process (can't wear the dollar store jobs, mismatched eyes). Then the bathroom faucet threw its shaft out of joint. Thankfully the boss was still up and heard the little Niagara in there. No showers til he gets that fixed. Arggghhhhhh

The boss was buying stable cleaner parts up at Hands one day a year or so ago. He was grousing about it breaking down and costing a lot all the time. The Amishman in line behind him was holding a five-tined fork and said, "Oh, mine broke too, so I just got a new one," and brandished the fork.

Ayyup, you can clean out behind fifty cows with a fork. We didn't have a stable cleaner behind twenty-two of ours for decades. The boss and his dad cleaned them Amish style.You can do it....but it is a misery. Especially on Sunday morning and all.

You can compute without glasses too, if you are a communication and fun with Zuma junkie like I am. But you get a little cross eyed.

Only got one calf out of all the excitement yesterday, yet another behemoth bull. Our calf buyers love them, but we sure would like some heifers. ETrain was foolin' and still hasn't had her baby. We were thinking that Liz's cow, Foolish, who was born on April Fool's day, hence her name, might calve yesterday on her birthday, but she didn't either. Oh, well.

April Foolishness

A bazillion and twelve geese on Summit Lake

Photos do not do justice to the numbers

The boss left early, Alan is at school, everybody else has to work and TWO cows are calving simultaneously. One of them always a milk fever problem. Eating breakfast while I give them time to settle down, then off to the barn.

Northview Clothespins

The Way They Are

I love cows. But they are not the creatures of Disney.

This is a terribly sad story, and demonstrates just what they can do if frightened, injured, or just in a bad mood. Deputy killed by cow.

Here is an article detailing fatalities caused by cows in four states. Scroll down to the table .......

I Read a Lot of Interesting Things

Sorry about the general messiness in this photo.

Definitely time for spring clean up.

Alan took this with his phone from the top of the grain bin.

I don't know if you would be interested too, but here is a link to a story about dairy colostrum enhancing athletic performance. Heavens! We save some for the calves, but dump a lot of it right out.

And a fifth of Chinese dairies may close. It wasn't too many years ago when a lot of Holsteins from NY were exported to Chinese buyers and there was a lot of hoopla about it. I thought then that we might be shooting ourselves in the foot competition wise, but I never imagined the mess with melamine being mixed with milk to raise protein levels. Sure is nasty. Hydrolyzed leather protein is even worse.

Chicken Polish

This guy's been hittin' it.

King's Ransom Farm Rises Again

After the tragic collapse of their barn during the heavy snows this winter. Read about it here.

Supposed to be a Farm Blog

Do click

Yeah, this is.

In theory at least.

But I can't get away from my fascination with other stuff.

Thus you will have to suffer with more birds etc. They put the glitter on otherwise very cold and miserable days. Last night I lingered in the last rays of sunset listening to a thousand, or a thousand dozen, or a bazillion geese down on the river urgently shuffling around before sleep. I have been hoping every night and daybreak for a woodcock but not a peent or a whistle had I heard.

However as I marveled at the geese in their many, with more winding in all the time, I heard the musical whistle of timberdoodle wings, right over the house. The boss was coming across and I pointed it out to him...not too impressed. Oh well.

He was heading up to his aunt's house for his last thing at night, every night, chore of filling her stove with wood, so we talked and listened to the peenting for a minute. The bird flew right at us just as he closed the car door.

Sadly that seemed to scare him away and although I froze my ears for a good long while I didn't hear him again. Here's hoping he will return, even if his stomping ground is a little farther out in the field than right by the lawn where he was last night.

Speaking of birds...turkeys...yeah...we have turkeys. So does Jeffro.

Sounds of Spring

You will want to turn your sound up, as this was made just so you could hear the din of this mixed flock of red winged black birds, starlings, grackles, and whatever that little yellow thing in about the middle is....gold finch maybe....

I was out with Nick and these guys were tuning up in the tree right by the house. Loud enough to hurt your ears almost.

Meanwhile we are wishing that winter would go into remission. The normal daily temp for this time of year is 46. Instead we are getting up to low single digits and not warming up much all day.

Sunday Stills the Color Blue

There is so much blue around the Northeast in March. Blue Jays, blue skies, blue fingers and toes (yeah, it is 7 above this morning, trust me, we're blue). Alas, skies are out of the equation and the blue jays elected not to show. So here she is in all her glory, our son's beloved, Bomber Blue. She has her own Facebook page and the whole nine yards. Sorry about the mud but she is a boy's truck and it is mud season.

And doesn't Mom look nice in blue? I thought so, so I took a whole bunch of pics of her

What is that scary thing?

For more Sunday Stills......

Babyland

Two calves yesterday, a heifer to Hollywood, a bull to Baja.

Busy, busy. Hollywood's had a leg back, but Liz and the boss repelled it a little and got the leg up. As soon as all was clear she sat right down and got it born. Hallelujah.

Several-many moons ago I bought the boss a bull calf for Father's Day, Keeneland Astre Pat. There is quite a story about him, as I went to the sale and he was purchased for big bucks long before I could even get in a bid. Then at the end of the auction he was put up for sale again. Seems the individual who purchased him the first time thought he was a heifer. I got him bought for about a fifth the original price.

Not to be outdone, the boss bought another bull (O-C-E-C Lindy Fred-ET) from Oneida County Embryo Company, a son of the famous Stewarthaven TT Fallon cow (one of the most incredibly beautiful cows I have ever laid eyes on. We saw her at pasture when she was quite old and she was like a Bonny Mohr painting. Silky black hide over a fabulous frame with wide, sweeping ribs and a rump like you wouldn't believe....just wow!)

We raised them, had them drawn at Dependabull when they were old enough, and have been just a tad competitive about whose choice was best ever since.

KPat made a lot of heifers, middle of the road milk cows, nothing special, but sturdy and dependable. The Freds are big and black and framey like grandma, but a tad mastitis-prone.Oddly enough the best daughters of either bull were out of daughters of the other bull. Turned out to be a great cross......Hollywood is out of an old KPat daughter and her baby is by Fred. Really nice calf.

Which made our little competition kind of silly I guess.

And my new favorite milk cow, alongside my beloved Broadway, is a Fred daughter out of my old Citation R Maple cow, England.

Fuzzy little Egypt was a loon when she was young. Abso-positively nutso. When we had to do anything whatsoever with her she freaked and we had a rodeo. However, after she had her baby she turned into the bovine version of a happy puppy. When I milk her she turns her hairy black head around to be scratched and loves to have me pet and fuss with her. I can't believe she is the same cow. Needless to say she is treated like a big baby and called Boo boo and all. (Yeah, I call my cow Boo Boo, what can I say?)

Off to the barn in a couple of minutes who see who has gotten up to what in the night (hopefully they all just finished their hay, slept and chewed the cud, but you never know.) Have a great Saturday.

Hairy Butt

Hairy woodpecker that is. We have downies all the time, but this pair of hairies is the first in a long while. I heard them before I saw them..their chinking call is quite different, louder and more musical, than that of the downies. For some reason the female spent at least ten minutes guddling around under the stones in the herb garden the other day. Photo was taken through the window so it isn't the greatest, but I guess you can get the idea.

Things are in a sort of holding pattern here. Mud, sunken driveway, hard to get at the feed. Just waiting for better weather to bless us. It is always thus in early spring.....however, I visited the garden section while picking up a few things at Wally World yesterday.

What a sweet renewal! Red flower pots! Green flower pots! Dirt! Peat pellets! Seeds, seeds, seeds! Felt like a kid at a carnival.

Life was worth living again... I am going to save up and have me one of those glazed red flower pots with the nice water catchers, yes I am. Wouldn't it look nice with a bright, cardinal red geranium planted in it? And I just happen to have a baby one out on the kitchen window sill.

Snow over Mud

Stuck milk truck, gravel hauled in, feed hard to get out, but the sun rises are sure fancy...

Dad Says

We have to call him George now, even though that isn't his name

Here is an interview with the folks about the gun show this past weekend. Very nice....except that his name's not George.

And aren't George and Alice a fine looking pair...with nearly sixty years of marriage behind them!

The Flashlight

In her job as a milk inspector, Liz visits many farms each day. A number of her farmers are Amishmen. Such was the case one day last week when she stopped to perform a routine inspection. As she checked out things in the milk house, she observed a grain truck blowing corn meal into an overhead bin in the barn but didn't pay too much attention.

When she finished in the milk house she pushed open the door into the stable to check on things there.

The door was wedged almost completely shut. She crawled through into the stable to see what was wrong. Corn meal was falling from the open bottom of the grain bin chute and had piled up against the door. The farmer's mules had pulled the chute open with their teeth. Thus as the trucker blew the grain into the bin it flowed down onto the stable floor below, right in front of the cows, horses and mules.

She tried to get the trucker's attention but he couldn't hear her over the noisy truck.

So she climbed up on a cow stall and hammered the chute shut herself, twisting her back in the process.

Then, because the animals were eating the feed as fast as they could gobble, she raced to find the farmer.

He was not at home, but she knew he farmed with his brother, so she drove down to his house and roused him instead. Kids with shovels were just climbing into her truck to go sort out the mess, when the missing farmer arrived driving his horse and buggy.

She said he left her truck in the dust, pounding down the road to his barn to save his livestock from overeating on the rich corn meal. Those standardbreds can fly when they want to.

She offered to help with the clean up, but he thanked her over and over and said that she had done enough just closing the bin and running for help. At least a ton of corn meal had spilled onto the floor but that much again had been saved by her quick actions.

At home that night she realized that somewhere in all the excitement she had lost the fancy little flashlight she uses to check the inside of milk pipes and such. She figured that it was gone forever somewhere in the mess of corn meal at the farm.

However, a few days later our milk truck driver dropped it off right in our milk house. The Amish farmer had found it and made sure to send it home on the truck so she would have it if she needed it (he has the same driver as we do.)

When she turned it on she noticed that it was brighter than it had been....the batteries had been going a bit dead...so she popped it open....and there was a set of brand new batteries.

Spring is Sprung

A soggy snow robin

The grass is friz

And I know just where the boidies is.

Right on the feeder

It's sprung all right! in the wrong direction!

Happy Birthday

Alan is 21 today. If you see him out and about with the Blue Bomber (or hear him, which is a distinct, if unfortunate possibility), I hope you will wish him a good one.

He has done a lot in his life for someone so young, from putting up much of our cow feed and rebuilding tractor engines to putting food on the table in the form of game (Mr. Headshot) when we were too broke to pay the butcher toprocess a beef for us. He can turn a rooster into dinner, build a fine woodshed or whisper heifers into standing still to be milked.

He has me humming Hinder songs as I wander about my work.

I think I'll keep him.

Have a great one big guy and take good care of you!

Zero to Sixty

Fireworks?

No, just a shiverish photographer and a sparkley moon

In bird.2. Less than a week ago there was nothing going on around here in the bird department. Now there is an actual dawn chorus, even if it is only the penny whistle of the titmice and the woodwind robins, with a few raucous jay squawks tossed in. The robins actually wake me up.

You won't hear a single complaint about that though. What a way to start the day.

I know everybody got out to see and photograph that incredible moon Saturday night. However, it rose so late here and it was so darned cold out, with a lazy wind (the kind that goes through you rather than around), that I didn't get much.

I sure saw some though. I got up around two AM to have a look around and you could read by the moonlight.

Indoors.

I checked.

Outdoors, tangled in the stark darkness of the honey locust branches, it looked as hard and round as a polished diamond.

Blinding

Bright.

Kind of crystalish. Not like any moon I knew before. Cold too. It got down to ten, which is pretty chilly for March around here. Perfect sugar weather though.

Sunday Stills..Canine Companions

The original three collies, Gael, looking sheepish,

Nick with his back turned,

and Mike hating the camera, but doing what I asked him.... as always

Mike, "killing" the cat dish

Gael bringing home the bacon..... er......chicken

Two Bears, the cracker dog

Nick!

To a dedicated dog person this is a fine challenge indeed. Nick is the only one of these dogs still with us, except in fond memories, of which I have a million, each less likely than the one before and all true. Dogs have been good to me.

The little brown dog, Two Bears, was an amazingly clever little girl, who got her son, Bobby, to dig out woodchucks for her by barking in his ear. We were always having to go get them out of hedgerows, where she stood on the surface barking and barking and barking, while he dug until his toes bled. As far as I know they never actually caught one, but that didn't stop them from trying.

For more Sunday Stills.......