Washing Down a Mountain

Quick run to Fort Plain yesterday for parts for the milkers (inflations for you who milk cows). We took Route 5 because they just announced that it had reopened after the flood and we wanted to see what had happened that the clean up took so long. Liz drove home that way one night and called me on the phone later. She was incoherent about what she saw.

Once we got to Big Nose, so were we.

Gratuitous mild profanity erupted in its own little flood, mile after mile. (Holy S**t was the most common epithet.) Ordinary words just couldn't capture our astonishment at what had happened. The vicious flood waters carved huge channels down the flanks of that whole mountain...just scored the earth like the claws of some great beast, many feet back into the mountainside, right down to the bone and even into it..

These photos do not do justice to the vigorous new streams and water falls that splash merrily down the sides of Big Nose Mountain now. They look as if they have always been there.

I wish my Grandpa Lachmayer, who took us on many road trips down the valley on the road that curves around its steep green sides, could be alive to see. He would have enjoyed the astonishment.

Nature is powerful beyond imagination and erosion apparently does not take centuries, just a lot of water.

The boss thought he counted seven or so of these gigantic gashes in the mountainside. They went many, many feet into its sides and stretched out of sight toward the top. Can you imagine all that rock and dirt and trees and debris dumped on the roadway below? I am impressed that they got it all cleared up before freeze up.


****Just a few weeks ago this whole area was smoothly rounded and covered with forest.....

Mag-tastico!

Yesterday was. The sun shone. Oh, there were clouds but they were a minor annoyance. The tractor had a flat tire...the big expensive rear tire. But our good tire guy came down and fixed it right away and charged a very reasonable amount so that was okay too.

And when I walked past the window on the way to who knows what, something flitted across the yard and flirted with the laundry. I am always thinking bird, and watching hard to see them, but this was something else, a monarch butterfly so bright and orange against the vibrant green left behind by all the water. It was as if it came just to entertain me, testing the last bright, red, canna blossom, comparing the colors of the shirts and blue jeans, floating up and down on a freshening breeze. It only stayed a moment or two, but they were good moments.

Then at evening chore time, the setting sun was like a spotlight shining across the shadows to highlight each bright tree against the darkness of the retreating clouds. The sky to the west was a soft, bright, greenish-gold, with just a few puffy clouds that looked as if they had been shipped down from Heaven.

Just to make it perfect, better than perfect, beyond all that is perfect, a set of geese winged over low, heading straight into the sun. It lit their wings until they seemed to be made of burnished metal, tin foil geese, mirror geese, so beautiful they made my heart hurt. Their calls followed them to the horizon as we went to let the girls into the barn to eat their supper.

It was an amazing gift to see them, like finding a diamond in a crackerjack box. Plumb made my day.

Escaping from the Flood

Old Faithful

For the past several days we have been finding a few cows in places where they don't belong each morning. We figured it was probably due to the boss doing some electrical work and forgetting to plug the electric fencer back in on Saturday. He does stuff like that pretty often nowadays.

Yesterday morning we had all the cows and all the colored heifers, but every single black and white Holstein heifer was missing. Of course it was still raining but Liz and Alan went hunting for them, fond them in a hay field and brought them home.

Alan spent the entire day fixing fence. The problem was undoubtedly precipitated by the lack of electricity on the fence. A plethora of overgrown rose bushes lying on the wires didn't help.

However the biggest issue was that the flood took the corner off the fence, ripped the post right down. Our creek is usually just a trickle, but it has been swollen to little Niagara status a lot lately. Anyhow, the kid worked the whole day and got it about half finished...good enough to get by but he will have to finish it today.

Especially since he left my good hammer and my not quite as good, but good enough, brush cutters up along the fence in a bucket. It is unwise to fail to return mommy's tools around here.

It has been very weird this summer how the heifers have segregated themselves. Now and then they gather in one bunch, but most of the time the two brown Jerseys pair up with the two red milking shorthorns and the black and whites form another group entirely. It is not because they were particularly raised together or anything, but they sort by color pretty much every day....odd....

Well-Meaning But....

Great article here on how ill-informed folks often make the wrong call on animal welfare situations. One of the best I have read.

Monday

Quack, quack, ribbit....learning a new language here, the language of rain.

Sunday Stills....Water Droplets

No shortage of these. Bossman says the folks say there have been twelve days of rain in this set.

For more Sunday Stills......

Cool Stuff from other Folks

Jinglebob posted this link on the real result of letting folks exercise their Second Amendment rights.

A good friend participated in this Guinness Book record collection of boats in Inlet NY.

Take into account that Inlet, a tiny town in the Adirondack Mountains, has a population of well under 500, yet beat out Pittsburgh, PA for the record. The event raised money for the Susan G. Komen Foundation for breast cancer research and was called One Square Mile of Hope. (Record is not yet official but surely will be.)

Benefit Tractor Pull

At the Fonda Fair grounds October 29th and 30th. This sounds like it will be a tremendous amount of fun for pulling fans with proceeds going to flood victim relief.

***Thanks, Scott for the HT

Operation Swoop the Coop

The name flat cracked us up, although the subject isn't all that funny. Now we are just waiting to hear who dunnit.

***Ask and ye shall receive. Here's the answer.

***And yet another, and probably more accurate story, this time with photos.

Who is Really Getting Your Vote

Hacking the voting machines

Sunrise

We're having one!

Yesterday, not so much. This video shows one of the reasons Liz didn't make it home to milk last night. All the roads approaching the farm from the west, north and south were closed, so she just couldn't get here.

Beck, Alan and I did all the milking and Beck fed calves while the boss went out and churned up mud getting the cows fed. Took him all of chore time and then some and he cut a tire on the skid steer on the slate banks that were carved out by the water rushing down. There is a good eight inches of heavy gravel with rocks bigger than my fists piled up in front of the cow door. Guess when they get the skid steer tire fixed he can use it to fill those holes.

It was hard to even get to the barn last night, normally a five-minute or less walk. The mud was boot top deep, the creek under the culvert bridge, which normally holds barely enough water for a cow to get a careful drink sounded like Niagara and would have washed you away had you stepped into it.

It was spooky to even step out onto the darned bridge. It has washed out several times, once just as the milk truck was about to drive onto it, and it always makes me nervous to cross when we are getting a lot of rain.

Beck warned me not to step into the water rushing across the barnyard up on top too. However, I am a shorty and couldn't begin to step across, it so I waded right in. Sure enough it was racing fast enough to nearly pull my feet out from under me. Wow! The kids grabbed my hands because they are such nice folks, and, although I would have been fine without, I was thankful.

What a year!

Not Again

A huge thank you to friends, family members and caring neighbors who called us about the tornado warning. We had no idea....

We ended up spending around 45 minutes watching the skies to the west and south, ready to hit the cellar if we had to. We got an outrageous lot of rain and some pretty wild winds and rumor has it that something did some damage just a tiny bit to the south of us, but we are fine. Now it is raining hard and thundering wildly.

The boss just got the driveways half-way fixed up so the milk truck can get in all right and we can get the trucks and the Durango up and down. Guess he is looking at a couple more days on the skid steer. Guess I had better shut this down before the storm gets any closer.

Puddle Wonderful

Actually I don't think puddles are all that wonderful these days, as in, if I don't see another one this fall it will be soon enough. But aren't these puddling butterflies wonderful? I love their pink legs and little green tennis ball eyes.

Heartbreaking

This video features one of the farm families who lost the most in the recent floods.

The nice lady doing the narration has sat at our kitchen table a couple of times....they are hard working, highly-respected folks, who made a good name for farming wherever they went. The video will just break your heart if you love the land, the animals, and the people who care for them. It is long, but do watch.....

Hurricane Irene Aftermath: One Farmer's Story from SkeeterNYC on Vimeo.

Chopping Sorghum

Chopper man

Sorghum seeds

(where are the bobolinks?

they love them)

Happy Birthday, Mac

Wow, it is the 200th birthday of one of America's favorite apples, and NY's number one variety, the McIntosh. Do read the article if you have time. It is really interesting.

(When I asked the men of how old they thought Macs were Alan answered that they came out in 83. Huh? But he thought I meant the computer. Talk about a generation gap.)

Farmer's Bubble Wrap

Ready for just a little pinch

These seed pods of the pale touch me not, or jewel weed (the spotted orange ones work fine too) are more fun than the wrapping from a dozen packages. And they grow themselves out in the yard by the thousands.

I found a lovely plant yesterday, with at least fifty pods, fat, ripe, and pure green dynamite.

Greedy thing that I am, I popped them all. To achieve maximum results pinch the pointy little tip at the bottom and the seeds explode like quail out of a covey. I pinched maybe twenty or so, reveling in the crazy flight of the flinty little seeds, then shook the bush to make the rest of them detonate. (I was taking my life in my hands as this plant hung right over the electric fence...which may be why no one else had popped the seed pods before me.) You can't help but walk away smiling.....

The best ones are the fattest ones, with translucent skin showing the dark seeds within. (The thinner green-seeded ones will pop too, but no where near as wildly.) This video will give you an idea of what happens, but the individual has not been trained in touching-me-not and is pinching the top of unripe pods...it is important to pinch the bottom for best effect (true in many situations).

Anyhow, as you can see I am a cheap date and easily amused.

We know a lady who actually sells jewel weed seeds and touts it as a skin-soothing medicinal plant. Here we let Ma Nature decide where the stuff will grow and pop 'em where we find 'em.

Can you imagine how many folks would garden if everything we grew was this much fun to plant?

Surprise from the Garden Pond

Look closely, now. This is the base of one of the water cannas, the big variegated one, which I brought inside and placed in a ten-gallon fish tank full of water.

I like to keep them going from year to year so they bloom in the pond, which this one did, quite enthusiastically. A couple of days after it came in I spotted these tiny brown specks all over the inside of the tank. They are growing fast now and it is much easier to tell what they are.

See them? Tiny, baby snails.

Sunday Stills...Signs of Fall

Fat fellow, gearing up for fall

Fall fruit

Sorghum seeds

Staghorn Sumac

Goldenrod

Fall asters

Only a few scattered trees are changing colors yet, but there are many other signs that winter is approaching.

For more Sunday Stills....

Rescue Rangers

Taken with my cell phone...kitties are under the flap of the box.

Setting up the milker day before yesterday. Heard the dreaded cheeping cry of a kitten in distress.

Oh, oh....

Athena has turned out to be one of those kitten shifters...here one day, somewhere else the next and we hadn't seen her kitties in a couple of days.

The girls and the boss went on the hunt. No kitties in the manure shed. No kitties under the compressor. No kitties under the bulk tank. No kitties in the ceiling.

Nope the kitties were in the wall. Yes, indeedy, inside the wall. Appears Athena hauled them up stairs to an abandoned grain bin and they fell down into the wall.

Alas, when the wall was demolished with hammer and tongs...or whatever...there were only two kitties left of the original three. (Not to mention a large hole in the wall, which spooked all the cows that have to walk by it...or at least it spooked the Jerseys, making it seem like all the cows.)

The two residual chats were enthroned in a cardboard box in the milk house, with mama in fond attendance, canned cat food and milk was provided and all was well.

Well, except that cats aren't allowed in the milk house. By law.

Next morning when we went to remove the little offenders ...yay...an empty box. No kitties. So the girls crawled around on their hands and knees in the milk house until they found the two little devils under the fridge and pulled them out. They had to be relocated before the milk truck came and they got us in trouble.

Only lo and behold there were now three kitties. Either they multiplied like gremlins in the night or Athena punched a big hole in the plastic covering one window to bring the missing felid inside with his sibs. (Seems she knows a cushy berth when she finds one.)

I sent Becky for my window repair tote and fixed the yawning opening. Kittens were placed back in the old calf tie up whence they originally emanated shortly after birth.

And of course by evening they were missing again. This time they were quickly discovered over by the permanent cat food dish. I find myself wondering just how many lives they have used up so far......and also who is going to fix that wall and when.

Devil Tailed Toad Strangler

(When it's not raining, it is pretty)

Yeah. We were milking last night while the rain pounded down. Cows didn't want to go back out into it, let me tell you. Take a day of fixing and changing to keep them in and they are really much better off out, so we insisted. They protested, but went eventually out to their feed in the heifer pasture.

They weren't the only ones. The barn was full of teen aged toadlets too, little couple-inches -long fellas that came inside out of the rain. (It has rained enough to drown slugs all over the paths where we walk) We are big herptile fans here at Northview, so the toads all got escorted outside to safety too. Nothing good about the collision between half a ton of cow on the hoof and half an ounce of Bufo.

Then when we came in the house, we found that a friend had put up videos of a little sneaky snake of a tornado up around Glen somewhere and other folks were saying that they had seen two. Another video I found this morning showed it coming right at one of our friend's family's farms, but is was sucked up into the sky before it hit them.

Wow! We didn't even get any wind to mention for which I am grateful. I guess the twisters were both little devil tails, stirring things up but not doing much damage. Still, this is weird as heck. Not your grandma's upstate weather.

Alan and I ran errands and visited folks earlier yesterday and came home along the river. You would not believe how big a channel it cut during the Irene and Lee flooding. Another wow. It looks like a glacier came through at warp speed, cutting gouges and flinging rocks and mud behind it.

We have stayed away from Schoharie and Middleburg and the other really badly damaged areas, but I shudder to think what it is like down there. Poor folks.

Hey, if by chance you want to read this week's Farm Side, the paper put it up online. Usually it is only on the pay site, but here it is if you are interested. Just Look and Listen

Change 'O Plans

They happen to the best of us. Woke up full of hope for a harvest day. The guys got some sorghum chopped yesterday and changed fields to go after some better stuff. Were planning on more of the same for today. Walked out of the bedroom and heard rain thundering on the steel porch roof (for some reason you can rarely hear it rain in our room).

Well, dang, so much for sorghum. During drier years they might be able to chop the same day as rain if it cleared up by noon, but it is so soggy, it will be at least a day before they can move.

Normally this would plunge me into despair. Enough already, and I wish the forecasters would get it right once in a while. We were supposed to get one more nice day before the gunk set in.

However, today there is just going to be a change of plans. If I can pull it together the boy and I are going visiting and to the store. I am going to finally see folks who have been too long neglected, deliver some tomatoes and beef and books (of which we have a plethora) and then hit the store for dog food, DVDs and ammo. Getting to be that time of year and the big bucks and big Toms are making themselves known. And I am going to put a few thousand photos on DVDs and maybe speed up this tired old computer a bit. Maybe.

There. I am all cheered up at least for today. Hope you have a good one too.

Here are some links that may help.

I have been at meetings where this guy spoke and always thought he was pretty darned good for the community, but now I am downright proud of him. Man on a Mission

A small but interesting positive carved out when the flood waters revealed bits of history in Fort Hunter. Can you imagine the possibilities from this discovery? A church probably attended by Sir William Johnson before the Revolutionary War? Wow....

****Update, please go read this story about a modern day crime fighting hero. You simply can't make stuff like this up!

Facebook Changes

Close up of FB Dev at work

(If you are a normal person, who has an actual life, and who doesn't like rants and tirades from folks who don't, please don't read any further....please...you will just think ill of me, and I value your good opinion. However, I have no life and get my personal interactions here on the interwebs.)

Yep, Facebook devoured itself yet again, just turned around, grabbed its tail in its sticky, black beak and sucked itself right inside. Slurp! Just like a cocktail olive. It's done it before and eventually everyone got used to the pointless, intrusive, and annoying changes that it made to itself when it emerged from its own ugly, and now inside out, butt. This seems like the worst update yet.

I read my morning news on FB, keep up with friends and family, play pointless, but addictive games and generally waste quite a lot of time. I also used to get the news feeds of a large number of farms and farm organizations, which I used to glean tips for future Farm Side stories or to kick off posts here on Northview. A whole new ball game now.

Only Facebook, with its insane level of popularity, could c**p in the hats of millions upon millions of loyal, all day every day, customers and get away with it.

But they will. We will all whine and bitch and carry on and send them nasty notices. Then we will all figure out how to find the news and updates we used to use and twist ourselves inside out to do so. I truly don't think that FB devs have any interest at all in serving their customers. I think they sit around in little padded rooms thinking up ways to tick off their millions and millions and millions of users and then gloat when they get all those millions of angry letters.

Meanwhile, maybe they bought shares in Google+ (which is also hard to use and confusing) and want to send a little business their way.

Okay, enough of that. Now I will go see how much time I can waste figuring out how to find Farm and Dairy, and Dairy Herd Management and all those other folks....and you...if you are my FB friend. Rant over.

***and yes, I do know that there are many more important issues to worry about, flooding, famine, etc., but today is my day to whine.

***Update #2 Becky pointed out that all we really wanted was a "dislike" button

Not Helpful

As you can see the Sudex got away from us.

Supposed to cut it when it is as high as your wallet.

It would take a pretty tall guy for that to be the case

here, even if he carried his wallet in his hat. However, the weather is what it is and volume is good too. We will take all the feed of any description that we can get.

These pics belong to Alan, who took them with his cell phone and posted them on

Facebook where his low down,

thieving , conniving

mother could easily steal and repost them.

Thanks guy, for this pretty darned cool taste

of autumn field work on a hill farm in upstate NY

The Rubber band girls of summer seem to have left for warmer places already. I am keeping their feeder full, but there is no sign of their humming and buzzing around my head when I go out on the sitting porch. Not much reason to go out there now anyhow. All the house plants are inside; nothing left but the hummer feeder and the parsley and basil. I will let the basil freeze, as it is always full of bugs if I bring it in...and the parsley doesn't care about the weather....although it does seem perkier if I water it occasionally.

I miss the hummingbirds and the other summer birds, but the blue jays are bright and beautiful as they scream across the pasture, alarming all who will listen. We do have a few killdeers and those absurdly frustrating fall warblers. I had a pair literally three feet from me the other day and STILL couldn't identify them! They were pretty though.

The guys got some feed put in yesterday and a lot of mowing and such done on Sunday. It is not usual to work Sundays here, except for milking, feeding and chores, but with this awful weather you take the weather when you can get it. They got it so they took it.

Now it is raining again, so they won't be able to do much today. Guess it is going to warm up a bit though, which would be good. This taste of cool fall weather we have been having is very invigorating and we get a lot of work done, but it is plumb uncomfortable around the house.

Oh, well, better days are coming, it says here in fine print. And we still have grass, greenery, cows, buildings, and each other, a lot better than a lot of folks are dealing with. Take care out there.

Away From the Blog Right Now

Discussion on the merits....of Ford vs Dodge

Threecollie is away from her blog right now. She may be outside hanging up laundry and picking tomatoes.

Or possibly corralled in the office with a long pile of bills and a short pile of milk check.

Or she may just be playing hooky because it is so darned nice.

Anyhow, leave a message after the tone and she will get back to you tomorrow. Thanks!

B-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-P........