People ask us all the time, "Why do you have a big scale in your dining room?" 

People ask us all the time why we have this huge set of scales in our dining room. We are never quite sure how to answer, because there is no real reason. We bought it years ago when a local knitting mill went out of business. They must have done a lot of weighing because they had several of these big ones, plus a number of somewhat smaller units for sale for various prices. I think we paid $125 for ours.

Anyhow we were noodling around the old warehouse where the sale was being held and both, separately, came to the conclusion that one of them would be just right for this old house. We just had to have it.

My mother-in-law was alive then and living up here (we lived in town and commuted). She was as taken with the scale as we were, when we hauled it home, but we couldn't figure out how to get it into the house. Thus it lived on the porch for several years until she passed away and we moved up from town. When we hired movers to bring the fridge and other heavy items up we got them to bring the scale indoors. Now there is sits among the guitars and shotguns in all its glory.

The guys went to get some wood from some real good friends of ours yesterday. The town cut some elm on them and they let us have it. There is just nothing to beat free wood, and we are staying nice and warm on the strength of it. The fellows did get to talking and get home late, which is understandable. Farmers hardly ever get to see their friends to visit with because they always have a pile of chores waiting at home. I am glad they got to catch up on the news. We didn't get out of the barn until 8:30, but the boss is taking a bunch of calves to the sale today, which will give us earlier nights from now on for a while.Seems to take forever to warm milk in this weather. Last year we had so many heifer calves we are still struggling to house them. This year it looks like the bulls are going to make up for it. Three in a row now. Only one was by an AI bull, Ocean-View Extra Special, who came out with a very disappointing proof, so it isn't such a bad thing I guess. We have nine yearlings in one pen, with two more needing to go in there, calves in the sawdust shed and in every empty cow stall in the barn.

Alan got his new chainsaw tuned too. They have to adjust the choke after ten tanks full of fuel and he had reached that point. I worry about him using it, even though he is old enough to drive, or will be soon. Still he is getting the box elders all cut down and made into wood, which makes the place look a world better. They are such scrubby trees and crop up everywhere.

We love the woodstove, but it added an awful extra lot of work on the boss to keep enough wood ahead heat this huge place and run the place alone (except for us) too. It makes a huge difference when Alan can cut up a bit when it gets busy.

Wednesday noon, deadline for the Farm Side. Getting that puppy written leaves little time or energy for blogging, even though that is so much more fun. However, the paper actually pays me so they get priority today.

This week the column hit on the Hoard's Dairyman judging contest, the new BSE case in Canada, the failing (to put it mildly) audit of USDA on packing companies, dairy monopolies, and the outrage of National Dairy Promotion and Research Board handing over six million bucks worth of checkoff dollars to the EPA to buy a new stick (air emissions monitoring) to beat dairy producers with. Nice of them to spend our money on us that way. I have to thank Sarpy Sam for giving me ideas about where to dig up some of the dirt on these topics. Not all the ag news that's fit to get upset about is printed here on the "right" coast.

And last but far from least, condolences to the family, friends and readers of John Jablonski, fellow Recorder columnist for lo these many years. His passing sure was a shock!

If you want to spend a buck on Friday you can read all about it on the opinion page at the paper's website.

Big snow flakes here today 

Water cress on ice.....in the garden pond. 

Here's a story that points out one of the many holes in our educational system. No one seems to look quite closely enough at new hires. And getting rid of them once they are hired is a real challenge.

Anyhow, a teacher's aide at an area school was arrested for "three counts of second-degree rape, three counts of second-degree criminal sexual act, two counts of third-degree sexual abuse and one count of endangering the welfare of a child." He is alleged to have perpetrated all these crimes upon a fourteen year old child. Terrible right? Disgusting and all that. The school district fired him and rightly so.

Ah, but, here's the catch, guess why- "for lack of required certification to be a teaching assistant". Yup, couldn't fire the guy for being (allegedly of course) a sexual predator, but still working in a public school. Nope, they ditched him because his credentials weren't in order. "During the investigation......(the) school district checked (the suspect's) teaching background with the State Department of Education and learned that he lacked proper certification," a school offical was quoted as saying. Apparently they didn't even look until he was arrested.

At least he's gone.

Another case of BSE or mad cow disease was revealed yesterday to have been discovered in Canada. And didn't our puppet Secretary of Agriculture just murmur something along the lines of, "Nothin' gonna change, bahse, nothin' gonna change...we got us a deal."

Yup, they have a deal all right. Canada can do whatever they darned well please in regard to inspections (see Thoughts From the Middle of Nowhere, January archives on this). The folks from other nations who used to buy our meat can run scared because of the incredible carelessness of a meat packing company with its offices right here in NY, our industry can lose the trust of our local customers too, but we got us a trade deal with Canada, so nothin' is gonna change.

It makes me so mad. The markets we American producers depend upon for survival are being buried in imports, often illegal, (as in the case of milk protein concentrate, hauled in without tariffs to make cheese,) that are not produced under the same standards to which we are held. Our government spends a fortune checking up on us; here at Northview we have sometimes been under the thumb of as many as five different milk inspectors at one time. They regulate us to death and even expect us to dig into our own pockets to pay for it, as in the ongoing argument with the EPA over them coercing dairy farmers to monitor their own air emissions and even pay a fine up front.

Then they cook up deals, wherein any body who can do it cheaper or who can benefit big agribusiness consortia, even many that are based overseas, can import materials that were never subjected to those strictures. Thus we often get to pay for the privilege of putting ourselves out of business, while foreign entities sell our customers inferior and even downright unsafe products. Grrrr.....

It is January, at least two months before we can really expect anything to happen on the change of seasons front. However, if you watch and listen closely, subtle changes are occurring each day as the hours of sunlight lengthen.

First a white-breasted nuthatch was merrily yelling out its summer mating song as it hammered at a sunflower seed near the feeders yesterday. (You can hear both summer and winter calls here. ) I had a friend who used to call these clever little birds "ass-ups", which is crude but descriptive of the way they hitch around the side of a tree, clinging to the bark. I also heard, but didn't see, what I do believe was a robin at the same time. I know they winter over quite often up north, but they never show up here at Northview until along about this time. Guess it is warmer over on the other side of the river, where all the south-facing banks are.

Then yesterday afternoon I noticed that the cows are beginning to shed. A lot. You might think that warmer weather brings this about, but it is longer day-length that does this trick too. The hair falls out fast this time of year and it seems like everything (including us) is soon coated with it.

There is also an elusive somebody coming around the feeders, but not showing its face. I keep hearing a loud, wheep, wheep call like a downy woodpecker on steroids. I'll bet it is a red-bellied woodpecker, but I am not familiar enough with the call to be sure. Maybe he will show his day-glo orange spotted head on the suet soon so I can be sure.

The Paint big cheese, just before the wind. Thinks pretty highly of himself doesn't he? Another photo by Becky

I have always hated the wind. Since we moved here to this hillside, exposed to anything the river wants to throw at us, I hate it even more. It is hard to believe that it could make a place this old and big and strong shudder and bend to its will, but it does. Oh, how it does.

Earlier this morning it was so darned unnaturally beautiful for January that I kept finding excuses to go outside and hang around. The horses finally could get out after all the ice the past few weeks. They loved it and bucked and rooted around in the mud and rolled like fools. Becky even took a few pictures of DG bucking and teasing Jack to play through the fence.

We were all in the house when it hit. Wham. Like a fist. Like a mountain. Like a landslide of cold, hard air. Thirty seconds after the first gust it ripped my greenhouse from its moorings and gave it the old who-flung. The girls could not get out to bring the horses in for several minutes because it was just too dangerous to even try to go outdoors. You couldn't even hang on to the big, heavy, wooden back door.

Now it has cleared off some. The horses are happy back in their stalls with a big feed of hay to help them warm up and dry off. However, my Christmas present is smashed into the mud on the other side of the driveway, with its legs in the air like a dead raccoon on the side of the highway. Maybe the guys can salvage it later when the wind dies down.

New baby bunny. Photo by Becky. Guess these guys were a couple of weeks old before they were discovered 

Get that camera away from me....by Becky

Yesterday we had one of those days. First there was Bungee. Bungee is a BIG calf. She belongs in the pen with the other BIG calves, where she can drink from an automatic waterer and eat from a feeder, instead of being tied in the aisle with little calves. They are hand watered and given TLC not needed by those beasts in the pen. However, Bungee's other name is Houdini. The the guys got sick of catching her and tied her up with the babies.

Doing babies is my job when kids are at school. When I attempted to hang her nice big bucket full of luke-warm water, she grabbed the rim and dumped the entire pail on the region that might be my lap if I were sitting down at the computer (which I would much prefer as opposed to watering six-month old calves by hand). I was plumb ticked off. All my other long johns were in the washer, so it was spend the whole day looking as if I had suffered an unfortunate accident or shiver without them. Avatre, who knocked Liz down going after her water, is another BIG calf that WAS on the walkway. I can tell you that before breakfast was even considered yesterday, Avatre and Bungee were both galloping around the big calf pen happy as kids at recess. 'Nough said.

Then last night the guys were telling stories out of school while the last cow was milked. They both glory in tales of their excesses in hall ways and class rooms. The girls and I, being more conservative types, went out to the milk house to start tearing down so we didn't have to hear yet another put-one-over-on-the-teacher story.

We were just getting started when they came out laughing over some real humdinger of a tale. I don't know why the boss didn't look to see what we were doing before he hustled over and unhooked the pipeline from the tank. I do know that what I was doing was hitting the switch that pumps about five gallons of milk at a shot through the pipe he was unhooking.

It got him square in the face. It also got the door, the microwave, the jackets on the ladder and pretty much everything on that side of the milkhouse. It was a real Keystone Cops moment. We placated him with promises that it would be worth the discomfort of suffering a milk bath because of the benefit to his complexion. The three bottle calves went a little short because that was their milk all over the walls, ceiling, and husband.

Oh, well, farming is known to be a hazardous occupation, and yesterday just proved it.

Small sky country 

A great big thanks-a-lot to Brooklyn-based Atlantic Veal & Lamb, for getting our beef market with Japan closed again. Nice work fellas. (A Google search for the company reveals an interesting number of court actions involving them. Take note that they handle a good deal of meat imported from Canada, which it appears that they re-export.)

"This just simply should not have happened," said US Secretary of Agriculture, Mike Johanns. I couldn't agree more.

Heck, Japan only used to import over a billion dollars worth of US beef every year. And trade was JUST resumed in December after being closed for two years due to the discovery of BSE, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy, in two cows in this country. Now the above company is alleged to have shipped some veal containing spinal material to Japan. Japan is displeased in a big, big way. That practice was not permitted under new trade agreements, so the minister of agriculture there slammed the door shut to American beef once again. The USDA has removed the company from the list of businesses that are allowed to trade beef with Japan, and is investigating their activities. However, I am sure it will take more reassurance than that to get the market open again. Shame on the meat company for not following regulations and on the USDA inspector who let the violation slip by him. American agriculture really needs friends like that. Not.

We all went to the gym* (see glossary below for technical terms) today for a nice workout. First we all went on the stair master**. Then we all did 123 cycles*** on the treadmill**** and 25 on the Bowflex*****. There was much whining, a real no pain, no gain kind of thing. Except the boss and me. We have been partaking of this kind of workout for so many years that we know that the best way is to just shut up and get it done.

*haymow
**mow ladder
***pulling these things off the skid steer bucket and dragging and stacking them
****bales of alfalfa hay, 70 pounds each
****bales of nice straw, much lighter, thank God!

Yeah, we got in a nice load of hay and straw today and put it up in the mow. My nephew always used to say that unloading hay was like a trip to the gym, and I guess he must know. All I know is that I am glad that it is done.

I see that two more people have been charged in matters relating to the secretive organization Earth Liberation Front or ELF. These two are blamed for a fire bombing of a slaughterhouse and of a lumber yard. I have been ranting about these radical domestic terrorists for years in the Farm Side. It is good to see some of their crimes coming home to roost. This pair is facing up to twenty years in prison along with some hefty fines if convicted.

Today was test day, the day a Vermont Dairy Herd Improvement representative comes to measure how much milk the cows are producing and to take samples to monitor quality.

Today was also ice day. Our ground is still blanketed in the same carapace of ice that has clutched our driveways and walkways in its frigid grip for months.

And it was raining.

Hard.

Thus when Liz and I attempted to go to the barn, because we could see by the milkhouse lights that Tim was over there waiting for us, we could not do so. It was simply impossible to walk at all on the flowing-water covered ice. I made it to the spruce tree and just started sliding willy-nilly down the hill. I don't know how the boss got over there, big feet or something I guess.

To heck with it I thought, gave up and struggled back to the porch. Of course after a bit, the boss came along with the skid steer and spread some sand so he could have a little assistance with milking and testing. By then it was too late for Liz to help, as she had to be at school by eight and had to shower and make that challenging 25-mile drive to the college. We kept the other two home from school. It would have been completely impossible for them to walk down either driveway and neither of us could leave to drive them because of having to test. I figure if they can take days off for long dead explorers and all manner of conferences and meetings they can have a driveway safety holiday now and then.