Charles Thurwood's Diary 

Charlie Thurwood's Pocket Diary

South wind and raind a little and we split wood
In the afternoon it raind and at night Till came down and playd cards and the wind blowd very hard
4 pales of sap and 32 eggs

So read the March 26, 1874 diary entry of farmer Charles Thurwood of Fort Plain, NY. His little pocket journal lives in the top drawer of my desk here Northview. I bought it years ago as a Christmas gift for the boss.
Every now and then we take it out and compare what was happening in the farming world over a hundred years ago to what we are doing today. It is both very different and yet a lot the same. Our sugar bush is running strong these days, although someone else it tapping it. The sap flows into an old bulk milk tank through fancy plastic lines, but the syrup will taste just as sweet when we get our share. Our hens have begun to lay, although we can't find the nests. And there are only two hens here, we sure wouldn't be getting 32 eggs even if we could locate them.

The boss thinks this house was probably standing here then. Although most of Charles’ trips were to Fort Plain or Cherry Valley, he could have passed here sometime during his life here in the valley. For sure if he came to Fonda he had to have passed our cow barn. It has been there a very long time. Maybe the cheese factory that used to stand where our calf pasture used to be (before the road went through) was making cheese back then.

I wonder.

Traceback made easy

Here is another case where animals with a transmissible disease were discovered and easily traced to their source, despite the lack of a national animal id system. Take note that despite the fact that the pigs in question (which were found to have TB and to have illegally crossed state lines) didn't have health certificates that are already required by law, they still had no trouble tracing them.

This is just more proof that we don't need the system the USDA is so eagerly pursuing.


farming
NAIS

Medina Daydreaming....born yesterday morning, just as the new milk inspector was leaving. 

Across the valley 

More ID

It would be worth your time to visit No Mandatory ID and read today’s post. It contains a letter written to the Sioux Falls Argus Leader about that paper’s editorial stance on National ID. Seems the paper thinks that we dumb farmers ought to just suck it up and smile while we pay to make the USDA look good.

I have heard way too much whining that they can’t trace that last BSE case in Alabama anywhere. This is supposed to constitute proof that we need national ID. They are pretending that it will make a difference to someone somewhere if they can find out where she was born and who she hobnobbed with over her long life.
Wrong. If that cow was over ten years old, most every animal she had contact with over her life is already dead.

Long since.

The only beef cows who hang around for over ten years are likely to be brood cows and breeding bulls. They are after all, beef cows. So where do you really think they are now? And who would gain what by tracing them?

Besides which, if you look back you will see that at least here on this continent, BSE cases have been so sporadic that there rarely, if ever, is more than one case in one herd. Heck there have only been three cases in this whole country. The disease isn’t contagious in the normal sense, cows have to eat infected feed to get it. Add to that the fact that BSE cases are on the decline world wide and you have the whole story. National ID is hogwash, bull crap and bad news and papers like the Argus Leader that support it are full of it.

NAIS
farming

The 11th Commandment

Thou shalt not launder thy pocket herdbook.

More of these every day now...

Amarillo

The name that came out of the hat for our new baby (see below) is Amarillo. I want to thank everyone who offered us a name. We have a number of other babies due soon and I am sure we will use some of the other terrific names for them. I am keeping a file of good names that people come up with as we are all kind of burned out in the naming department.

For the first time this year I missed the Wednesday deadline for the Farm Side. This is actually the latest in the year I have ever lasted without skipping a week. (The editor doesn't care how often I write; I think he understands the vicissitudes of farming.)

I actually was hard at work on a column about the beef check off and the Beefmobile when a milk inspector from one of the companies that wants to buy our milk showed up. By the time I got back to work it was just too late. I have about 925 of my 1000 words and will just get it done for next week.

I hope you like the new header. I have a lot to learn about this editing the template stuff.

Calf
Farming

Sugar ice

Good stuff this morning. The guys cut down a medium sized maple tree for firewood the other day. It is lying in the yard waiting to be cut up and oozing sweet sap and making sugar icicles like mad. I broke off a bunch of them into my coffee cup and made my breakfast coffee with the sweet sap. Lovely.

Clear the Roads

Alan turned 16 today. Look out.

The new one 

You called? 

Name That Calf

When you have a registered dairy herd your animals must be named. If the herd has been in the family for a while and you follow the trend of naming a calf something that starts with the same letter as its mother’s name, you soon start to run out of names. Trust me on this.
When I started going out with the boss he was delighted to turn the task of naming over to me. By the time kids came along I can’t tell you how happy I was to start turning it over to them.

Now we are asking you to try your hand. Yesterday’s little heifer needs a name, preferably beginning with either ‘a’ or ‘s’. So far the suggestions are Sprite, Amarillo and some weird place name that I can’t spell or pronounce.
If you have a good idea for a name, just leave it in the comments section.
Please.
We will pick one out of a hat like we did when we named a ‘v’ calf through the Farm Side.
(A word to the wise: virtually every conceivable conjugation of the name ‘Ann’ and most ‘a’ fruits have been taken already.) Have fun.

Doesn’t all this naming and registering stuff make you wonder why we need a national animal identification system? As soon as little ‘a’-whatever is named and looks like she will survive all right, we will take her picture, write that name with our our herd prefix, her date of birth, the date her dam was serviced, the registration number and name of both sire and dam, the name, address and account number of her owner, whether she was a twin or not, her color, and whether or not she was an embryo transfer on a registration blank. Then we will sign it and send it (plus money) to the Holstein Association. Later we will get back her nice new registration paper, clearly identifying her, us, and where she came from. You will not only be able to trace her, but you can have a look at who her ancestors were and where they lived back to the 1800s if you go on the Holstein website. What the heck more do we need? An ear tag that will rip a big hole in her ear when it gets ripped out on a feeder or tree? Nah, it is just a government gimic to keep tabs on our business. You know it.

Farming
NAIS

Saturday

It was an eventful day today. I went out for early barn check to look in on 114, who STILL hasn’t had a calf. I also checked 75 and Mento, who are due the 24th. I didn’t see any babies anywhere.
When Ralph went over about an hour later there was a little heifer calf running around the barn and she was all dried off and had obviously been there a while. She belonged to 75, whose name is Apricot.
Now, I will admit I didn’t turn on all the lights, but how the heck did I miss a whole calf? I mean the barn isn’t THAT big. Now we are looking for good "A" names for her.
Liz got up, even though it is her day off, and got baby all dried off, put into a coat, dipped her navel and gave her a bottle of colostrum. Hope she comes along all right. A heifer was real welcome after the string of huge bull calves we have been having.

On a less positive note, our milk marketing cooperative held its last annual meeting, after voting to disband last month. It was a pretty emotional time, as many of the members’ families have been shipping milk to Canajoharie Cooperative since their grandparents were farming. We have been shipping there for sixteen years. It was just another victory of the big agribusiness companies over the actual producers of our nation’s food. We still haven’t decided where we will send our milk, although we have to start pushing the pencil pretty hard next week, as we have to change by the first of April or be stuck getting the lowest price around from the new co-op. It is very hard to know what to do.

On the bright side issue we won a "Super Milk" award and an Allied Co-op Quality award, which of course makes us happy. You can’t eat them or pay bills with them, but they sure look good on the office wall.

calves
dairy

Happy St. Patrick's Day

Happy St. Patrick’s Day to all Irish and honorary Irish readers.

I can claim, at least in part, (there is Scots and German in there too) to be the real deal. After all, my dear departed grandma was a McGivern, and there were MacIntosh’s and such like back there too. I am not wearing any green, but I am off to the supermarket to get a few packages of corned beef to freeze and enjoy throughout the coming year. I boil the stuff in several changes of water so the salt doesn’t kill us off, and we really like it.

St. Patrick's Day
Irish

It was really weird

We spent at least ten minutes tonight debating whether we wanted to turn London outside for the night or not. It is still pretty wintry here and, even though there are two sheds in the barnyard where cows can get shelter if they need it, we rarely leave them out at night until May.

However, London had a huge bull calf the other day (just what we needed, six in a row now) and pinched a nerve in her pelvis. This left her slightly knuckled over at the pastern and she has a little trouble getting up and down. We figured she would most likely have a better time of it out on the dirt, but we weren’t sure she could make the long walk to the door.
We finally decided to give her a shot at it and turned her loose. Although she kind of wandered a bit, she made it to the door and was quite happy to do outside. Later I had occasion to go out to the milkhouse and went outdoors with a flashlight to see how she was doing.

I found her lying quite comfortably on a big pile of hay that forms under the mow window.
Something just didn’t look right though. I could clearly see the top of her head and the area below her ears where her eyes should be. However, instead of her eyes being there, they glowed from about where her chin would be. I stood there staring. Liz came out and stared too.

"She’s down and something is wrong with her." Liz said.

"She sure doesn’t look right," I agreed.

We stared some more.
Suddenly we both began to laugh out loud.
The reason London had eyes on her nose was that BS, the old black sheep, was tucked up under her neck. It was her eyes that we saw glowing. The other sheep, Freckles, was snuggled up against London’s rump. They were delighted to have one of the big guys outside to protect them from the coyotes, and were as close as they could get.

And they call sheep stupid.

Mandatory NAIS

It only took a couple of days after the USDA announced the United States 3rd case of BSE (or mad cow disease) for someone to start raving about forcing a mandatory animal identification program down the throats of farmers, ranchers and small holders.



I predicted that this would happen yesterday when I was writing this week's Farm Side (which will run in the Recorder this Friday). Anyone with any sense knew that this would be the result of finding another case, even though there was never any danger of the cow in question entering the food system.

However, every new disease or new case of an old one becomes another stick to beat the poor dumb livestock owner with. You would think that we farmers really NEED Congress to tell us how to label our cows. After all, they are all familiar with farm livestock aren't they? They all know all about how well ear tags stay in cows' ears don't they? And anyhow, as Sarpy Sam is fond of saying, "An ear tag never stopped a disease."

NAIS
BSE
mad cow disease

Flattened by a Bovine

I got squashed by a cow last night. Pretty badly, actually. She was reaching for feed and just happened to slam her rib cage into me, knocking me into a metal stall divider…three times. It didn’t exactly hurt and I went on milking for a couple of minutes, but then everything started to just feel "wrong" somehow. I had to go sit on a bale of straw for a while because I felt very faint. I just couldn’t get feeling right, so I left the rest of milking to the others and came over to the house where I could sit down if I needed to. I had major abdominal surgery a long time ago and sometimes getting hit real hard messes me up more than you would expect. I felt pretty crummy all evening and went to bed way early.

Of course this morning somebody still had to make the early morning barn check as 144 STILL hasn’t had her calf. I was the first one up so I went out. I hobbled like a little old lady, baby steps all the way. Still no calf so I hobbled back. It took a while.

I dreaded milking. I was really afraid of getting hurt again or more or whatever. However, it has to be done and when the kids are in school there is nobody but the boss and me to do it. At first it was as bad as the early walk over; I could barely move. Plugging the milkers into the overhead pipeline was almost more than I could handle. However, there is nothing like exercise to stretch damaged muscles and joints. I am happy to report that chores are done for the morning and I feel pretty good. Or at least not too bad. It was a reminder though, that no matter how tame and sweet milk cows might be, they weigh around three quarters of a ton. They are very single minded, and they don’t really give a darn if they flatten a mere human who gets in the way of their luncheon.

cows
agriculture

Return of Winter