Some things don't mind all the rain quite as much as we do.

Montana terrorist hunter

Here is a story that Sarpy Sam featured on Thoughts From the Middle of Nowhere. It is a bit long and is printed in the notorious WP, but it just fascinated me. Imagine an ordinary American woman taking the time to learn Arabic after 9-1-1, and running eight computers all night long, luring would be terrorists out of the woodwork, in order to turn them over to our intelligence agencies. Imagine being brave enough to testify against some of those crazies in court. Impressive.

We are not having nice weather

Normally this is a six-inch deep, clear trickle over pretty stones.

Lucky me

I sometimes complain about the challenges of farm life, probably more often than readers would prefer. It can be a hard life, and it is comforting to whine. However, there are some rewards we don’t often think about that can make a day very pleasant indeed. Such as taking your 18-yr. old to get new glasses and pick up the wonderful dress grandma made her for the Senior Ball.(Thanks, Mom, she looks so beautiful in it.)

And coming out of the store to find a young man with a big box of yellow kittens free for the taking.

And being able to take as many as you can carry right home with you.

Oh, it was a job to push my cart loaded with a big pile of stuff, including fifty pounds of dog food, out to the car, all the while juggling two little golden live wires. (Thank God for elbows.) However, I was more than repaid in excited smiles when Becky finished her shopping and I gave her one, and when we got home with the other one for Liz.

Lucky me, yellow cats! If I had more arms I would have taken them all.

"Come on now, hold still, for a second."
Maqua-kil Blitz Mendocino

Tornado warning today and this is what we saw. It never made it to a tornado here, but north of us it did some damage.

Rana clamitans gardenpondiensis

Beyond the horse pasture

Name that calf

Since an outrageous percentage of the calves belong to Liz anyhow, she is hosting her own darned "Name that Calf" contest over on BuckinJunction. If you are clever with names, give her a hand.

I wonder

This is truly a family farm. Before his parents passed away, the boss farmed with them his whole life. Then when we married (over twenty years ago) I joined the crew and the kids came on board as soon as they got big enough to see over a shovel.

Although it was a challenge to work together day in and day out and keep any semblance of serenity, I grew very close to his family, especially to his mom. I miss her every day, particularly buying her plants and flowers, and looking for special bits of china that I knew she would love when I visited garage sales. She was always so delighted with any gift, no matter how insignificant, that it was a real pleasure to come across something she would like. She worked hard at being a “good” mother-in-law. I am sure that I didn’t make that easy for her sometimes.

Today we went to the cemetery to “visit” the folks. I don't have the plants we put on their graves every year quite ready yet, but we were out and just felt like stopping. As we walked up to the graves from behind the stone I noticed that the earth had sunken a little and it looked kind of bare. The cemetery is located in very sandy soil that supports little in the way of grass. (Although the farm fields that come right up to the boundaries and even inside on the unused parts, have a thriving crop of rye, corn and oats this summer. It seems fitting for all the old farmers buried there to be surrounded by the chugging of tractor engines and the sighing of grass in the summer winds.)
I remarked to the boss that I should buy some Johnny Jump Up seed and plant the bare area, so there would always be flowers that wouldn't mind the mower and would come up every year in that special spot. Peg loved plants and it was a way I could have the joy of giving her some again. I knew it was a plan that I would carry out as soon as I could.

We stood and reflected for a minute, then turned toward the car, where the kids were waiting for us.

Suddenly cold chills raised a crop of goose bumps on my arms and stood the hairs up on the back of my neck.

There, right where I had been thinking of doing my seeding was one, single, perfect, dark purple Johnny Jump Up plant, its little cat face turned up to the sun.

There were no others anywhere around that whole section of the cemetery, just that one, on Peg’s side of the little square plot.

I am still shivering.

Take me to the asparagus

What a day…and it isn't even noon yet. First the cows were on high alert this morning. (Even though both cow and cooperate start with the same two letters, the similarity ends right there.) Don’t know if it is that we are going to get a storm later today or if the flies are starting to bite, but the boss and I both got switched in the face by dirty tails this morning. Several times. That REALLY hurts, and it doesn’t make you more cheerful to have it happen!

Then we couldn’t get Alan’s show cow, Bayberry, into her stall to milk her. There were just the two of us, and we just could not get her to let us lock her up no matter what we did. Liz had the morning off for her birthday, but she came over to help us feed calves, and even with her help we couldn’t get her to put her head in the stanchion. Maybe she is coming in heat.
Tonight hopefully she will calm down. Alan will have to go out and catch her in the field with a halter (she will only let him do that-nobody else), because we are not going to let her do the circus in the barn thing again.


While she was tear-assing around the barn being an idiot she went up into the manger in the annex of the barn and stepped on that little kitten in the picture below. Miserable witch anyhow. I think the kitten will be okay, but there was just no reason for all that misbehavior.

I am going to hide out in the garden today and try to get some stuff planted. Hopefully the asparagus will behave itself.

Two teenagers

There are only two teenagers here at Northview now (and they are both asleep). As of around 1:30 this morning or so, Liz has been twenty years old. As of last weekend she has been a college graduate with an Associates degree in animal science. (Four semesters on the Dean's list are in the bag, so to speak). As of the 10th she has been out of college for the summer and helping us here on the farm.

Oh, the clean mangers, calves moved to new stalls with automatic water bowls and daily help with the milking we have enjoyed. She is going back for her Bachelors in August, but for now it is a delight to have her home. Soon everybody will be on vacation (which is something of a misnomer for a farm kid, but you get the idea). Maybe we can even get a day in digging Herkimer Diamonds or collecting brachiopods this summer.

Anyhow, Happy Birthday, Lizzie; hope it is a great one. We sure do love you!

"Wild Thing" and one of the kids

Brand new "black red" baby from Salt Lake.
The black blob by her head
is her calf coat, which she took off herself.

Valley light

Good reading

Here is an interview with Jeff Soyer of Alphecca and Tarazet.

The man is plumb brilliant.

I wish I had one tenth of his genius and way with words! If everyone listened to his arguments in favor of Second Amendment rights, we would not be worrying about them being abridged.

Maqua-Kil TNT Hattie, named after my great grandmother

Wealth

Our oldest forwarded this to me and somehow it resonated:

What is the difference between the rich and the poor?

One day, the father of a very wealthy family took his son on a trip
to the country with the express purpose of showing him how poor people
live.
They spent a couple of days and nights on the farm of what would be
considered a very poor family.

On their return from their trip, the father asked his son, "How was the
trip?"

"It was great, Dad."
"Did you see how poor people live?" the father asked.
"Oh yeah," said the son.

"So, tell me, what did you learn from the trip?" asked the father.

The son answered: "I saw that we have one dog and they had four.
We have a pool that reaches to the middle of our garden and they have
a creek that has no end.
We have imported lanterns in our garden and they have the stars at
night.
Our patio reaches to the front yard and they have the whole horizon.
We have a small piece of land to live on and they have fields that go
beyond our sight.
We have servants who serve us, but they serve others.
We buy our food, but they grow theirs.
We have walls around our property to protect us, they have friends to
protect them."

The boy's father was speechless.

Then his son added, "Thanks Dad for showing me how poor we are."

Barbaro

Over the past couple of years we have developed the tradition of milking late on Triple Crown race nights so we can enjoy the excitement. Thus it was that two weeks ago we were cheering Barbaro on when he won the Derby, (mostly because I have admired Michael Matz since I was a horse-crazy kid and he was riding in the Olympics).

We were delighted when he won. However, tonight when the pre-race commentators began to sing his praises and chortle about how easily he would probably win the Preakness, I had the kids mute the sound on the television. Every farmer knows you don't brag and you don't take anything for granted. Ask a farmer with a barn full of hay, twin calves on every cow and a rainbow arching over his farm gate, how things are going and he will tell you, “Hmmm, not too bad I guess.”


It made me nervous hearing those city idiots predicting the race results before the horses were even saddled. However, nothing prepared us to see the horrible breakdown of that lovely horse. I will be very surprised if they don’t end up putting him down, although as I write this they are still exploring their options.


My heartfelt sympathy goes out to all the people who work with him. If you care for animals you have empathy for their pain; when they hurt, you hurt and you want to fix it right away. His people must be feeling terrible right now.