Getting ready for the fair

Christopher Porco Guilty

I am stunned by the verdict. Although I have been convinced all along that he probably was, in fact, guilty, the evidence that the press released didn't seem much more than circumstantial. I suspect we will see an appeal, and I can't really blame them if they seek one.

At any rate, the six hours of deliberation seem short for the situation, but then I wasn't sitting there in the jury box. Still...

Good post at NYCO blog

NYCO has a good post today on the traumatic stress the June flooding caused area folks.
The boss noticed early on that there were a lot of untimely-seeming deaths in the towns worst hit by the waters. Guess he wasn't the only one.

Oh, and Assemblyman Tonko is asking that the rumors about the dams not being opened fast enough be investigated too. We first heard these stories at a local business that was destroyed almost entirely. Only a limited amount of credence was given to the rumor at that time, but now, hmmmm.

Japanese enjoy US beef

According to the Cattle Network three Costco stores there sold out of American beef products as soon as they were available. Five metric tons fairly flew off the shelves the very first day the beef was available. Beef prices are already trending upward, probably on the strength of that story and the shortage of feed that is fast developing across the nation. Now if the blankety, blanking fools in the processing plants can keep banned material out of the meat and the USDA can do their job to make sure of that, maybe we can enjoy the open market for a bit.

Review milk

Thanks to Kim Komando I discovered today that Amazon.com is selling milk, and, since folks like reviewing books and records, they are doing the same for nature's most perfect food. Read all about it here.

Sunday's prize catch

Just outside the kitchen door...

Good morning sunshine

One year

I missed it! I missed the anniversary of my first year of blogging. It was yesterday. I was busy taking my son fishing and such. (They weren't biting so we brought home some crayfish for the fish tanks and lots of pretty rocks instead.)

Oh, well, I would like to thank all the people who have stopped by to read and/or comment over the past year. Without you this would all be pointless.

Went to Mill Point on Schoharie Creek this morning. Good time had by all

Susan Butcher

How could it be? How could Susan Butcher, athlete enough to have won the Iditarod four times, probably one of the toughest people in the world, be gone? Susan was one of my greatest heroines for as long as I have followed and loved sled dog racing. Her name was synonymous with everything that the Iditarod represented. You know, bravery, determination, heart and a spirit of adventure.

She died from complications from a bone marrow transplant undertaken to combat polycythemia vera, a rare disease of bone marrow and blood..

Born in 1954, she had two young daughters and was married to lawyer and fellow musher, David Monson.


You can leave a message for Susan's family and friends at theStatus.
(Type in butcher for the ID and butcher1 for the password.)
Trail Breaker Kennels
Susan's bio

Don't touch bats!

950 or so Girl Scouts may have to be given preventative shots for rabies, because a counselor at their camp caught wild bats and encouraged them to touch them. There were also bats roosting in the girls' sleeping shelters.

We used to have problems with bats coming indoors down at the old house until we finally cemented up the right hole in the chimney. Becky woke up with one on her pillow one night and we hauled her and the bat straight to the hospital to be checked out. She was unmarked and the emergency room doctor actually asked if he could keep the bat (which Ralph knocked out with a spray can of ether used to start tractors, and put in a jar). The doc wanted to put the bat in his new bat house! Only 1% of the bat population has rabies, but you can't be too careful with that terrible disease. I am terrified of it. There are wild cats around here and they just scare the life out of me because we are in a rabies area.

Reminiscing and Rustlers

You never know what will make a difference, what will stick, what will stay with your kids forever (which is scary as heck!). This morning I was at the sink talking to Becky while trying to get the smell of filamentatious algae off my hands, after cleaning some out of the garden pond. (I originally went outdoors to chase Comedy away. She was trying to scoop out some lovely guppies and goldfish for a mid-morning snack. The empty OFF! can I tossed her way served its purpose, but I somehow got pulled into the great time-sucking black hole known as puttering-in-the-yard. I wound up dragging a half a mile or so of stinky green gunk out of the pond and mulching under the hostas with it. You could tell what I had been up to from six feet back.)

Colin Raye’s song, I Think About You came on the country radio station. Beck, who is now 18, said that she had always liked it and would always remember it in a special way. She reminded me, “You sang it to me once. We were outside Grandma’s house and it came on the car radio. I was sitting in the front and you leaned over and sang it to me. I remember because I was eight years old.”
(You have probably heard the line, “I think about you, eight years old, big blue eyes and a heart of gold. When I look at this world, I think about you.....”)

I think I like the song because it has always reminded me of Beck, who does have that sort of generous, giving and caring heart (which she hides under the exterior of a teenaged curmudgeon.)
Imagine remembering something like that for ten years and liking it because I sang it to her (if you have heard me sing, you will know how unlikely THAT is.)


I walked away from the sink, still stinking of rank green pond weed, but with a nice, warm feeling to carry around for a while…at least until the next time we go to war over prepping cows or feeding the pony or something.


*On another topic entirely, check out this story on modern day rustlers. These cows didn’t need a national animal identification system to be traced. All that was required here was a vigilant owner and some eager policemen.

Morning through the moonflower vine

Goodbye to the Catskill Game Farm

What a shock this morning to hear that the Catskill Game Farm is closing. It has been there simply forever, as long as I can remember (since 1933 in fact). It was a popular school field trip, a fun and educational, if exhausting, day out with the little ones and a well-known breeder of many threatened species. (The facility won awards for many of its breeding programs, including Przewalski horses.)

The farm features over 2000 animals from dozens of species. For some reason the Galapagos tortoises and the rhinos always stick in memory, as well as seeing the long blackberry colored tongues of the giraffes coil towards your hand when they reached for grain.

They say declining attendance in large part blamed on several lousy summers in succession is to blame. Insurance costs are another factor.
Although I have been there so many times that the trips and animals rather blur together it will be sorely missed. Even local farmers often sold lambs to the owners to stock the petting zoo.

There will be an auction this fall to disperse the animals and equipment. From Addax to Zebu by way of Kulan and Kudu, that will be quite an event.

We are thinking that we will take the kids and the camera back this summer for just one more visit before it all falls under the hammer.

Poor baby

Twisted Robin

I wouldn't have seen this if I hadn't been cleaning the filter on the garden pond this morning after milking. However, I walked over to hang the used filter on the fence so I could hose it off and there it was. I hurried over to the door to ask Becky for the camera and rushed outside for a close up.


I thought it would be really cute.

Then I saw the beak. Poor twisted little bird. The parents are still caring for it, and soon arrived to beep and boop at me in protest at my presence in their territory. I don't imagine it will survive long after they stop. Comedy was hanging around too, looking for handouts. She is a terrific hunter but I didn't chase her away. I suppose that being eaten by a barn cat would be a kinder fate for the poor thing than starvation.

Buying a new car

Actually that is kind of a misleading title. I was really just doing research online in order to do a better job of buying a USED vehicle for our second daughter to drive back and forth to college.

Anyhow, I stumbled across this article and was stunned and kind of shamed to see how easily we fell for some of the ploys used by car salesmen to suck in innocent buyers. (We drive a beat up old '94 minivan that we bought new from a dealer who used several of the tricks described in this story to get a few extra bucks from us.)

I will know better next time. You can too if you take time to read this admittedly long article.