Another shot across the bow

Here is an article on the practices of a high profile "organic" company.

And below is a quote to give you an idea of just how dedicated to their cows' welfare they seem to be.

"If grazing was going to interfere with higher production, they didn't want to graze," he said."


And another from the farm veterinarian,

"They don't appear to have an interest in grazing other than window-dressing and lip service."

So spend triple to buy milk from Horizon and get what you pay for....or maybe not.

Thanks for My Cattle.com for the quotes. My cattle has a long list of useful articles most of the time if you get a chance to check it out.

There be moonflowers

And the sago palms are putting out new leaves; must be summer in the northern tropics.....upstate New York

Zucchini

Bringing you a brief respite from all that nonsense about showing cows and giving you a glimpse of what really keeps everyone happy when all is said and done.

Frieland Z Mandolin Rain

This 3-yr. old is a daughter of a homebred cow. The dam was sired by a bull we owned when Liz was a baby, Foxfield-Doreigh NB Rex, a son of Whittier Farms Ned Boy. Mandys' sire was Ocean-view Zenith-TW, a bull which Liz chose and used extensively as a young sire. Here are some photos of his other daughters. Check out the one of Ocean-view Zenith Cora. I always though she and Mandy were marked a lot alike down to the little spots on their (opposite) shoulders.

Show day

Alan, the boss and Liz with a group for junior exhibitor's herd

Show day at the fair was surely eventful. On the 32 mile drive over we saw a police SUV backed into the bushes on a blind curve on Duanesburg Churches Road. Locals know that as a twisty, windey, wild thing of a goat path that makes a shortcut through some pretty untamed country on the way to Altamont.

We wondered why he was there and talked about it as we hustled to get over to hold halters for Liz. It is just not a place where you see policemen.

Then in the post 10PM darkness as we convoyed home after the show we came upon a whole school of police cars, light bars flashing, lighting the roadside like a garish noonday. The policemen were emptying out a vehicle they had surrounded, dumping what looked a lot like the product of an illegal green crop out on the ground beside it.

The kids had seen hitchhikers in that spot every day on their way over to take care of the cows. The folks in question were dressed like hippies (no shame there, I still have my beads), but they had a hinky feel about them. The kids mentioned them and speculated about what they could possibly be doing on a rural farm road, when we were discussing their fairground adventures after they got home.

Anyhow, those exact people were standing beside the captive vehicle. The news may be interesting today I think.

The show results were strange. We never expect to win anything with our Jerseys, as there is a nationally known and ranked herd at our fair. Kind of hard to beat. This year Liz won reserve senior champion and reserve champion with Heather her five-year-old Jersey cow. We were simply stunned. Of course we bought her from that well-known herd as a calf, but still....

On the other hand we generally do quite well with our homebred Holsteins. This year we only had one first (I think) and lots of seconds and lower placings. Still I was pleased with how our cows look. We like them lean and dairy. Some years that is what the judge is looking for and we do very well, and some years we get a judge who likes a big, powerful, less-dairy cow and we don't fare as well. I am thinking though, that although Mandy hasn't won her class since she was a calf and got junior champion every year, she will mature into a more competitive cow in a few years (if we can keep her going that is). It is those extremely dairy cows that mature into lastingly good looking animals I think. Certainly Frieland LV Dixie, our all time biggest show winner never earned a blue ribbon until she was an aged cow, but she was rarely beaten after that. She even won senior and Holstein champion twice as an old lady. We can hope for the same for Mandy.

At least there was no glueing, taping, blocking or icing done to our string. Those of you who show will know what I mean. I would rather lose with an honest cow than win the way some seem to need to. I hate to see that stuff at a small county show and shame on the folks who need to cheat to win. It is one thing to stick a little glue on a cow to stop her from leaking out all her milk (not something we do either) and quite another to glue the teats to the bag so they hang straight. Ugly.

Where the wild things are

We have been doing our chores at odd hours because of the fair. Because of this we are seeing animals that are probably always there, but not out where we would normally see them.


Monday Liz went out at the first flush of foggy dawn to bring the cows to the barn. They come down on their own if we wait until five thirty or so, but any earlier than that and they have to be
fetched.


She had just turned a corner in the lane when she saw something mysterious in the misty semi-darkness ahead of her. Then the shadowy lump in the path started to move. It was a tiny red fox kit, tussling with a weasel nearly as long as it was. It was tossing its prey (probably provided by an indulgent mother) into the air and catching it again, totally absorbed in its play.
All at once it saw Liz and paused to peer at her feet. Evidently because of fog and shrubbery it couldn’t see her torso.

It stared in puzzlement until she spoke, realized that she was probably dangerous, and grabbed the weasel to vanish into the haze.

A few minutes later she was chasing cows off the feeder wagon when a mother killdeer and chicks came out from under it. Mama fanned her wings over her stilty babies and shrieked in dismay at the early morning intrusion. If you have ever had an up close view of baby killdeer, they look as if they were designed by Disney, with an excess of cute that just won’t quit. Liz sure had a good story to tell when she got down to the barn.

Then Alan was chopping hay last night and saw a whole herd of deer in the next field. A moment later a magnificent buck, which he said already had antlers as long as his arm, came out to stand right on the hay and watch him. There have been a number of deer around this summer after a total absence all winter, but nothing like this big animal. There are often big bucks around in late summer and early fall, but as soon as hunting season arrives they vanish and are not seen for months. They don’t get large enough to grow those big racks by being dumb.

Anyhow, everyone has put in crazy hours this week, which is why there will be no Farm Side on Friday. I sat down to write it, with a bunch of interesting research on the origins of fairs at hand, and darned near fell asleep with my head on the keyboard. Still sometimes it is worth working extra hours when the payment comes in moments like these though.

Our string

Mandolin Rain using Junie as a foot rest

Things to see at the fair

Little piggies. Two of these will be coming home with us not too long after the fair.

The boss bringing in straw

Fair time

This is our farm sign on our fair display.

It was cool and pink and hazy this morning....

I love mornings like this....

Whitewash revisited or a lot of bull in the afternoon

Well really it was a steer, but he sure acted like a bull. We whitewashed yesterday so I went over to the barn about four PM to start undoing everything we did to get ready. I was pulling plastic off the bulletin boards when I noticed something amiss. The great big shorthorn/Holstein steer we are raising for beef was not in his stall. Instead he was up in the manger fighting with a yearling heifer, Chicago, who was still tied in her stall.


This guy is a brute, may 13 or 14 hundred pounds of nasty-as-a-bull. (We women have often wondered if the guys missed something of key importance when they castrated him, although they swear they didn't). Anyhow, he doesn't like me and has always lunged at me whenever I walk past his stall.


Still I couldn't just leave him fighting with that poor little heifer.
So I picked up a piece of pipe that had missed being put away and walked over to that side of the barn. I was careful to stay close to things I could hide behind.


Good thing too. The first thing he did when he saw me was charge right at me. I jumped into the baby calf tie up and swung the gate closed in his face. He ran right up to it and threw his head over snorting at me. I gave him a pop on the nose with the pipe, which backed him off a foot or so. A second pop sent him back to fight with poor Chicago some more.


As soon as he was otherwise occupied I slipped through the stalls, where he would have to wind around them to get to me and ducked out of the barn.

I hustled to the house to send Becky after the men, who were baling, and Liz and I went back to the scene of the crime.
There is no stopping that girl.
"I am not afraid of him!" she declared. Chicago is one of her babies and she wasn't about to let her be abused by a big pile of beef.

I took my hickory stick; she took the pipe. She opened the gate to an empty pen; I tiptoed up behind all the fans, which were stored under a canvas for the whitewashing. That gave me something to duck behind if he charged. I hollered and whacked him on the rump with my stick. She stood by the gate and threatened him with the pipe. In less time than it takes to tell it that stinker was locked up in the pen. However we had to let Magma, our red calf, loose to run around the barn because she was tied to the gate. She had a fine time thundering up and down the mangers and walkways and running underneath him and under Chicago while we were working.


The men were as far back on the farm as they could be, about a mile away, and Becky couldn't find them, so we had the barn all cleaned up by the time they came down. It took at least an hour to rope the darned "steer", (which I still think is a bull), get the nose leads and a halter on him and walk him back to his stall. With three people holding the ropes.


I think Lizzie and I ought to get the farm-girls get-it-done award or something. And I think it is time to call the processing plant real soon.

Kashette, up to no good.

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.