Close encounters of the vulpine kind

I was on my merry way to the barn this morning, juggling a cup of coffee with cinnamon and whipped cream in one hand and my bright yellow and red Scottish lion umbrella in the other when I got a big surprise. A large cat seemed to be slipping between the two green tubular metal gates that keep the cows in the cow yard. I could see immediately that it was not one of our cats, because although it was the right shade of grey, but it was orangy brown too.

It neatly threaded its way between the gates, obviously a habit, as it moved so neatly, and ran straight to my feet....whereupon I darned near tossed the coffee one way and the brolly the other.

Because it was no cat, it was a grey fox. It was as startled as I was and did a 90 degree turn, claws scrabbling in the stony path and vanished into the tall weeds of the heifer barnyard. The encounter didn't last ten seconds, but the fox was less than ten feet from me when I realized that he wasn't a cat and he realized that I wasn't ....well, whatever a fox might mistake a middle-aged lady with a gaudy umbrella and a mug of java for. Perhaps a minivan with a bad paint job or something.

I know the goosebumps on my arms didn't subside until halfway through milking. I also now know that the rustling bushes along the walkway that we have been blaming on a woodchuck might just be something much more interesting.

The sun came up in a ball of fire

No Nais.org hits the big time

Congratulations to the anti-National Animal Identification Program website, NoNAIS.org on attracting nationwide mainstream attention to the grassroots movement against this intrusive and expensive program. (I have had a link in the sidebar to the site for quite a while now.)

NoNAIS, run by Walter Jeffries of Sugar Mountain Farm, has done such an excellent job of getting the word out on the problems inherent in the proposed program that his site was mentioned and linked to by Drovers Alert, a mainstream beef producers newsletter, sent out by the well-known magazine Drovers.

It is impressive for a small farmer to do such a fantastic job of getting his ideas out into the public that he manages to reach so many people within and outside the industry. There are a lot of farmers and ranchers very much opposed to national ID, but not too many of them are able to get their opinions out there.

Look mom, no cows

These dark August mornings the cows don’t come down from pasture. Milking time arrives and the barnyard is empty. No big spotted bodies or shiny little horse-chestnut-brown ones either. Not a bovine to be seen.

No Mandy, no Junie, no Heather or Hattie.
Not Zinnie nor Eland nor Bailey or Ricky. To the top of the silo to the ridge of the barn…now dash away, dash away…no wait a minute, it is too early in the year for that.

What are we to do? Milk late and get nothing done during the day, when we are already far behind from the bad weather in June and July? Or stagger up the hill to get them, in the dark, dodging thistles and late wandering skunks? Which if you take a cow dog along are like a mutt magnet, the first thing the hound comes upon to the benfit of neither dog nor stinker. (Maybe the dogs are just dedicated to herding anything black and white, I don’t know.)

I thought of outfitting the cows with their own personal flashlights. It would take a Rube Goldberg arrangement of batteries and timers to keep them on the cow and turn them on and off at the right times. Perhaps they could be fitted around their necks with collars or harnesses and set to turn on at five AM and off at six thirty. And aimed straight down the cow path (someting of a challenge if you take into consideration the characteristics of cow paths) to light their way home.

With an arrangement like that you would think that they could find their way to the barn before noon anyhow. It would be a big help.

Think it would work?

Garlic chives and lobelia

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.