The dogs

*Mike and Nick, 3/4 brothers*

*Nick, who is not thrilled about the camera*

*For carina

*Gael is in season and can't have her picture taken with her son and brother...

Moth TV

The boss, a man with a true magnetism for low flying bats, (along with an intense horror of them,) came up with a pretty good reason why bats start showing up in the cow barn in late September.

The outdoor bugs are mostly gone.

(Except mosquitoes of course.) We always wondered why they come in, because they don't bother us until quite late in the year. However, now, around eight PM, they flutter down out of the haymow and dive bomb us while we work. They are just eating stable flies, to which they are most welcome, but with all the rabies around, we wish they would stay the heck away from our heads.

According to moth TV, the boss is probably right. On a normal summer night Alan and I can spend ten minutes watching our special television every night on the way up to bed, and never run out of interestingly different species of moths to exclaim over. Now one or two skittering up and down the glass of the window on the front stair landing it is a lot. For some reason that high window is like a magnet to them, although other lighted windows in the house are insect free. These creatures of the night are plumb amazing, a study in delicate shades of brown, tan and cream that is as intricate as a 1000 piece puzzle.


Anyhow, the bats drive us nuts as soon as it begins to get dark. The other night one actually landed on a white porcelain light receptacle and began gobbling up flies that were clinging there soaking up the warmth. I never imagined a bat landing to munch lunch, but this one hung there for several minutes until the light evidently got too hot for his little feet. Then he went back to buzz-bombing us. I can't say I am sorry that the little flying mammals will soon follow the bugs into hibernation.

Speaking of rabies, Alan saw what was probably a rabid woodchuck yesterday. It was fumbling and stumbling around on the ground in a most alarming manner. Thankfully he was on the tractor. Not so thankfully it was the first time he went out without his .22 all week.

New England Asters

*Sorry about the blurry picture, but this little green wasp or fly didn't sit still long and left very soon. Any idea what it might be? Perhaps a cuckoo wasp?*

Grain not to blame

Last week, the New York Times, which loves to hate conventional farmers, blamed the recent outbreak of E. coli O157:H7 in spinach on cows fed grain diets. The story carried the sensational title of "Leafy Green Sewage." Even though use of any fertilizer product that has anything to do with cows on leafy vegetables is strongly discouraged by the FDA (if not downright outlawed), the activist newspaper eagerly snatched an opportunity to bash animal agriculture.

Now an actual, real, honest to gosh, scientist has pointed out that they are full of hooey. On US Newswire comes a story, quoting Dr. David Renter, an assistant professor of veterinary epidemiology at Kansas State University, as saying, " E. Coli O157:H7 Not Limited to Grain-Fed Cattle"

Turns out that sheep, deer, bison, raccoons, birds and cows that live on grass and hay, not to mention the humans who harvest the crop and are often as much as a quarter mile from the nearest bathroom, can all carry the disease in their digestive tracts.

Shame on the Times for being so quick to trot out the latest in unscientific bilge for a blame game in such a time of crisis.

Spitzer not a farm guy

Days are getting very short, less than twelve hours of sunlight now. This means dragging a flashlight along to every milking and hard times getting any crop work done between chores.

I have been asked to aid some other farmers in drafting a letter to the NY Attorney General, Elliot Spitzer, about the current fad among milk processors of marketing so called BST-free milk. BST is a naturally occurring hormone, synthesized by Monsanto, and used by some farmers to increase their cows' appetites and thus their milk production. It has always been rather controversial, even though it is impossible to detect differences between the milk of cows that have been given it and cows that haven't. For the record, we have never used it here at Northview.

However, of late, some milk companies have asked their farmers to sign pledges not to use it so the the companies can market their milk as BST free (even though it really isn't, as all cows produce this hormone naturally). No problem there. We need to offer consumers what they want and if there is a market, good. And I repeat we don't use it here at our farm anyhow.

Problem is the milk companies are charging consumers a whole dollar more a gallon and paying the farmers not one cent for producing it for them....even though it becomes more expensive to produce milk without it. It is just another example of so-called farmer cooperatives becoming instead for profit companies and making those profits by stepping on the necks of the real producers of our food. I will gladly help draft the letter, although I don't expect that it will accomplish anything. Spitzer is busy running for governor, as he has been since he took office as AG. He has no interest in fairness to farmers, or as far as I can see in upstate at all. NY is bleeding dairy farmers like a gushing torrent, with farms all around us selling the cows and looking for new lives.
Unfair practices like this will just speed the death of the state's number one industry. The fools.

New Piggies

Liz and I drove over fifty miles one way to pick these guys up.

And ended up with these thrown in for free.

This is what happens....

when you try to take pictures of the guppies through the glass of the aquarium.

Tis the season

For all that winter is hurtling towards us like a frozen rocket (and yes I know that autumn doesn't officially start until tomorrow, but, trust me, winter is nipping at its heels like like a coyote on a white tail) this is a fabulous season. The air is so crisp and invigorating that it fair makes your skin tingle. When I have occasion to go outside to hang up laundry or fill the stove with wood, I don't want to come back inside. I think we are filled with the same instincts that set the Canada geese winging down the great flyways and the woodchucks and squirrels fattening up on alfalfa and corn. There is a constant, intense, urge to get something, anything at all, done and done right now. It is surely a restless time of year.

Every Friday it has become my task to drive Becky over to college and wait while she has three classes. You might think that three hours spent sitting in a car might come under the heading of cruel and unusual punishement, but it is nice in fact. I get to read all the papers in peace, and maybe a good book too, and the campus is tranquil and lovely. The girls both attend SUNY Cobleskill, an ag and tech school, which has liberal arts degree programs as well. It also has a renouned horticulture program, with much of the campus landscaped by students. Young maples are just now turning bronze and gold, flowers that are unfamiliar to me flourish in dozens of beds, and wonderful birds rustle in the shrubs.

In fact a small sparrow comes every week to torment me, hopping briskly back and forth along the curb under the front bumper. He is in constant motion and a frustrating puzzle. It is as if he were saying, "Nyah, nyah, bet you can't guess what I am."

He is right, I can't. Is he a chipping sparrow in fall plumage, or perhaps a juvenile? Probably not, although he has a dark russet cap reminiscent of a chipper's summer garb. Savannah sparrow? The notched tail and markings almost fit, but not quite. Something else altogether perhaps? I just don't know. He is always ruffled up as if recently injured and has a few upturned wing feathers that suggest the same. I even took the binoculars along this week to try to get a good look, but he is always on the move. It is really bugging me.

If we ever retire and can afford it, I would like to go to school at SUNY Cobleskill and study some of the horticulture and maybe fisheries and wildlife programs. They are just so darned interesting.

Fall

A coolish wind whistled through the goldenrod today. What heat comes upstairs from letting the hot water from the wood furnace circulate through the oil furnace plenum felt darned good. Everything is getting ready for the cold. Monarch butterflies like floating stained glass windows, teeter and tip on every breeze. There are a couple of early maples blazing like torches across the valley. I found the big wooly bear on the drive next to the compost bin. (Longest one I ever saw.) I don't think fall is going to wait for its official start this weekend. First frost won't be far behind so I am dragging house plants in a couple at a time.

The other night Alan saw quite a sight. A female coyote lay right in the middle of the farm road, in the second field behind the barn, nursing four pups. She barely bothered to get out of the way of the tractor, although her whelps hustled off into the corn. Wonder if she is rabid or sick with some other thing. Not normal to stay right there with a human around.

Another strange visitor is a bat, probably a little brown, that sleeps right downstairs in the barn, beside the vaccuum tank for the milk pump. What a weird spot to choose to sleep, as he (or she) is barely above head level, right out in the bright light, in the noisiest spot in the barn. It was so low tonight, clinging to the outside of a metal sheathed powerline, that if I had the camera with me, I could have made quite a close up. Of course it was over at the house. Naturally.

Wooly bear caterpillar

Question of the day. What does this guy's color pattern have to tell us about the weather we can look forward to here in the Northeast this winter? I am sure I don't know. Any ideas?
(If you can't see him well enough to tell, he was about the longest wooly bear I have ever seen with an exceptionally wide orange middle.)

Strange days

Sundae on the Farm 2006

Alan and I took a few pictures yesterday during the time when he wasn't carrying ice cream and I wasn't playing tour guide. As you can see a good time was had by all.

Another hazy morning

This picture of the water garden was taken a few weeks ago, but it still looks much the same. Hoping for some sunshine later for Sundae on the Farm.

19,000

Thank you to my 19,000th visitor, from Syracuse NY, referred by NYCO's blog at 8:06 PM today!

Horse auction

The boss dragged me across the river to a horse auction yesterday. I won't lie and say it wasn't fun, although I really didn't want to go. (Just lazy I guess). We came within about 25 bucks of bringing home a horse. (Whew, close one there.)

Anyhow, what an assortment of horses we saw. The migration of the Amish to the area brought a huge offering of draft horses of all ages and descriptions and there were a few local light horses and ponies too.

It was exciting. While we were standing behind the auctioneers' stand watching a pair of Halflingers being paraded at a high trot, I looked over at a commotion a few feet away and found myself staring right at a horse's belly button. Argghhh!!! A tall, flaxy chestnut mare was sunfishing right there among all the auction goers and horses waiting to be sold. Only the fact that a couple of big Amish boys were on her halter kept her from throwing herself right over backwards. We decided to go over by the grandstand until they got her through the ring. She was a hot one and I don't envy whoever has her in their stable today.

Just after she sold an Amish fellow brought in a little yellow colt. I was pretty sure it was a Halflinger, but it didn't have the refinement about the head you see in the hotblooded ones around here. It looked more like a miniature Belgian with a puffy little curly tail and thick, furry blonde ears. I liked it. It was very correct and seemed very quiet (could have been drugged of course.)

We watched a few more sell hoping to see what that one brought and then left. We were over in Fonda getting laundry detergent when the boss said, "I want to buy that colt."

O....ka-a-a-y.....we are about as broke as we could possibly be, milk prices are what they were in 1970, fuel prices aren't, and we already have two horses nobody does anything with. Still, the man works like a dog...two dogs maybe, and today is his 58th brithday. (Happy birthday, Ralph,we love you). So, I said, go get him, no more than four hundred bucks.

We rushed back to the sale where I sat in the car with a good Andrew Greeley book while he went in to see what he could do. He bid up to $250 on the little guy, then decided that was enough. A dealer took him home for $275.

Can't say I was really sorry. We knew nothing about the colt except that he was cute and had no real use for him. Still he was cute...... really, really cute. He had excellent feet and legs and was put together just right.


Horse prices ranged from ten dollars for a skeletal old thing that someone is hoping to rehabilitate, to near four thousand each for a pair of locally grown Paint showhorses. They must have sold a hundred head, and were still selling long after we left. You could hear the aucioneer's chant from here when the wind was right.

Finding my folks

When I first saw the picture below and a number of others that were given to my mom along with it, all was explained. I have always felt like a changeling child, dumped into my more conventional family from some weird place where girls like to wear boots and jeans and run around in the woods doing guy things. Heck, I have spent most of my five decades trying to outdo guys at what they do. I only got smart and let them take up the heavy lifting…and tractor driving, cow wrangling, ladder climbing, huntin’, fishin’ (wait a minute, I still fish and milk cows) and all that stuff a couple years ago. I haven’t owned a dress in over thirty years. (They damn well better bury me in blue jeans.)

Both my grandmas were lady-like. My mom went along with my dad whether he was digging rare minerals in the wilds of Canada or wearing the kilt and representing the clan at the games or carving or painting, lugging books into shows, or doing hands on archeology, but she was always a girly girl.
Not the kind of kid like I was, that brought in a dinner plate sized toad and dumped it in her lap when I was supposed to be on a date with that cute blond guy. Or had my big milk snake get loose at my graduation party and scare all the Lachmayer great aunts half to death. Or was the best, most un-tackle-able football player in our gang. Or played guitar in our garage band that graduated into a bar band that rocked any number of wild places, even one biker bar....where we played Born to be Wild for about three hours straight because we felt safer doing so. (After all some of our audience was out in the parking lot throwing some of their buddies off the roof onto parked cars...all in good fun, of course.)

I felt like a freak.

Until I saw the pictures. There were my great grandma, Carrie Montgomery, whom I never met, and a whole passel of great aunts, wearing rubber boots and men’s knickerbockers or baggy old men’s pants, camping along the beautiful Canesteo River. They held up massive bass they had hooked; they cooked rough in the woods. They rode in wonderful wooden boats and set up this delightfully inviting camp. (Don't be fooled by the dresses in the cooking picture. Others that are not posted show them dressed like female hunting guides and darned proud of it.)

When I saw the camp I wanted to just walk right into the picture. It said home like my own living room does.

Take a look at my mom’s blog, Tryon Books and More, and see my late great aunt Fanny. (That is her with the bass in the bottom picture. She is the one wearing knickers and close-cropped hair.) Fanny had a collie dog too!

How I wish I had known all my Grandpa Montgomery’s sisters-in-law and his mamma.

They were my kind of women. Or maybe I am theirs.

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There is a story behind this picture

*Thanks to my wonderful mom for allowing me to use it. Story to follow, later when it isn't time to go to work. While you are waiting look closely, and think about just walking right into the picture......

The running of the wools

Yeah, yeah, I know, in Spain it's the running of the bulls, but we do things differently here at Northview Dairy.

See, I used to keep a half dozen or so of assorted sheep to introduce border collie puppies to the wonders of herding. Sheep stay together better than cows, don't kick as hard and are much easier to herd. However, Nick, our youngest, is seven now, so there has been no need for sheep for years. Still, there are two elderly hangers on around the place, Freckles and BS, her ancient dam. (And, yes, BS stands for just what you think it does.)

They are rarely any bother at all and we are quite fond of them. They live, by choice in the cow barn yard and the tool shed. They could duck under the fences and go wherever they wish, but they seem to like their chosen domain. However, there is one cardinal rule on a dairy farm. No sheep (or pigs, or horses, or chickens) in the cow barn. It is not only sensible practice, it is the law, enforced by the dreaded milk inspector.

This morning those naughty old ladies, who heretofore seemed to know better, strutted right into the stable behind the cows, ran up into the manger and began to fight the cows for their food. It was plumb ugly.

The boss was NOT happy. Beck and I quickly haltered them and led them across the bridge to the heifer yard and locked the gate. (I am grateful that they are halter broken, as dragging a reluctant sheep is nearly impossible.)


They were so miserable. You have not seen forlorn until you have viewed an elderly sheep deprived of its chosen hunting ground. They paced back and forth and blatted sadly with drooping ears. However, sheep have been sent to the auction for getting in the habit of coming in the cow barn. (There are any number of other buildings where their presence is acceptable.) We let them stew all day until we were done putting cows in for night milking. Beck went over and opened the gate.

Then it happened, the running of the wools. It is a good thing Beck was quick to get out of the way. Those two old ewes raced across the bridge and up the hill to the yard in front of the tool shed. There they fluffed their wooly coats and settled down to chew their cuds as if they had been there all along. I wonder if they will try to come in the barn tomorrow.