Doggone it!

I mostly mind my own business where other people's dogs are concerned. However, yesterday I was just plain perturbed by a doggy situation the girls and I experienced. We were at Wally World buying an elbow brace. I blew my right one a couple of weeks ago struggling with a barn door that had come off its rollers and it has been getting progressively worse. I parked, as is my habit, in the rows in back down near the swamp. There was no one else around.

However, when we returned to the van there was a gigantic blue truck parked about as close as it could get to our driver's side door.
And in the open back was a beautiful blond Doberman.

Loose.

Completely unrestrained.


She was a gorgeous dog, although there were several rather serious scars marring her lovely golden coat. She wore nothing but a choke collar (something I would certainly never leave on an unattended dog).

I felt strongly uncomfortable, despite having no particular fear of Dobies. (Some of the nicest dogs I have ever met have been Dobermans). However, I have worked with dogs all my life, and this dog gave me the willies. Determined not to show breed prejudice, I unloaded my stuff into the back of the car (including an extra-large bag of dog food), all the while keeping half an eye on the occupant of the next vehicle, who was about five feet from my face. The girls and I kept up a stream of nervous chatter about the dog and her presumed-to-be-idiot owner while we worked. When we done loading our things I turned to walk to the driver's door. The dog came quickly toward me and leaned out of the truck bed with an "I mean business" growl rumbling in her throat. She bared her teeth right at my face.
Needless to say I went around to the other side of the car to get in.

A few seconds later a man jumped into the truck and drove away with the dog still loose in the back. We marveled at his unconcern.


What kind of dimwit leaves a dog loose in the back of a truck in a busy parking lot anyhow?
And what kind of malicious fool does it with an aggressive dog? It certainly isn't fair to the dog, no matter how well trained and it isn't too safe for passersby either. I sure hope I don't meet him again.

Yummy

A new product has just hit the shelves in the Middle East. Its release was timed in order to coincide with the Holy Month of Ramadan. When this Camelicious substance reaches our shores will it sweep Coke and Pepsi aside in its wake? Will Mountain Dew be replaced by Desert Dew Drops? Only time will tell, but date-flavored camel milk may be the Yoohoo of the future.

Evergreen Cemetery

*Fonda, NY*

Catskill Game Farm closes

This is the last weekend for the big attraction and naturally the animal rights idiots are there protesting. The place has an incredible record of breeding endangered species in captivity, helping to assure their continued existence on earth, but there is always somebody who has to stand on the sidelines whining and waving signs. And of course they get the headlines and camera time.


I wish we could get away to go to the auction. Although I have no interest in owning an addax, a yak or a rhinoceros, they have peafowl, guinea hens and exotic chickens. I could go for something like that maybe. I certainly miss having guineas. Ours used to fly up to the top of our 72-foot high tower and cackle and screech for hours as they surveyed their territory. For some reason I found that amusing. They are also wonderful for curing horses of being spooky about noisy things bursting out of the bushes. They spend all their time in a state of frantic alarm and after a while the equines pay no attention to such antics... a big help in a region where there is an equally feather-headed wild turkey under every other bush.

Speaking of screeching. About an hour before first dawn today I was luxuriating in my cozy nest, fairly wallowing in the knowledge that this is my morning off. No need to haul cold, still-damp sneakers onto stiff, achy feet to trudge through what feels like half a mile of mud to where fifty muddy, cranky cows await. No need to work for four hours before breakfast and second coffee. No need to do any darned thing I didn't want to.

Suddenly, SOMETHING let out an awful wail that sounded like it was right beside me.
Close.
Real close.
I thought one of the kids was having a nightmare. It came again. And again. And again. I realized that it was outdoors, but it was the most unearthly sound you could imagine and it was right next to the house.

I woke up the boss and we jumped out of bed to find Liz about to pound on our bedroom door. It had wakened her too. Of course it was still pitch dark and the land was blanketed with dense fog, so thick you couldn't see across the driveway. Whatever it was it was gone by the time the sun came up, but I kept dogs in, much to their chagrin, until I could actually SEE them when I let them out. Chances are it was a coyote, but it just didn't sound normal. We have the wild brush dogs around all the time and although they have a pretty unearthly cry we are used to them. Could have been a rabid one or a dog that had been hit by a car and was running in the dark. There is just no way we could tell because of the fog. I went out on the porch for a while, but couldn't see at all no matter how bright a flashlight I had. I suggested that the boss take a .22 or something to the barn with them, but he didn't. I am not going out to fill the stove until the fog lifts. It's cold, but it isn't THAT cold.

**Update...along about noonish when Alan finally stumbled down the stairs (having the morning off himself and having stayed up to watch the Mets game in its entirety last night) blond hair puffing over bleary eyes and jammies hanging off his bony hips, we got....dum da dum dum......the REST OF THE STORY.

We asked him if he had heard those infernal Hellish shrieks that paralyzed the rest of us with shivering terror.


"Oh, yeah," he replied. "That was Gael* howling back at the coyotes out on the hill. I heard her but I was too sleepy to go down and holler at her."

*Border collie number three, in season and evidently in the mood for love...any love.

Danged dog!

Maple

Blogriculture

I stumbled upon a stellar West Coast agriculture blog yesterday, by way of checking out my Site Meter to see who visits here. Someone did a search for "dairy farm blog" and found both Blogriculture and Northview Diary.

Blogriculture is the blog of two writers for the Capital Press Agriculture Weekly paper, which looks to be a tremendous source of useful ag info. Interestingly, one of Liz's best online friends, a writer whom she competes with on Its Your Turn, writes for the paper as well. They were kind enough to Blogroll me, so I am returning the favor. Take a minute and check out Blogriculture and the Capital Press. I am personally looking forward to a promised upcoming post covering a very interesting trip.....

"We send me this weekend to an Oregon farm to watch a crane drop, from the equivalent of 10 stories high, a 1,000-pound pumpkin on a Mazda hatchback."

I can't wait to read that one!

Fall color as promised

*Lovely old carriage house down in the village of Fultonville*

*The neighbor's sugar maple*

*Staghorn Sumac down along the driveway*

Checkerboard Magnums Promise

This is our purebred milking shorthorn bull, Promise, perhaps an anomaly on a Holstein farm, but calving ease on heifers is important to us and his babies bring a good price at auction. Beautiful Broadway is the one red daughter we have from him. All the rest have been various combinations of black and white.

This will take you to a picture of Promise's 90 point dam.

Here is a picture of Promise before we bought him. Sadly his speckles vanished.

For laurainnj at Somewhere in New Jersey

Great Border Collie site

Carina shared this site with me. It is truly hilarious to anyone who has ever been around a BC...or even three of them.

The dogs at Northview

A recent comment from a good blog friend in Michigan reminded me that not everyone at Northview Diary can read the column I write for the Recorder, the Farm Side, thus not everyone has already been bored to death with our three border collies.

Let me rectify that situation. Mike was my first border collie dog. I bought him from a local breeder, who has since moved to the left coast. Mike Canaday also sold me Gael, who was out of the same dam, Floss, and sired by his open trial dog, Robin. I liked Mike so much that I bred Gael to Bill, Mike's sire to get my young dog, Nick. Floss and several other dogs in the pedigrees of the three collies were actually imported from Scotland.

Mike (the man, not the dog) once brought Robin to the farm with some sheep and another fellow, his dogs and a horse, to practice for the national sheepdog trial. He just let the sheep out of the horse trailer and turned them loose. The darned things bolted for the barn and raced down the cow barn driveway towards the road. Sheep are fast. My heart was in by throat. I was envisioning carnage with wool and lawsuits and jumping up and down, when Mike released Robin and whistled something. Within seconds, literally seconds, even though Robin had never seen our farm before and hadn't seen the sheep go, I was pinned against the gate by a milling, wooly flock. He had gone over the bank, through the creek, and down below the sheep to fetch them back. Those open trial dogs are plumb amazing!


Border collies of the real sheepdog persuasion, as opposed to AKC, where good looks are all important, can have any length of hair and be just about any color you can imagine. As long as they work, it is all good. Mostly black dogs are pretty much preferred because sheep can see them better and don't mistake them for other sheep. Two of our dogs, Nick and Gael, are of the shortcoated sort; Mike is a pretty boy. They never need grooming, he requires frequent unraveling.

All three dogs work. Mike as a young dog was quite talented, although he has retired himself now at almost twelve. However, they have no where near the skill level of dogs like Robin or even nursery trial dogs. This is my failing as a trainer, not theirs as dogs, although Gael is a bit weak for a cow dog. Training sheep dogs is the hardest thing you can imagine....like parenting with sheep.

Read Mike's Ten Tips page for a little insight into getting a Border Collie puppy started.

Websites about working Border Collies.
United States Border Collie Handler Assoc.
American Border Collie Assoc.

Blondie

*Here you go Liz, as requested*

A meme!

Sort of. A regular commenter on one of my three very favorite blogs, (Pure Florida) started a neat photo exchange thingie for this weekend that sounded like a lot of fun. So I am going to play along.


Vitamin Sea is Laura's blog, worth a read while you check out other bloggers all around the country who are taking pictures of their hometowns, fields, forests, oceans and rivers this weekend and sharing them with us all. I am just waiting for the sun to come up before I head out with the camera to see what I can find to photograph. It is opening day of fall turkey season, so I am going to stay near the house. Of course it is pouring.


Wish I had taken the camera with me when we went out bringing heifers down yesterday. We brought all the springers in with the cows, so we can put the open heifers in with the bull in a couple of weeks. It was SO pretty on top of the heifer pasture hill, with the trees just starting to change and all the little white churches shining their steeples out among them.

I was amazed to find that I was able to comfortably hike up that big ol' hill TWICE! We went up first to get a half shorthorn heifer calf that wild little Mary had hidden in a tiny cup-shaped hollow we call the calving grove. (Cows have probably been hiding babies in there for a couple hundred years or more, ever since this has been a farm anyhow.) Then we had to go back for Mary, who for some reason wouldn't come along with her baby. Every breath was like a cool drink of water on a hot day. You could just feel the air recharging your lungs. In the heat of summer that hill about kills me. In fall I was able to charge up it faster than the boss.....the first time at least. He had a bit more stamina on the second trip.


Our resident red tailed hawk screamed as he sailed above us and the other heifers ran along side us dancing at the fun of it all. It actually was fun....for work.

UPDATE: I believe after reading posts on other blogs that I am supposed to take requests....so what would you like to see photographed here at Northview Farm?

Fall colors are kind of subdued this year

Bunny

*For matthew didier

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.