Halp us Jon Carry we r stuck hear n Irak

Thanks to Cousin Scott for this answer from some soldiers in Iraq to the esteemed Senator's comments on their level of education. At least SOMEONE has a sense of humor!

Looking out the living room window

We were slumped in various locations around the living room, comfortable in our Sunday chairs, like so many limp vegetables when Alan spotted a white-tail buck (8-point, or so mr. bright-eyes says) and two does in the overgrown horse pasture just outside. They were a good 800 feet away, so even though we could see them quite clearly, we had little hope of getting good pictures. Kind of frustrating, since we love to share.

Then the kid had the inspired idea of lining the lense of the digital camera up with the lense on the Bushnell birdwatching binoculars....and amazingly, hey, presto, pretty deer pictures!

Smart boy, I think I'll keep him.

Retired cow dog at work

*Mike, eyeing a heifer though the fence*
*She is not dog broke and not a bit impressed*

*Young stock coming down to look at that glaring dog*

Sky

No NAIS noticed again

Remember this post?


Back in August, I thought it was a pretty big deal that Walter Jeffries' No NAIS.org was mentioned in Drovers Alert. Now the same website has been mentioned in this USA Today story.

I for one, am glad to see it. The very valid arguments against NAIS need mainstream attention and I am thankful to the hardworking farmers and ranchers ***who are getting it for us.

Even a state veterinarian, who is in favor of NAIS, admits that there are major flaws in how the program is set up today,

"As for arguments that the program is unconstitutional and a violation of privacy, "I can't counter that," Hoenig says. But he tells the farmers, "In an emergency, you're going to be coming to people like me for help. So give us the tools we need to do our job."


Giving them tools to do the job is all well and good, but they are asking for weapons of mass destruction when a BB gun would get the job done just fine.

***Update...upon further reading I realized that Sarpy Sam's No Mandatory Animal ID, which is linked with the word "rancher" above is also mentioned in the article. I didn't recognize it, as his url is different from the name of his site.

Happy Halloween

Another game for your spooky enjoyment.

Cat Bowling

For those who want to get an early start on Halloween festivities.***


http://www.itsga.com/fun/cat_new.swf


***For cat lovers, no animals were harmed in the making of this game. They were "spared".
***For non cat lovers, bowling for cats says it all.

I don't mind

It is a closely held secret how I feel about driving Becky over to the college for her Friday classes. Liz takes her other days, but has nothing scheduled on Friday so it is my turn. The other day the bookstore lady from whom Becky buys me a coffee for the drive home mentioned to Liz that she felt sorry for me having to sit in the car all that time.



Let's see, how can I handle such punishment week after week? It was so still this morning early that you could hear the leaves falling. They made a sibilant rustle like the pattering of a crisp rain at the beginning of a summer storm. The air was crystal clear after last night brought us the first real killing frost. Oh, we have had a few little ones that polished off the tomatoes and cannas, but last night it hit the mid twenties. Driving down the valley it was so clear that a church steeple appeared to be suspended in space like a knife on a string. You could spot pigeons soaring miles away in the pristine sky.



Oak trees unfurled a sprawling magic carpet of gold and red and chestnut across the mountains. Stark shadows sharply outlined those mountains in the brilliant slanting sunlight. The view was so beautiful coming down into the Schoharie Valley that it almost hurt to look at it.

Once I parked a scattering of crows dive-bombed the parking lot. Amusing to watch one alight on a slender, brittle twig and try to balance, flicking its wings and teetering awkwardly. One flew so close to the open car window that I heard the rustle of its feathers like a whisper of silk right next to my ear.


Canada Geese, flock after flock of them, crisscrossed the sky, flying low and fast. Or they wheeled, calling plaintively, over some body of water out of sight below the campus. I sat in the car, warm sun at my shoulder, a good book in my lap and no more work to do than to leap out of the car occasionally to snap another picture of the unfolding morning beauty. Poor me.

Sycamore leaf

This landed on the car right in front of Danescara when Beck and I were driving by today. We were on a wild goose chase to see a strange, long, wooden sail boat go through the lock at Tribes Hill. Somehow it got so far ahead of us that we missed it. We often make a run for the lock if we see a real cool boat going past the house out on the Mohawk. I sure would have liked to get a look at this one, but it was not to be. Nice leaf though. Big too, that is a full sized pencil there.

Congratulations Sam

To Sarpy Sam at Thoughts From the Middle of Nowhere, one of the best of the best, on three years of insightful blogging. He is one of my first reads every morning.

Wild weather

We had a few bright flashes of sunlight today, which was pretty welcome. The boss found at least one field where he could actually get some corn chopped without having Alan tow him with the White 2-105 4-wheel drive. A lot easier that way.

Sweeney vs. Gilibrand

Fired off the Farm Side this morning SIX HOURS before deadline. I am way proud of myself, but really, it was an easy topic and darned near wrote itself. Although newspaper subscribers will have to read between the lines to figure out who I was ranting about, I will save you the mental anguish. I was all fired up about the campaign between Sweeney and Gillibrand for the US Congress. Good Lord, those two are like whiny little kids, not an issue between them, but plenty of childish tirades and he-said-she-said trash talking.

I love to put the things Becky has learned in college sociology class to work in rating their honesty. She says that when someone is lying they tend to glance involuntarily downward and to the left. Watch 'em when they rant and rave. See where they are looking?

Thankfully, no matter who wins that contest neither of them will represent this district. We just get to suffer through their campaign rhetoric on television. Can't wait until November 8th!

FFA and the vegetarian

Not much time to write these days (broken stable cleaner, two sick cows, three feet of mud in the fields with corn harvest only just begun, seventeen calves in the barn and a partridge in a pear tree) so I will share another great story. This time you can read about the vegetarian animal rights activist who will perform at the annual FFA convention. Amazin'!

Another view back on the hill

* taken from Seven County Hill field looking west across the Sixty-Acre Lot*

Meth

Nothing funny about meth. Nothing amusing about the way it is showing up in rural areas like this. However, this story of how some young, er, dumb and dumber fellows tried to steal some Sudafed to make some is hilarious. Not everyone uses cat food in quite that manner.

Argghhh....

Talking turkey

Hunting that is. (Note the fashionable duct tape fastening the orange vest together. This boy has style.) I know there are those who don't believe in hunting, but we have at least two hundred turkeys on our three hundred acres. (They gather together in the winter and we count them so we know.) The two or three a year that we roast will not be missed...and they are fat from eating our corn and alfalfa.

Partly because he is an avid hunter, this boy knows every inch of our land like other kids know the ins and outs of video games. In this picture he was showing me where he shot three turkeys with one shot one time (quite by accident). He loves to take me out to share his special places...an old pallet leaning on the rocks in the Sixty-Acre Lot hedgerow where he can hide and watch the wild things go by, a puddle where a dozen green frogs lurk, waiting to plop into the water with a startling splash. The old dam, the owl tree, he leads me to them proudly when we have time. I have visited all these places before when I was young and eager, but it is good to see them again through his fresh, fervent eyes. He is a capable tracker and so keen of nose that he can SMELL where the birds have been. My nose isn't sharp enough to notice until he points it out to me, but he is generally right.


It is comforting in a way to realize that the nature walks we took the kids on when they were little, turning over rocks to look for salamanders and spying on birds, have come full circle. Now we are the ones being taken.

How bad the corn is

This morning the sky was lumpy and dingy grey as if someone had stretched a dirty sock across it. For a while the sun tried to spill down between the lumps, but by the time we were done with chores there wasn't a ray to be seen.

It is plumb depressing. It just rains and rains and rains. A flood watch is on for all day tomorrow. Again.
The river is already bank full from all the snow up west last week . Meanwhile the guys go out to try to chop corn and the fields are quagmires. They are getting two or three loads a day on good days and barely enough to feed the cows on not-so-good days. Yesterday the boss jack knifed both feeder wagons bringing them down the hill. Dangerous. Worse when it is the forage wagons that he is bringing down. I don't know how they are ever going to get the corn in if it doesn't dry up soon.

The picture is how bad the corn is in at least one field, from all the rain this summer. There are fifteen or twenty feet or more between the stalks on half of the field, none at all on part of it, then a good stand up where the drainage is better. Very worrisome.

Tragic news

The death of a fellow student* of our girls, the teenaged son of a favorite professor, has been rattling our world this week. This is too sad for easy discussion, so I will just let you read about it. The alleged perpetrator is not a student at the college, but notice that the police apprehended him in a dorm.


I feel so much sympathy for the friends and family of the young victim. Not much more to say about it.
*Correction, the Gazette says not a student, although the girls knew him from campus.