Green

A tiger in his previous birth

Or so the neighbors are saying about this carnivorous calf.

Jonrowe and Swingley scratch from Iditarod Race

Both 53-year old Doug Swingley and Dee Dee Jonrowe, same age, have scratched their teams from this year's race. Swingley is said to have possibly broken some ribs and dislocated his thumb in an accident. Jonrowe broke at least one finger in a fall and may have further damage to her hand. It is a shame to see these two respected veterans forced to stop, but I am in awe that they can run at all. I only have one year on them and I am sure not up for running over a thousand miles in weather colder even than it is here (and trust me, it is plenty cold. The transmission on the work truck is frozen, making it impossible to get any hay).

Here is the official site for the race. Here is Susan Butcher's family website, which supports the families and children of cancer patients.

That pesky global warming

Stop by Northview Dairy Farm this week and enjoy our forecast: from Channel 10...

Today will feature partly to mostly sunny skies and afternoon temperatures will struggle to rise to between 5 and 10 for the area. This would be a RECORD LOW MAX temperature for the date which is 15 dating back to 1901. On Wednesday...a weak storm will track to our south. This will increase the clouds and there could be a few flurries, especially south of Albany. When this goes by, another blast of Arctic Air arrives for Thursday !

We may set another record low max temperature on Thursday and possibly a record low temperature Thursday night/Friday morning.

Guest post

This was written by our esteemed veterinarian here at Northview and is something folks really should be aware of....

Beware, American Consumers!

I am writing to inform the unwitting American consumer, that they are being duped and defrauded by the Retailers of America, of which, Price Chopper has just joined the ranks. There is a rapidly growing movement to sell milk by large processors and retailers (Wal-Mart, Dean Foods, Price Chopper, etc.) at a higher price to the consumer by calling it "rBST-free", or "artificial hormone free” milk. BST (Bovine Somatotropin) is a naturally occurring hormone produced by all cows in response to lactation. All milk has the same amount of BST in it, whether or not cows are injected with rBST (Posilac). So the milk that is labeled as being different and sold at a premium is no different.

rBST (recombinant Bovine Somatotropin) is a FDA-approved supplement, that about 20-30% of our Dairy Farmers use to help cows produce more milk. It is one of the most heavily researched and studied drugs to ever be approved for use in Animal Agriculture, and has been in use for over 12 years. It is simply a tool that helps dairy farmers make a living.

Aside from the baseless fear marketing to the consumers, what is the most troubling about this trend towards “rBST- free” milk is that it is occurring at a time when farmers are enduring the worst prices they have ever seen. They are receiving the same for their milk that they received in the 1970's and 80's, yet we all know how much more fuel, electric, and other inputs cost today. Under current market conditions, not a single dairy farmer is making a profit milking cows.

To add insult to injury, they are being coerced into giving up a safe, approved technology, without adequate and fair compensation. The only people profiting from “rBST-free” milk are the processors and retailers. It is very troubling to me that the labels are illegal and misleading, according to the Food and Drug Administration, which is not enforcing its own labeling laws. So please don=t be mislead. All Milk is Milk. Whether it is produced Organically, or non-Organically, with r-BST or without. It has the same composition. It is all antibiotic free. It all has hormones in it. Milk is Milk.

The only way to stop this movement of selling milk through fear tactics is to not buy it. Buy regular milk; the same milk you have been buying forever. Don't spend your hard earned money on a marketing ploy, that is illegal and misleading, and driving dairy farmers out of business. Our farmers are the most efficient food producers in the world. We need to support them and appreciate them, or we will some day be as dependent on foreign food as we are on foreign oil.

Kris Harshman, DVM

Dairy Veterinarian since 1985

Iditarod Starts

My favorite sporting event of the year and the last great race has begun in Anchorage, Alaska.
82 teams, 1000 dogs, what could be more exciting? It kicked off yesterday with the ceremonial start downtown and will continue for over a thousand miles over frozen snow, hard bare ground and some of the roughest conditions on earth. To the winner $69,000 and a truck. to everyone, even those of us who follow from afar, a huge dose of pioneer-style adventure and excitement.
For the best coverage I have found visit Cabela's Iditarod site.


Jeff King is always a favorite of mine, but it is easy to get behind almost anyone brave and determined enough to get behind a team of dogs and head out into the wilderness. Included among them is the husband of the late Susan Butcher and their daughter, Tekla, who will ride the trail later this season in her honor.

There is much excitement over this year's event, as there is the potential for another five time winner if any of several mushers including King and Martin Buser or Doug Swingley should win.

A boy and his cow(ch)

Alan and his show cow, Bayberry, who is used to kids using her as a portable seat.

Birdy Weather Watching

This time of year it is hard to get away from the topic of weather. We have had it all in the past four or five days, snow, sleet, freezing rain, fog and warm sunny days that feel like April (I vote for more of those). This morning it is foggy with the ground covered with a cast iron coating of yesterday's ice. I will be glad when the walk to and from the barn is done, as it is a real challenge to get over there and back.

Weird things have been going on with my garden pond. I ran a stock tank heater on it during the worst of the cold (it is, after all, a stock tank.) The other day there was a huge opening in the ice, right down to the bottom with no water showing. I figured that the ice had cracked it and let the water out and I was going to be missing a lot of fish and plants. Then yesterday's rain filled it right back up again. I simply don't understand what is going on out there, but I sure hope the fish and green frogs that are spending the winter there are all right. I filled and cleaned the twenty gallon fish tank in the living room anyhow, just in case I see some fish, and can bring them in.

The birds make being outside enjoyable just the same. Last night, as the almost full moon ascended behind the old horse pasture, a couple of dozen ducks swirled in front of it before pitching down toward the river. As I turned to walk away one last one raced across it, a speeding black silhouette on its cold white face. All I need was a camera and fast reflexes. Didn't have either though.

Chickadees are singing their spring call, DEE, dee, dee, and taking no prisoners at the feeders. Normally they wait their turn, what with being the tiniest of the visitors, but now they charge in to grab seeds as if they were overnight blue jays on a tear. They blow through the gold finches like a hot breeze and the bushes ring with them. I think the tame pair is still around as a couple of them fly right up to me, bitching and begging if the feeders are bare.

Cardinals are in ready-for-spring mode as well, whistling from all over. We have quite a flock this year and they make a lot of music. Even the starlings sound like water over stones as they chortle from the eaves of the heifer barn.

One of the colder days when updrafts were few, a resident red-tailed hawk landed about two feet above the ground in a bush just outside the living room windows. The hunting is probably good out there in the overgrown pasture and he stayed quite a time, while we admired his massive, feathery self. Then he soared off looking as big as an eagle against the brown and white of snow and dried golden rod.

Even though it is easy to find beauty in this ice-bound season I am eager for spring. Everything is just too cold and hard right now. Snow is six feet deep in all the farm roads, with ice a couple of inches thick on top of it. Nothing we own will move it or negotiate it, so you can't get anything done without a huge hassle. The men are piling manure, can't get out to the woodlot, can't safely navigate the driveways even with four wheel drive, working is just plain lousy on an all day, every day basis.
Please send me a warm day, mud and all, if you have one to spare; I am half past ready.....

BOOKS

BOOKS is the kind of blog that can make you proud.

BuckinJunction is too.


***Update: One of the authors of these two blogs pointed out rather sharply to me that they are NOT written by my sisters, as I actually have none of those. Rather these are the work of my two older female children. Thus the new labels....

(B) icicles

As long as these continue growing, you know it's going to keep on snowing

Two outrageous stories

Illegal steroids, some of them sold to high school coaches....just a few miles from here! The figures offered by authorities say that ten million dollars worth were sold in New York State and "at least $250,000 in illegal and controlled substances were sold directly into Albany County."

Officials claim that they are not going to name the "patients" who were buying these substances. I am thinking that if college and high school coaches were buying them for their players, parents should know who they were. I know I would want to.

And Bonny Prince Charlie is railing against Mickie D's foods, which would be just fine if he didn't run a huge organic food company, which he promotes relentlessly. Right now he looks to me like he is just trying to hobble the competition. I am not a big fan of fast food, but ulterior motives aren't my favorite either.

Why blue?

A recent comment asked why the ice in the previous post is blue. We have always figured it was because it picks up minerals as it flows through the ground on its way down the hill. This road cut is along the highway at the front of our property and the water that flows out of it comes from under a maple woods where a fellow we know taps our maple trees for maple syrup (and gives us a couple of gallons each year for the privilege.) Above that woods is a good alfalfa field on fertile slate ground, some of the best we have. The low quality of forages in NY in the past couple of ridiculously rainy years attests to just how many nutrients are leached by excess water. Why wouldn't that make the ice look different?

Just to be sure we were correct in our assumption, I did some research on blue ice. (Did you know that there is software with that name, and rappers as well. I sorted through a mountain of dreck before I came up with anything remotely useful.) I found lovely pictures of ice. Then I found this, which really doesn't seem to explain our ice, since there are sections that are just as thick adjacent to the blue ice that are plain white. And this, which shows black ice. Here are more links about ice color. I guess you can take your pick of theories.

I am still inclined to think ours comes from minerals, as the blue occurs right next to plenty of plain old white and some that is just sort of dirt-colored, probably from dirt. Anyhow....

Thanks, Laurie, for an interesting question.

Blue ice

We took a quick trip up to the western end of the county today to buy bird seed, rabbit pellets, twenty-seven bucks worth of bread (parents of teen-aged boys will understand this purchase) cow medicines and two pints of this.

Upon arriving home we stopped in front of our maple woods to take a picture of the blue ice on the road cut there. It forms about this time every year and I find it just plain beautiful. Most years we see some snow rollers at about the same time, but none are in evidence yet. Still we had two pair of bluebirds in the driveway the other day so spring must be getting closer. On the other side of the equation, we also saw a trio of horned larks up in Glen and they are surely birds of winter. I can't wait until the days warm up just a bit and maple sugaring begins. Then you know for sure there is a change in the season coming.

May I have one of these please?

Robotic milking
Machine


***My birthday is in just over four months..hint, hint

Swan song in the Mohawk River

And a trip to the New York Farm Show....we hurried through chores this morning so we could go to the Farm Show. Although it is a long drive and the weather wasn't the greatest, we had a really nice time there. Some of the best sights were along the way though, including a pair of swans opposite the Roadway Truck Stop right here at home and some wild, snowy, trees on Little Nose Mountain. The boss took the swan photo, as he had to cross the highway to get it and frankly I was chicken.

God bless pet heifers***

***(And a pox on men who leave gates open)…

I was peacefully comparing prices today, trying to figure out whether it would behoove me to change to Road Runner and digital phone, eschewing the frustrations of dial-up and AT&T, for just about eleven dollars extra a month. I had a really helpful salesperson on the phone and was about to make a deal, when three heifers caromed off the snow banks by the garden pond and headed down the hill.

I looked over toward the barn and, sure enough, the guys had finished up feeding, gone on to the next chore, and left the gate open. Muttering words that would melt the computer if I typed them, I quickly excused myself from wheeler-dealing and raced out of the house in my soft, worn, leather house loafers. (The low ones that an inch of snow will fill in an instant. Trust me, we have a bit more than an inch.)

The heifers were more than halfway down the driveway by the time I got to the front yard with a bucket and some chicken feed pellets, which is what was handy on the porch. They were also between me and the state highway and the Interstate and closer to the latter than to me...down to the last curve and actually almost out of sight of the house, maybe five car lengths from the highway.

What do you do in a situation like that? There was no way I could get ahead of them to stop them from going into the road. If I went farther down the drive, they would be likely to run away just for the fun of it, and get there sooner rather than later. A bad situation.

So, I did what any self-respecting cow spoiler would do and called them. The odds of them coming, having never been called in for feed or anything before were slim, but I was plumb out of choices. I hollered, “E….come on baby, co boss, co E,” and rattled my pail of chicken feed.

And (thank God for his eternal goodness), my pet heifer, E Train, threw up her head and galloped back up the hill to me, a goodly tenth of a mile. She didn't really want the chicken feed but she followed me to the fork in the driveway anyhow, head in the bucket, with her runaway buddies in tow. There I managed to get behind them, and with a few side trips to leap through five-foot snowdrifts and sniff cats, they went back to the cow barnyard where they belong. I am more than slightly grateful that they didn’t get down on the road and cause an accident, and more then ever glad of E.

Sustainable (NOT) development and a great dog rescue

Here is a story about what activist organizations are doing to deprive citizens of not-so-wealthy nations of economic development, and how they are going about it.

And anopther one about the dog who who was the silent heroine of the Mt. Hood Rescue this week.

***We are in the process of attempting to find a car that will negotiate the driveway from Hell in three feet of snow but is small enough to be comfortable for not-so-tall me to drive, as my minivan, although willing to go almost anywhere, is no longer able to do so in a straight line or to stop upon arrival. And then there is the pair of bull calves we have to sell, all the major repair work that has been waiting for Alan to have a week off from school so there are two men for the various jobs...and all that stuff...so I may not have much to say for a day or so. Sorry.

Opera browser

I know a couple of people in my blog roll use Opera so I tried it. So far it is very nice but it won’t let me type posts for this blog. Hmmmm. I am typing in Word and trying to paste.

Weird....it will let me paste in "edit HTML mode, but not in "Compose". I am sure there is some way to do this and I will try to find it.

Big problems on the computer front

Kindly old Mr. Gates sent some along updates yesterday, which Norton generously allowed to be installed, even though I had instructed via my settings that I be asked if I wanted to install such downloads. The seeming result of that is that Netscape, my browser of choice, no longer functions (could have been a coincidence, but since my profile vanished from the computer at the same time I don't think so. No viruses, no new spyware, so I am leaning strongly toward those pesky updates). Since I despise IE and don't find Firefox willing to open a number of my favorite news sites, I will be spending a long, long time, re-downloading Netscape on my slow-as-molasses dial up connection. If and when I get my shiny new, not working today, computer going I will visit all my favorites. Until then, just sign me....
addicted to the Internet and needing a fix

Scare tactics

We took our sweet time milking the cows this morning. It isn't milk tanker day, we got the grain truck in all right yesterday, most of the driveways are clear, and Alan is home from school, so we just coasted through chores. Al went up and dug the sheep a path so they can come down with the heifers after hiding in the tool shed during the storm. We puttered instead of pushing hard to get done and it was kind of nice. We even spent perhaps more time than usual sitting on thecurb behind the last few cows, talking about this and that, because for the first time in days we didn't HAVE to rush.

Thus when we came inside and the phone was beeping I hurried guiltily over to take the message, which I expected would be the girls telling me that they got back to college all right after their storm induced mini vacation. Instead I heard incoherent sobbing, and someone saying, "Oh, my God, oh my God," for about thirty seconds before it was cut off. To me it sounded just like Liz.
I was scared to death.
Total panic.
I called the guys in to listen and the boss thought it was the girls too.

While I called Becky's cell phone in worried haste, only to have it drop the call before taking me to voice mail, Alan kept calmly saying, "It's not the girls, mom, it's a prank call or somebody out of school and getting high."

I didn't believe him. I couldn't believe him. The roads are mostly cleared, but visibility is debatable because of the wind, and there is plenty of drifting. And those are my babies out there on the rush hour highway, no matter that they can and do both vote.

He was right though. When I finally managed to get Becky on the phone, they were fine. I wonder whether it was in fact a prank call or if it was a wrong number and some other mother is going to get some kind of frightening news from her daughters this morning.
I hope it is the former.