Golden morning

I just liked the way these scraggly old trees framed the rising sun this morning.

Whoo hoo

Check this out! A very special person gave Becky a call tonight to let her know that Emerson Drive is expected to perform at Fonda Fair, right across the river from us. After what she went through last year upon finishing high school, including having the concert to which we bought her tickets for graduation canceled, this is pretty special. I know what we will be doing this August 31st, the good Lord willin' and the crick don't rise.

We are wondering if the guys actually read the letter Liz wrote them last year detailing Beck's big disappointment and asking them to think about either coming back to Northern Lights or playing the fair. We will probably never know, as they never answered the letter, but excitement reigns tonight anyhow.

Growing lettuce indoors (part two)

This has worked out amazingly well. We have enjoyed lots of lettuce for sandwiches and small salads and it just keeps coming back no matter how much we pick. The boss makes amazing croûtons (really good in soup too, so I made some of that Saturday, with venison, homegrown ground beef and a little Italian sausage from our 2006 piggies) so with a little super sharp hunter's cheddar and some ranch dressing we are rich indeed.

Hmmm

Someone kindly nominated Northview for a blog of the day award and I just wanted to say thanks...so thanks.

Today

Worth reading

Turkish Dogs has a really well thought out post up just now, which details the agenda of the Humane Society of the United States and PeTA in a truly enlightening manner. You know, of course, that as far as those organizations are concerned we have no right to interact with animals unless they are starring in animated Disney drivel and we are paying to look them on the TV screen.
Janice has included some truly damning quotes inher post. You will be grinding your teeth, I'll tell you.

Maybe tomorrow

567 Purebred cattle killed by bookkeeping

Just in case you think National Animal Identification is harmless read this story about a farmer in Great Britain whose records are alleged to be not quite up to snuff...so they killed all his cows on him.

Imagine half a million pounds worth of purebred dairy cattle butchered at a "secret location". Imagine not even paying the farmer for his loss. As in, hey buddy, you are out of business, too bad for you....all because of violations which have not been proved, and with no crime being charged. To me it is a signal to every livestock owner in the US, whether you own two back yard chickens or 10, 000 milk cows, to maintain your vigilance against NAIS. Don't let them pretend that it is voluntary and don't believe that it isn't going to hurt you.

Seventeen

Happy Birthday Alan!

Doctor Green

That is what a vet we used to have called the first green grass of spring. Sarpy Sam's photo of his beef cows casting out across his Montana pastures in search of a few new blades got me thinking about that. Here in the frozen (see photo below) Northeast, dairy cows spend most of the winter indoors. If they are outside too long when it is this cold their teats freeze. (A frostbitten udder is an ugly thing indeed.)


However, after several months of having every bite they eat carried to them (and all of it being stored feed), they need a chance to forage around and nibble on whatever tempts them. Green grass can make them sick if they get an excess in the spring, but they just love to have some.


We have to work hard sometimes to keep them eating through the challenging weeks after they have a calf. This period when their whole metabolism is changing from resting through their "dry period" vacation to working hard making milk is called transition. Sometimes the process goes awry and they stop eating. Cows that don't eat die. Unlike humans who can go weeks without food, a cow had better be eating or chewing her cud almost all the time or you need to start worrying. Sometimes when one is just a little backward, something tasty will make her forget her woes and begin to eat again without being doctored on. There is nothing more tempting to a winter-sour cow than a handful of green grass. Even when it is too muddy to let them out, as soon as the first green spears show up west of the machinery shed, the kids and I go pick some and hand feed it to our pets. Or any cow that is a little off feed....or anybody with a long tongue and a soulful expression. You should see them bang their stanchions up and down when they catch the scent of someone with a pail of grass. It is cupboard love in its finest form. Most of us cringe when we see the doctor coming, but for cows when it is Doctor Green they come a runnin'.

Movin' On

*Grackle trying to use the tube feeder*

I came back over to the house today, half-way through milking, to get another cup of the beverage described below. Usually I take that all important second cup with me when I go out to milk, having consumed the first here at the computer, while waiting for the rest of the household to rise and shine (or rise and glower, as the case may be.) However, last night we got a mess of fresh snow on top of partly frozen tractor ruts and mud and walking was tricky.

Anyhow, while I waited the 2.25 minutes that I nuke the water for my all-important Tasters Choice, I looked out the window over the kitchen sink at the heifer pasture hill. You never know what you might see out there, from turkeys, deer and squirrels to those big black half dog/half coyote things that got the neighbor's pony. Today there were blackbirds flying past, a little above treetop level, just about over the north side fence. The flock undulated, wave-like, as they went, maybe seventy or eighty birds in sight at any one time.

They flew...and flew..and flew...the whole time the water heated, all the time it took me to put in the coffee, sugar, and milk. All the time it took me to tug on two pairs of gloves, slip outside and get all the way to the cow barnyard without spilling any. It had to be at least five minutes worth of grackle, red-winged black bird and probably some brown-headed cow birds. At the same time starlings shuttled back and forth, blue jays flashed by and a few geese sounded their distant hound dog cries. I'll bet there were a thousand stretched birds across the roughly half a mile that makes up our road frontage.

There may be snow on the ground and ice on the river, but the ones who arrive first gets the prettiest mates and the fanciest nesting sites. The birds aren't waiting for the weather; they are migrating and they are doing it NOW.

The things you learn

***1453: Coffee is introduced to Constantinople by Ottoman Turks. The world's first coffee shop, Kiva Han, open there in 1475. Turkish law makes it legal for a woman to divorce her husband if he fails to provide her with her daily quota of coffee.***

I have been gently (and intermittently) enjoying the Outlander series of books for some months now. I read perhaps a chapter or two each day, with a marathon every Sunday afternoon. (On a normal non-Outlander Sunday, I polish off at least two books, but these are really, really BIG). They are vastly entertaining and thought-provoking too and I like 'em.

A lot. I am most grateful to find an author I enjoy who has written a plenitude of material because I am always running out of book before I run out of interest. These books are teaching me a great deal, as one part or another sends me searching the Internet to find more details on dozens of topics. (I also dream of Jamie and Claire as if they were friends or family members...not sure what that is all about, but I don't mind it.)

Reading about the American colonists in such detail fired up my curiosity about just how coffee found its way around the world. (After all, since it is such good stuff; we should surely comprehend its origins). This timeline tells the tale pretty well.

***The above quote should serve as a warning to husbands even if they don't come from Turkey. Don't mess with the lady and her coffee! (Or get between her and a good book!)

Frosty morning

*Taken 3/2

Chicken dinner with a side of cow stomachs

*There be mountains*
*Even if they are kind of small*

*A pretty red train that was parked along the road*

*Beaver house on Route 7 near Oneonta*
*Photos by Alan*

When I hear the bugling of north bound geese I can just lean over here at my computer, look up and out the window, and watch them winging over the barns and house headed for the Arctic tundra. Any other time of year they pretty much seem like pests, gobbling crops and hanging around parks eating and excreting, but in the spring their calls are stirring. Electrifying even. They make you want to get up, get moving, and go out doors and do something.

Therefore yesterday Alan, Becky and I did a bit of gallivanting. We headed off to Oneonta after chores in search of the elusive Brook's Barbecue chicken dinner. As it happened that is just what was being served at a farm information meeting presented by the company from which we purchase our cow grain, Pennfield Animal Feeds. Since this week's Farm Side is going to be about said meeting I won't spoil it for local folks by telling you all about it. However, it was a pretty trip as you can see from Alan's photographs. We sang all the way down and all the way back. With Alan's steady (not to mention on key) bass to help us along, even Becky and I could get by. We actually discussed the possibility of just driving right on by and singing some more, but the lure of that wily chicken was just too strong. We gave in.

At the dinner we learned important facts about raising calves, including all sorts of stuff about esophageal grooves, abomasums, reticulums, rumens and rabies. I also won door prize of a nice hat and Alan won a tote full of goodies and tools. He traded me the tote for my hat, shared the cookies and crackers with everyone, and snagged the ruler and work gloves right quickly (before some a certain nameless individual could get HIS hands on them).

It was a valuable meeting especially in that the program information could be used by small farmers like us, even though it applied to just about any size farm. All too often we may learn something new at a farm meeting, but it is something almost impossible, or at least totally impractical, to implement on a fifty-cow dairy. I was grateful to bring home information on raising babies that I could put into practice this very morning, rather than talking about it while milking, then letting it fade from my memory because it was a thousand miles out of reach for little old Northview.

I have to thank the geese for the inspiration and Pennfield for prime poultry and super schooling. I had a real nice time!

Ironic indeed

I'm sorry, but this just makes me shake my head in wonder...

"A North Pole expedition meant to bring attention to global warming was called off after one of the explorers got frostbite."


Am I missing something here?

"Then there was the cold - quite a bit colder, Atwood said, then Bancroft and Arnesen had expected. One night they measured the temperature inside their tent at 58 degrees below zero, and outside temperatures were exceeding 100 below zero at times, Atwood said."

Mackey wins

Come Back Kennels came back in a big way as Lance Mackey won the 2007 Iditarod and became the first musher ever to win back to back Yukon Quest and Iditarod sled dog races.

Jeff King, my own favorite musher, had class enough to cheer Mackey on when it became clear that he himself was out of the running. Jeff is running in fifth place right now. Zack Steer, who will likely come in third is in Safety.


***I see by reading his profile that I should be including Paul Gebhardt, this year's second place musher, in my list of favorites....he grew up on a Minnesota dairy farm, which makes him A-okay in my book!

What a dog race..Iditarod 2007

Day 10. As the leaders pass towns and check points with names like Shaktoolik and Unalakleet, this years race has turned into a dash for Nome with several top racers within a few hours of one another. Right now Lance Mackey has a decent lead, but Paul Gebhart is making him work for it. Martin Buser, Jeff King, and Zack Steer round out the top five. Other high caliber mushers are also within striking distance.

Mackey has an interesting thing going with the fact that he is running the race for the sixth time wearing bib number 13. His father and brother both won it under those circumstances and it looks like those numbers might be the charm for him too.

Propane explosion and train derailment

Big news in Upstate New York. I haven't seen a train all day so I guess the tracks are still closed. They were this morning anyhow. It is so quiet with no rumble grumble across the river every few minutes.

Oops

If I have missed replying to your comments, or answering emails from a couple of you who are my favorite folks, it is because I somehow changed the filters on my main mail box. Kind of an "oh, duh", moment. I think I have it fixed now, but if you are fuming and wondering why I am so rude, well, now you know. Nothing to do with rude, but everything to do with clutzy. Or idiotic. Or careless. Or a doofus. You get the idea.

Sorry.... if you have emailed me in the past few days and didn't get an answer I humbly apologize, but you are going to have to resend because they are just gone...

More possibilities

You might be a dairyman if....

(These are a little more graphic than the last set).
Still an awful lot of them apply to me.

Number one: is a big waste of time. You do it AFTER work
Number two: Yep, haven't we all? Nails too. Fence pliers, nitrile gloves....I could go on and on
Three: And Sunday
Four: No accident about it
Five: And dinner
Seven: And worse things
Eight: It's "have drunk". (Where do these kids go to school anyhow?)
Nine: Some are tougher than others. What farmer hasn't seen a perfectly healthy cow with "I am dead, aren't I?" syndrome? Or maybe it is "I have fallen and I can't get up."
Ten: Shirts too
Eleven: Right up there with baling twine
Twelve: They are aren't they?
Thirteen: No, it is "close enough for government work" around here.
Fourteen: Fluffy reindeer bathrobe actually. It is warmer than jammies and covers a multitude of sins
Fifteen:Nope
Sixteen: Yup, and more than once
Seventeen:Yes that too
Eighteen: Uh, huh,
Nineteen and twenty: some cows are smart as rocks and have a death wish too. From getting loose and falling upside down with their head pinned under them in the manger to getting wedged upside down in the watering trough I have seen more than I want to.
Twenty-one: Actually I love the stuff
Twenty-two: Both, not at the same time
Twenty-three: Actually not
Twenty-four and twenty-five: When the boss had emergency surgery and I was all alone I could lie down on a bale of hay and sleep as long as no one bothered me
Twenty-six: All my life in fact
Twenty-seven: Well, you get the idea. I have never tried to back up a spreader, because that is not one of my jobs, but I can back up a forage chopper and hook up wagons (it took me a very, very long time to learn though). Fairs used to be a lot more fun than they are now. Too old and tired I guess. And I have no problem whatsoever figuring out what to do with a day off. It's finding them that is a problem.