Todd Fritsch Cheyenne City Limits

Every now and then I write the Farm Side about barn music, (and the wars that sometimes accompany it)...that is, what we listen to while we partake of the staggering ennui produced by milking the same cows over and over again every twelve hours infinitely (or so it sometimes seems). We are a musical bunch, some talented (not me) some just appreciative (yeah) and there is always something playing; Jason Aldean, Kieth Anderson, Trent Wilmon or sometimes George Strait. And sometimes Queen, very loud, if no one is around but Alan and me. Northview has a wee advantage over my thousand-word weekly moment of newspaper fame though. Here you can actually listen to what we listen to.

Or at least you can if you click on Todd Fritsch over in the side bar...or right here.

(Mattie, bro, I am talking to you here....you will like this guy if you can get your dial-up to download it. I just wait it out because it is worth it.)

Somewhere on the site (it moves around) you will find a little juke box. Once you find it, might I suggest Faith Ain't Faith, Bob Wills Song, The Cowboy Song...(or really anything else on there)? This guy is somewhere between Chris LeDoux and Garth Brooks and sings cowboy songs in a sweet, warm voice. He is a real Texas rancher so he knows what he is talking about too. I can listen to him all day (and in fact I have been listening to Faith Ain't Faith for the past twenty minutes.)

"Cheyenne city limits, ridin' a busted thumb, saddle over my shoulder, headin' back where I come from.
Rank broncs they left me, broke and all tore up....
An old man stopped to give me a lift in his beat up pick up truck
I crawled in and we drove off through that dark Wyoming night
It was downright eerie how that old man read my mind.
He said, son you've stopped believin' you can ride in the rodeo
Remember what your grandpa said, when you were twelve years old..

Faith ain't faith until it's all that you have left. Ridin' high is easy, but the lows are life's true test. Do your best to keep believin', the good Lord'll do the rest.
Faith ain't faith, son, until it's all that you've got left."

Nor' Easter...maybe

Since midweek the weather pundit folks have been predicting a severe winter storm for local environs. Thus the fellows scurried around all week getting in some extra firewood for us, and hay and straw for the cows . I picked up portable objects from the lawn and everyone battened down the hatches, or at least tied the canvas on the woodpile, during yesterday's prelude to the storm. (See ominous sunrise above.)

This morning we got up to fast falling snow, really coming down like Christmas. (The ground is already covered completely and I have only been up an hour.) For the first time ever the dogs were jumping on the back door minutes after I let them outside. Normally I have to call them for a minute, even though they can expect a nice crunchy, tasty, not-yet-recalled, dog biscuit when they come inside. I am hoping this exceptional behavior is not an omen.

Anyhow, the weather folks have now downgraded the whiny weather portents from winter storm warning to winter weather advisory....and flood watch.

If my calendar is correct today is the Ides of April. Where is spring? I think Clem hogging our share! When are we gonna get some nice weather so the guys can get on the ground and I can play in my gardens? Alan got half the fence built so we can get heifers out to pasture, but it will be hard for them to eat snow cones and icicles, so in they stay. Cabin fever is a normal January/February ailment for the northward dweller, but April? There is something wrong with this picture!

(Which BTW is the side lawn..note the cattail bog)

***Check this weather out!

Matthew Strikes again

I am sure everyone has seen the thinking blog thing....Matthew D sent it to me...five thinking blogs, hmmm......

I am thinking that the blogs that most keep me thinking are.

1) Pure Florida...not just thinking, smiling, laughing, knee slapping, looking things up to learn more, sometimes crying, always satisfied by a good read

2) Thoughts from the Middle of Nowhere...everybody loves Sarpy Sam

3) Upstream...local, pertinent, I may not always agree, but I'm always interested.

4)BOOKS BuckinJunction....written by my kids. I think I always will at least think about reading them and think I like them.

5) Blogriculture...this is a great blog, written by folks who work for the Capital Press farm newspaper. Sometimes they are funny, often they are thought-provoking, always worth reading.

I am only allowed five by the rules I guess, but I read everybody over there in the blog roll as often as I can. Cathy, Joni, Rosemoon, HT, Carina, Laurie, Jeff, Swen, and Matthew, who sent me this are frequent reads. So are Cubby and Karen and Mrs. Mecomber. And Wil. And Jan. And Caroline. And everybody else on the list. I read some because their lives are fascinating, some for their politics, others because they feel like family, and some because they are talented photographers, or writers, or funny, or just nice enough to link to me way back when nobody else did. I like the folks I have "met" blogging here at Northview and I thank them for their friendliness.

Interesting quote

From a story in USA Today.

"The desire for a raw natural diet is leading to a new pattern of foodborne illness," said Douglas Powell, a professor of food safety at Kansas State University in Manhattan."

Coyote

Laurainnj, who writes the fascinating blog, Somewhere in NJ, recently posted the story of the coyote down there that tried to carry a toddler off, right out of the family back yard. Many people had very interesting comments on her post and I got to thinking about our experiences with the little brush wolves here at Northview.

About thirty years ago, though I had lived most of my life hiking the mountains and working outdoors, I had never seen or heard one. They just weren't out there. Then on a trip to the Boonville area (not so very far from Canada) we heard a pack howling as we slept in our camper one night. It was a wonderfully eerie, hair-standing-up-on-the-back-of-your-neck experience.

Soon we were hearing them here, some distance farther south and east. They didn't bother much of anything and were an interesting reminder of wilder places. We still didn't see them, but we knew they were out there.

Then at age 26 I took up milking cows. Soon I married my farmer and coyotes took on a whole 'nother aspect. First they contented themselves with taking our cats. They just LOVE cats! From a high of around forty clustered around the free milk dish (thanks to all the folks who do drive-by drop-offs) we now have seven. Any that don't stay in the buildings are lunch. Next they began to prey on weakened animals like twin calves born outdoors at night. The mother cow can protect one quite successfully, but two are hard to cover. Then they killed a cow that fell down an embankment and couldn't stand. We couldn't get her on her feet, but she looked like she was going to recover, so we were carrying food and water to her with the truck. One morning her hide was almost entirely ripped off, her throat was torn out and, of course, she was dead. So to those who wonder if they can take deer, the answer is a resounding yes, even though they are quite content with rats and rabbits when they can get them.


Later a pair of them drove the visiting nurse off the back porch when she stopped to care for my late mother-in-law who was receiving hospice care. The nursing service called us in high dudgeon to come get our dogs off the porch so the nurse could get in. No dogs though, just a pair of coyotes that were bolder than they needed to be.

I suspect the one that attacked the child was rabid, like the fisher that attacked a woman in her garage near here, or didn't realize that the child was a person. I have no fear of them bothering me personally, even though I have encountered them many times when walking in the fields. They are bolder than foxes, which bolt willy nilly, but not aggressive-seeming. They offer us dirt farmers a boon in that they kill woodchucks, which otherwise build great mounds of dirt around the holes they dig in hayfields. There is something about a hidden pile of dirt and stones that is rough on farm machinery! We don't miss the chucks as they just adapted to the predators and moved down to the house, where they dig holes under all the buildings.


However, to all the folks who claim that we are encroaching on coyote habitat and thus should be happy to have problems with them, sorry, this time we were here first. Unquestionably people drove wolves out of the northeast and opened a niche for the little wild dogs, but coyotes didn't show up here in upstate New York until LONG after I was born. The cities they are moving into were there many decades before they arrived to sort through the garbage and grab small dogs. I am sure they are here to stay though, so we get calves in off the hill as fast as we can, and are thankful for cows like Zinnia, who would protect a baby from a whole pack of real wolves if she had to.

The things you see

Seen on the street in Fultonville

Seen creeping up out in the main garden

Seen from the big windows just before the sun went down

....on a fine (finally) spring day.

In case you ever wonder...

....why I am this way. My parents, (abetted by my grandparents), used to sing this song to me. It was performed at different times by Bing Crosby and Dorothy Shay, who released it in 1947. I was born the same year as Vladimir Putin and am three days younger than Dan Akroyd, so I don't know why they chose me for this particular golden oldie. I was a nice kid, really I was. There were other female grandchildren in the family, but I was the only one to receive the signal honor of my own song. It is really not fair.

Here is the chorus:

Daughter, baby daughter,
Poisoned all the neighbors chickens.
Daughter hadn't oughter
Least 'till she could run like the dickens.
They hit her with a shovel!

They pronounced it "Dotter".
They still call me that.

I think I like this guy

*****

For those of you, who, like me, don't watch 60 Minutes, here is the transcript of a show on Rick Berman, AKA "Dr. Evil", a lobbyist for the other side of the food-as-societal-scourge and deadly -poison-that-will-kill-you-if-you-eat story. Even if you don't agree with him he is pretty entertaining. As someone who makes a living (sort of) selling a food product, his ideas are a welcome bit of sanity in a world that seems to have lost all common sense to me.

"I have no problem with education. But, education turns into regulation, you know?" Berman says. "As the government gets deeper and deeper into people's lives, they start to dictate more and more. If a bartender can cut you off for visibly being intoxicated, why won't we get to the point where a restaurant operator is not allowed to let you order dessert? I mean, you could get there."

Nobody wants to see a drunk driver coming at them down the middle of the highway, but I don't think it is time to regulate pecan pie intake just yet.

****Nice sunrise today again...amazing lot of black birds hanging around, grackles, red winged black birds, cow birds and starlings.

The only thing making this possible

This is what is making life semi, sorta, halfway, bearable during this unseasonable spate of cold, nasty weather. I posted it over at the View last week, but I just wanna look at it some more and pretend I am not freezing......

More pet food recall

Carina posted this story today and I think it is really worth reading.

Happy Easter

Why I can't seem to find the energy to write about anything...

The normal temperature here for this time of year is fifty......today it is a balmy 28.

Sunrise

Almost but no cigar...thank God!

First there was a bomb threat at the school today...kids had to stand out in twenty degree weather for quite some time, then hunker down in the concrete-walled gym while the bomb-sniffing dogs were brought in to go through the buildings....
no bomb.

Then Old Roy dog biscuits were recalled....and on the fridge are the remains of a great big bag, the rest of which was devoured with great relish by a certain trio of border collies that I know. The Sunshine Mills website listed lots of closely related sizes and flavors of biscuits that contain melamine...
the ones on the fridge weren't on the list...
or at least not yet.

I am most grateful that both of these close calls were just that, on behalf of my favorite boy and the best dogs in the world.....

Old stone mill

The stream below the mill

Had to go to Oneonta again and finally got a couple shots of this old mill. It was kind of hairy parking along I-88 with the semi's roaring by practically scooping the car up in their slip streams. Kind of a neat old place though.

Don't pay more for the same stuff

"In a recent study, lab analysis of 95 different brands of retail milk purchased in 48 states confirmed all milk naturally contains the same hormones. There was no difference in hormone content of retail milk based on label claims regarding the use of POSILAC."

Center of the dance

We hadn't heard the woodcock since I posted about him the other night so I figured that he had moved on. However, I heard a faint twitter when I was walking over from the barn tonight, once again as the last pink faded in the west. Soon a loud peent came from over by the horse pond. I wanted to walk up there, but I was pretty sure crashing through the brush with a flashlight would spook him, so I just stood in the driveway behind the car. The Interstate was loud, but I could hear the peent quire clearly Figured it would be hard to hear the sky dance, but danged if he didn't do a big circle right over my head. I have never heard one make such a huge circle, all the way from the pond to the heifer barn, which is on the other side of the house. It was great....worth waiting for my dinner of homemade soup to stand and listen.

On Fiery Hill

From inside the house foundation

"White bronze" marker

And old marble stone

We made a trip to the abandoned farm where the boss's mom grew up. Nothing left but the foundation, a lot of brush, a few stones and some realtor's signs. Wish we were rich enough to gather up all these old farms and keep them safe.....

The cemetery is up the road a bit, and may have nothing to do with the farm, but it is very lovely. I especially like the zinc monument... I have been wanting to get up there since we finally got a digital camera to take pictures of it before something happens to it. (Although as it happens someone has done quite a bit of work cleaning up around the stones etc.)

**Photos by Alan

Geese

Muskrat houses

Over on Route Twenty near Sharon Springs. They dwarf the tiny pond they occupy. Must be quite a sight when as many rats as it took to build 'em start swimming around and cutting cattails. The pond must churn like somebody was stirring it with a souped up Evinrude!

Timberdoodle

Coming over from the barn last night, talking a bit to Alan, pleasantly tired, happy to be finished with chores... just past daylight...barely needed the flashlight. Suddenly something hurtled past my head on whistling wings, a speeding susurrus, silhouetted momentarily against the last orange glow in the west. Mourning dove, I thought, wow, she is out late.

Then, from the flat, grassy knoll up by the horse pasture pond it came....for the first time in at least fifteen years I heard a very special sound. The buzzy, rasping, nasal peent! of a male woodcock courting a mate. Ah, all became clear... the feathery bullet was his lady friend heading elsewhere in a heck of a hurry.

We have a dancer! Big news! I was thrilled. Indeed cold shivers ran up and down my arms. Alan made fun of me, saying that they (woodcocks, that is) are all over the back of the farm; all I have to do is walk out there to see one. However, he has never heard the dance and doesn't understand that watching one bomb through the bushes like a flying rocket or hearing one dance are not the same thing. Not the same at all.

It was too cold last night, I was too tired, it was too dark. But (if he stays) Alan and I will tiptoe up to the pond one night soon to watch and listen to the magical sky dance. If we are lucky, Mr. Timberdoodle will spiral skyward, then hurtle to earth piping the ethereal mating whistle that makes these fat, pointy-nosed little birds a ghostly springtime wonder. It is such a special thing that you almost feel guilty watching...like you were in some one else's church or something. Once he stands there in the darkness, hearing that other-worldly song, I think my boy will know what I mean about timberdoodles though.

I had never seen the sky dance and didn't know of it at all until I read A Sand County Almanac in college, having grabbed it off the college bookstore shelf because it had a pretty cover. (Now there was a life changing moment....all these years later and I still think of the things I read there, especially how chickadees come to folks who cut firewood...looking for insects. (They do btw.) You just never know when an important book will sort of jump off the shelf at you and change your way of looking at the world.)

Later someone important to me at that time in my life found a dancing ground across the road from my camp in Caroga Lake. We sat on the tail gate of my pick up truck in the driveway, every single clear night, swatting mosquitoes and watching the dance as the sun went down. I didn't have a TV then and didn't miss it either.
When I moved down here to the valley, there was another dancer who regularly performed on the heifer pasture flats behind the house. Then a few years ago he left for some reason and I never heard another until last night.

Now we have a possible avian thespian setting up stage out by the pond, which is already one of my favorite places on the farm.
I hope he stays.