I wonder

It is brutally hot here now. When it hits the nineties in upstate New York, extreme humidity always comes along for the ride. The discomfort level escalates like tension in the Middle East.

The guys are putting in baled hay right now and the mow is a sauna. I am glad my days of storing hay went bye bye when my knees did. They come in dripping for a change of shirt and a nice cold drink, then back for another load they go. The cows go nuts when they smell the sweet tang of new hay, and crowd the fence hoping for a hand out. At least the men are nearly done putting up the baled hay, although there is plenty of chopping and some late corn planting yet to go.

As the girls and I milk the cows in our own private steam bath, swatting flies and dodging sloppy tails, I wonder...

Does Al Gore have his air conditioner turned on right now? Or is he reducing his carbon footprint and sweltering like the rest of us? Just asking is all.

You are very special to me

One of the most kind and caring, intensely moral, upright and decent people I have ever known.

Hard working

Talented

Much loved

Did I forget handsome?

Happy Birthday "little" brother!

What is it about baby birds?

Maybe it is from years of raising little chicks on the porch and being attuned to distress cheeps, so if their light bulb burned out or something I could rescue them from chilly death. Whatever causes it, I cannot let the imperative cries of baby birds float over my head among the background noise like I do the trains and the cars on the Interstate. I have to at least go look.

Thus at this time of year I spend half my time peeking out the window, or peering nearsightedly up or down or somewhere else to see who is doing all the cheeping and peeping. The wrens are still at home in the front porch pillar, but I am kind of used to them. Still I check on them every now and then and enjoy the parents' all day chorus. Both male and female downy woodpecker come in to the suet feeder dozens of times a day, trying to teach those pesky chicks to pick their own suet. The male has no patience at all and is a very noisy fellow when feeding. He reminds me of a dad cheering his sons at a Tee-ball game. The mother is just tired.

Then there are the chipping sparrows. I nearly stepped on a tiny, half-fledged baby the other day, right under the clothesline. It fluttered away peeping that all too familiar distress call, but very musically. Now its parents spend the whole day racing back and forth along the clothesline chirping at their hidden children. They even perch on it among the clothes pins and fit right in, being much of a size and color to match, although the clothespins don't have brilliant russet head caps. I have chased them (birds, not clothespins) around with the camera several times, but to no avail. They are just too quick for me. (I can however, catch up with the clothespins and do quite often. This is nice weather for drying things outdoors.)

A young blue jay of teen aged persuasion has been seen going in and out of the eaves of the heifer barn. They are not normally building birds and he is rather striking darting in and out of the dark holes. I think he is taking Sassenach and starling eggs to eat, and more power to him.
The killdeers from DG's yard have flown the coop. They sail around and around the yard like a precision air drill, screaming their signature call. I defy anyone to NOT look up when they pass on sickled wings.

There are many others.... baby birds are everywhere and so are hungry predators trying to eat them. The field below the sitting porch is a constant swirling drama as jays and crows and grackles battle Eastern kingbirds and sundry smaller, quieter fliers, for the lives of their offspring. I take a book with me when ever I go out there to sit, but I never get any reading done because I end up watching them.

Hmmmmm.....

What IS this?

Mom's (bored) board




Alan is bored in a more elaborate fashion
(with a little help from Becky)

****These are for Steve

****We are supposed to use these barn blackboards for cow related info...thus you can see above the watermelon some of the intimate details of number 49 (AKA Veronica) 's affairs and above the assorted tractors and fishing tackle you can read about Lemmie's love life and see when we received grain deliveries....should you for some reason be interested in such esoterica. However you can also see how we spend our time while we wait for the first set of cows to finish being milked. Sometimes these drawings become amazingly elaborate and last for months and even evolve. Such as the Halloween pumpkin from last year that was drawn on the bigger board where the tractors are now. Over the winter it froze, was covered with snow (LOTS of snow at some points), thawed, rotted into mush, and a little pumpkin seedling grew up the side of the board and bloomed. And then one day it was erased to make room for something else....you see, when I say bored, I mean BORED.

Come on over and bring the kids

Here are some new kids on the block who came to visit yesterday while I was planting petunias. I was in the dabbling mallard pose under the honey locust, grubbing out fox tail grass and grubbing in fluffy-ruffled double pink petunias, when I heard urgent chink-chinking calls right above my head. A much harassed and nearly de-feathered mother downy woodpecker was feeding a pair of chicklings, (which were nearly as fluffy as the flowers,) suet and then sneaking away trying to get them to fend for themselves. She is already pretty tame and they don't know any better, so even with 3X zoom, I could get some fairly close shots. The big fluffy birds are the kids; the small scrawny one is the mama.

Mama is the little beleaguered bird on the bottom
Baby is the big one

Should I fly away from the fool shoving that little camera at me?
She looks sort of dangerous...

Na, this stuff is pretty good....
MAAAAAA...come over here and chip some more of this out for me, will ya?

Finally!

Here is the House Wren video Mom promised you guys. Hope it will work for everyone!

Calf kills Wolf

Sarpy Sam alertly caught this amazing headline...if it hasn't been changed by the time you get there. I am wondering if the wolf choked on a bone, or if the calf packed more wallop than your average Angus or something, but I am thinking it is quite an event anyhow.

Fishing trip Mill Point

All work and no play?
Nah.....not on Sunday





What the Schoharie can do when it wants to




River of rocks

***Mrs. Mecomber mentioned in the comments that this looks like a river that can rage if it takes the mood.
Here are a couple of links to what it has done in the past. The bridge in the middle photo replaces one of two that went down one terrible day in 1987. (That tree is a lot bigger that it looks in the photo btw!) The other bridge was on the New York State Thruway and killed 10 people when it fell. We were in our car at the bottom of the house driveway with Liz, just a baby, in the car with us the morning it went down. We actually heard it, even though we are about five miles away from it. The boss knew instantly what he heard. Both he and my dad always distrusted the big Thruway bridge, as its construction was known by local folks to be less that the best. It seems to be forgotten now, but the local sheriff at the time tried to close the Thruway that day before the bridge fell because he was afraid that it would, but was not permitted to do so..... with tragic results. A couple of days later we parked the car on the road above this fishing spot and saw whole cottonwood trees, 60 or 70 feet tall, bouncing down the river and banging on the banks. We even saw a mobile home bounding by. The force of the current shook the road like an earthquake. Here is a picture I took last summer that gives something of an idea how deep this river gets. This is a few yards upstream from this year's photos. Flooding goes much higher than the high bank you can see behind the painted rock.
We are very careful about choosing our fishing times here.

Interesting

From TFS Magnum, about tax revenue after tax cuts.

Northernfarmboy

(Liz had been trying for a couple of days to get the wren video up, but dial-up has its problems in that department as well.)

While we await its arrival, I found another interesting species that sometimes inhabits upstate New York in summer. I was lucky enough to get a few photographs of one that was displaying on our lawn. (They are quite tame and friendly to humans.) This is a representative specimen of the Northernfarmboy in its usual summer plumage. (Note the typical hat with folded bill, {Go 'Cuse} the incipient farmer's tan and the hay muscles just coming into seasonal bloom).

You may find Northernfarmboys in their natural habitat, (although the species is declining through habitat loss to burgeoning development), sometimes polishing the seat of the old Case 930 with the seat of their worn out jeans, while they ted a field of hay or chisel up some corn ground. Other times they are found tooling around in the bright blue pick up truck seeking the elusive driver's license or hunched over under the hood of the White 2-105 repairing whatever breakdown it has come up with in a long series of same.

Included are a couple of pictures of typical Northernfarmboy habitat, including a passing thunderstorm and the horse pasture on a misty morning, the first of which will send your average farmboy running for cover. (Especially this particular specimen, which was nearly struck, to the hair standing up on the head stage of too darned close, by lightning and doesn't like it much any more.)




Northernfarmboys come in a wide range of ages and color patterns, but are easily distinguished from Northerncityboys by a certain loose-limbed walk, as if always going somewhere and knowing exactly where that somewhere is, strong, broad shoulders and that unmistakable farmer's tan in summer. (Girls, if by chance you happen to catch one for your own, be prepared for him to work ridiculous hours doing arcane things that smell bad and produce staggering amounts of dirt.)

They are, despite that, quite nice to have around and I wish a very happy Father's Day to my own sun-browned Northernfarmboy, and to my Dad, who is a spectacular specimen of the NorthernBookDealer, with a dash of master carver, rock hound, gardener and a host of other talents thrown in for good measure.

Have a great day, guys!

Timothy and Troglodytes aedon

Timothy is in bloom now.

Liz may have mentioned that she bought a digital camera to take rodeo photos and video for her blog, BuckinJunction. This has an incidental benefit for me, in that she can also take video of the house wren family that we discovered was nesting in the pillars on the front porch. She is going to put one up here for me later today. You can see them feeding their babies and singing at our front door. It is so delightful to sit here with the doors open to the front hall way and hear them sing and the babies twittering when they bring breakfast. It gives new meaning to the concept of sweet talk.

I apologize to all, who like us, have glacial dial-up connections (she lets her videos upload while we milk, which takes about three hours.) I know you probably won't have time to load the video when she gets it done, but I just couldn't resist sharing it.

Meanwhile, here is a rather blurry photo, taken with my much smaller, and not quite so zoomy, camera.

We stopped to pick some Vitamin C today

We had to run to Fort Plain today to get some barn calcite, which we sprinkle on the floor so the cows don't slip when they come into the barn.

I did NOT want to go.
The garden beckons.
Vigorously.

However on the way home we stopped at Cashin's and Liz and I picked two quarts apiece in about five minutes. Literally.

I think it is going to be a good year for strawberries.

Morning Glory

Well, really, it's a geranium, but you get the idea I think. There is nothing painful about early mornings this time of year.

New in the blog roll

This blog showed up in the Center for Consumer Freedom daily newsletter today and I just had to give 'em a link. With everything from why PeTA and Jesus probably wouldn't have been pals, to Lincoln's poem to his pet dog, it is plumb entertaining. I want to be able to read it easily myself.

***If you are bothered by dead woodchucks, don't go there, but if you like reading about working dogs, don't miss it.

Just fine

Yesterday Alan got to go to a big tractor pull....way out near Buffalo, the Dansville ESP Tractor Pull. The rest of us stayed home.

Which was fine.

Until evening milking time.

First the boss went out to bale up a load of hay and unload a couple of loads into the mow....

Which was fine

Until every single bale began to hang up in the chain on the hay elevator. When the girls and I went over to milk he was on his sixth trip up the ladder into the mow and about as happy as a hornet on a hot plate. (Not quite so fine.)

Eventually he got things working and got the hay put away while the girls and I got the cows grained (Liz), the milker set up, and the herd brought down from pasture and put in the barn.

Which was fine.


Until we discovered that Encore was missing. She is a little summer yearling of mine (sister to Etrain) Liz kept up to show. When she decided to take a small string this year we turned her out. It was after seven before they found her hiding in some brush as far back in the pasture as you can get. Then we couldn't catch her, because for some reason a couple of full sisters, Beech and Butternut, decided that they really needed to beat her up. Every time we got close to her one of them would come and throw her with their head and she would run away again. Eventually Liz got her hands on her and wrestled a halter onto her head. What with driving all the other cows out of the yard, closing the gates, getting her into a stall, which had to be set up as all were full, it was nearly ten PM before we got done with chores. Two hours late is plumb painful, especially on Sunday, which in theory, should be and easier day.
The kid got home from the tractor pull about ten minutes after we came in from the barn, just in time to miss all the fun.

Which was fine.

***The top photo is of the Supernatural, which belongs to a friend of ours.

Some animal rights stories

Nice folks these. (Killing the family dogs was what really got me going.)

And these

They're everywhere. (The problem is that chickens are simply NOT cats or dogs.)

Frost in June

The sun looked brassy enough this morning.

Who would believe that Wednesday night it froze? The moon flowers and cardinal climber took a serious hit and a tomato got nipped pretty badly. This is the latest spring frost I have ever seen here. Two days later it is in the upper eighties. Weird weather!

MIlk prices, oil prices..which should be higher?

Elaine Shein, my good friend at Blogriculture, has written a wonderful post on recent milk price increases. She really has it nailed. I find the Capital Press blog, Blogriculture, to be among the very best Ag blogs because it is well-written and entertaining, yet covers farm issues with real insight.
Thanks, Elaine, for sticking up for dairy farmers and our products. We need all the help we can get.

Thanks also to all you good folks who run to the store for a gallon of our product or grab a pizza with extra cheese or a milk shake with your lunch. We love you all. The girls all love you too.... 96, Char, Zinnia, Bariolee, Lemonade, ETrain, 114, Junie, Beausoleil, England, Bailey, Voldemar, Bayberry, Volcano, Adela, Star, Beech, Balsam, Butternut (3 full sisters) Veronica, Heather, Hattie, Hooter, (the Jersey girls) Lily, Mandolin Rain, Zipper, Kid, Jingle, Colorado, Sedona, Boston, Eland, Drive, Soir Noir, Chicago, Cisco (mother of Kid), Egrec, Elendil, Brink, Salt Lake, Lakota, Foolish, Detroit, Marge, Mango, Marvel, Sequoia, Berlin, Virginia, Mary, Mento, Consequence, Crunch, all think anybody who drinks milk or eats cheese is terrific.

So do all their "kids" ...Mendocino AKA Blitz, Zany, Hazel, Hicktown, Bama Breeze, Encore, Blink (daughter of Brink, of course), Takala, Chickadee, Armada, Camry, Alpha Zulu (AKA Alpha Zulu Pinecone) Magic, Medina, Spruce, Broadway, heck I could go on all day. They all love anyone who has ever worn a milk mustache, or said yes to Got Milk? because they would be out of a job without you! Thanks for making June Dairy Month!

Heifers

These are the heifers out at pasture. We had to bring them all down today as a cow that was running with them had a calf early and we needed to get her in. We pulled all the drys and close up heifers out of there and put them with the milk cows so we don't have to bring the whole bunch in every time there is a calf. It is easier to watch them when they are with the milking herd as we bring them all in twice every day and they get handled more. Also we will be turning a bull out there in the next couple of days to catch any the shorthorn bull missed and we don't want to have to go in with him and try to take cattle out.

We got a heavy dose of Barry over the past couple of days with heavy rains, high winds and amazingly cold temperatures. It will go down to 37 tonight and was in the low 40s last night. I felt sorry for the show heifers that are running out with the cows. They were so cold this morning that their hair was standing all on end and they looked awful. Cows don't usually mind chilly weather, but they were so wet when it turned cold that it was rough on them. The darned wind flattened the irises, which were spectacular this year....oh, well, we had them for a few days and it is supposed to get better tomorrow.

On the upside, I wish I could bottle a couple gallons of Mohawk Valley air right now and send it where ever you are. All along the valley thousands of locust trees and billions of wild grapes are in bloom all at the same time. The scent is like the freshest, cleanest, sun dried laundry you could imagine. It sneaks up on you when you least expect it, bringing a moment of sheer delight. I want to find someone who will let me dig a couple of black locust seedlings and plant them up near the bowling green where we lost the big apple tree last year. Then I can enjoy them up close and personal every June from now on.

PBR in Verona, NY

Moving the bulls

Mike White signing autographs

Not quite 8

Liz and I traded in some extra hours of work yesterday for a day off to see the rodeo. Of course the long go had no more than started when a wind storm that swirled hats into the sky like a cloud of flying mushrooms, swept in a miserable rain storm. Like the chickens that we are we retreated from our seats right in front of the chutes to perch in a private box in the enclosed grand stand. I hated to leave our vantage point, but Liz, with her superior camera, actually got some great shots because we were up above the fence. Still there is a lot more drama when you are thirty feet from the thudding hoofs and popping tails. My pictures are cropped from my sorry little 3X zoom, but you can get an idea f the action anyhow. I am sure a little later today Liz will have some great stuff on BuckinJunction, which, after all, is mostly dedicated to rodeo.