Prime Real Estate

For the wright wrenter

Beware

I felt a bit bereft

As I came over from the barn after milking tonight a raspy, buzzy, fluffed up family of just fledged wrens chattered at me from the bushes. Bah, I thought. Our front porch songster's family, in the pillar, has grown up now and we will miss our all day front hall concertos. Mr. Wren even goes down inside his pillar home and sings INSIDE it! I love listening to him.

I was thinking how much we would miss his singing as I came to the garden pond. And there, on the wire that brings electricity into the house, he swung, singing his heart out at the sunset. Guess we have TWO wren families. What largess!

I agree

With R-Calf

Flower day

All unbeknownst to herself

Miss Cellania gave me a birthday present. I would like to share it with all of you, so you can waste as much as possible of your Fourth of July holiday clicking on little spheres trying to blow them up.
Go ahead....click it....you know you want to.


****You will be cussing me all day if you do

Our national anthem

This is a very sweet story and so fitting in light of the holiday tomorrow.

Mandy and Jack

Mandy with her new baby...photo by Liz and stolen by mom from BuckinJunction

Get that camera away from me and gimme that grass!

BlackJack

The moon is a cold white laser, a chilly beacon across the darkness

At three thirty in the morning anyhow.
This is not something I would normally know as like most folks I am asleep then. However, yesterday, after threatening for days, Liz's best show cow, Mandolin Rain, finally decided it was time to have her calf. This was the second time Liz bred her to the popular Holstein bull, Fustead Emory Blitz. Her last baby was Mendocino, known to the family as "Blitzie". She was a BIG baby. It was easy to see from Mandy's behavior last night that this one was going to be big too. Although she is our largest cow, Mandy is a bit on the fragile side, thus Liz stayed up all night with her. Not so long ago I would have waked up and worried a dozen times if she was staying up with one of her cows. However, she is 21 now, knows pretty near as much as the boss and I do about calving, and knows when to tap on our door if things get out of hand.

So I slept like a baby....(well, actually a lot better than any baby who ever lived here). However, at 3:30 I was wide awake and went down to see what was going on. The night was dazzling, blue and black sky glittering with that laser moon, so bright there were shadows in the shadows. It was so pretty outside that after Liz, who was sitting here at the computer waiting to go out to the barn again, told me what was going on, I went out in the dark just to look around. It reminded me of the night we lost the boss's mom, six years ago this coming Wednesday....my 49th birthday as it happened. We went out of the house when it was over, so shattered and hollow it felt as if we would never be right again and there, across the back yard and heifer pasture, was a moonbow stretching like a stairway up to Heaven. I have never seen another night like that, before or since. Last night there was no moonbow, but it was otherwise the same. I thought I felt her presence, as I stood on the back porch, barefoot in my reindeer bathrobe, as if she were watching over my baby while she cared for her favorite cow. I'd like to think she really was.

The news about Mando was good. Although Liz had to help her, she had a big, black heifer calf, and came through fairly well herself. Now the girls are going to have to scurry around trying to find some calcium gluconate, on Sunday, no less, as the stuff we thought was calcium in the case on the shelf is dextrose, and not much help to a cow with a mild case of milk fever. We are thinking Tractor Supply will have some........

The day's occupations

Yesterday's too....

Anniversary of the flood

This time last year much of the Mohawk Valley was under water. Friends, neighbors, and folks all over the state, lost homes, cars, gardens, miles of crops and entire businesses. It was truly a horrible disaster. Response to it made clear though, the sense of community that folks here in the other New York, far from the lights of the big city, share. From an army of blue, made up of Amishmen and women, who marched into our small towns to undertake clean up and rebuilding, to the cars full of just regular folks who showed up to look for ways to help, the turnout of volunteers was amazing. The boss, Alan and I even spent a couple of hours here on July 4th last year, washing merchandise and replacing it on the shelves. I asked the guys if for my birthday they would take me up to Fort Plain to help with the work because it just felt right and I am very fond of the folks at the Agway store. They obliged and pitched in too. I wish we could have done more, but we had to deal with running a generator tractor and keeping the farm going at home so we could only work for a short time. Others spent days and weeks helping out.

The people who run the Fort Plain Agway Farm Store are amazing in my book. They struggled through the first flood, more flooding later in the year, a lightning strike that took out their computers and almost losing the use of their building and still are going strong in this blessedly drier (so far) year. I have never gone into the store to pick up barn calcite, chicken feed or bicarb for the cows and not been greeted with warm smiles on every face, even when things were at their worst. It is always a pleasure to do business with them.


Here at Northview, we are lucky enough to live on a really big hill, so although we lost a large percentage of our corn crop, had driveways washed out and went without power or trips to the store for a while, we came through pretty much all right. Other parts of the valley were not so fortunate and some places are still cleaning up ruined houses and trailers. I am hoping that this year on my birthday we can just stay home and grill some Nathan's and boil up some potatoes for salad. I am getting too old for the excitement.

My mother, the painter

Cows are going to visit the Statue of Liberty

No lie

Read all about it at Moove to American.org

You can even sign a petition supporting American beef and enter a create a burger contest!

We don't use it

But I still understand the technology. Now it seems that the NY Times also understands the false hoopla surrounding rBST-free ( a misnomer if ever there was one) milk. Don't pay more for the same exact stuff, is all I'm sayin'.

I mean, check out this quote from the Times article:

"These reviews noted that traces of BST are found in milk from all cows, supplemented or not. They also pointed out that, like other proteins, rBST is digested in the human gut. Moreover, even if it is injected into the human bloodstream, it has no biological activity."

Wild Wednesday

Torrid Thursday...well, not really much more than just a touch torrid, but it alliterated nicely. Last night after a serious set of thunder storms, the sunset filtering through honey locust leaves was pretty and peaceful so I grabbed the camera. We lost power for a while, but it was back on before milking so we didn't have to fire up the generator. We bought that to be ready for the Y2K scare. Of course we didn't use it then, but since that time we would have been out of business without it half a dozen times. We once had no electricity for 16 days! The only damage this storm did to us that we have seen is to put a big box elder tree down on the cow lane fence. Of course one of the cows cut a teat climbing over it so she will be tough to milk for a while. A cow just won't go around if she can go through. Last week lightning took out one of the fence chargers despite lightning arresters on the fence. It is just an awful year for lightning.

One thing that amazes me is that even during the wildest storms birds fly back and forth past the living room windows like shuttles in a hurry. You would think they would huddle in a tree somewhere and wait it out, but they don't.

It is cooler today, a bit, though still soggy with humidity (see yesterday's comments for a definition of this arcane weather term). Up until yesterday it had been quite dry (and I am not complaining,) but the corn needed a drink pretty badly, so the rain was kinda/sorta welcome. I put the potted sago palms out for a drink and a bath, of which they were much in need. It is odd to see the puddles full though!

***I have been tagged by Mrs. Mecomber and will answer, as always on The View at Northview
****Oops, no, wait a minute...I did this one a while ago, only with six things.
Two more....let's see
7) I am phobic about ticks and call it tick terror. Keep them buggies away from me!
8) My father has been president of the local Audubon society, the mineral club, the carving club, plus collected archaeological relics at one time, and fossils, and always took us kids along when we were young, so we had a REAL interesting childhood....not to mention the antique store and the book store, which served as playgrounds to the young Montgomery clan.

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?