See ya

Boil up some hummer food, clean and fill the feeders, take out the trash, clean out the fridge, finish up all the laundry, pay the bills, balance the check book, order grain, order teat dip, roll up the change and take it to the bank, pack the snorkels, fins, poles, tackle boxes, grab a stack of books at the library, indulge in the latest Nora Roberts (brought to me by the Farm Side, thank you), bandaids, Skin-so-Soft, Off!, dog food, dog ropes, canoe? (no, we'll come back down and pick that up if things are quiet on the lake; no sense getting swamped by the maniacs) charge up some camera batteries, drag extra hay up to the horse yard, Frontline on the dogs, don't forget the can opener, leashes, life preservers, remember the butter, hotdogs, macaroni, spaghetti sauce and home made jelly, bring along shampoo and flashlights and blankets....and oh, heck, where is that list anyhow!??!!!

We are off to camp tomorrow for a week, hopefully including some fish. Take care!

Jaws

Up from the depths he comes....

Oh, no, he's got me!

Much excitment

About the weather. We have had thunderstorm after thunderstorm...at least a couple every afternoon. For the most part the worst of the weather has gone off to the north bombing Gloversville and Johnstown with dangerous hail and high winds. Last night our turn came.

We got started milking late for one reason and another (mostly having to do with men). Alan had not yet fed the cows their wagon of chopped oatlage with field peas and new seeding so the boss sent him off to do so as soon as the cows were in the barn.

I happened to look up the hill as he was pulling out with the tractor and shouted for the boss to get that boy back ASAP. The gate where they take the wagon through into the field is in an area we call "Lightning Corner". Trees that sprout up there don't usually get more than thirty feet high or so before they are burned or blasted down.

Anyhow the boss let out one of his mighty whistles; the kid heard him and made it to the barn just as the maelstrom hit. Thank God! Within seconds I looked out to see the four or five heifers that stay in the barnyard while the cows are milked bolting down the hill. The tree that they were standing under crashed to the ground, and was still bouncing, as they came for the door. None were hit though. I think they heard it tearing loose before it actually came down. Now there is a large and tangled pile of potential firewood waiting to be cut up and hauled away. Right there handy so to speak.

It was a wild storm. Parts of the overhanging roof of the milk house porch blew off. Rain slashed in through all the windows, wetting us even inside the barn. Dirt blew into our eyes from the windowsills. (Gritty nasty stuff.) The windy downpour lasted most of milking. I hated to touch anything metal because lightning was banging down all around us, but I didn't have much choice as the stalls, dividers, pipelines and the grates over the stable cleaner, which we must walk on are all metal. On one occasion the cow I was milking jumped right up in the air when a bolt hit. I think she got a little zing there.

When the kid finally got to take the feed out after the storm blew itself out, Lightning Corner was a jumble of blown down and blasted trees. It took him a good hour and a half to shift them so he could feed the cows. I lay awake for quite a while last night being very, very thankful that we stopped him from trying to beat the weather and get the cows fed before it hit.
VERY thankful.

Thanks!

To whomever invented this product. I can't think of any beverage that would taste as good as milk with these drinking straws made from Cocoa Krispies cereal. I'll bet they are prefect for slurping up nice cold dairy beverage. and lousy for drinking soda, designer water, grape juice, Budweiser, or margaritas. Yay milk!

The Seven Wonders

NYCO had an interesting post about looking for the seven wonders of
that area of the state, which led me to contemplate the potential for finding the seven wonders of Northview Farm.

Of course holding it down to seven is about like eating one potato chip...there are a lot more in the bag and each one is tastier than the one before.

However, I will start at the bottom and work my way up through seven delights of life on this hill.

7)Soft fog cat-footing up from the river on a gentle summer morning. It deadens the sound of the Interstate and makes the train whistles echo lonesome and long across the valley.

6) Neon Moon peeking in through the sawdust shed window. She can barely get her nose over the edge but she sees PEOPLE and they are about her favorite thing in the whole world because they bring BOTTLES of MILK! There is always an inquisitive new calf or two to keep things interesting.

5) The scent of a mow full of fresh hay, which comes with the opportunity for the guys to grease the cross mow elevator without getting on that awful ladder...they can just stand on the hay and get er done. No worries mate.

4) Knowing that we FINALLY got the blood drawn and the hair pulled from the bulls for DNA testing so they can go to Dependabul and be gone from our lives. Remind me to tell you about what I think of the difference between breed requirements for DNA testing...a few ear hairs from the Holstein and BLOOD from the shorthorn. You can't get blood out of a stone, but you can from a bull's butt...it just isn't pretty...or fun....or safe. I am so glad that that job is over. Now we wait for results.

3) The birds, wildlife, flowers and just general outdoors stuff that surrounds us all the time. Living here on this hill is like spending all day every day in a national park or wildlife refuge. Just yesterday I was able to get the photos of the wren and the vulture on the no trespassing sign without taking any time out of my work day. They are just there. We also saw white tail fawns, eastern cottontail babies, woodchucks with kits, squirrels and dozens of other birds. I love it here.


2) Growing what we eat and eating what we grow. Right now except for herbs and lettuce and our own beef and pork and milk we are waiting...for tomatoes, squash, beans, peas.....and I CAN"T wait, I'm telling you. Meanwhile the guys grow a 300+ acre garden of food for the cows too. Neat.

And the number one wonder of life here is......

1) Working together every day, especially with the three kids that make it possible for us to do this. And I am not kidding. We couldn't do it without their help, from field work to cooking dinner to feeding calves and filling out registration papers, they have their hands on everything and I am glad for it. When you figure that they are fun and funny people too and a delight to be around who could ask for anything more wonder-ful? I am proud of them and I hope they know it.

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.