Emerson Drive

Number one fan and little brother before the show (3rd row seats!)

Brad Mates

David Pichette


Mike Melancon



Danick Dupelle



Dale Wallace (with David Pichette)

***More later when I can see, speak and type again........

If you get a chance to see these guys, go. We had so much fun last night that despite two nights in a row of four hours of sleep, I am as happy as music can make you. We stood in line for hours for those third row seats. Then the kids stood in line again for as long as it takes for about 800 people to get autographs. They told the band about all the cows with names from their songs and they were delighted to hear about them...asked them to send photos of them....Drive, Moments, Evidence, Lemonade...I think Hollywood Kiss is another one of them...they have six, I just can't remember them all.

Smoke....big pullers

Went over to the fair last night because Liz didn't feel well and the guys wanted to see the Supernatural, which belongs to friends of ours, pull. Took a walk around the fairgrounds, then took care of Blink, the calf that we have over there. She is so sweet, just the nicest baby. She loves attention and eats French fries, which is an important attribute in a fair animal.

Got to talk to an amazing array of wonderful people and got to eat some amazing cookies. What more could there be to life? I felt so at home sitting on that old blue show box, reading a Kjelgaard book and watching the people go by. (How could Wild Trek, which is such a rich and detailed adventure story be older then I am?)

As kids got driver's licenses and took over the show string, I have stayed home and missed the belonging part more and more. Somebody has to do the work at home and I have had my years of showing, since I was twenty-two or so and started with horses and chickens and bunnies.

It was kind of nice to have personal charge of a lovely cow and personal time to read my heart out. It would have been nicer though to know where the scrubbing brush was so I could spot wash poor Blink who had a couple of spots in addition to the ones she was born with. Anyhow, it's a good fair so far.

(Shaky hands)

There's nothin' I know of can make you fall in love

Like a night at the county fair.*

*Thanks to Chris LeDoux

The blue show box

Is showing its age. I have had this old army trunk since I was in college, many moons ago. It served as a tack trunk when I showed my old horse, Magnum, and then with the harness ponies, Deranged Richard and Major Moves.

When the family started showing cows when Liz was six, I painted the cow and our names on it. It has been hauled back and forth to many shows since then. Many, many shows. It has held shampoos and tie chains and buckets and health papers. Grain scoops. Show halters. Rope halters. Squashed lemonade cups. Dirty, wet, nasty socks. Crumpled last place ribbons. Crumpled first place ribbons.
More memories than you would ever think could possibly fit inside such a small container.

If I had a nickel for every time someone sat on it to peruse a show catalog or read a book while waiting for "phone calls" or just to catch up on farmer gossip, I'd be rich.
(Oh, wait a minute, I already am.)

Liz is 21 now and it is on its way to yet another show, the Fonda Fair. I am thinking maybe it is time for a little touch up on the paint job.
How about you?

Wrench in the works

Last year we, or rather I, bought a young bull calf from a registered Holstein breeder who sends cows to a friend's farm to be milked. We wanted to draw semen from him to breed our own cows AI as we don't like to keep bulls, but we like something cheap to use for "clean up", to mate the cows who don't breed as well as we would like.

Anyhow, we raised him up, fed him and cared for him for a year, and then sent in some ear hair from him for DNA testing as required by the Holstein Association for AI. His dam, who belongs to the people we bought him from, also had to be tested. Imagine my dismay when we got a letter Saturday stating that his grandpappy wasn't in fact his grandpappy. (Your papa aint' your papa but your papa don't know.) Somewhere along the way somebody goofed. I suspect until this is all straightened out he is no longer even registered.

Never having faced such a situation before I simply have no idea what to do. We paid for a purebred and eligible for AI use animal. As it stands right now that is not what we got. We fed him for a whole year plus a couple of months, by far the greatest expense in owning an animal. We really, really want to send him up to Verona where the drawing takes place and then sell him. He is big, messy, hard to care for, and costing us MORE money every day to feed. I am tempted to beef him and just take the loss....but I just don't know.

***Update...spoke to the Holstein Association today and all efforts are being made to resolve this. However the sire of the mother cow looks like it is going to turn out to be a bull we used heavily that had a bad proof and was beefed by the bull stud. If this turns out to be the case we will sell Frank, but at least he will be registered. I laughed out loud when I heard who the probable grandsire was and I'll suspect the lady at Holstein thought I was nuts. It was so ironic though. Ocean View Extra Special was a bull we used heavily enough to have the winning get of sire at Altamont a couple years ago. We like his daughters and couldn't really understand why they dumped him, but really can't use any more of that bloodline.

Just a little memeish

From Smokey Mountain Breakdown

4 jobs I've had

Kennel Cleaner
Chamois folder
Vet tech
Handler of smooth fox terriers for AKC shows

4 places I've lived

Gloversville
Caroga Lake
Fultonville
Fultonville

4 places I've holidayed
Floriday
Montana and Wyoming
Peck's Lake
Terril pond

4 favorite foods

Steak
Cookies
Home made salad
Potato chips

4 places I'd rather be

Camping
Fishing
Sleeping
Heck, actually I am perfectly contented right here

The end of summer

Brings good things to eat.


Special friends stop by bringing gifts from the garden. (Thanks Gordie...we do love corn.)



We freeze all afternoon. (Not freeze as in being cool, freeze as in putting up.)
Husk the corn.
Stack the corn.
Boil the corn.
Cool the corn.
Cut the corn off the cob.
Bag the corn.
Put the corn in the freezer.
Do it again.
And again.
And again.




It is 96 and icky humid. Not a good day for freezing anything in a kitchen billowing with steam...water bubbling loudly...keeping the doors closed to keep the head-banging bane of the heat outside. No breeze. No breath. There are sticky bits of corn everywhere. Sticky corn on the table. Sticky corn on the floor. (Happy dogs, happy dogs. How they love that sticky corn.There is no need to sweep or mop.) The counters and table are another story. No dogs allowed there and it would make good glue, I'll tell you. Still, you make hay when the sun shines and you freeze corn when the corn comes.


Many hands make light work. (And many kids have many hands.) The kitchen is full of teens and twenty-somethings armed with knives and bowls and baggies. There is much silliness and sibling competition. Many insults and near passing of drinks through nasal passages with all the nonsense that is being bandied about. (It is one of my most cherished goals as a parent...to make my kids pass food through their noses at things I say..{ask them about summer vegetables}.....this time they do it to each other though. The apple doesn't fall far from the tree and I guess the corn doesn't either.) We finish in under two hours and save out a dozen ears so we can have fresh corn on the cob for supper. This winter corn that brings the taste of summer right back to us will be a special treat for chowder or just for dinner. It is always worth the effort.


We make apple snacks in late summer too. Ginger gold apples are in, the first of the really hard, crisp, good-eatin' apples...not soft and mushy like Macs. They are so tart and tangy and delightful, just like the great late-fall apples like Spies and Ida Reds. I salute whoever invented the variety.

To make your own apple snack, core and cut up the best apple you can find.
Cut up the sharpest cheese you can find...just a bit.
Add raisins
Granola
Cheerios
Eat
(We often bag this stuff for a quick rake along snack...it will keep a few hours and is full of autumn goodness)

Salute

If you have a minute, visit My Blog, the delightful blog of the author, JA Jance. She has written a salute today to her late parents that is very moving and yet fun to read.

"According to family legend, he first came courting my mother's younger sister, Toots, but was told by their father, "Norman, in this house we eat the old bread first." And so he ended up with the older sister, Evie, instead."

Anti-NAIS blog

Good stuff here! Watch the videos if you get a chance.

Ear tags and disease

Isn't it amazing that the Holstein Association is in favor of national animal ID?
(Well, no, it isn't all that surprising....They maintain a large and lucrative animal database. They make money by identifying animals. Why wouldn't they support it?) It aggravates me to see them pontificate like this no end though. They prey on the ignorance of the general public to make their point of view seem like the right one. I disagree. Pretty strongly, in fact. England has one of the most restrictive animal ID systems in existence. They still have outbreaks of horrific animal diseases. Ear tags don't stop them.

I defy the proponents of NAIS to explain to me how putting expensive ear tags in cows will stop the spread of foot and mouth disease should it come here to the USA. It blows on the wind, flows with the water, is spread by birds, animals, car tires, and people. You could ear tag every domestic animal in the country and it would still do the same thing. Oh, the government says they could find the animals quicker to "do something about it" (read kill cows...the Brits killed a number of herds that didn't even turn out to have the disease. Tough luck for the cows and farmers). Maybe they could find cows faster. However, ear tagging my cows wouldn't do a darned thing to stop the dozens of deer that ramble all over our farm..and the neighbors' farms...and the Amish farms. It won't stop the wind, or the water, the Thruway or the starlings. It won't stop the disease either.

Poor baby

Blinky

Summertime news

Another site

With a fantastic catalog of natural sounds. I was researching for the Farm Side, writing about the sounds and sights of a summer day and stumbled upon the Macaulay Library.

It is simply amazing! This is a toy I will be playing with a LOT!

How (not) to photograph a calf

(The first time she goes out on a halter)


Running

Running some more

A pause for the cause

But I lo-o-o-ove you

Maqua-kil Blitz Neon Moon making her debut at Northview Farm.

Say it isn't so

Upstream

Who is this raider of the green bean patch?

Here is where I am looking to try to find him. And here.

A couple more cow stories

You might think that it is a chore for cows to be dragged to the fair...that they must mind being shut into a stock trailer, driven 32 miles over twisted hill country roads, and kept away from green pastures and good buddies for a week.

You might think.

However, there is a certain amount of evidence to the contrary. About six years ago one of the show heifers was turned out with a herd of regular heifers. The boss was really worried about how we were going to sort her out to take her to the show. (She had been to the fair the year before.) However, as soon as he backed the trailer over to the heifer yard, she threw up her head and ran up to the gate so she could get on.

Same thing this year. Because of the light duty truck the guys made a second trip back home to get Lemmie and Blink. They loaded Lem and went back into the barn to get Blink. When they came out there was Heather, Lizzie's old Jersey show cow, who isn't going this year because we didn't get her bred until real late, climbing onto the back compartment of the trailer. Foolish, a milking two-year-old, who went last year too, was right behind her and Junie, a dry who has been showed all her life, was running down the hill for her turn. I suppose it just shows that they aren't stupid. For the week at the show they are fed about ten times a day, have nothing to do buy lie in knee deep straw, get washed, and groomed and pampered until they shine like stars. It is like a spa for cows! What's not to like? Still it amazes me that all it takes is one trip over to the fair for them to associate a trailer ride with pleasure. In fact, Foolish has never even ridden on OUR trailer, having been hauled over by our trucker last year!

Then the other day, Alan was standing in the barnyard waiting for the boss, and decided to scratch Balsam, mother of Bayberry, grandmother of Bayliner. He used to show Balsie when she was a heifer but she is an older three quartered cow now and can't be shown. He was being careful to stay at arm's length so she wouldn't knock him down if she decided to take off, as most cows won't let you touch them when they are running free. Instead of taking off, she scooped him into the hollow of her neck, with a swoop of her head, and cradled him there against her neck so she could be sure not to lose the source of all that lovely scratching and petting. It was like a huge cow hug...she is mean to other cows, but she sure is sweet to people.

Mandy

Getting ready

This is Mandolin Rain, a 4-year old daughter of Ocean View Zenith out of an old homebred cow, being milked after the show in the fair's milking parlor. It amazes me how the cows take to the parlor, not being milked in one at home. Lemonade had to be milked off the wrong side and is only a first calf heifer and she stood like a champ.

I see you!

What is amazing about this picture is what Mandy is looking at, staring at in fact, over the side of the parlor stall. There is a roped off area where fairgoers can watch the cows being milked. I was standing in the center of about thirty people a good twenty feet from her. She is not one that I milk, she hadn't seen me in a week, it was way past dark, and yet she picked me out of the crowd and stared at me most of the time she was being milked.

I was amazed and humbled. ...although I guess that there was no reason for me to get all excited. One of the kids' friends showed her in one class last year and as soon as she came over to the string this week Mandy recognized her and wanted to be petted. The cows come home tomorrow night and I am way past ready... a night with more than five or six hours in it would be a real bonus.

Doing pretty good here....92 pounds in a day

This one did win

Frieland Chilt Blink

Although I think the kids came in fifth with that best three females group below this baby, showing as a senior heifer calf, won her class against stiff competition. She is not spectacular in the rear "wheels" and could stand to be a little longer and stronger over the topline, but I have liked her since day one. Blink is a daughter of the Select Sires young sire, Chilton, out of a Comestar Leader cow Alan used to show, Brink.

Finally

I'm thinking this is Best Three Females Class, Altamont Fair 2007. We didn't win the blue ribbon, but it was a groundbreaking, watershed, revolutionary, first time kinda thing just the same. Check out the guy on Mandy's halter...