Effects of Obesity epidemic

On skinny kids. It is really rough you know...the way they have cut down on the portions in school lunches (while raising prices, naturally) . If your son is six feet tall, still growing, very active and a fellow whose skinny bones form a walking anatomy lesson, all you hear is whining about the little tiny sandwiches and terrible teensie tacos that are served. Good manners and lots of "pleases" and "thank you ma'ams" will sometimes get a boy an extra scoop of salad or an extra juice, but by the time that bus gets here at 3:17....get out of the way, he's headed for the cupboard
and the fridge
or anything that holds still long enough to put it on a plate (quick Mike, hide under the table).

All kids should have to do farm work after school. That would end this whole "obesity" affair in about a week.

The recipe

Italian Venison Vegetable Soup

The soup below really starts as just your basic meat and vegetable soup...I make 8 quarts at a time as there are a lot of us and I want it to go extra meals.

First slowly brown the meat, in this case venison, with garlic and onion...to your taste. I use two cloves and one small respectively. I substitute stew beef, ground beef, or regular or Italian sausage or any combination thereof for the venison in this brew. We just happen to be out of all those things right now and down to eating deer or buying meat.


When the meat is well cooked, I add such vegetables as are available..canned, frozen or right out of the garden. This particular batch contained carrots, green beans, lots of cut up grape tomatoes, and yellow and green zucchini, all from the garden plus some frozen cauliflower and broccoli.Also a large can of corn and a can of garbanzo beans.


I usually add a couple of the large cans of crushed tomatoes and as many cans of water as it takes to fill up the pot.

For seasoning...well it varies. This time I added garlic and onion as listed above, commercially prepared Italian seasoning, fresh parsley (but frozen or dried is fine), a dash of Mrs. Dash, a couple leaves of lovage, (but if you have celery, that is better) and half a leaf of sweet basil. I also often include spearmint leaves and orange mint leaves, but mine are all buggy right now. If is a little too tangy a teaspoon of sugar is a good addition. So is thyme if you have time, which I didn't this time, although there is plenty of it out in the herb garden.


When everything is boiling nicely I toss in some pasta. We are fond of weird pasta...strange shapes and colors seem to taste better. Or rice...brown, white, wild or all of them. (you could put potatoes in the vegetable section as well).


In order to call it Italian soup, this time I dumped in about a quarter cup of grated Parmesan cheese, which adds a nice flavor and texture.


Then I set my oven to between 285 and 325 and go to work....temperature depends on how long I am going to be gone. If you can't watch soup or stew it will cook itself very nicely in the oven. (I have yet to meet an 8-quart slow cooker I'm afraid.) Anyhow when I am done milking cows the soup is done becoming dinner.


I really like this recipe because it is very forgiving. You can put darned near anything in it...and I do.

Venison vegetable soup

Italian style (I put in lots of zucchini and parmesan cheese and dump in some Italian seasoning.)

Even more meme-ishness

Here is a meme from In the Pink...feel free to play if you would like to...just leave a link in the comments if you do......However the girls have asked me to tag them so....Liz
and Becky

1. If you could have super powers what would they be and what would you do with them? (Please feel free to be selfish, you do not have to save the world!) Flying has always appealed to me...I was looking at the jumping gym at the fair and wishing I was young enough and spry enough to play! If I could fly I would do so, looking down at wild and lovely places.
   


2. Were you to find your self stranded on an island with a CD player...it could happen...what would your top 10 bloggers island discs be? Emerson Drive/Countrified, Todd Fritsch/American Cowboy, Todd Fritsch/Sawdust, Nitty Gritty Dirt Band/20 Years of Dirt, Any Jimmy Buffett, Any Hal Ketchum, Any Garth Brooks, Beethoven's 9th Symphony, Trent Wilmon's first album, Jason Aldean's first album.
   


3. If you were a smell what would it be? Grape flowers is what I'd like to be...I am not sure that is quite how it would turn out though...eau de cow is much more likely.
   


4. What bird would you most like to be? Chickadee so I could join my little friends in the yard as they party all day long.
   


5. If you were a bird who's head would you poo on? Hillary Clinton
   


6. Are there any foods that your body craves? Varies, but I like to eat..cookies maybe
   


7. What's your favourite time of year? Spring or Fall
   


8. What's your favourite time of day? Early, early morning...or when we are done work at night
   


9. If a rest is as good as a change which would you choose? Rest, I am a real lazy bones
   


10. If you could have a dinner party and invite any 5 people from the past or present who would they be? (Living or deceased.) Louis L'Amour, Nora Roberts, JA Jance, Dick Francis, Patricia Penton Leimbach or alternately, myself and the four wonderful people with whom I abide. We really are a self-sufficient and happy bunch and like to be together....I will miss them when they find their own paths.
    

Cow eating French fries video

BuckinJunction

The French Fry calf

For the past few years the show string here at Northview has been oddly bereft. Kind of dull and ordinary even. Since the death of our all-time-number-one-best show cow, Frieland LV Dixie, there just hasn't been another animal that had her "big cheese" presence and bossy ways. Mandy, our current anchor cow, is sweet enough, and lovable, but mostly you would describe her personality as pleasantly stupid (at four years of age she still stops at the barn corner, too confused to turn right to find the door....twice a day, every day.)

This year, just to test the waters, Liz took a calf that belongs to her dad, Frieland Chilt Blink, (those are her ribs sporting the Northview sign in the header), over to Fonda. The competition is harsh there and Blink stood last in her class. (We subscribe to the "somebody has to be last" school of showing and don't get too excited about it though. We have been on the other end a few times too.)

Anyhow the kids came home laughing like crazy yesterday and said, "We've got another Dixie!" Another Dixie...hard to imagine another cow as funny and yet imperious, queen of the world and everything in it, as old Dix. She had so much personality that I even had her ghost write my newspaper column, the Farm Side, once. (She bragged about how many people worked so hard to take care of her wants and needs...veterinarians, feed salesmen, peons {us}. It was so "her".)

One of the most entertaining, (not to mention most aggravating) features of Dixie's outlook on life was that she considered ALL food to belong to her. ALL food. We discovered this little quirk when Liz ran to clean up a "phone call" and left nachos on her chair, well out of reach (she thought). She returned to find an empty plate and a smug, self-satisfied cow with cheese on her whiskers.

From there on no French fry was safe. No taco salad uneaten. No Nacho unstolen. It became part of the culture of fair week to feed Dixie odd foods and watch her enjoy them. If you didn't offer she would ask, swinging her long head and lashing her tongue in the direction of your dinner. When she passed away no other cow seemed to come along that was as much fun to take to the show.

Enter Blink. Alan was sitting on a bale of straw noshing onion rings the other day when something large and sticky slipped under his arm and plopped in his plate, slapping up most of the food. It was Blink's tongue. She wanted some. Ketchup and all. Finding cow slobber unappetizing he let her finish them off. There was no turning back. Besides being a nice natured, engaging critter like old Dix, she shares her taste in junk food. Last night the kids bought her a whole plate of French fries and ketchup and took a video of her eating them. Right now they are busy with the fair, but as soon as Liz gets a chance it will be posted on BuckinJuntion

I have never seen food vanish so fast. If cows could eat hot dogs Joey Chestnut would have to look to his laurels.

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.