Johanns resigning.

Pretty big news here. I wonder who will be the next Secretary of Agriculture.

What on earth!

I was struggling to get a fire going in the outdoor stove yesterday when I heard the oddest sound. It is noisy here on the hill with a constant backdrop of traffic sound from the Thruway and the trains, so I had to strain to pick it out among the din. It was a sort of purring, clacking sound, hard to describe, but something like a squeaky wooden carriage wheel in the far distance.

As I made my way back and forth from the house with various combustible materials, such as a few scraps of old pine that used to be a flower box and ever more recent newspapers I kept noticing the sound. However, because it was soft and the traffic in late afternoon is loud, I just couldn't find the source.


Then as I paused for a second on the back step, catching my breath (I have this really nasty cold), I spotted a furious whirl of movement out on the heifer hill.

Turkeys! I never did get them all counted, but there were a lot and they were just going crazy. Running back and forth, up and down, and around in circles all over one little section of the hill. They were like little old ladies at a fire sale rushing from table to table and clucking over bargains. Really, it was as if they had completely lost their minds.

There were at least ten adults, which seemed very disturbed by the goings on, like referees at an out of control soccer game. Perhaps twenty poults-of-the-season were indulging in a turkish frenzy. They chested up to one another like boys confronting each other on the playground. Then whoever felt taller would grab the other guy by the back of the neck and they would twirl in tumultuous circles, all the while purring and chuckling musically.


It was the most amazing thing I have ever seen in the great outdoors. They went on and on about whatever they were up to,mostly keeping a little circle, perhaps sixty feet in diameter, but sometimes spilling out across the hill, then always returning.


When I finally got the fire going at least an hour later, they were still at it. I suspect that the little family flocks of two or three hens and this year's young that keep to themselves all summer are combining into the gigantic flocks of a hundred or more that hang around here all winter. I am thinking maybe they were sorting out the pecking order and deciding who was going to be leading the cornfield onslaught and picking up the tastiest alfalfa seeds. Whatever they were up to, I just loved how musical their chick-to-chick battles seemed. Sibling rivalry sure doesn't sound like that here in the house.

Our milking shorthorn bull

Checkerboard Magnums Promise

His blood typing finally came in so he can go to Dependabul in ten days to be drawn. Then we may sell some semen on him if anyone is interested in using him. He is quite well bred, with a lot of milk and type on the dam. Plus we can AI our own Holstein heifers and get smaller calves, which are much more valuable for sale than the traditional Jersey cross calves.

The other bull we did blood work on turned out not to be what he was sold to us as. We decided to cut our losses as we are sick of waiting for his former owner to find the needed paperwork and for new papers maybe (and maybe not) to be issued. Thus the vet performed the necessary surgery to turn him into a steer and he is now destined for the freezer. We didn't pay a lot for him, but it cost me ninety bucks to blood type him and that will be a total loss. Oh, well, we are out of beef and Herman, the beef steer I was already raising, has a way to go yet.

Promise's pedigree, Sire: Checkerboard Magnum
Dam: Horizon Peggy Sue EXP
Paternal Grandsire:Meriville Peerless
Maternal Grandsire: Three Springs Sundance

Foggy mornings, bright afternoons

You make me smile

Two folks generously nominated me for this, but I am too tech-thick to know how to duplicate the graphic. I will just say thanks and that everyone in my blog roll has taught me things. Shared their lives and homes and thoughts with me. Introduced me to their families and friends and pets and livestock. Helped me understand their part of the world better than before...and become valued friends, even though I have only met them in print.


You are supposed to pick ten other bloggers to whom to pass this on, but I never was much one to follow the rules. I just can't choose ten favorites from the 30-odd blogs in the side bar not to mention those of my family (some of them are pretty odd too).
I like 'em all. I read 'em all, almost every day. So here's to all of you...you make me smile.

This little piggy learns a lesson

Two weeks ago the boss and Liz made a trip down to Medusa wherein resides the wonderful family from whom we purchase pigs. These folks breed really good pigs, long and lean, and they grow like crazy. The end result of growing a pig for your freezer depends in part on how well you care for it, but the quality of the pig you start out with also makes a huge difference. They have never sold us a poor one.

This year the guys decided to raise three pigs as we made a lot more sausage from the last pair and they didn't last long. Nichols does our meat processing for us and they made our sausage to our exact specifications (very mild). We loved it.


Anyhow, these three little fellows were part of a huge litter and were kind of on the wild side when they came home. However, they soon discovered that when the door to the 4-horse trailer that we use for a pig pen opened, someone on the other side had a pail of milk. Or a dozen ears of field corn. A zucchini. Apples. Tomatoes. Grain. They soon really liked to see the door open.


In fact when the boss opened the door the other night one jumped right out. Oops! Because they are a little wilder than our usual pigs he was frightened and immediately bolted away in a panic. The trailer is in the barn yard. The cows were also in the barnyard waiting to be milked. Instead of heading for the high country like any sensible piggy, this one ran right into the center of the herd, much to the chagrin of the bovine bunch. A forty-pound squealing, bristly, thing racing among their feet was unprecedented and just plain unnatural. They did what cows do in such circumstances. They kicked the heck out of him. He somehow struggled back up to the trailer and the boss herded him inside, where he flopped down in the straw on his side.

When the gang and I came over to milk a few minutes later the boss greeted us, "I guess one of my little piggies is going to die."

He recounted Lewy's tale of woe. We all trooped up to the trailer, where a few minutes earlier the pig had been slumped in the straw panting and quivering and looking not long for this world. When that wonderful door opened however, he somehow dragged himself up out of his death bed and limped over to the food dish where he looked up expectantly. He was noticeably lame in the rear trotter, but he still had his priorities straight. Maybe things weren't so bad after all. A few days passed with no further porky excitement.

Just now I asked the boss, "How is your little piggie?"

He replied, "I can't even tell which one he is any more."

However, when the door opens for pigs to be given their many and various gustatory delights, nobody jumps out of the trailer.

Todd Fritsch

Video

***there is just something about the kind of bands that play county fairs....

Lucky and the new piggies

Mickey Mouse ears

****Tomorrow if things aren't as crazy as they have been the past two days I will tell you of the adventures of Lewy, the third little piggie, who found out something about cows yesterday.

Speaking of hmmm

Thanks to Miss Cellania for this story on the effect of high ceilings on thought processes. This old house has at least ten footers. Heck the windows defy commercially available drapes by being too darned tall unless you like open space either at the top or bottom. So we do without; I like to see the sunshine anyhow and no one can see in way up on this hill.

Anyhow, now I know why I am weird.

( “When a person is in a space with a 10-foot ceiling, they will tend to think more freely, more abstractly,”)

Yup, that's me all right....abstract thought indeed.

The sleep of the just

Or just sleep? We took a quick run over to Central New York Farm Progress Days today. Didn't stay long as these are busy times, what with corn chopping in full swing and all. This isn't our truck, BTW but I wouldn't mind if it was. We passed this one shortly after the incident below.

Anyhow, today the weather was spectacular, the show was pretty decent, although perhaps not up to past years, and the ride home was especially pleasant.

Out the car window near the auction

Most especially when we made a short detour to look at some machinery that is coming up for auction this weekend. As we rounded a corner on a tiny back road we came upon a National Grid truck. That is our area electrical utility and seeing their trucks isn't so uncommon. However, I am not so sure about the guy sound asleep in the driver's seat, head thrown back and mouth wide open. I hope it was his lunch hour, although it was two in the afternoon. I wanted to take a picture to share, but the guys wouldn't let me.

I did take a few others though.

This company supplies our milkhouse cleaning supplies.

****Update, I haven't spent much time reading blogs today, what with traveling, but I just visited Liz's, BuckinJunction. She posted yesterday on 9-11 and what she has written made me proud to be her mother. I mean, I always knew she was a good kid and all but this was just special for someone only 21 years old.

Marnie

I have been reading a number of blogs, which feature marvelous insect photos and lots of interesting posts on such things as tagging monarch butterflies. Today Burning Silo had a photo of a "surprise" indoor monarch, which reminded me of an incident that I had forgotten.


You see once upon a time we shared our home with a butterfly too. It happened one fall when Alan was quite small. An early frost had struck overnight ending the growing season with a decisive bang.


We were driving up the hill to the house, which was not our home yet, when Alan called out, "Look mom, it's a butterfly." And sure enough, among the bushes that straggle willy-nilly beside the drive was an empty chrysalis with a butterfly clinging below it.



We crawled out of the car and rushed over to look. He was young enough then that such a sight was a new and truly exciting event. (Eh, I admit it...we would still be just as quick to stop today and he is a senior in High School now.) As we got closer we could see that things weren't good for this poor insect though. "Her" wings had only half opened and had hardened into a crumpled, curled-over black and orange mess. I suppose the frost may have been the culprit. We left her there and went about our business, but at night she still hung there, wrinkled and weary. We decided that since more bad weather was forecast and since Alan was a little boy who hated to see anything suffer we would take her home.



At that time we lived about a mile from here in a house in the village, as the boss's folks lived here. There didn't seem to be any serviceable jars for monarch housing, and with those wings we didn't figure she would be going anywhere, so we released the critter, christened Marnie by her benefactor, in our tiny bathroom.


Since the kids had studied butterflies in school Alan knew enough to make sugar water, which he offered her in a soda bottle cap. She promptly obliged by sitting on his finger sipping neatly through her cunningly unrolled "butterfly straw".


Thus began about ten days of feeding her interesting sweet things, checking your toothbrush for butterflies, and finding her sitting on your shoulder when you went in to wash your hands. We brought bunches of late flowers in for her and she knew just what to do with them. She had to work hard to fly well enough to join you as you prepared to shower, but fly she did. Alan took her for "walks" outside, perched on his outstretched finger. She stayed with him, seeming content. Someone was always hollering, "Don't let the butterfly out of the bathroom," every time they heard the door open.


We really enjoyed her; it was fun to have a butterfly in the house. However, there were a number of close calls when she escaped from her little prison and found her way to kitchen or closet. It was not easy to find her again and I was afraid that one of these incidents would lead to disaster or that she would be injured when someone picked up a towel or something (she often chose to perch on towels).


Therefore, one brilliant sunny afternoon when over 30 wild monarchs (with properly flat and handsome wings) were sipping at the mums in the side yard, I took Marnie for a walk. I wasn't sure what would happen, but I needed the story to have a happy ending for her very young benefactor. I wasn't planning on bringing her back to the house.


Amazingly, as soon as she felt the sun beating down over the bank of glowing flowers, she lifted off my finger and spiraled off over the lilac bushes. She circled higher and higher until she was out of sight, flapping diligently off toward the river.


She was an insect, (not necessarily even a "she" although anthropomorphically we called her one.) I don't imagine we even existed for her and that her landings on our persons were incidental rather than planned. I rather doubt that she made it to Mexico or lived to reproduce. Those wings probably didn't carry her very far on that late fall afternoon of freedom.



However, we have comfortable and fond memories of sharing the bathroom with a butterfly and an everlasting soft spot for Monarchs just the same.

We did it!

.Danick Dupelle

David Pichette

Emerson Drive...this time in Ebensburg PA******

******which is WAY too far from here for us to go. WAY too far.

****got up at three on Saturday to milk, drove all day (Liz) went to the concert and fair, drove all night (Liz). Got home again at five on Sunday. Milked again. Feel very, very poor. Very poor

Will they do it?

Are the three women of Northview brave enough to hop in the car and go here to see this (scroll to the bottom to see what is on tomorrow afternoon)?
I am not sure but things are leaning that way.

Homeland Security

....and cow feed. You will be (as I was) comforted to learn that the Department of Homeland Security is keeping us safe from cow feed. Yep, I have it on good authority that samples of chopped hay and corn are often flagged for further investigation at the post office level. (Fermented or fermenting feed tends to smell "funny"). Then the folks who are fighting terrorism, cow by cow, can test the samples for themselves. After assuring themselves that the little sample baggies contain only grass and grain they send it along to the nutritional lab for which it was intended in the first place. Then the farmer and the feed company guy get the info they need to balance the daily ration for the cows.

It is always good to know how our tax dollars are being spent....and wonderful as well to feel safe and well-protected from immediate and obvious dangers such as feed samples.

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.