Back to normal

Starting this past Saturday, we got ourselves back on a semi-normal schedule of time off for the cheap help. (The best Sunday morning I have had in a month.) Starting yesterday the boss and I began doing weekday morning milking and chores without any help.

It has gone amazingly well. The boss lost a huge percentage of the mobility of his right arm and a good portion of its strength when he fell. Still he manages to milk the north string and the three cows-from-Hell in the west line, because I am afraid of them. If I absolutely have to, I can milk Hooter, who would like to step on my head or kick me to kingdom come. Ditto Drive, who has the added feature of being a really BIG cow who flat out doesn't like me. However, I have managed to reach this ripe old age having never, ever, put the milker on Soir Noir (who should be called Coeur Noir in my humble opinion). I am hoping to keep both my record and my brains intact. They don't give him much trouble, except Hooter, who is a typical Jersey pain in the neck.

I am very grateful that he is back, even partly. You don't appreciate what someone else does until they don't do it any more and you have to. I have always taken for granted being able to leave the barn when milking was done. Now I have to stay until every last little tidbit of work is done, setting up the washers, putting in the soap, milking the bucket cows, every bit of it. I miss the good old days when those were his jobs and I took care of last minute supper preparations or tossing wood in the stove, and taking care of dogs and such....but at least he can milk so the girls don't have to before(and after) college. That was rough on them and I am glad it is behind them.

They are closing the river down and opening the locks early this year, because supposedly they are running out of water. The bigs boats are scurrying south while they still can.

The sumacs remind me of the ghosts of British soldiers, standing in scarlet ranks and waving at us as we pass.

Source of e coli contamination in Topps recall found

And, whaddayaknow! It was imported beef......

"FSIS officials said that late last week the CFIA provided FSIS with PFGE patterns, or DNA fingerprints, from tests of beef trim from a Canadian firm, Ranchers Beef, Ltd., which supplied trim to Elizabeth, N.J.-based Topps. Although Ranchers Beef, located in Balzac, Alberta, ceased operations Aug. 15, some product remained in storage and was collected and tested by CFIA as part of the joint investigation of the Topps recall and as part of its own investigation into 45 illnesses in Canada from E. coli."


As you can see the Alberta plant where the contamination originated had shut down before the recall was even instituted, but USDA delisted them anyhow. Talk about an empty gesture.

Here is the rest of what they are doing about it.

"On Oct. 23, FSIS announced new initiatives to protect public health against the risk of E. coli O157:H7, including expanded testing, including testing of imported trim at the border. On Oct. 19, FSIS notified countries that export beef to the U.S. of new policies and programs, and is working with them to ensure they implement the same or equivalent measures to protect the public from E. coli risks. On Oct. 4, FSIS publicly outlined the timeline of the Topps recall, the preliminary findings from its investigation of the Topps recall, actions already taken by the agency and further steps to reduce E. coli 0157:H7. "

Another story on the topic.

My stomach hurts from laughing so hard

If you want to share my pain, go watch this video
(I think this lady knew my mom...and since I became my mom several years ago......)

HT to Kim Komando

A new site and an interesting story

I received an email from AgWeb today announcing new features for their online publications. One of these is a whole page of agriculture-related blogs, from which I gleaned this story from NYT, I will have to file it under Hmmm, as it makes me say hmmm. This is perhaps because I love steak and potatoes, cookies, potato chips and any number of supposedly deadly foods.

Anyhow, I am going to put the AgWeb blogs link right over in the sidebar, because I think I will be reading them often. People often ask the boss where I get the ideas for the Farm Side. The long and short of it is off the Internet, except when I am writing about the travails of feeding pigs when the pig owner is out of commission. Then they come straight from real life at Northview.

The Honey locust

....is sending its leaves flickering down like yellow confetti at a tree party

Who knew

That the United States had a serious foot and mouth disease scare this summer?

This story proved something something many of the serious farm and ranch bloggers have been saying all along. We don't need NAIS. The pigs in question were imported from Canada, but were still promptly traced to their source, even though they were commingled with a number of others in a slaughterhouse.

The barn blackboard

Revisited

***Note the bandage on the right wing...guess where we got that idea.


I took these photos of Alan's and my time wasting efforts yesterday morning and yesterday afternoon some darned cow erased most of them as she walked by...good timing I guess.

The shelter dog controversy

On a number of the doggy blogs I read I have been following the controversy over shelter dogs and intrusive inspections by shelter personnel. etc. (You have certainly heard of the flak over Ellen DeGerneris' dog). This story offered an aspect that startled me. We are importing dogs to adopt out from our shelters from other countries. They are serving as vectors for foreign diseases. What!?! I thought our shelters were overrun. Why do we need dogs from other countries?

The story raised the issue of the canine version of rabies, which was recently eliminated here (dogs still get other kinds of rabies, such as bat rabies). I might add, what about foot and mouth disease? Dogs can't get it but animals other than hoofed creatures, including people, can carry it. One incident would devastate the American farm economy and the fall out from that would hit everybody in the nation. Lots of critters would die too. You would be staggered by how many animals would have to be killed if that disease were accidentally (or intentionally) imported here. A little common sense would be appreciated by me at least.

"It's a ticking time bomb," said Patti Strand, president of the National Animal Interest Alliance, a group that represents breeders, pet shop owners and others interested in animal welfare. "We've spent fortunes and decades eradicating many of these diseases, and they may be reintroduced."

A ticking moab if you ask me.

Falling revisited

Of course

It is important that we attend the interment of my dear uncle's ashes today. He passed away a couple of weeks ago and I want to be there. I need to be there. The kids feel the same.

So, of course, Boston showed up at the barn this morning trying unsuccessfully to have a calf. One of our best cows....naturally. Liz checked her and the calf's head was back, so she turned it. The boss checked Boston and thought maybe Liz has it right now. We gave the cow a bottle of calcium to tune up her uterus and get things going.

Maybe.

So now we wait. And hope she gets the job done so we can all go. At least I will go with a kid or two but it would be nice if the calf came so we could all go.

Meanwhile I took a picture of the old cat, Stormy, looking wistfully at the back end of all those birds yesterday (no she didn't catch any...she hasn't caught anything much in years being a very old cat. I just thought she looked funny sitting in the bird bath dreaming.)



And of a little spider on the watercress in the garden pond. I thought she was something the birds had deposited, but a closer look revealed her hungry, well-camouflaged little self.



*****Update, Liz just came in from the barn. It's a heifer (YAY) and barring complications we can go where we need to. I am thankful indeed.

The Birds

This morning the long lawn, just outside the living room window, looked (and sounded) like a scene from a certain Hitchcock movie, which scared me so bad when I was a little kid that I hid under Grandma Lachmayer's dining room table. Now her table graces my dining room and I am not worried a bit about this mixed flock of red winged blackbirds and a few other odds and ends, such as blue jays, getting in through the doors. Heck, I am not even worried about them pooping on ...er, repainting...my car (the girls took it to school today). However, it was quite attention-getting to have so many noisy birds swirling around the window.



They hung around for a while, picking something out of the goldenrod and sumac bushes, then flew across the old horse pasture to a dead elm tree where they loomed over the neighbor's cornfield, planning today's raid. Yesterday thousands of them rolled over in undulating flocks that took long minutes to fly over. Oddly they were flying west.
I wonder if they know something we don't.



***And I have lovely (well, sort of lovely, I took them through a none too clean window) photos, to add to this post, but Blogger is bogging down in the photo upload department again, so I guess those will have to wait.

******Update, they finally loaded, but you have to click to see all the birds.

Help me

I'm

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Instant pick me up

I was kind of dragging this morning. Heck, I admit it. I was REALLY dragging this morning. Got through milking somehow and came in to this desk to finish up the Farm Side as today is deadline. Despite my usual enjoyment of that job it was looking like just another chore this time. It took me ten minutes just to proofread the first paragraph. Then on my monitor I found the upper note. Nice...a real make my day kind of treat.

A considerable time later ( I am simply not on my game) I found the other note low down on the side of the computer itself. It was accompanied by chocolate. Frozen chocolate. (You can see it below the notes.) Need I say more? I am happy now. Bring on the deadlines...I can lick 'em all.


Thanks Beck, I love you too!

Big processors at work

Hood buys smaller company.

Daybreak

It happens quite often. (And usually I am there to see it.) Only during the longest days of June does the sun make it up before I do and even then it is still low in the sky. This has nothing to do with any particular virtue and everything to do with being a dairy farmer and morning person. Dawn is the finest time of day and I like to see what it brings.

This day brought an exceptional one. (Despite the fact that I only got quick peek out the barn door). When we went to work the sky was clear as mountain water. (The grass was about that wet too.) Orion was wheeling overhead, bright as winter and almost as cold. It was exceedingly dark except for the starlight and about as quiet as it ever gets.

Then, about the time I was taking the milker off Mango to switch it onto Bubbles, a sharp, clear, golden light appeared toward the east. It made a bright band across the tree-lined horizon and seemed to unlock the colors from the night. Black sky changed magically to a liquid midnight blue, edged with silver and turquoise. The stars were like holes in dark paper, letting bright light shine through like tiny spotlights. The dead elm in the creek stretched skeletal branches toward the sun, as if warming fingers that were ever cold. It was breathtaking, (could have just been the cold, but I thought it was the sky).

I watched for a second then turned back to my job. Milking machines wait for no man (or woman) and cows have little patience with dreamers. By the time I stopped to look out again, the sun was all the way up, the sky was a cold white-blue and it was time to turn the cows outside and feed the pigs. (Which is a whole 'nother story, which you can read in the Farm Side this Friday if you are so inclined. ...and have a buck as the paper is still a pay site.)

It was a beautiful daybreak though, a nice side benefit to working where there is little to block the sky and the air is clear enough to let it shine through.

Baxter Black on animal activists

Thanks to the Center for Consumer Freedom, without which I would not have read this.

Light

OMG

This happened in our bird count territory. HT to wonderful cousin as we don't get this newspaper. Read the whole story as it is spine tingling. It's a bear of a tale.

We have been fed again

And very well too! I thank our benefactor. Good stuff

Yesterday

Lot #1

Some friends of ours sold their cows after a lifetime of farming with purebred Holsteins. Health was the issue I guess. When the auctioneer asked them to speak to the crowd, they simply couldn't. I was almost in tears too, because I had a pretty good idea of how they felt. So many years, such beloved animals, and in a couple of hours it would all be gone. We know the auctioneers quite well after years of attending sales and now and then buying a calf or two....they were Dave Rama of the Cattle Exchange and the dean of pedigree readers in the Holstein world, Horace Backus. They spoke very highly of this farm couple and I have never seen them work as hard to get the money out of the cows. Usually auctioneers sell as fast as they can to get people bidding impulsively, but these guys announced right at the start that they were going to take as long as it took on every cow, until they brought what they thought they should.

Horace Backus

They were fantastic cattle, with real deep pedigrees, .... lots of old fashioned sires like Paclamar Astronaut and Paclamar Bootmaker up close. It was a pleasure to see them as we have done a lot of the same kind of breeding over the years. Just sold our last Astronaut a couple years ago and I milk a daughter of one of our Elevations. My favorite yesterday was an excellent 90 Encore daughter and her own daughter. ....great big, deep-bodied black cows with an obvious will to milk.


I would have loved to have bought one, had I the money or the facilities to keep animals of that caliber..we really don't have either. Our barn is probably a couple of hundred years old and we are real hard pressed to house big cows. Mandy has to have a special stall and she barely fits in it. Anyhow, I felt pretty bad for them, but there was a crowd of the top Holstein folks in the region there for a chance to buy their cows. I think that says a lot about how very well respected they are and what a great job they have done at breeding a top quality herd. We had to leave pretty early as our own cows had to be fed, but I hope they did well enough on the sale to take some of the pain out of seeing the cows go down the road. I wish them the best anyhow.