Road trip

A little hazy riding south ....

Sometimes a road trip can be a wild ride to Pennsylvania to see Emerson Drive in concert because once just isn't enough.

Nicely framed

Other times it is just the weekly Friday run down to Cobleskill to take Becky to college and run over to Wally World for dog food and boots for our farm boy.

Russet oaks carpet this hill

The former is wildly exciting, off-the-charts-different for me and the girls. The second can be a pretty nice journey as well, what with dozens of migrating red tailed hawks perched on trees along the roadsides everywhere. I have never seen so many in one day before. There was even one on a telephone wire (yes wire, not pole, I don't know how he did it), and great blue herons, golden poplars, fox-red oaks and stunning mountain and valley views that change every mile.

One of my favorite swamps on Corbin Hill Road

Either way, we love our road trips (except that they are getting obscenely expensive, causing me to eagerly anticipate December when they get out of college for winter break.)



The piece de resistance for me...a good quarter mile of winterberry holly, lining the road on both sides. I wish it wasn't out in such deep swamp water, because I would snag a couple of branches for the house if I didn't have to swim to get it.

Okay, which is it?

TFS Magnum posted this fun test the other day. You can use it to discover what reading level is required to understand your blog.

I ran my three through it just for the heck of it. It was kind of startling to discover that Northview is written at the elementary school level. (Geez Louise, I thought I was a little more erudite than that.) However, I do have an excuse for writing for the underage set. Years of writing the Farm Side with an older version of Word, which measured the grade level of a written document, schooled me to make things as simple as possible. I want it readable, so people can get through it fast. (I miss that feature, which isn't inlcuded in the version I use now....and I get complaints about complicated articles too.)

Still...elementary! I was humbled. After all, I'm not Watson. Then I ran Garden Records and the View at Northview through it. Both registered Genius level. What the heck? I could see Garden Records, which has passages from Charles Thurwood's 1874 farm diary, turning out that way. They require a little deciphering......but The View is a photo blog for Pete's sake. Even the dog can read it. I am still confused.

Have a go at it anyhow and let me know how you wind up. It really is kind of fun, even if it is puzzling too.

Scouting bucks

The boy just bought a new barrel for his 500 6-shot Mossberg pump 12-gauge. He bent the original barrel when he was nearly struck by lightning while turkey hunting, (he threw it, ran and rolled when he felt his hair standing up straight) just weeks after he bought it after saving his money for a whole year. The new one is a 24", rifled barrel, ported, with a Bushnell Sportsman 3-9 by 32 scope. He is hoping that poachers don't beat him to the buck he saw last week, which, from the photo he took through my binoculars, looks like a pony with antlers. It amazes me how big deer get on a corn and alfalfa diet.

Alphecca had an interesting post today linking to a TU article about Chuck Schumer wanting to gain more hunter access to farm land. He wants to throw twenty million of federal money into that project. Good manners and attention to safety on the part of hunters would probably help more. The fellows who come in and shoot all the deer before hunting season and tag them as being shot up north where it is open make problems for the honest guys. It gets to the point where you would rather have deer and turkeys eat a third of your crops than let some of the maniacs from the city hunt your ground. We can grow more crops, but the guy who ordered Alan off our own fields at gunpoint two years ago caused a lot of other hunters to see posted signs when they hit our boundaries. Then there are the three kids from our local town who were apprehended while RUNNING after a deer, while shooting at it....right where the guys were working. Sad

When do the meaningful inspections start?

More recalls


The more you read about the stuff we are importing, the worse the situation looks. I for one, am scrutinizing the labels on everything from boxes of cereal to bottles of shampoo. But how do you know where the stuff actually origninated when they have changed the way they write the labels? Istead of saying, "Made in the USA", they say assembled by so and so in the USA? From what? From where?

This stuff is labeled for ages four and up. Unreal.

Shivering now

After a balmy October punctuated by just a few frosts, November is living up to its reputation. It is cold. It is windy. Yesterday when the boss was up in Johnstown picking up some heifer headlocks he bought it snowed. Excuse the shaky fingers, but the picture above is what this morning's "sunrise" looked like. (It seemed more like the backdrop for a Gothic romance than a sunrise to me).

So, of course last night the fire went out. I dragged poor Alan out of bed early to try to get it going, but the water temp was only 105 when we came in from milking. That does not translate into balmy indoor temperatures. I was up against the Farm Side deadline, so I really wanted to write rather than play Daniel Boone. However, you can't type when your fingers are shaking and you can't think during an environmentally induced brain freeze (with no ice cream in sight.) Therefore I hauled myself and a big stack of Country Folks, Lancaster Farming and assorted other newspapers, oh, and a box of matches, out to the stove in the yard. There I found, much as I expected, that the reason that we are cold is that we are burning huge, round, blocks of green maple. (I suspect it has something to do with certain people being busy chopping corn, but it is still absurdly cold inside). Unsplit, wet wood is about as easy to light as a pile of snow and gives off just about as much heat.

With a little help from the boss I got the sadly-smoldering, super-sized rounds of soggy wood close enough together to be kissin' cousins at least, piled on some shredded paper and waited. And waited.
He went off to feed the cows, while I watched not much happening. The thermometer crept up to 113, which is a long, long way from the stove's optimal operating temperature of 187. The wood kinda, sorta gave off a few anemic wisps of cool, yellow flame, but a conflagration it was not.

I was irked, not to put too fine a point on it, as I do like to make deadline and thus money. The Farm Side is sort of the meat and potatoes of my writing efforts (with Northview Diary being the gravy, the frosting on the cake, and a whole lot of fun). I make a serious effort to get a column in every week. This wood stove induced slow-motion frenzy of cold-fingered misery was not much of an asset to my work related goals.

Finally I went hunting small wood. There really isn't much left around the stove, as having to build frequent fires is not exactly a new issue. (I wonder if I could get frequent fire miles?) At first my efforts came up empty.

However, just behind the stove is an estimable pear tree, which weights itself down with fat, magical pears almost every summer. That sweet specimen of arboreal splendor had my interests at heart yet again. During last night's thundering November winds it dropped, not one, but two, gnarled, twisted, knotty branches. These branches were dry, crispy, and small enough for me to break up for kindling. Within a mere matter of minutes my fire was jumping and I was back inside at the computer typing, still with my hat and coat on, but with functional fingers and brain (or at least as much as usual anyhow).



Thank you pear tree. You look great in spring, you provide treats in summer, and you help us keep warm when the cold winds blow. What a friend!

Ap-pear-ent success!

Overwhelming voter turnout

NOT

The boss and I just voted in this not-much-going-on off year election. I surprised by how few had gone before us. He was number 45 and I was number 46. Granted this is a small town. Granted the Supreme Court justice is the only really big office on the ballot. But still......

Gender select

You can choose whether you end up with a heifer or a bull with this technology, but it has its drawbacks. I won't get into them here, but you can read about them in the article. Or here. We have been thinking about buying some gender select Fustead Emory Blitz-ET (Blitz has produced one million units to date) to breed Liz's cow, Junie. Liz has two daughters of Blitz from her show cow, Mandy, and they are quite nice. Junie is a pretty good cow ( we won't discuss her temperament, which is a whole 'nother story), but she has never had a heifer calf. She doesn't exactly fit the recommended parameters for using the stuff, having put her heifer days well behind her, but the boss has a phenomenal conception rate in AI. If anybody can get this thing done, he will. I am not sure just how I feel about volunteering to reproduce Junie, but.....

This is so neat

I am sure every Blogger blogger in the known world (except me) already knew that they have a cool little site called Blogger Play where you can see all the photos that are being uploaded to blogs around the world. In real time! However, in my usual slow to catch up fashion I just stumbled on it yesterday.

And was enthralled. This morning in quick succession I saw bunches of bananas, cute little boys, gorgeous sea coasts, knitting, snow and new lab puppies. I just know I am going to waste all kinds of time looking at it....

I watched, but I didn't see this picture of the northern sky go by.

A cow's life

Partly because many folks are far removed from farm life, and partly because every farm is different, I get a lot of questions about how the cows here live. With that in mind I thought I would tell you about a day in the life of an average cow here at Northview Dairy.

Let's use Beausoleil because she is a real middle-of-the-road, ordinary girl (and a family favorite.) In summer her day would begin somewhere out on the pasture hill, where she and her herdmates at some unseen signal would start down to the barn.

This time of year she wakes up when the light goes on shortly after five AM. I suspect she doesn't mind her human alarm clock because she is about to get roughly a scoop and a half of Pennfield 20% protein grain. While she and her pals are eating, someone is pulling the milking machines down from the wash in place system and setting them up for milking. By the time the grain is mostly gone, people are washing cows' udders, three at a time on two sides of the barn, with a spray solution of Clorox and water and a clean, individual washcloth for each cow. The teats are carefully dried and the milkers attached. While those six are milking the next six are "prepped". As the milk flow stops, the milking person removes the machine and sprays each teat with Fight Bac, which is darned good stuff I can tell you. The pre-washing, careful drying, and disinfectant at the end of milking each cow helps assure you, our customer, clean, healthy milk. It also helps keep mastitis infection at bay for wonderful Beausoleil and her buddies.

Between cows on our farm each milking machine "claw" gets dipped in sanitizing solution too. We take cleanliness and udder health very seriously here. Two cows (Fitty and Aretha) whose milk is not good enough to sell (by our standards at least) are milked last and the milk is fed to our pigs and our beef steer, Hermie.

When everybody is milked, the calves fed, and the pipeline and machine washer set up, Beausoleil and her pals are let out of their stalls to go to pasture for the day. She is an old cow and waits for the impetuous youngsters to crowd out the door before she strolls calmly outside. Out on the hill she will find two feeder wagons full of ensiled corn and grass haylage, which the cows eat at will until late afternoon. Then they generally head down to the barn.They usually come in on their own, wanting to be milked again and to get a second feeding of that tasty grain. We feed a mixture of pellets and steam flaked corn, which the cows simply love. When the door is opened they crowd inside and hustle to their individual stalls, eager to eat theirs before the neighbors reach over and gobble it it up.

Then morning chores are repeated, washing, milking, calves and all, plus bedding is put in each stall if no one found time during the day. Last thing at night, before the cheap help heads for the house, baled hay is put down for all the animals. This keeps them busy at night with something to chew on and tunes their tummies up for the morning grain feeding. Beausoleil is usually one of the first to lie down in her bed to chew her cud and sleep until the light goes again on in the morning.

Life is a simple routine for the cattle, the same activities repeated day after day because that is how they like their lives, as boring as possible. Come winter, they will get most of their food in the barn because of the weather, and sometimes will stay in all day (they can't walk on ice too well). Most days though, they get a period of time out in the yard for exercise. In summer, they are only inside at milking time, spending their days and nights out in the pasture.

There you have it, lifestyles of the rich and ruminating.

So sad

The poor man who was mauled by the beef cow last week died. If any of the local news entities saw fit to mention it, I didn't see it. Had it been the other way around we would have read headlines for the next two years. Channel 9 News is still anguished over the theft of three pit bull puppies from the humane society even though they have been returned. My heart goes out to his extensive family. He was a lifelong farmer from Berne.

Why I don't mind

(Click for a better look)

Driving Becky down to school now and then.

Note the pile of books on the right.
(Ignore the pile of bills in the center...I am)
Notice instead, the bright, beautiful day.
The glorious rural scenery; a handsome farm is framed in my windshield, there where I wait in the visitor's lot. There are cows on that hill and ducks and geese in the creek along the bottom....Check out the comfortable cab of my (nasty-gas-sucking) SUV (which gets up the driveway, which chances to be my main concern in vehicular virtue).

Trees changing all gold and russet. Green pastures, late alfalfa, and burnished corn fields, row on row. Aspens glowing against the dark evergreens. Hills and valleys set in sharp relief by the rays of the low -lying sun. Every inky shadow a counterpoint to some shining thing in that brilliant spotlight.

Add good music in the CD player and good company both ways and the ride and the reading time make a nice change from my usual days....still I DO wish that girl would get her driver's license.

Strange visitor

Yesterday ...considering the season that is. Today I suspect she is submerged in the garden pond, shivering like the rest of us.

Liz is off to

This great adventure

What do you say

To a dog who turns thirteen on Halloween?

Why, Happy Birthday, Mike, of course.

Bad things happen

Yesterday the boss took a couple of cull cows over to the auction in Central Bridge.
Finally.
We had planned on selling them along with a couple of excess heifers as long possible before the Canadian border opens to imports of beef and dairy cattle of all ages (November 19th). We figure that prices will drop then, and judging by how some of the futures markets are acting, they probably will. Anyhow, the day we were going to send them originally was the 25th of September, the day the boss broke his shoulder. Then the brakes went out on the pick up (luckily without a loaded trailer behind it) so there was even more delay.

We had a bit of a rodeo loading them, as they are both wild ones (that's the main reason they were making the one-way trip as we will make allowances for gentle cattle). I was a nervous wreck, worrying that he would get bumped and set himself back again, but we eventually got them on the trailer. He drove over to the sale barn with them to find out that this had just happened. We still don't know who was hurt, but it really troubled me that Liz had to go over there for her AI lab last night. I fret about her working around all those wild and crazy cattle anyhow, and knowing that something like this had happened earlier...well, it just bothered me. The auction was still going on because of the days disruptions, even late in the evening when the class convened. I was awful glad to hear my car pull in last night (her truck is getting a new computer just now). I hope the man who was attacked comes along all right. This was just an awful thing to happen.

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