Here is why I hate corn pickers

This poor man amputated his own arm after getting it caught in a farm implement, which then caught on fire. Our corn picker sits up in one of our fields abandoned because it was too darned dangerous to run...

Rainy days and Mondays

Today is both. There is a fine scrim of ice on every bit of ground, which makes walking a challenge. The milk tanker didn't show up this morning and we are hoping he isn't off the road somewhere.

Yesterday was certainly something. First Nick and Wally got into a discussion through the kennel fence and woke me up way too early for a morning off. Then Alan set out to skin and cut up that nice little buck he got. To his dismay something was terribly wrong with it. Every bit of meat was full of holes and blood clots, essentially ruining it. What a shame! We figure that any one of four scenarios is possible.
1) It got policed in a fight with a much larger buck, which did an amazing amount of damage.
2) Hit by a car.
3) EHD
4) (Most likely in my opinion) Some idiot loaded it full of turkey shot thinking they could kill it with a bird load.

Whatever happened, we won't be eating it.

Then the kid brought down the Christmas tree (I use the term loosely). Last year he got us this tree. We teased him about it but we liked it. I expected something similar this year when he suggested getting another, so I said, "Yeah, go ahead."

About an hour later he dragged this thing in the house.

It is over ten feet high and set up it reaches half way across the living room (you can see how wide that is in the shotgun pellet pictures below.) I am not sure quite what to think of it, but looking on the bright side, there will be room for every single one of my many and various Christmas ornaments on it.... For all of Grandma Peggy's too.... And for all the ones that have been languishing in boxes in the attic for a decade or six.

Half decorated

Wow.....

13 Degrees This Morning

***Late this afternoon Daniel Boone got another deer, a small six-point buck. He was just climbing up into his tree stand with his gun already on the rope (and of course, unloaded-there has already been one death in NY involving a tree stand ladder and a loaded gun) when it walked by. He said it was quite a scurry to get down from the stand, untie and load the 20-gauge. Then he missed it completely. It obligingly gave him a second chance. Another head shot.

Hunting safely

These are our living room windows. We love the view. We don't love the shotgun pellet holes. The glass is very thick and we have been told it would be absurdly expensive to replace so the reminder of someone's vandalism and foolhardiness remains with us. This was done before the folks bought this half of the farm back in '62.

Taking mandatory NAIS to a whole new level.

Here is the story of a farmer who defied NAIS, so the state came in and RFID tagged his cows under a court order. (What part of voluntary did they miss?State troopers enforcing ear tagging rules? Good grief!) Although I do think we need TB testing, I have to say that I admire Greg Niewendorp for standing up to the government on mandatory RFID tags.

Here is a group that wants to make it easier for farmers to direct market to the public without jumping through all the hoops that government has put in front of small operators. I have mixed emotions about some of this, as we do pasteurize milk for a reason, but still it is interesting. We know of several small turkey farms around here that were utterly defeated in their efforts to supply folks with tasty, home-grown turkeys, because state regulations mandated separate stainless steel pans for every turkey and dozens of other rules intended more to stifle small players than to make meat safer.

Happy Thanksgiving

To everyone! This is my favorite holiday. It is all about family, friends and sharing....rather than parties and getting stuff. I like it!


****Photo by Liz, right out on the lawn

Twas the day before.....

Dish washing, yam boiling, celery chopping, pie crust all over the table, onions blending their fragrance (pungently) with that of the three gifted kittens in crates in the kitchen. Liz went down to Gordie and Marie's yesterday and brought home two short haired calicoes and a long-haired black and white tom. Can you imagine a farm running out of barn cats? Me neither, but we only have four old cats and the two little yellow ones I got at Wal*Mart last year left. (Speaking of the scents of Thanksgiving preparations, I just remembered why I don't like cats in the house. Yowsa, tomorrow will be better on that front I hope.)

Liz is cooking the dinner this year (she did last year too because I had the flu) but I helped with the shopping and am helping with the clean up. We hit the stores at 6:30 this morning to miss the crowds and it worked out well. However, we had a touch of excitement on the way home. We were just leaving Johnstown when something black banged off the windshield leaving behind a mark. It made an incredibly loud CRACK sound and scared the heck out of both of us. At first I thought it was a rock from someone's tire and I looked around for a truck or car, which might have thrown it. There was nobody there! Liz thinks it was a spent bullet and I suspect that she may be right.We were right next to an abandoned farm. We didn't need any coffee after that I can tell you!

Would you believe kids over at school were really giving her a hard time yesterday because she is doing the cooking? I don't mind a bit doing it myself. However, she asked a couple of weeks ago if it was all right if she did it. The kids all learned to cook partly from their late grandmother, some from me and some from my mom. They all like to. However, her buddies think it is cruel that we are letting her undertake such a big meal. She says if she had been born just a couple of generations ago she would be married by now and cooking for her own family and doesn't care what they think.

Gee, I'm glad she's not (married and cooking for somebody else I mean). It is nice to lean back and watch someone else doing all the chopping and rolling and boiling. However, it is back to the salt mines for me I guess....well, actually, the kitchen sink. I am waiting for the woodstove to get some more water hot for me and then I will tackle more of those darned dishes.

A little randomness

Grandpa's gold finches

Blue jay inspecting the lawn for errant sunflower seeds

Oh, deer

The final rule

Explained

The link above will take you to a question and answer page on the new rules for importing cattle from Canada to the USA. The USDA will now allow animals born after 1999 to be imported for beef and breeding purposes, plus allowing many more categories of beef products and by products. The coming weeks market-wise should be very interesting, as usually allowing more imports from Canada is rough on cull cow prices here in the US. The final rule also allows many more dairy animals to be imported, usually resulting in excess milk production and lower farm gate milk prices. This time, however, the Canadian Loonie is very strong vs. the American dollar. Things may not be as bad for US farmers as they have been in other years when the border is open (although conservative estimates point to 600,000 head coming south in the next year.)

I am not holding my breath anyhow. The border opens today and we already took a $400 hit on one heifer we sold last week....evidently buyers are planning on higher supplies and lower prices. (We were getting $1200 and got $800 instead for a breeding age Holstein heifer.) Farmers in Canada are already hurting too, due to the divergence between the currencies. I don't pretend to know what will happen in the next few months in either the beef or dairy markets....other than that food giants like Tyson and Dean Foods will prosper and we farmers won't get rich selling our products to them.

We will be

Processing venison today

Blissful joy, a morning off

I didn't see this today....this was actually taken yesterday.

As close as the kid got

Our one winged warrior

Is mostly back to work now. His shoulder will probably never be the same as there are muscles detatched from the bone that are not going to grow back. However, he is a typical tough farmer and just keeps going and going. He managed to get all the corn chopped and finished up Thursday. You can see in this picture from last week that his right arm doesn't work too well, but he gets things done some how...(he is bringing me firewood in this picture, bless his heart.)

Farming is different from most jobs in that respect. There are a finite number of people to do work that is absolutely unforgiving. Cows must eat, drink and be milked. The stove must have wood. Things have been kind of ugly....cows don't get bedded or stables cleaned until late afternoon and I do most of the former. Not so neat and tidy as it might be, but they have something to lie on at night anyhow. One side of the stable manure has been piled outside under the chute for weeks....that will get cleaned up pretty quick now that he doesn't have to try to chop acres and acres of corn with one arm and worn out equipment. Just yesterday, Liz and I helped him get all the fans out of the barn, move calves, change calf collars, build stalls, clean mangers and a half dozen other jobs that have gone begging until we had enough help and time to do them.

Now we have to rebuild the sawdust shed for yearling calf housing, tear out half of the old calf tie up and put in the new headlocks so we can catch the yearling heifers to breed them...oh, and get some Amish in to patch the roof if we can... rebuild the pig housing....get the five bred heifers and two dry cows down off the hill ....and on, and on, and on..etc.....

I am awful glad to have him done with corn and able to help in the barn all day....you just can't imagine how glad.

On another note, today is opening day South, deer season. Cows are all staying in the barn except the seven out on the heifer pasture hill and they have a lot of feed down here to keep them busy and close to the barn. Show heifers are locked in the barn yard. Horses are in the barn.....and my son is somewhere out on Seven County Hill with a twenty gauge and a dream.
I forgot to have him borrow a cell phone from one of his sisters, so I will worry and worry.
I trust him.
It is the poachers who will have by passed our no trespassing signs I worry about. The ones who hunt in full cammo and take sound shots and can't tell a deer from a billy goat or a Jersey cow. It is an insult to call them hunters. They are just idiots. I hope he doesn't meet any.

Still more company

I glanced out at the garden pond yesterday to see an odd creature leaping futilely against the side of it. It was the right size for a sparrow or chipmunk, but it just didn't look right somehow. I grabbed the camera and ran out in the rain to find this guy trying to get in out of the weather. I think it would normally have been an easy hop for so big a green frog, but it was COLD and he was kind of floppy. I took his picture and then gave him a helping hand over the side into the rain-dimpled water. He stroked swiftly to the bottom and vanished under a cinder block.

I just bought a brand new heater, so he should have a comfy place to hibernate this winter, along with the two itty bitty greenies and one large, fat leopard that are already there.

Deer on the side lawn

The kids got up to find this little guy munching on the raspberry vines at the edge of the lawn a couple of days ago. (I missed the whole show due to being over in the barn milking the cows, but I guess he hung around for quite a while.)


The video was taken through the living room window. ....the white blur when Liz pans the camera down to the bird bath is a hole made by some idiot's shot gun pellet some years ago....there are around fifty of them there. Notice that although he looks at the house quite often, he never flags his tail in fear. Notice also the amazing camouflage. The second he walks into the golden rod and wild roses along the horse pasture fence he vanishes. I think he spends a lot of time hanging around the house, actually...partly because of the hoof prints under the window and partly because SOMEBODY is eating all my lettuce.

***It could also be that he has read the game syllabus and knows that opening day of the southern deer season is Saturday and figures it is safer next to the house.

A real meme

Cathy, of Looking Up, who seems to be one of the nicest bloggers I have ever "met" (she toots her car horn when she goes by the farm with her family on their way to the coast) presented this nifty meme today. I want to play too.

Here are the rules:

"The first three people to comment here and then post the same message on their blogs will receive a small (real, not virtual) present from me!"

According to Cathy, these presents may be as small as a bit of foliage from the garden and it may take a while for them to arrive, but this just seems like fun. I have things, small, neat, things, which we dug from the ground or found or grew. I would be happy to share some of them. Good luck

***Update...C'mon, you know you want to play..leave a comment and I will send you a small good thing...really....

Dog Song

No, not the Gary Paulsen book of the same title (although it is a good one, if not funny like Wood Song).

This is an actual dog song I stumbled upon on MySpace. I can't remember how I became friends with the fellow who wrote and sings it, but I was clicking along yesterday, hit his profile, and it began to play. I stopped clicking...frozen...listening. (If you aren't a dog person don't bother.)
But if you are you will get it...and it will get you I promise.


The girls got it when I played it for them when they came home from school last night. (Mike got some big hugs I can tell you.) The only way I could figure out to link to it is to put it on my MySpace page....so go there, click on the music player and listen to "Stay," by Joe Hash.
It is the perfect anthem for all the old dogs out there, past and present, and all the dog folks who love them.

***(There are some fine dogs whose folks have links over in the side bar, such as Feather and Flounder, Lucky,
Shasta, Cubby, Sugar, Fat Buddy
plus
Dog blogs, blogs with dogs,
this is by no means all the dogs and dog folks, but you get the idea)

Do they know something we don't know?

Liz and I visited this farm up in Stone Arabia Saturday in order to purchase some straw for cow bedding. (The straw was terrible..stiff with mold, dusty, smelly and hard to shake out. We won't be going back.) The farm worker who loaded the truck spoke very little English...at first. Then when he saw that the old lady who came in to order and pay for the straw was accompanied by a kind of cute young blond, he perked up considerably. So did his command of the language.

After each bale he leaped out of the mow with tremendous enthusiasm, hitting the truck bed with a resounding thump. He would stuff the bale into the load, wink at Liz, and then hop back into the mow. In no time we were loaded and ready to roll. If I were going back I would take her along every time....great service and he was a really nice kid!

Anyhow, just above this field of corn stubble a mass of perhaps 200 snow buntings whirled like a flock of black birds. It was easy to see that they weren't though; their size and the flashing of bright, white wings made them unmistakable. I was quite surprised to see them, although that farm usually offers a few horned larks and other birds of the wide open spaces. It is very early for sb's to show up here, as you can see from the range map on the link above. Even on the Christmas bird count we have only seen a few over the years. However, there they were on a pleasant, sunny 50-degree day, taking to the air over the corn and seeming to enjoy it....So I ask again, do they know something we don't?

The finest things in life

Are sometimes round and crunchy.
(Imagine, every bite a cold, crisp explosion of sweet, tangy juice)
(Imagine dozens of them)
(Mine all mine)
(Well, sort of)

We ran down to Pines yesterday, since Bellinger's is closed for the season (Alan says he heard that they ran out of apples), and bought a whole bushel of apples.
28 bucks! (Worth every penny, but, dang!)

This is an apple household, make no mistake about it. We love 'em. We eat 'em. The photo above is the already much marauded-upon basket of fruit that we bought. See all the empty spots? These apples only came home at noon yesterday and already they are vanishing like Houdini.

We chose a mixture of Golden Delicious, Ida Reds, and both red and green Northern Spies. We are making our way through the Delicious first as they are not the best keepers. I turned control of the green Spies over to Liz, as they are my favorite for pies and she is the best pie baker (cakes are Becky's thing). The hard, crisp winter keepers, the Spies and Ida Reds, will mostly find their way into Apple Snacks, my favorite winter breakfast (or lunch, as far as it goes.) I am having one now.....ahhh........

A Coyote explains

A Coyote at the Dog Show offers his take on the blog readability tool. Works for me.