I thought that this story of a southern farm family's struggle to stay in the dairy industry was interesting.
Monday, December 10, 2007
Sunday, December 09, 2007
Indoor Lettuce
I planted a flower pot full today. Not much will make it to the table, as I can't walk past and not pick a leaf, but even a little is a wonder on a sandwich up here in the frozen north in the middle of the winter. I grew some in a cooler last year and we ate it for months. I use two mixes from Pinetree Garden seeds, winter lettuce mix and lettuce mix. I love the different shapes and colors of leaves that you end up with.
I am contemplating starting small flower pots of it and giving them as Christmas gifts to beloved folks who are impossible to shop for. Is this a good plan do you think?
Saturday, December 08, 2007
Road trip
Just a short one...over to Altamont yesterday to pick up a beef we had processed. (Came out surprisingly good too, for an unfattened Holstein heifer).Roads were pretty bad, as it is really cold for so early in the year and spitting snow all the time.
We saw these Canada geese on the way home and stopped to take pictures. The silly things just walked away down the cornfield, even though I was quite close to them. Sure are a lot of them around for so late in the year. I see hundreds almost every day.
On the way home we ran along the river for a while. What a melting pot of water fowl lined the banks, littered the rocks and crowded every little left-over pool. Great black backed gulls, ring bills and herrings, millions of mallards, Canada geese, mergansers, plus hordes of crows. There were literally thousands of them.
Friday, December 07, 2007
Missing
Last week, against the wishes of certain people, (such as me and the girls) certain other people (who shall remain nameless) let the heifers back out on the hill. We had just gotten them in for Pete's sake, but they were tearing the wires off the tractor and getting in the way of feeding and barn cleaning. He brought them back down nights, but let them out days. Problem was there is a Jersey in the bunch who looks just like a deer (still deer season) and a springer that was ready to pop any day.
Of course the springer had her baby way out by the pond. And of course they couldn't bring her down because it couldn't walk and she was on the prod and yadda-yadda-yadda.
There are times you just keep your mouth shut and hope for the best, which, sadly, was not what we got.
Of course she came down without the baby. And of course when the kids and I went out to get it in off the icy fields it was gone. And of course there were calf tracks leading out of the pasture, through the fence, across two fields and down into a ravine. Of course they tapered off and vanished. Of course there were six sets of coyote tracks following them at a run, all the way from the cow pasture to the ravine. We let the mother out to look for it in case it was hidden, but she just wandered around mooing for it, with no luck at the actual finding part.
Alan kept taking relays of fresh flash lights out and tracking, but he just couldn't pick up the trail again where it disappeared in the ravine. He searched half the night to no avail. We looked for three days before we finally gave up and accepted that the coyotes must have taken it and dragged it away. They have gotten calves before, but I felt especially bad this time, because if only the mother had been left at the barn we could have gotten it in safely. Easily. I knew the boss felt bad too, although he would never say so, because if anybody mentioned it he just walked away.
Then night before last, I heard a little cry when I was walking over to milk. I couldn't tell if it came from the barn or down where the boss was down letting the heifers back into the barnyard from where they had been out on the hill. I thought to myself that it would be so wonderful if the baby had somehow survived and found the heifer herd, but I knew better. The last tracks were so far from the pasture, it had been three days, it is so cold and coyotes are so relentless.
I went in the barn and started setting up with a heavy heart. I just couldn't get the baby off my mind. The animals are our responsibility in this world and I can't help but take it seriously. Even though I had nothing to do with putting the mother back out in the field, I felt a deep guilt over it.
Then came the Christmas miracle. The boss walked in the door with a furry little black critter trotting at his heels. Somehow that baby had escaped the coyotes, found her way back across a good half mile of unfamiliar terrain, and followed the heifers to the barn. A little later she latched right onto a bottle of milk and wagged her tail with what looked to me like sheer joy at being warm and fed. She had never seen a person, but she just loved folks from that first second. She even climbed out of the pen where we put her so she could watch the boss work on the feed cart yesterday. He said she stood there right beside him staring at the motor he was working on, so close he could feel her breath on his hands. I guess he is forgiven, because if she can, she follows him like a dog.
We rarely keep Milking Shorthorn Holstein cross calves as we have a registered herd. However, the first thing the boss said, after I got over the tears of joy that she was found was, "She stays, she earned it."
Her name is Toots.
Of course the springer had her baby way out by the pond. And of course they couldn't bring her down because it couldn't walk and she was on the prod and yadda-yadda-yadda.
There are times you just keep your mouth shut and hope for the best, which, sadly, was not what we got.
Of course she came down without the baby. And of course when the kids and I went out to get it in off the icy fields it was gone. And of course there were calf tracks leading out of the pasture, through the fence, across two fields and down into a ravine. Of course they tapered off and vanished. Of course there were six sets of coyote tracks following them at a run, all the way from the cow pasture to the ravine. We let the mother out to look for it in case it was hidden, but she just wandered around mooing for it, with no luck at the actual finding part.
Alan kept taking relays of fresh flash lights out and tracking, but he just couldn't pick up the trail again where it disappeared in the ravine. He searched half the night to no avail. We looked for three days before we finally gave up and accepted that the coyotes must have taken it and dragged it away. They have gotten calves before, but I felt especially bad this time, because if only the mother had been left at the barn we could have gotten it in safely. Easily. I knew the boss felt bad too, although he would never say so, because if anybody mentioned it he just walked away.
Then night before last, I heard a little cry when I was walking over to milk. I couldn't tell if it came from the barn or down where the boss was down letting the heifers back into the barnyard from where they had been out on the hill. I thought to myself that it would be so wonderful if the baby had somehow survived and found the heifer herd, but I knew better. The last tracks were so far from the pasture, it had been three days, it is so cold and coyotes are so relentless.
I went in the barn and started setting up with a heavy heart. I just couldn't get the baby off my mind. The animals are our responsibility in this world and I can't help but take it seriously. Even though I had nothing to do with putting the mother back out in the field, I felt a deep guilt over it.
Then came the Christmas miracle. The boss walked in the door with a furry little black critter trotting at his heels. Somehow that baby had escaped the coyotes, found her way back across a good half mile of unfamiliar terrain, and followed the heifers to the barn. A little later she latched right onto a bottle of milk and wagged her tail with what looked to me like sheer joy at being warm and fed. She had never seen a person, but she just loved folks from that first second. She even climbed out of the pen where we put her so she could watch the boss work on the feed cart yesterday. He said she stood there right beside him staring at the motor he was working on, so close he could feel her breath on his hands. I guess he is forgiven, because if she can, she follows him like a dog.
We rarely keep Milking Shorthorn Holstein cross calves as we have a registered herd. However, the first thing the boss said, after I got over the tears of joy that she was found was, "She stays, she earned it."
Her name is Toots.
Thursday, December 06, 2007
The ice one
Me zero
I was helping the boss drive the heifers out of the barnyard this morning, so the milk truck doesn't have to wait for the gate to be opened. I was carrying my empty coffee cup, four bags of wet cow washcloths and a fiber glass sorting stick. I took a step.
And crashed flat on my back on the icy hill, banging my head a good one and wrenching at least one arm. He said I was talking but my eyes were open and not looking like anyone was home.
All I can say is, the ice won. Bah.
I was helping the boss drive the heifers out of the barnyard this morning, so the milk truck doesn't have to wait for the gate to be opened. I was carrying my empty coffee cup, four bags of wet cow washcloths and a fiber glass sorting stick. I took a step.
And crashed flat on my back on the icy hill, banging my head a good one and wrenching at least one arm. He said I was talking but my eyes were open and not looking like anyone was home.
All I can say is, the ice won. Bah.
Wednesday, December 05, 2007
Snow stories
This morning the boss and I got to regaling Alan with stories of winters we experienced as children and young adults. The years between the time I was about fifteen (and he nineteen) and the time I turned 28-ish included some staggering winters. There was a spell when I was living in one town and milking cows for a farm in another when the weather had to be experienced to be believed.
I had to be at work every day at five AM, so I left home around 4:30. That winter we had nearly a month when temps never got above twenty and at least a week of nights that reached thirty below. I drove a little Volkswagen station wagon sort of thing. It was an early example of front wheel drive and would go anywhere you pointed it. It was also a typical VW so the heater was dead. We used a little catalytic space heater to "warm" (warm being a relative term, resembling the comparison of scale of perhaps Vesuvius and a cigarette lighter, with "warm" being the lighter and comfortable being the volcano) it up and defrost the windows.
I would go out every morning at four or so and light the darned thing (with a match-it had an open, circular "wick" which was quite exposed), then go back inside for more coffee. If I propped it on the seat just so, it would sort of thaw a hole in the frost on the windshield so I could drive to work. It wasn't exactly ideal, but there isn't a lot of traffic at that time of day anyhow. I never missed a milking.
Then there was the blizzard that hit when I was living in the camp in Caroga Lake. (No insulation, one layer of simple board walls-it was a SUMMER camp after all). I don't remember exact weather statistics, but I probably was commuting to the same farm (I worked there a long time before I met the boss). During the night we got feet and feet and feet of snow, howling winds, temps way below zero...it was like living in Alaska. The little sheet steel wood stove in the living room (sole heat source) was a joke in the face of such weather. We didn't have running water though, so there was really nothing to freeze but us. Sometime during the maelstrom, while all occupants slumbered (including dogs) the front door of the cabin blew open. When we awoke in the morning we had to shovel two feet of snow out of the living room. (And you wonder why I refuse to get all excited about global warming.) At that point we accepted an invitation from some friends who had an apartment in the city and stayed with them for a few days.
The boss's stories of winter wildness included taking water upstairs at night so he could have a drink if he was thirsty and finding it frozen in the morning. Icy winds howling through the walls. Snow that the biggest tractor on the farm couldn't get into, let alone out of.
I have other memories of driving that same VW with that same stupid heater to that same job in an ice storm. There was simply no way the car could go on the roads themselves, which were like a long, black hockey rink. Still I had to go to work, as I loved my job and my employer's cows needed to be milked. So I put one tire on the snow bank and crept off to Johnstown where 150 Holsteins awaited. Never missed a milking then either.
We were nuts. We drove bad cars (I had one that you had to park on a hill to start and a truck with two leaky tires, which I swapped twice a day to get to and from work-I could change tires better then any girl I knew) and lived in frighteningly primative places. However, we were young, intrepid and didn't really know any better. And it was a real good preparation for marrying a dairy farmer. I fit right in from the day I got here.
I had to be at work every day at five AM, so I left home around 4:30. That winter we had nearly a month when temps never got above twenty and at least a week of nights that reached thirty below. I drove a little Volkswagen station wagon sort of thing. It was an early example of front wheel drive and would go anywhere you pointed it. It was also a typical VW so the heater was dead. We used a little catalytic space heater to "warm" (warm being a relative term, resembling the comparison of scale of perhaps Vesuvius and a cigarette lighter, with "warm" being the lighter and comfortable being the volcano) it up and defrost the windows.
I would go out every morning at four or so and light the darned thing (with a match-it had an open, circular "wick" which was quite exposed), then go back inside for more coffee. If I propped it on the seat just so, it would sort of thaw a hole in the frost on the windshield so I could drive to work. It wasn't exactly ideal, but there isn't a lot of traffic at that time of day anyhow. I never missed a milking.
Then there was the blizzard that hit when I was living in the camp in Caroga Lake. (No insulation, one layer of simple board walls-it was a SUMMER camp after all). I don't remember exact weather statistics, but I probably was commuting to the same farm (I worked there a long time before I met the boss). During the night we got feet and feet and feet of snow, howling winds, temps way below zero...it was like living in Alaska. The little sheet steel wood stove in the living room (sole heat source) was a joke in the face of such weather. We didn't have running water though, so there was really nothing to freeze but us. Sometime during the maelstrom, while all occupants slumbered (including dogs) the front door of the cabin blew open. When we awoke in the morning we had to shovel two feet of snow out of the living room. (And you wonder why I refuse to get all excited about global warming.) At that point we accepted an invitation from some friends who had an apartment in the city and stayed with them for a few days.
The boss's stories of winter wildness included taking water upstairs at night so he could have a drink if he was thirsty and finding it frozen in the morning. Icy winds howling through the walls. Snow that the biggest tractor on the farm couldn't get into, let alone out of.
I have other memories of driving that same VW with that same stupid heater to that same job in an ice storm. There was simply no way the car could go on the roads themselves, which were like a long, black hockey rink. Still I had to go to work, as I loved my job and my employer's cows needed to be milked. So I put one tire on the snow bank and crept off to Johnstown where 150 Holsteins awaited. Never missed a milking then either.
We were nuts. We drove bad cars (I had one that you had to park on a hill to start and a truck with two leaky tires, which I swapped twice a day to get to and from work-I could change tires better then any girl I knew) and lived in frighteningly primative places. However, we were young, intrepid and didn't really know any better. And it was a real good preparation for marrying a dairy farmer. I fit right in from the day I got here.
Tuesday, December 04, 2007
Meme from NYCO
This probably won't be much fun if you live down south, but NYCO cooked up a pretty good meme for those of us that live in the snowy regions.
Here it is, straight from NYCO with my answers below:
"Winter Questions:
Here it is, straight from NYCO with my answers below:
"Winter Questions:
I haven’t ever done the “blog meme” thing before (i.e., “Friday Five,” five questions that everyone is supposed to blog about on Friday - it’s a friendly way of getting blog traffic to circulate) but here’s some winter questions and answers. Feel free to tackle these questions on your own blog, and I will add a link to your post.
1. What’s the winter tool you can’t do without?
2. The winter tool you could do without (i.e., find unnecessary or silly)?
3. Your favorite music to listen to when stuck in the house in a snowstorm?
4. The winter sound you least like to hear?
5. Your driveway shoveling pattern: vertical (up and down)? horizontal (pushing from side to side)? Or any which way?"
Answers from Northview:
1) The Frothingham Free Library
2) Roof rake (our roof is about thirty feet high-at the bottom)
4) The wind thumping and banging my bedroom wall and slapping the bird feeders around.
5) I hope and pray that my driveway is "shoveled" by a man with a skid steer. If not I rely on 4-wheel drive or hibernation.
Your turn-how do you handle the interminable days of winter?
***Update
Mrs. Mecomber and
Breezey have played too!
Loping Loubob as well!
Monday, December 03, 2007
Oh, kitchen, my kitchen
The fearful week (and four days) is done
Noses have weathered all attacks, the prize we sought is won
The smell is gone, the air is clear, and mama is exalting
While follow foods that are not tainted, the odor gone a faring
But heart, oh heart,
The grief that I have taken
While in the barn the kittens whine
Ousted from inside
Oh, kitchen, my kitchen, I am glad to have you back sir
Rise up, for you the cats evicted, for you the mom rejoicing
***to make things perfectly clear.....eleven days ago, Liz was given three cute (well two cute and one Hellcat) kittens by a dear friend of the family. They are more teen aged cats than kittens and for those long and miserable days they have lived in dog crates in my kitchen. Let me tell you, three cats in the kitchen smell...well, they smell real, real bad. No matter how often their little boxes are cleaned. Today they were exiled to their new home in the horse barn and I am a very happy camper. Very happy. Very, very happy.
However, Liz is not happy and thinks that I am mean as a box of rattlesnakes left on a hot sidewalk too long. Even so, it is nice to be able to breathe again.
(They only got to stay in as long as they did because the Hellcat one bit our friend and we needed to make sure she didn't have rabies.)
HT to Walt Whitman, who said it so much better.
Noses have weathered all attacks, the prize we sought is won
The smell is gone, the air is clear, and mama is exalting
While follow foods that are not tainted, the odor gone a faring
But heart, oh heart,
The grief that I have taken
While in the barn the kittens whine
Ousted from inside
Oh, kitchen, my kitchen, I am glad to have you back sir
Rise up, for you the cats evicted, for you the mom rejoicing
***to make things perfectly clear.....eleven days ago, Liz was given three cute (well two cute and one Hellcat) kittens by a dear friend of the family. They are more teen aged cats than kittens and for those long and miserable days they have lived in dog crates in my kitchen. Let me tell you, three cats in the kitchen smell...well, they smell real, real bad. No matter how often their little boxes are cleaned. Today they were exiled to their new home in the horse barn and I am a very happy camper. Very happy. Very, very happy.
However, Liz is not happy and thinks that I am mean as a box of rattlesnakes left on a hot sidewalk too long. Even so, it is nice to be able to breathe again.
(They only got to stay in as long as they did because the Hellcat one bit our friend and we needed to make sure she didn't have rabies.)
HT to Walt Whitman, who said it so much better.
Sunday, December 02, 2007
Winter wonder-land (or why can't the calendar get it right?)
According to the calendar, winter arrives in this hemisphere on or somewhere around the 21st of December, close to the old Julian calendar solstice.
That same calendar is ALWAYS wrong and has been every single year of my life. Winter up here begins WAY before the 25th and ends when it gets good and ready. Believe it or not, we had frost the 8th of June this year, the latest I have ever seen. (There was ONE year, back when my brother was still in the service, when we had the oats planted by the end of March and all the fence built too, but it was such an aberation we are still talking about it.)
Wikipedia says this, "Winter is one of the four seasons of temperate zones. Almost all English-language calendars, going by astronomy, state that winter begins on the winter solstice, and ends on the spring equinox. Calculated more by the weather, it begins and ends earlier and is the season with the shortest days and the lowest temperatures. Either way, it generally has cold weather and, especially in the higher latitudes, snow and ice."
Say what you will about Wikipedia, they got that one right. In fact, it looks as if winter is throwing its snow hook our way starting about noon today. (Oh, joy.) Not to mention its ice. Rain. Sleet. Freezing rain. High winds.
I think I will hibernate.
Or, alternately, I will betake myself off to the grocery store for some dog food as we are out, and have five (count 'em, five), bottomless canine consumers, warn up the homemade soup from last night's dinner for the human contingent and pray for school closings, which will send the company of helpful and entertaining young adults my way tomorrow.
***Stormy day update, file under unbelievable: the tank driver mentioned in the post below turned the dial on the bulk tank washer backwards AGAIN today and broke it (these things are like a washing machine dial and can't be turned backwards. He has been picking up milk for decades and knows better). Last time he did it it cost us six hundred bucks to fix. Eventually we got part of that paid for by the trucking company. I doubt we will get them to do anything this time. The boss is so mad he is fit to spit.
That same calendar is ALWAYS wrong and has been every single year of my life. Winter up here begins WAY before the 25th and ends when it gets good and ready. Believe it or not, we had frost the 8th of June this year, the latest I have ever seen. (There was ONE year, back when my brother was still in the service, when we had the oats planted by the end of March and all the fence built too, but it was such an aberation we are still talking about it.)
Wikipedia says this, "Winter is one of the four seasons of temperate zones. Almost all English-language calendars, going by astronomy, state that winter begins on the winter solstice, and ends on the spring equinox. Calculated more by the weather, it begins and ends earlier and is the season with the shortest days and the lowest temperatures. Either way, it generally has cold weather and, especially in the higher latitudes, snow and ice."
Say what you will about Wikipedia, they got that one right. In fact, it looks as if winter is throwing its snow hook our way starting about noon today. (Oh, joy.) Not to mention its ice. Rain. Sleet. Freezing rain. High winds.
I think I will hibernate.
Or, alternately, I will betake myself off to the grocery store for some dog food as we are out, and have five (count 'em, five), bottomless canine consumers, warn up the homemade soup from last night's dinner for the human contingent and pray for school closings, which will send the company of helpful and entertaining young adults my way tomorrow.
***Stormy day update, file under unbelievable: the tank driver mentioned in the post below turned the dial on the bulk tank washer backwards AGAIN today and broke it (these things are like a washing machine dial and can't be turned backwards. He has been picking up milk for decades and knows better). Last time he did it it cost us six hundred bucks to fix. Eventually we got part of that paid for by the trucking company. I doubt we will get them to do anything this time. The boss is so mad he is fit to spit.
Saturday, December 01, 2007
Troy Stanley or Lee Eisneberg
All afternoon yesterday we listened to the hostage drama at a Clinton campaign office in New Hampshire. (The girls called me as they were leaving college, or I wouldn't even have known about it as the boss and I were busy battening down the hatches.)
All afternoon yesterday Fox called the alleged perpetrator Troy Stanley. This morning when I sat down to read the news headlines they are calling the guy Lee Eisenberg.. So which was it? And did he really only have road flares? And who is Troy Stanley? Is he upset over the apparent misidentification? Or is one just an alias for the other? Just wondering.....
***Update, a commenter has answered these questions in the comment section.
All afternoon yesterday Fox called the alleged perpetrator Troy Stanley. This morning when I sat down to read the news headlines they are calling the guy Lee Eisenberg.. So which was it? And did he really only have road flares? And who is Troy Stanley? Is he upset over the apparent misidentification? Or is one just an alias for the other? Just wondering.....
***Update, a commenter has answered these questions in the comment section.
Friday, November 30, 2007
Busy, busy
*The milking machines waiting to be washed after milking yesterday*
*The path to the orchard, made by Becky and Jack, but used by me in my woodquests*
*The wimpy wood I find*
Thursday, November 29, 2007
Northview girls
Frosting...the heifers are in from the hill
Liquorice ...(I think)
Mandy
Bama Breeze***Notice that only Bama and Mandy still have ear tags, and all Mandy has is her official USDA tag (required for shows). They ALL had tags like Bama's when they went to pasture. The National Animal ID System, NAIS, will rely on ear tags to trace animals to their source.....what a wonderfully reliable system they are planning.
A couple (or three) links
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
Too good to be true
I don't think I have said too much about our ongoing situation with our milk truck driver. It has been just one of those things. Way back in the spring our regular guy got hurt and a substitute began to pick up the milk. (The milk truck picks up every other day here at Northview, which is pretty much the norm for all but the largest farms.)
We always got along wonderfully with our regular driver and his son-in-law, who was his relief driver. They were the kind of guys who glanced in the barn now and then and if they saw something amiss, they dealt with it. For example we left one day to go to the farm show in Syracuse. Chores were done and everything was ship shape when we left. We thought. However, Dale took a look in the barn and there were little twin heifers behind old Zinnia, who had calved early. He knew we were away and put them up in front of their mama where they were safe. It wasn't his job, but he took care of it anyhow.
Dale always picked us up at 9:30 in the morning. It was no problem to be done by then. (It takes at least a couple of hours to feed grain, set up the milkers and to actually milk the cows. By the time you factor in actually getting up, getting dressed, making coffee, letting the dogs out and walking to the barn, you have to get up pretty darned early even to be done and the milk cooled by then.)
At first the new guy did the same. We missed Dale, but what could we do? Then he started showing up at 8:30. Then 7:30. Now we were running into difficulties. The milk was still warm when he was pumping it into the truck. (Illegal and wrong.) Still, it was summer and with the kids home we could be done milking by then. So, of course, he backed it up to 6:30. Terrific. Sometimes if we have mechanical problems or a calf to pull, that is when we START! We were starting earlier and earlier and still not being done before he came in. It was pretty frustrating.
We couldn't wait to milk until after he picked up either. Before we can milk again after milk is picked up the tank has to be washed. It takes an hour, which made us too late to milk 12 hours later at night. There were any number of other issues, such as him hooking up the hose to the tank before the milk was measured, breaking the tank washer, and the milk being warm so we got high bacteria counts that we didn't deserve. Still, we soldiered along and compromised at being done at 7:30. He still pulled in at 6:45, but everybody just put up with it all.
Then Monday he didn't show up. He had been promising for six months or so that he would be done driving the first of December since he has a winter job. When another guy picked us up at 9:30 we were absolutely ecstatic. We practically handed out cigars. We figured he had quit early and we could go back to our normal milking hours of 6 or so in the morning and 5:30 at night (which is when we have been milking anyhow, stretching the days out very l-o-o-o-o-n-g.) Happy, happy, happy!
However, just as we were getting ready to put the milkers on at 6:37 this morning, we heard the rumble of the tanker truck down below the gate. We had to shut down, let him draw off the milk, and wash the tank, before we could milk. It put us hours behind and I felt like kicking the wall!
Seems he couldn't get up the driveway Monday because of the ice, so Tyler got the milk. (This is another issue if he keeps driving since the boss can't add another task, sanding the driveway, to our already crowded race to get done before he gets here.)
Woe is me!
Tuesday, November 27, 2007
Joni's idea
Was to show off some of her favorite Christmas ornaments. Seemed like a great plan, so here are a few of mine. I'd love to see yours too, hint, hint....
Not so wild horses
Made by my mom
Naturally
Not so wild horses
Made by my mom
Naturally
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
