Westland/Hallmark and some happier cows

The animal abuse incidents at this plant have had and will continue to have, far-reaching and ugly effects on the animal livestock industry. When one business allows such transgressions everybody gets a black eye, whether deserved or not.

Thus I was simply tickled pink to find this story central in all the news feeds over the past few days. It puts a better face on agriculture and it is much more the true face than what the HSUS has been putting about about cattlemen and women. Cow water beds have actually been around for years, as have dozens of other kinds of mattresses for cows. A comfortable cow is a functional, productive cow. Thus it is not only kind to make them comfy, but profitable too. There is actually constant intense research done on which beds cows prefer and will use most, as they make more milk lying down than standing up.

We bed with straw (or right now, hay, since our straw guy is out)., but we do have thick rubber mats under some particular cows, which could be described as klutzy and need them. The cows love to be bedded and fluff their own straw up before lying down on it. Our oldest ever cow, Frieland RORAE Ann, who passed away on the farm at just shy of 21 years old, used to stare at me nights....I could feel her eyes just boring into me while I milked, until I ran over and bedded her stall. Then she would lie down with a contented sigh to chew her cud. We always get a big kick out of the way cows communicate with their peons (us). They have the stare of demand down to a science...and you know, after a couple or three decades of living so close to them, I usually can figure out just what they want from me.

Some of them also delight in eating their bedding, which is both hilarious and frustrating. For example old Beausoleil picks her bedding up on her hind leg so she can reach it easily and eats it that way. It is not that she is hungry, as I can toss a chunk of the same old hay up in her manger and she will push it away. It is just a habit she has and there is nothing I can do about it but laugh at her and stay out of the way of that waving leg when I am shaking out her bed.

No more excuses

For lame photography.....



Thank you...you know who you are but I don't know if you want to be unmasked here.


First attempt....it's raining so we are a little limited outdoors, but as soon as the sun shines... I have already been immortalized on television as this hooks up to it....much fun being had here.

Maple season explained

I have been wanting to photograph a wonderful sugar bush we drive through every day, but the road is dangerous and there is no place to pull off. then the boss called me in to see this on TV. This is Steve Savage, "our" maple guy who taps our woods (and lots of others too) and keeps us in sweet, golden syrup. If you have the speed, watch the video. It is pretty cool. If not, the text is pretty explanatory.

What is it with roads and birds anyhow?

Coming home from taking Beck to college, late (in more ways than one) this morning. There is a red truck on the other side of the road, partly off the road and partly in traffic. (We are talking busy state highway here, narrow as heck and cars are flying along at least fifty-five mph.)

The man, bearded like a singer in the Soggy Bottom Boys, (only his is real), and dressed perfectly for the part, gets out of the truck and begins to step out into the road. I slow down and wheel over the object of his interest, which is dead center (quite literally) in my lane.


The thing is what we up here in the Northeast call a partridge, which is more correctly known as a ruffed grouse. As I pass, the man steps into my lane and bends to pick the critter up. Winding out of sight, several curves ahead, I can still see him in my rearview mirror, trying to pry that bird off the pavement.


What's up with that I ask you? Nobody is that hungry.


Maybe he ties flies.....

****Update, Becky had the likely answer to this dilemma. The college has a taxidermy class and they often use reasonably intact road kill for practice subjects. This bird was pretty fresh so.....maybe....

Be careful what you wish for

Driving down to Cobleskill, nearly nine last night. Had to pick Becky up after a late class (when will that girl learn to drive?) Alan was riding along to keep me company and we were enjoying each other thoroughly. He is a nice boy and very aware that his eighteenth birthday is Friday...and that the world will change for him and us real soon. As we passed the spot where Beck and I saw the screech owl the other day, I calmly mentioned, "Gee, we haven't seen any owls tonight. Usually we see a couple."

Not three hundred yards down the road we saw one alright. boy did we see it! It swooped right across the grill of the car, almost over the hood. It was close enough that we instinctively cringed backward and stomped on the floor...me on the brake, him on empty floor mat and an imaginary clutch (he is used to his five speed truck). Despite the fraction of a second that we saw it and the gasp factor, I did get to see what it was. A barred owl, all fluff and stripes. It looked big as a turkey from where I was sitting. If it had extended one feather even an inch it would have touched the car. I like owls, but I will not ask so carelessly again.

Which do you prefer?

Fresh fish on ice?

Or really, really fresh fish under ice?

Yesterday hundreds of geese

Today thousands. This flock took long enough to fly past for Alan and me to stand discussing whether he had time to run inside for the camera. Enough to decide, well maybe. For him to run inside and get it. For me to take dozens of pictures. At least five or six minutes. At least a thousand geese. Probably many more than that.

The Season is in Full Swing

Sweet!

Reaching joy

Winter is prison. I don't care how beautiful it is, it makes me miserable. I get though it by feeding the birds, growing as many plants as I can fit in my windows, on my benches, anywhere I can put them, and by waiting.....

***do click***

For a day like this one. There is still snow, but it is perfect snow...loose granular is the skiers' term I think. It has a satisfyingly sloppy crunch underfoot. Fun to walk in. It is on its way out too, leaving us apace..... Every step you take will be a bare place tomorrow. Every dark thing has its own Easter basket nest too, melted by absorbing rays from a still hidden sun.





Birds are everywhere...avian surround sound.

There be robins. Maelstroms of geese, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds ringing everywhere. Red winged black birds and grackles, blue jays with cheeks so crammed with sunflower seeds that they look deformed when they fly. Thunderous clapping mourning doves...birds everywhere. One flock of Canadas went by this morning, sailing east down the river. I counted...slowly....very slowly...to thirty seconds worth and they were still coming, punctuated by silver gulls that were caught up in their beating flight path.




Because I was on a hill and they were not so very high over the water I was looking straight across at them and could see their wings throbbing, brown, then grey, then brown again, in flickering unison.


There is water everywhere too, rushing toward the river like it might miss it if it didn't hurry. The horse pasture pond is overflowing. As I sit on the old barrel I set here years ago, I can hear the excess softly burbling across the grass despite the racket from the Intersate. It is so clear that if it weren't for reflected light, you couldn't see it.




Can you see the water below?...



Even though it is still winter you can sense the springing up of outdoor things. It is easy to remember why lambs buck and caper and horses gallop and kick just for the fun of it. I feel downright frisky too.

Beginnings

We had a second baby yesterday..... out of Dreamroad Extreme Heather. Sadly he is the first bull calf she has ever had and isn't much bigger than a breadbox. We don't know what the heck to do with him. Anybody need a well-bred Jersey bull? Out of a former reserve champion Jersey, bred by a nationally known herd. By the bull Moment?

It's a girl

Meet Frieland E Cookie Crispy

That is not her mama checking her out but rather Consequence who is also due for a baby pretty soon. She stands next to Crunch, the new mother. Sire is Four-of-a-Kind Eland

And so it is done

Elliot Spitzer has resigned. I spent the morning listening to the news with one ear (no choice, the boss had it on) while writing the Farm Side. Deadline day and as usual I was right up against it. This week it is about the effect this scandal could have on agriculture in the state. The Farm Side BTW is a weekly column about farming (amazing huh?) in our great state. Farming is about as regulated as an industry can get so what happens in government greatly affects everything we do. A late state budget affects everyone who pays taxes. Budget deadline is April 1st. What are the odds that it will be done by then? How many heads of departments will roll under new leadership?

Time will tell how this all plays out, but I am glad at least one aspect is finished.

Just passing through

Snow is softly falling, but like a decade of beads on a rosary a javelin of Canada geese wings over,seeking true north and talking to the tundra.

Mackey Leading out of Safety

I thought that the Iditarod would probably be over when I got up this morning. It is not, but it won't be long now. Mackey is still in the lead going away from the Safety checkpoint, but Jeff King is hot on his heels. King has kept his team intact at 16 dogs through most of the race up until now, which is quite a handling feat, but now that they are on the ice he dropped two. Probably by the time we are done milking it will be history....a very exciting race this year and we much enjoyed it.


A few complaints about the new website though. Someone was looking to make money off race followers and if you were a non-paying customer the site was frustratingly hard to navigate. Lots of fascinating anecdotes to be read on the blogs, but when you wanted standings you had to click all over the place. In the end I missed the old stand-alone Cabela's site. The official site when it was stand alone was a pain in the neck and the new one seems to fit that description as well. I expect by next year they will work the bugs out, but if they don't I will use the newspapers for info.

More on the Westland/Hallmark case

This comes from the New York Times, a surprising source for such a balanced discussion. Of course as you might surmise from yesterday's post, the Times has been surprising New Yorker's rather often this week. The author is of the opinion that in light of independent audits by companies, such as McDonald's it is unlikely that such abuse is widespread.

Spitzer resigning...maybe

News reports from all over say that the governor of NY, Elliot Sptizer, may resign tomorrow.
Never liked the man. Never, never, never.
When he was attorney general it was clear that he was running for governor, rather than attending to the state's legal business. I used to use Attorney General's office publications for research for the Farm Side. When he took office most of them vanished from publication.
Although he has been a fairly good man as far as helping farmers goes, his policies in relation to almost everything else have appalled me. I was just thinking today as I read Windy Ridge's comment on gun control measures planned for New York under the current administration that the worst thing that has happened to the state in years was George Pataki's appendicitis. That was before I learned about this.
Today is the first time in over thirty years that I heard my dad give his rebel yell (over the phone). I think he is happy about the news.

Dark

It is. Still. The clock says six, but my brain says five. Everyone is asleep except Liz, who already left for her new job/internship and me, who got up early to see her off. We would normally be milking by now, but everybody is tired and cranky from the stupid time change...so I haven't called anyone yet. It isn't tanker day, Liz already checked the springers (cows close to having calves) and the cows won't care because they are still on Eastern Standard time. Let the poor souls, both bovine and human catch an extra half hour. It isn't going to hurt a thing. Liz is talking about sleeping when she comes home between milkings for her midday break and I am going to encourage her to....she is already weary with four months to go.


We sure have a mess of cows due to calve and have already calved four I think. Probably closest is my Crunch cow (her mother's name was Cookie, by a bull named Plushanski Thor Cutter, so how could I not). Crunch nearly died as a two-year old when she got into the manger in the heifer barn and fell down with her head turned under her. We missed her at about dark that day and went in to find a nightmare. She probably weighed 1100 pounds and was wild as an eagle, stuck down and thrashing wildly. During the course of getting her up Liz got dragged around the barn and Alan took a beating too. With some of us pulling her on a rope halter and someone holding her tail to balance her so she could stand we got her on her feet and walked her outside. As soon as we let her go she went right back in and fell again. We made her comfortable and let her stay there. It took weeks of hand carrying water and feed to her and helping her to her feet every day, but the kids, (mostly Becky and Alan doing the hauling) saved her. She is due now for her second calf and bred to Four-of-a-Kind Eland. I am grateful to the all kids for their hard work back then, getting her out and keeping her going. Cookie was my all time favorite cow and I lost her to a clostridial infection and then her only other daughter, Cedar, was electrocuted. I still have Cookie's sister, Eland and her niece, Egrec, but I would really have hated to lose Crunch.


When the whole affair was over, Crunch had a couple of ropey scars on her legs where she cut herself but she was tame. We figure she turned wild as a calf because the anesthetic for having her horns removed didn't work quite right. She was fine and tame up until she was dehorned and got up the next morning hating us all. (We have our veterinarian dehorn the calves; they receive both general and local anesthetic for the operation...horned cattle are dangerous to themselves, their herdmates and us working in close quarters with them as we do.) Now, she is a sweetheart and was top milker on the farm two months last year. I would love to get a heifer calf, but I will settle for getting her through calving in good shape.


Besides Crunch, we have Liz's baby Jersey, Hazel, her old Jersey show cow, that was reserve champion Jersey at the fair, Heather, Egrec, Mento, (both mine) and others I can't think of this early in the morning.... all gearing up to have calves. So far most of them have been calving during the day, which is a nice bonus...hope they continue in that style.


Sorry about rambling, but I am just not quite awake yet.

**Update, the boss just got up and turned on the news to find that the Cumberland Farms store just across the river from us was robbed yesterday. That is too close...just too close.... maybe a mile and two tenths from the bottom of our driveway. And they wonder why we want to stay armed and able to protect ourselves from stuff like that. Since 911 sent vast numbers of folks moving north from the big city, a veritable crime wave has followed right in their footsteps. Used to be mostly in Schenectady and Albany, but now our banks are being robbed and our stores hit right close to home. Dang.

The Time Change

(I could have added an adjective or two in there, but this is a family friendly place.)
We time changed this morning...got up an hour early to milk and the cows looked at us as if we were nuts. They were still lying down in their comfy beds and didn't even want to stand up. They love routine and hate anything that changes it. Last week I was asked in a newsletter how farmers feel about changing time. Anything that disrupts routines disrupts cows and makes things harder....so I don't like changing in either direction. As to why we at Northview don't just ignore the change and stay on the same schedule year round...in a word (or maybe two) the milk truck. He comes at 8 AM. We have to be done by then. If we just stayed on Daylight Savings we would always be done before 8, but meetings and such would just kill us. I do not understand the rationale behind changing and would like to stay on Daylight Savings year around. Sarpy Sam has some good points on the issue today too....oh, I was reading blogs and see that Linda does too.

Yesterday one of Liz's heifers had a little bull calf (which was a disappointment...she really wanted a heifer). Interestingly though, he was red, which proves that his mother is a red carrier, even though she herself is plain black and white. She was sired by the RC bull at Select Sires, Kenyon, but her dam has never had a red calf. When I looked at him trotting around the barn in his little calf coat this morning I wondered aloud, "How many of these do you think are alive in the world today?"

Not because he was red or a bull, but because he is a son of Citation-R Maple, a bull that has been dead for a very long time. It would be interesting to know just how many of them there are today. Not many I'll bet.

Morning off

Saturday isn't Sunday. However, with Liz away most days for her internship the family schedule of mornings off...Saturday for her, the younger fry and me on Sunday (the boss does not desire and will not take one) has been torn asunder. I didn't think we were going to get one at all any more. However, Liz was given this day off from her new job since she has to work a whole, straight week next week because her boss is going away.

Therefore she gave me and her sibs this morning off and she is taking the afternoon milking to catch up on sleep. I am having a happy time, reading everyone's blogs, and saying hello and doing not one single useful work thing. It is great.
Thanks kiddo!!!

Woke up this morning to a cacophonous din of assorted blackbirds in the honey locust. Two days ago I hadn't seen a single RWBB, now there are thousands. Grackles too. Two days ago there was no bird song....just dozy winter twittering (except for the cardinal, which would sing through a blizzard). Now there are house finches caroling their little purple hearts out and gold finches nattering away, plus all the uproar from the blackbirds.



So many geese, all Canada's so far, are winging over that you start to lose count at two hundred or so....per flock.

I guess we can safely say that spring has sprung,,,and although the grass has yet to riz, I sure know where dem boidies is .

*** footnote. I was searching for the well-known short poem about grass and boidies and discovered that there is much controversy over who wrote it. Everyone learned it in school back in the day and it was then attributed to Ogden Nash right there in the text books...However, now it is attributed to many others as well. I wonder......
Here are some great Nash poems, including another on spring.

Rose quartz

As you may have guessed...Becky has no classes today so I get to play on the computer instead of driving all day. Here are some photos of one of my larger pieces of rose quartz. Dad and I collected these perhaps thirty years ago on a mountain up near the Sacandaga Reservoir. They are amazing! This one is roughly 11"x 3 1/2" x 6 1/2 ". (Do click if you have time...)