Stuff

We have lots of white-crowned sparrows. They are amazingly tame! (Wrote that wrong the first time, which is what comes of blogging before coffee.)

And Alan's big brother took him to a ball game this weekend (ballgame photos by Alan, who took the little camera along)

I think he said that is the new Yankee stadium above

Gold finch afternoon

Just for fun

Here is part of a Farm Side column, which ran back in January of 2001. It is still true as far as I can tell. I have never done this before, but I thought that it might be fun.

There’s One in Every Barn. Light Foot Lucy, I mean. She’s a six or seven year old cow who has parked in the same stall and been milked twice a day every day, 305 or more days a year since she was two years old. But just try walking into her stall without announcing your presence with a “Hey, girl” or, “Easy girl”. She will jet propel you into the next decade on the end of her hoof. It will hurt. It doesn’t matter if you just stepped out from beside her after putting the milker on her next stall neighbor. Step back in beside her without announcing yourself and–wham- you’re outta there. She also has very ticklish teats and gives a tap dancing demo every time you prep her. Chances are she’s allergic to the stable shovel too and indicates her displeasure by kicking it whenever you scrape off behind her. However, animals like her invariably give too much milk for you want to sell them and they always have their yearly calf, so they linger forever. Everybody on the farm is relieved when they take their yearly “dry period” vacation. Hey, cows get six weeks off every year-it’s written right in their contract. I wish I had someone negotiating a deal like that for me.
Then there’s Feed Flinging Frieda. Frieda is always another high producer. At least she doesn’t kick. Instead she eats continuously and always has an itchy backside. Since she is so busy filling her face, she has no time to reach around and lick her itchy spots. So she throws food at them. Only a cow would imagine that chucking a mouthful of haylage on her back would alleviate that troublesome itch.
Our current flinger’s name is Silverwing. You can spot her from the other end of the aisle. First of all, there is nearly always a cloud of feed seething behind her as she grabs a bite, swings her head at her back and then grabs another bite. If you miss that part of the performance, the four-inch pile of hay on her rump is a dead give away. She looks like a walking haystack. Her manger is always bare first, since most of her dinner is on her back, in the gutter or down your neck. We just love her.

Another favorite of mine is Cathy Crowder. Cows of her persuasion stand politely against the far side of their stall to let you in to work. They then wait until you’re bent over prepping their neighbor to discover a succulent nibble of feed in the manger on the other side. They forget all about your presence, swing their massive ribs or rump against you, squashing your tender anatomy onto the stall divider. If you squeal, slap at them or (heaven forbid) swear emphatically, they panic and jump up and down. After all, they totally forgot that you were there, so your reaction comes as a complete surprise. You haven’t lived until you have been crushed by a bouncing creature that weighs over half a ton. If you’re really stupid like I am and always react by swearing or slapping, you learn to crawl through the front of the stall into the manger real well. Sure can’t get out the back. It must be quite a treat to see a fat, ungainly woman squirt out from between the stalls like toothpaste out of a stepped on tube. Nobody dares to laugh though. They know Mommy better than that.
The Grass is Greener Gertie is only a problem in the summer. There could be grass up to her elbows, a feed wagon full of green chop, a cool, clear pond and several shade trees available right there in the pasture for her lounging and feeding pleasure. She would still rather find her way over, under, around or through the fence to find something unique to eat. Her great, great grandmother is undoubtedly responsible for the old saying.
Then there’s Plain Old Polly. She’s not an All American, nor does she give one hundred pounds a day. Day in and day out she moves over, stands still, renders up her daily portion of the milk check, and stays clean - on the right side of the fence no less. When the 4-H leader or the guy from the bull stud strolls through the barn, looking for stars of the show ring, she is passed unnoticed. The vet doesn’t pick her our as too fat or two thin. She never gets mastitis or gets loose in the stable at night to run around stomping calves and gobbling up all the grain. Every year she has a calf, often a heifer, who grows up and follows the same path. I wish we had a hundred like her. Actually, most of the cows in the barn fall into the Plain Old Polly class, but rest assured it’s the Frieda’s and the Lucy’s and the Cathy’s and the Gertie’s that get your attention.

Morning hush

After the weekend we had it was kind of nice to step back into our normal routine. I guess Fonda is open for business again but Jing's family's building is mostly gone. When we were kids we used to walk past it and make faces, which were reflected back by the polished black marble store front (long gone). In those days it was Maze's Hotel, and housed a bar and restaurant. They made pretty good steak back then.


We will sure miss the Chinese restaurant. We only bought Chinese maybe once every other month, but still, four of us are downright fond of egg rolls and wantons and such (the boss has other tastes). I hope maybe the folks who ran the place can start up again. There are several decent vacant restaurant buildings in the two towns. (Lots of vacant buildings period...not exactly a boom town or towns.) Maybe one of them will suit.


I have been eagerly awaiting the return of the white-crowned sparrows. However, it seemed as if they were kind of late this year. Then this morning their calls were ringing all over the backyard and a couple were fighting under the bird feeder. They love to nest in the box elders and I love to hear and see them. The cat bird is back too. I think it is the same sorta tame one that lived in the yard last year. I was walking over to work yesterday and he came right out of the bushes to talk to me.

Name The Calf...

It's actually Liz posting this. But Mommy said it was okay. I'm doing a 'Name the Calf Contest' over on Buckin' Junction. This one is a black heifer calf in desperate need of a "D" name. And I am plumb out of ideas!

What a night

The boss and I went to bed early last night. We were kind of tired for no particular reason. Around ten thirty Alan tapped on the door, "Mom, I think the library is on fire."

I jumped out of bed and we went downstairs to look out the big windows. It is hard to locate just what is where, in the dark, across the river. By the steeple of the Reformed Church I didn't think it was the library. (We LOVE our library and our library ladies and wish that no harm come to them.)

You could see that whatever it was, it was big. Lots of lights and just a little flame, but over a large area. Too much smoke that towered pink and red against the sky like something in Mordor.



We tried to find out what was going on, but couldn't. No news on weekends. I tried to go back to sleep. However Alan called me again a little later, "Mom it is really bad and I think it is Jing's building. Jing is his good friend, whose folks run a little Chinese restaurant in a building just up the street from where my folks ran an antique and book store when I was little. (They have since moved.) Jing's family are hard-working immigrants who have brought a good service here and are a real asset to our community. But whatever, fire shouldn't happen to anybody. By the time we got back down stairs flames were shooting skyward from a huge part of the block.

Then the phone rang. It was midnight. Our phone does not ring at midnight unless it is something bad.

Sure enough it was the sheriff's dispatcher. There was a cow in the road near here and she wanted to know if it was ours. At this point the girls got up too and we all went out to look for it. While I was talking to the dispatcher she said the police were afraid the whole block would burn in Fonda. Terrific. I grew up on that block and although it is nothing fancy, it used to home to our family business. Now our friends and neighbors live and work there.

It only took a few minutes to find the cow (a heifer that somehow got out of the pasture), thank the good samaritan who caught her and held her for us and put her back in the fence. Today we will have to find out where she got out. There is frustratingly still no news about how bad the fire was or how many buildings are gone. Dang weekends anyhow. No news crews on. We feel so bad for Jing's family and whomever else was displaced by the fire and pray that no one was hurt.

What a night. Ironically we discussed getting Chinese last night. We do every month or so and would have last night but everyone was too pooped to drive over so Becky cooked. I suppose Jing's family would have lost whatever money we gave them anyhow. There are still few news reports except that nine people were displaced. Just awful

Eight Belles

I swear, I am going to stop picking horses in the Derby. We have a family tradition of each choosing a horse through the year before the big race and cheering our choices on. This goes back long before I even knew the boss....Secretariat and Affirmed were both horses I liked back in the day. I picked Barbaro the first time I saw him in the newspaper. We all know how that turned out. This year Liz picked Big Brown and the rest of us didn't pay much attention. Then Alan and I both liked Eight Belles for first and Big Truck second when we saw the actual line up. And it happened again.

Plant sale at the college

Really BIG tomatoes

And squash

View from the ag side of the campus

Flowering crabapples

Merchandise

For Steve

Not for sale

It is still on tomorrow if you are local and want to go.

Don't mine for coal under your house

(Or barn.) Check out A Coyote at the Dog Show on the perils of said activity.
Chilling and funny all at once....

It's snowing out west.

Listen to some home grown bluegrass.

Do we need another mall?

Mon@rch never lets you down.

Field trip on the gulf

New Chickies

Goats and haircuts

Goats in Chairs

The sheer beauty of laundry (and yes I am serious)

Border Collie on a bus

Sarpy Sam
Jeffro

Why not? It's raining and cold and grey and gloomy. You can sit at your desk all warm and comfy and range across our great nation (and Canada) adventuring, dreaming, laughing and crying. If these don't keep you busy long enough, there are more great folks and exciting places in the blog roll. Enjoy!

Gambling addiction

Lykers Pond yesterday

I think every farmer has one. Every seed you plant, every harvest you begin, every calf you raise or cow you breed is a gamble. Yesterday morning we woke up to a killing frost. Laid the tulips right flat on the ground and turned the asparagus in the upper bed to limp green spaghetti. (Dang it, I love asparagus and this is the first year I could harvest that bed.) So of course I planted potatoes, squash and giant sunflowers yesterday afternoon. Last frost date here is the end o' May. (Last year it was in June.) They may send up thick green shoots only to be cut down like blades of grass in front of the lawn mower. However, they may also survive and give us early vegetables. What with paying over two bucks for a cauliflower the size of a softball the other day I want early vegetables.
So I took a gamble.
If everything freezes I can plant more.

I would be nervous if I were one of the big farmers though. They have hundreds of acres of corn planted in ground that is cold and wet....will it come? Probably. If it doesn't they are out big bucks. However, they have hundreds and even thousands of cows to feed and ditto that many acres to get over. they HAVE to plant early and hope for the best. We have all our grass seeding in and the guys are fitting ground for the corn. None in the ground yet though and I am not sorry.

Not a tall tale

Brand new driver's license hot in his hand he betook himself shopping for shells and a new turkey call. (Lost the old one). This super-duper dandy new call is better than the old one anyhow and he was good enough with the old one to call in turkeys and occasional trespassers who mistook him for a strutting tom. (Do you have any idea just how crazy a kid practicing with a box call can make you?)

He left this morning at daybreak, chose his spot and sat down on his little turkey hunting seat to test the new call. Soon some hens responded, coming so close he could hear the frost crunching under their little turkey feet. No toms though and that is all that can be taken here in the spring season.

So he moved toward where he could hear some toms gobbling. As he was walking a deer bolted out of the woods not far away, and curved away when it saw him. Before he had time to really wonder why it was running, a coyote burst out of the woods behind it. It turned toward him and began to approach. His mind was full of the six shots his twelve gauge holds, when it stopped just out of range.

And looked at him funny.

Real funny. As he puzzled over why it was peering at him in such a strange manner he heard a faint crunch behind him.

And whirled to find the OTHER coyote twenty or so feet away, crouched down in the grass, stalking HIM. He couldn't get the gun around fast enough to disabuse it of that notion. It ran off over the hill where it would not have been safe to chance a shot.

I thought it was only where there are no hunters that coyotes are getting just a little too bold. Guess I was wrong.

Deadline Wednesday

I never joined Wordless Wednesday, although you sure can find a lot of fine photography from the bloggers who have on that day. However, I gotta come up with 1000 words for the Farm Side today, so here it is....Deadline Wednesday.

Not much to say

My sweet old dog is blind, deaf and drunk all the time now. His old dog disease causes him to topple over often and at random. He is better in full light, but it is still getting dark at night around here, and even in the house he can't get around much then.
He is sweet about it.
I leash walk him and he appreciates the support of the leash and my leg so he doesn't tip over. He appreciates lots of biscuits and eating people food while the others scarf dog food too. Been a long time since he needed to be walked, but he has always loved the leash. Gael obligingly came in season just now. Very helpful. She is a terrible flirt, and despite being neutered he thinks she is just dandy. I have been keeping him in the kitchen, since it is hard for him to be in his crate and in his current state he isn't going to get in any trouble....except what she cooks up for him. Nick is miserable. He is intact. However Gael is his mother. The weather is cold and rainy or he would be spending some serious time out in the run. I feel like I am juggling dogs twenty hours a day with him inside.

We need to ship a couple cows today. I really hate selling the one, old Marge. She is something like fourteen (if it was daylight I would get out my pocket herd book and check). We had talked about letting her finish her life here on the farm as we all like the old girl. However, now there are those darned drags to pay for and she is only giving twenty pounds of milk and isn't bred and isn't going to ever get bred again...(just too old I guess). The other one is Soir Noir and although Liz likes her, she is the most vicious kicker we have. I have never put the milker on her...she hates to be milked and kicks so hard. She keeps getting mastitis and we can't use the quarter milker on her because she would kill us. I won't miss her.

I have to go wake everybody else now (except Liz who has already grained the cows, checked the two springers and gone to work.) It is a drive Becky to school morning and we have to get started. Have a good one.

The ride

I went along for the ride to return the pin, (due to certain guilt issues). It was gloomy, but spring is springing so enthusiastically that it was nice-ish. There was one place where the road is lined with stone walls and between them and the winding strip of blacktop someone has planted thousands of daffodils. They were in glorious bloom...couldn't get a picture though, sorry. These aren't great...poor light, moving car, but the green was just amazing. The latter road photo is the village of Ames and the building is the Ames museum.

When we got to the auction site the boss asked the man he borrowed the pin from whether he thought he would ever see it again. The guy said, "Yeah, I am a pretty good judge of whether people are telling the truth or not...and besides, you gave me your name."

Kindness

Yesterday the guys went to the regional junk..... er....I mean used farm machinery...auction. Before they left the boss put a draw pin in the back of the truck and tossed some hay on it so it wasn't obvious.

Way too trusting. When they went to hook up the small set of field drags they bought, the draw pin was gone. What kindness! Someone obviously forgot to bring one so they helped themselves. (At least they left the hookup for the horse trailer, which was also there under the hay.)

They were in quite a fix, many, many miles from home and too late in the day to go buy another pin somewhere. However, a complete stranger who was there working on loading machinery loaned them his so they could bring the drags home.

Of course now they have to go back up today to return the pin.
But what kindness, to loan something to someone they didn't know, whom they had no way to know they would ever see again.

However, there are rumblings that they want me to ride along when they take it back. It is cloudy and rainy and I get enough road travel on the daily college trip. It is cold. It is not a very interesting trip. Hmmm....how am I going to get out of this? My Sunday chair is calling, chores are done and I have a real good book. What to do, what to do...

DA Surgery

(And no, the district attorney wasn't involved.) My Citation R Maple daughter, England, has been not quite right since she had a calf a week ago ( black heifer we named Egypt). Yesterday, she was not eating or acting right and she had a tell-tale fullness in the big triangle in her left flank. We called our vet.

The doctor confirmed what we thought. A displaced abomasum, one of the cow's four stomach compartments, Sometimes that part of the stomach flips over and then the whole digestive tract fails. Surgery is indicated to empty excess gases, flip the stomach back up and sew it in place. The poor doctor injured her back the day before, so it was rough for her but she got it done.

England was still feeling pretty sorry for herself last night, but she did chew her cud a bit and eat a little hay. Hopefully she will be livlier this morning.

Liz is milking so I can have a morning off. In answer to a question from a friend, she will be interning until May 30. Most of spring...feels like years.

One of those days

Busy. Interesting. Springy.
Right after milking the boss left for the crop center to get a spreader wagon to spread some fertilizer, seeds (alfalfa, alsike clover, timothy, brome, trefoil, field peas and barley), which is how we plant our hay crop. As soon as he was gone Beck and I saw the heifers working the fence. We threw them some hay to keep them quiet as we didn't have time to do anything else with them.

I drove Beck to school and on the way home saw a massive column of smoke to the north. It looked like an F5 tornado looks on television with a massive, swirling base and a column of smoke that could be seen for at least thirty miles. I couldn't pull off anywhere to take a decent photo...these were from our front yard. It was a mill complex in Johnstown, just a tiny distance from where my great-great aunt used to live. Biggest fire there in decades. I give a lot of credit to firefighters who got it knocked down fairly quickly. Alan's school was filled with smoke and the pricipal took quick action to close air vents to prevent outside air from filtering in, He also called the fire companies about whether toxic chemicals were burning so he could close school if needed.




Although I couldn't stop to get fire pictures, I was able to pull off the highway to move this lady (I saw lady because she was probably a fifth of a mile from water and headed for the woods..going to lay eggs maybe?) off the highway.
Anyhow I carried her to safety . Another much larger turtle had already been hit and was struggling with a badly broken shell.


I believe she is an Eastern Painted turtle, one of my favorites. (Chrysemes picta)
She didn't seem too thrilled to have her picture taken, even though she did have all her bright red and yellow makeup on.



There were some little tennis ball-sized painted turtles loafing on logs at Lykers when I stopped, but they were quick to slide into the water...too quick for photos, (unlike the fish, which are still swirling around the culvert opening). Big bull frog tadpoles there too, also too swift for pictures.


Back home, there wasn't a person to be found. Liz was visiting her boy friend. The boss was still at the plant. There were no heifers to be found either. The yard where the four of them stay was bare and empty. I changed my shoes and headed out to find them, (flip flops being lousy for running after cows). Luckily I found them locked in the barn. Later I also found out why my garden pond was down several inches. One of them jumped the fence and drank until she looked like a barrel. Liz put them all in the barn after that. They need to go to pasture. Dry hay just doesn't cut it when there is green grass to gobble...and tasty garden ponds to tipple.

The boss planted his seeding and cultipacked one of the two fields. The second will be done today. I planted dahlias, lilies of the valley, cannas....wild flowers...and lots of other stuff and cleaned the stock tank and figured out how to teach Beck to drive without anyone being killed by the fact that she can't steer. Killing two birds with one stone, in fact...she will drive the garden tractor mowing the lawn. Alan is too busy to do his traditional chore...and she can't steer, throwing those of us who ride in the car with her into paroxysms of terror on tight corners. The lawn mower plan seems brilliant to me. She learns to drive, albeit on a small scale. Alan is free to drive bigger tractors doing bigger jobs. And I get my lawn mowed to boot!

Farm talk

I was invited recently to participate in a bloggers only telephone interview featuring John Phipps, host of US Farm Report, who authors the blog John's World, as well as writing for Farm Journal, AgWeb and Top Producer and Kevin Wenzel, Seeds and Technology editor for Farm Journal. As a small town small farmer with a smallish blog I was very flattered to be asked to participate in this discussion.

Other participants included:
Dan Owens of the Center for Rural Affairs, a policy advocacy group working to make the Farm Bill more friendly to family farmers. Dan enjoys an insider’s view of the emerging bill and writes for The Blog for Rural America.

Cindy Zimmerman of World Dairy Diary, AgWired, Domestic Fuel and Zimcom media

Dien Judge of Iowa Independent. His blog is Smokey Hollow

Laura Klein of Organic Authority.com

Tim Wiseman of the University of Kentucky Rural Blog

The hour-long round robin has been offered as a public podcast. You can listen to it here.

The conference was a lot of fun with interesting people with a lot of knowledge of the topic of Internet technology as it applies to rural life and farming. Wish I was a smoother talker, but I guess there is a reason I do most of my opinion-sharing at the keyboard. I have to thank Hughes Net for inviting me to join the discussion.

Spring is like a teenager

Finished with the yearly task of making sap for syrup the maples have painted on their crimson lipstick and are going all out in a reproductive frenzy of flowering. Willow tree cheerleaders toss their neon green pompoms across every breeze and eddy, putting on more leafy finery every day. It makes for a pretty fancy contrast. Pewter colored poplars are puffing pollen from kazillions of catkins, spelling out torment for those with allergies, but looking to me like stately candelabra of the forest.



Spring is getting itself fired up with as much enthusiasm as teen agers at a pep rally.
Yay spring...go...go...go!

Coltsfoot

Thanks

For everyone's kind words yesterday. It appears that I may have panicked too soon. Mike seems to be suffering from this, which although bad enough can be overcome.
Canine vestibular disease, a common problem with older dogs. Who knew? He could get better in time. I hope he does, although he has been failing overall for about a year now. I will take whatever I can get.