Chicken bomb

I can NOT believe this.
One question comes to mind.
Why?

Fog horns and a butterfly

We don't live on a bay or a coast, just a medium sized river. However, if our cows had horns, this morning they would have been fog horns. The air was crispy cool and sweetly fresh when the sun was just starting to come up. We had to go out early to get the cows in as it is tanker day and for the first time this season we put the cows out in the Dimond farm pasture at night. They have been going there days, but we haven't trusted them out at night in a field they are not so very used to. However the pasture they have been grazing nights has gotten depleted and needs a rest. Milk production has been suffering because of it. This morning they came happily when called, ready to be milked I guess, but for some reason most of them were bawling as they wandered down the lane. It was cool enough that puffs of steam billowed as they bellowed, like big bovine steam engines. It was a strange sight.... long, narrow cow heads pointing in every direction, muzzles open wide, like trumpets at a jazz festival, with unlikely clouds of warm, moist, and suddenly visible air crossing above them. As happens all too often, I wished I had brought the camera. There is no fence on part of the lane they must use to get to that field, so four times a day I get to stand by the horse trailer and "be" a fence. I make a darned good fence too and so far none of them have gotten by me....not that they have tried very hard.


The butterfly above got caught between the screen and the stained glass door the other day. I only noticed it because the Sassenachs were harassing the house wrens again and I went out to chase them away. The wrens nest in the porch pillar every year and we get a great deal of enjoyment from them. Amazingly they know we aren't going to bother them and pretty much ignore us when we go out to chase the English sparrows out of their nest hole. I think the latter want to kick them out and the male tries to get into the nest about fifty times a day.

As I was opening the door I noticed the butterfly fluttering against the screen (which doesn't open). We couldn't reach it so Liz stuck the fly swatter in front of its feet until it finally climbed on. It paused for a fraction of time while I took a picture, then floated away down the hill. There seem to be a bunch of these around this year as I see them in the upper garden where I have been planting this week. I believe it is a Milbert's Tortoiseshell. In the course of tracking it down I FINALLY found a decent butterfly identification site, after looking for a couple of years for one that is easy to use.
I have never seen so many butterflies as there are this year so it is going to be wonderful to able to come inside and look them up.

So it begins

The first show calf of the season gets her first bath and leading session with a trip to the house as a reward for getting kind of cold and wet. Don't worry, she was warm and fluffy in just a few minutes.




This is redneck graduation present calf, November

More Key Drive Stuff

I have to work on this week's Farm Side this morning, so here is an oldie from '05 I think. The pictures are from last night's storm and the small truce that followed.

Some jobs seem so simple. Like greasing the elevator. How hard could it be? You just take your trusty grease gun and a tube of grease and go for it. It is recommended that you don’t wear a white suit or high heels, but other than such obvious exclusions, anyone can do it.

Of course the implement in question here isn’t the kind of elevator that carried passengers from floor to floor in old fashioned department stores, or the sort that is used to stockpile oceans of grain out on the prairies.

Instead, this elevator is a long, metal, skeleton conveyor that carries bales of hay across the haymow and dumps them where we want them. It hangs from the roof of the cow barn inside the mow and therein lies the rub. That roof is high. It is dark up there. There are bees, wasps, hornets and various other vespids. The roof isn’t just high; it is really, really high. Not quite as high as the Eiffel Tower, but a lot too high for the comfort of the acrophobics among us.

It hangs from chains so if you place our 32-foot wooden ladder between the ends, it just reaches. However, the whole affair sways alarmingly under the weight of whoever wields the grease gun. Of course the ladder in question is a big beast that is not tossed around casually too. Liz and I helped the boss put it up once and I can assure you from a personal perspective that it really isn’t a whole lot of fun.

That is probably why a significant amount of time elapsed between the day that someone pointed out to the hay crew that the bearing on the end of the elevator was squeaking loud enough to be heard over the milk pump, (which sounds a lot like a souped up Harley), and the day that they actually trekked up into the mow.

On the way up the first ladder, the boss repeatedly inquired of the chief assistant, “Did you check the grease gun?”

“Yeah, of course.”

“I mean, did you really check it?”

“Yes, dad.”

“Are you sure?” and so on.

Once up in the mow, the staggeringly heavy ladder was maneuvered into place between the rails of the elevator. It takes a man and a boy to hold it still, which presented something of a problem for the greasing gang, as one of the above is required to climb up with the grease gun leaving either/or but not both at the bottom. With it finally secured (secured being a relative term here, as in secure as compared to hanging from a spider web over the Grand Canyon) they began to debate who was going up the ladder to do the dirty deed.

Eventually the chief assistant was chosen for his relative youth and agility. He went crawled up about half way and complained, “Dad, hold the ladder still, it’s moving.

“Dad, it’s really high up here,” and so on, until the hay boss called him back down, and with grease gun in hand, climbed up under the roof to do the job himself.

Of course, you already know where this is going. When he stuck the gun on the grease fitting while clinging to the top of the massive, swaying ladder at the top of the dark, scary hay mow ceiling, among a few thousand cranky yellow jackets and a couple of drowsy bats, there just one single squirt of grease in it. Not enough to do the job. Of course not. How could there be?

When they came over to tell me the story, they quoted the actual words that were uttered at that juncture, but I will spare the tender sensibilities of Farm Side readers. (Trust me, you would rather not know.)

This time, after climbing carefully back down the shuddering ladder, the boss himself filled the gun with a spanking new cartridge of grease. Then the assistant was sent up the ladder (in no uncertain terms) to do the greasing.

When he got up there, rest assured that he pumped the gun until grease flew in all directions. It darned near dripped on his daddy’s head. For some reason he wanted to do a very thorough job so that he would not have to do it again for at least a dozen years or so. He looked real happy to have his boots on solid ground and the ladder put away again, I’ll tell you.

They are over there unloading hay right now using that very same, extra-well-lubricated, cross-mow elevator. And if I hear the end bearing squeaking again I am just going to keep quiet and hope it bears up under the strain. Some things just aren’t worth the hassle.

Have you ever heard of

Chick Sale? I grew up familiar with some very strange things, including this particular character. (I actually own a copy of The Specialist.) I also lived in a primitive cabin once, where I could truly identify with this fellow.

(A new outhouse can truly be a fine thing....and having a charity build one for you...priceless.)

Pete Hardin makes the NYT

I met Mr. Hardin a few years ago at a dairy meeting and found him likable and fascinatingly well-informed about perhaps the murkiest topic in town, milk marketing. He is well-known in the dairy industry for thinking for himself and for not bowing to conventional wisdom just to run with the herd. He also has a lot of theories about the tangled web of milk marketing and pricing that many people pooh-pooh, because they at first seem so outlandish. (Like water buffalo milk in imported milk from India.....) However, pretty much every time you read something in his publication, The Milkweed, you later find out that it is true. Now he is featured in an article in the New York Times.
If you have the remotest interest in what is and has been going on in the dairy industry for the past decade, (much to the detriment of most dairy farmers), read this article. It simplifies some very complicated issues impressively well. Milk pricing laws and formulas, the way it is marketed, and the structure of the big so-called "farmer" cooperatives are staggeringly complicated...about as transparent as a puddle of crude oil. It is amazing to see a publication like the Times reduce these topics to a comfortably clear denominator.


Here is a link to one of Mr. Hardin's articles on the situation (caution large pdf)




It is a relief to see these issues, which have supplied farmers with a nightmarish dilemma of where to sell their milk when the big boys come to town, and how to make a living on less than the cost of production, brought to mainstream attention. Maybe it will do some good.

My favorite flower

Or at least in June it is. Doesn't look like much does it? However in this season the wild grape flowers perfume the whole valley. I can't describe the scent. It is sort of sweet like you might expect the air in a candy factory to be. Yet it doesn't just smell like hot sugar. It is...well.....flowery... too. I wait all year for the first breeze laden with it to come floating through the milk house window. We could be miserable with roaring heat, drowning in humidity, worried about fifteen different things and the wild grape flowers will wash it all away in an instant. Nice......

Dansville Tractor pull

Mr. Determination

Alan came home tired and sunburned but grinning and happy with his big outing. This is the only picture he took for some reason, but it catches the action of one of the big rigs I think.

Milk snakes and gorgeous mornings

We have gone from frost nine days ago to temps in the mid nineties. It takes some getting used to. so I guess we will just get used to it. The corn loves it anyhow, and what with all the frigid weather, it needs it. Cows don't like it much. We have been keeping them in nights and feeding them hay, because the pasture they are on has temporary fence. (Not to be confused with permanent fence, which is, in theory at least, more reliable.). However, last night with every fan in the place running full speed they were panting and hanging their heads. We took a gamble and let them back out. I went over with the boss and Liz this morning, to help get them back in even though it is my morning off, because the two-year-olds have yet to learn where their stalls are. They didn't bother much though, for which I was most grateful.

Yesterday must have been milk snake day. Liz caught the itty bitty one above yesterday out on the bridge between the farms. It was so cute and perfect, right down to the egg "tooth"
Some of the photos I took actually show the tooth, but are otherwise blurry, because I was in a big old hurry to get Liz to let the little thing loose again. The boss thinks he turned a nest of them out when he was moving earth getting a lane ready to put cows in another pasture.


Then last night, while we were finishing up Alan caught a great big one in the same spot. The second one was as long as my leg from knee to ankle and as big around as a finger. When he let it down and it poured itself away over the ridges and bumps in the barn yard its beauty was amazing and indescribable. Milk snakes are my favorite of the slithery clan. They remind me of the Oriental carpets my dad used to get in the antique store sometimes when I was a kid. Wish I could have photographed the big one, but we were getting done real late last night (dump run, house work, fence building, Liz made spaghetti and homemade bread and garlic bread, shopping for a new string trimmer to get weeds out of the fence...all in all a long, busy day) and I needed to finish helping with the cows.

Then this morning the sun came up amid solid HHH. The weather is going to be a major source of misery for the next few days, but it is still pretty. Alan has gone to the big tractor pull in Dansville today with his big brother. I will worry...it is my job. He will have fun...that is his job...and he took the little camera so hopefully he will have some nice pictures of the big rigs for you tomorrow.

Got water?

Weather fellas say two or three inches yesterday morning. I say I hate it when it thunders when we are milking. So much metal around. And nervous cows. It knocked the power out for a while, which is why there was only a wimpy post yesterday. When the lightning started making the lights flash on and off I just unplugged everything and went to the barn...




I am having algae problems in the pond so I changed the fountain. We have been hearing toads every night and I thought they were here.


However, thanks to having to reset the bedroom digital clock late last night....by guess and by gosh......


And getting it wrong........ so I got up half an hour early and went out with the dog in the not quite dawn.


I discovered that they are instead down in the heifer barn watering trough. Chlorinated water. Emptied and refilled every couple of days. Heifers snorting around in it.....Hmmm.......




They don't know what they are missing.

Argentine food crisis

Kinda, sorta big news, but I don't see anything about it in the mainstream press.

Revenge of the Lawn

It is funny where online research will take you. I am always on the lookout for ideas for my weekly newspaper column, the Farm Side. After over ten years of writing it, sometimes not repeating myself is a challenge. Lately I have been mulling over the recent upsurge in home gardening and massive sales of garden seeds and trying to think of a way to get a column out of it. A post Nita wrote on the topic, which reminded me or WWII Victory gardens, was all the stimulus I needed. This week I actually got busy with it and it will run Friday (unless the editor vetoes it or something).

I learned so much while writing this one! I was constantly calling in to the boss, who was reading in the other room. Things like, "Did you know that Sears sold 325,000 pressure cookers in 1943?"
Or, "Did you know that we in America plant three times as much ground in lawn as in corn?"


Here are some of the places I visited in my search for data to back up my positive thoughts about gardens and my somewhat less than positive feelings about lawns.

Victory Garden

The Murder of a Garden

Landscapes and the Law

Garden on Trial

Lawn Nation (if you click any of these, click this one...amazing!)

And, last but not least, Revenge of the Lawn (which will tell you something about my reading tastes in college.

Tai Chi for cows

I'm sorry, but this is just nuts. If we started doing Tai Chi in front of our cows, I'll bet they would run for the hills....and I wouldn't blame them one bit!

And something I have learned after years of living in the country.
No matter what
No matter when
No matter how
If you think you are alone and you do something silly
Funny looking
or just plain stupid and wrong
Somebody will see you....even if you are in your farthest, remotest, plumb hiddenest field..
They will pop out of the bushes or come up the driveway or fly over in an airplane taking pictures.
(We have Murphy's Law out here in the boondocks too you know).

Tai chi! If I tried it, I'll bet it would be all over town in an hour and not because the cows told on me either.

Iris

At sunset

Road trip

.The Mohawk River from Dunkin' Donuts

Ran errands again with the girls while the boss spread fertilizer and disked it in. I don't know if he is going to plant corn tomorrow or try to bale some hay or both. We barely see him since Liz is home and he can do field work whenever he wants to.

Making cheese at Palatine Valley Dairy (where we stopped to pick up a Semex Jersey stud book....(don't ask).
Naturally we bought some cheese too. How could we not?

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Fun with French Fries

Note to boss...never bet against the cheap help (who are the same folks who spend the week at the fair with the show calves every year).

Yesterday Liz just had one of those feelings....something wrong with the heifers and dry cows. She went out to the pasture where they are stationed and sure enough River had had a calf and had pushed him down in our deepest ravine (which has a creek at the bottom.) Liz got them both out and came on down to report. Calf was a week early, tiny (you can pick it up under one arm) and a bull. Oh well.

Anyhow, while we were bringing him and his mama in to the barn we decided to bring all the close up dries in too and get them up to speed on grain feeding. (We have a serious selenium deficiency in the soil in this area and they can get some in the cow grain we feed. Selenium is a major aid to successful calving and the passing of the placenta afterward.)

After that nifty little rodeo concluded we were admiring last year's show heifer, Blink, who was running with them. Liz and I were joking about how she probably could walk right up to her and feed her French Fries. She loved them SO much last summer. The boss thought we were nuts and bet that she couldn't.

Well, now, it just so happened that we had French fries with our party dinner the night before. And it just so happened that we didn't eat them all., So....nothing would do, but Liz run over to the house and grab a handful to test the theory.

Blink was a little hawky after running wild since last fall. She let Liz get semi, sorta, kinda close and then stretched her neck out very, very long to sniff.....very long, giraffe neck...standing on tippy hoofs, ready to bolt away with her tail up.

And then she scented the French fries. Out came the tongue, down went the heels, and she gobbled them all up like the fair was yesterday instead of last year.
We roared with laughter.
Too bad we didn't put any meaningful stakes on our bet though.

Thunder boomers, koi and calf relocations

The first right while we were milking last night. Nothing serious, just got us wet with a good rain. We needed it. One upshot of that was a toad serenade last night. (I think they were partying down in the garden pond.) Amphibians, except for red backed salamanders, have been mighty scarce this spring. Dry weather I guess. Anyhow, it seems wonderful to me that something as homely as a toad has such a lovely song.

Actually right from the get go we had an amazing day yesterday. Thanks to Teri at Farm Life we discovered Craigslist. Now we check the local farm and gardens listings several times a day. Thus we discovered that someone over by Mariaville Lake had baby koi for sale for two bucks each. We all made the trip over and bought seven. However, the nice lady whose front yard pond is apparently teeming with little orange, silver, white and black fishies, threw in three extras.

Now if they will just stay IN the pond. We have had a terrible time with koi jumping out in the past. I am hoping they grow and thrive.

Only four of our old gold fish made it through to warm weather, although they all survived the winter. They contracted a terrible bacterial disease just as the weather warmed up though and died in droves. I am sure we would have been fine, but the spring fed watering trough where we have kept most of them for the past twenty years or so dried up and we had to put all those fish in the garden pond last fall. Not good. Way too crowded.

This is Carlene. We needed to get this door open for ventilation
so we needed to move her to a big stall

Then we went out to help the boss clean the barn. We took calf registration photos, cleaned stalls and moved some older calves into regular stalls. One the was tied in front of a door we needed to open to get some air into the barn. It was so much more comfortable last night with it open.

Carlene's other side. These photos will go on her registration papers

At night we had an "end of internship and two kids graduating" sort of party with pizza, calzone, grinders, French fries and the new National Treasure movie. (Grumpy old party pooper mom read a John Grisham novel, but stayed in the vicinity.)

It was nice. A really great day. I feel lucky. Maybe it is was the koi

This is the herb garden, honey locust tree
and part of the flowers around the garden pond...which you can't see.

World Milk Day

Is today. Kicking off June is Dairy Month! Yay!

James and the Giant......

Errr.....I mean Becky and the giant......egg. This egg was laid by Chick Pea, Becky's Buff Orpington hen. She only lays about one a week, but these massive double yolkers max out our old fashioned egg scale. On the electronic scale they each come out to 3.7 ounces, a full 1.2 ounces larger than a jumbo egg.