Thursday

I finally managed to make it around the fair.

Even though the fair is in full swing

The sun still rises

Fonda Fair Day Two

I never made it over...so much to do with all the kids gone. I did housework and laundry and built a good hot fire so everyone can have hot showers. Fed all the calves and heifers except the pen calves in the barn. Fed Pecan who stays in the barn because once we let her out we can't get her back inside. And milked. And cleaned calf stalls.

Liz had some problems when someone's kid punched poor November in the eye and refused to stop hitting and leave the barn. Everyone had gone to dinner or something and she couldn't find anyone to help her, but finally repeated threats to get security got them to go...but not until they had given her a good dose of verbal abuse. They saw nothing wrong with hitting the poor calf. It is a rare occurrence to have fair visitors act in such a manner but it happens...and it always seems to happen when you are alone. Years ago we took a small baby that had no chance of wining, but loved people and was cute as a button, over to the fair just for fun. She was Becky's and Beck was small too and needed something little and easy to lead. She loved people so we tied her on the end of the string so kids could pet her. One night Ralph stayed to watch all the cows while there was a meeting up in the main barn and the same exact thing happened. He is a burly, rugged, intimidating-looking guy (nobody ever budges in line in front of him) but I guess the folks had been in the beer tent or something. Poor little Juniper Heart! It was years ago and it still gravels me that some rotten little brat would beat on her and his parents stick up for him and think it was fine.

Frontier Net was down a lot yesterday so things are kind of behindish...sorry about that.

Fonda Fair Day One

Veterans, Mandy and Lemonade

The cows are in, vet checked, every little ear tag read and recorded. They are washed and full of second cutting hay. The babies were funny at first. They have never been off the farm before and were terrified of everything.

Been there, done that....Hazel

Everything.

Other cows. Kids wanting to pet them. Wheel barrows. Announcements on the loud speaker. Us. Each other.
Even food when we tossed them hay.

About an hour after we got them there, while the boss and Liz went home for the big cows, and I stayed to keep an eye on things, they began to tentatively nibble single stems of hay.

By noon they were brave enough to lie down unless kids tried to pet them. By three they were looking for me to bring them new hay every little while and not kicking when I cleaned up behind them. By the time we went home last night they were settled in like veterans, ignoring the commotion around them and sucking up the bovine life of Riley like it was their due.

Mmmmkay, guess this isn't so awful after all....Neon Moon

Wait a minute, I guess it is.

Meanwhile, as soon as Hazel, Lemonade, Mandy and Blitz came off the trailer, they sauntered into the barn, stepped up into the stalls and began to gobble that yummy hay. No opening day jitters for them. They are veterans and they love shows.....and after a long day of tending to their every whim and picking up every drop of cow poo almost before it hit the floor, I can see why.

The view from where I await the cows' commands

Fonda Fair Day Minus One

Setting up the decorations and bedding up the stalls. Liz, the boss and I went over today to work on that and I took my photos over and put them in. I don't expect to win at all. The competition is extremely vigorous....but I needed a pass and I had to enter somethings. Cows will be trucked over tomorrow.

Joe Hash

Joe Hash is one of the many wonderful musicians we have discovered on MySpace. He also wrote Stay, a song for anyone who has ever loved an extra special dog.

I have found so much music that I love on MySpace that Ialmost never listen to the radio any more. I just find artists I like, buy their songs from ITunes or somewhere similar, and listen to them on my IPod or burn CDs for the car or the barn sterio. I happened upon the Roosters in just that fashion and found my favorite song, Kill the Mullet, which as it happens is not about a fish.


Joe Hash sings "The H Word" at The Moonshine Café

Trent Loos has some good ideas

Here is a link to one of his columns

"The basic message is: Animal agriculture provides the essential nutrients for humans beings, and this is how it works. ..."

College starts today

The fair starts tomorrow. No zucchini so I will be skipping that class. I don't think I am going to cut down my giant sunflowers either......so I guess I will be just taking over some photographs....of frogs and toads, amazingly enough.

Hoping to get time to help Liz get her decorations up today. She was out in the barn until about 10:30 last night clipping heifers.....guess she is done with them anyhow. Figuring on missing Becky and Alan a lot today, but I guess I have to get used to it.

And all I have for you is this little sneaky snake Beck caught yesterday. I have never seen as many garter snakes as we have this summer. This one is slimmer than a pencil and about as long as the worn off stubs of them that I keep finding in Alan's pockets when school is in session. As little as they are they will hiss and spit and strike at you just as if they had something to back it up with. (The snakes, not the pencil stubs...the latter just make a lot of noise in the washing machine if I miss them.)

Sleepy Sunday

Moose like sprinkers too.

HT to Windyridge who saw it first. I found this video too amazing to pass up

Summer skies

Last night the sky was actually this strange red.
I have never seen it this color before.
I didn't think the camera would catch it, but it did.

We are suddenly having a little spell of favorable weather. I saw more hay being rolled up and baled today while Beck and I were driving over to Cobleskill than I have seen so far all summer. I waved to all the farmers dragging rakes and balers and wagons around their fields because I wished them well with all my heart. This has been a horrible summer weatherwise and some clear skies and dry air are long over due. I felt like cheering them all on, especially the elder fellow with the brilliant red umbrella shading him as he tooled along raking up some nice first cutting. He waved back and grinned from ear to ear.

Last night

Anyhow, last night and this morning I took still more sky pictures. I'm sorry but I just can't resist the sky.

Sunrise today

Dairy quiz bowl question

What substance flows through the cow's milk vein?

Mandy's milk vein

Answer: blood of course.

We like to see thick, twisted, gnarly milk veins....they have been associated, at least in our minds, with good production.

Here is a page of dairy quizzes for kids. Here are lots more if you like 'em. Our three all participated in dairy quiz bowl and did well at the regional level. Sometimes Liz even went to state (you have to be in the top ten in the region to go to state). Becky was once put on a team made up of leftover kids from several counties. She was a junior, but the team competed at the senior level. (She had been bumped off our junior team because the captain thought she wasn't good enough.) She came in somewhere along about 4th in the region...fourth senior that is. Finished ahead of our entire senior team...not to mention kinda doing good for a junior that couldn't make the team. We were pretty proud of her!

I ended up coaching our novice team for a number of years and it was an incredible lot of fun. It was absolutely a thrill to start with kids who didn't know the answer to the title question at the beginning and end up with them answering hundreds of much harder ones. They worked so hard studying those pages of questions and learning about cows. One girl, who incidentally was born about ten minutes before Alan at the very same birthing center, won first in the region and she didn't even have any cows, being a horse person.

Fair time marks the end of summer

Mandy is all clipped and shined up.
On show day she will be bagged too, but in this shot her udder is pretty empty
as she was milked a few hours before.

This year it also means that the last of my babies is off to college. Liz has graduated and is staying home to work with us, which is truly sweet. The other two start Monday and for some reason it is bothering the heck out of me. I can barely sleep nights, even though they are both commuting as there is an excellent state college about 25 miles from here. Becky will be continuing her studies majoring in anthropology and Alan will begin in fisheries and wildlife.


Their schedules are just plain nasty, with many days that they will leave at 7 AM and not return until 10 PM. Becky has been the calf raiser this year. Liz and I will be doing that now so it means an extra job. Alan has worked as hard as any man helping his dad and milking with me. We will miss their help for sure. However what I am going to miss most is the comedy and camaraderie we normally take for granted. We have a lot of fun no two ways about it. NapoleON and his appendi and the excellent discussions of all the latest reading material will be sadly lacking in the barn this fall. I am sad, even so far as to feel kind of crushed about it all. I know babies are supposed to grow up and leave, but who knew I was going to like them so much?


On the plus side Liz and I will have lots of good long cow talks and that is a very satisfying passtime. We can talk about cows and feeding and fitting and showing and making advantageous matings all day and half the night if we get a chance. I am sure glad I will still have that.....and weekends.

We love our cows

Amazing Balancing Frog

Trained using ancient methods discovered and perfected by the Honorable Order of Hibernian Herpetile Handlers and brought to Northview Dairy Farm for your amazement and pleasure.





***Or, wouldja believe he was sitting on the net float my mother gave me and the frogs have become so tame this summer that he stayed right there while I ran for the camera?

You go Grandma

Armed 85-year-old makes burgler call police.

We went to the fair

With the camera....and took pictures of jaws.




And of the new Miracle of Birth center...I also interviewed Dr. Lyman for this week's Farm Side

Chickies hatching

The fair sits in a circle of mountains.

Guess what we did yesterday

Choking on a duck

Is what Liz says her dad sounds like when he is snoring in his Sunday chair.

A very strange storm

Last night the boss, Becky and I finished up milking and chores so Liz and Alan could go over to Altamont Fair. We started early so we were in the house by 7:30, which was nice for a change. However, the weirdest thunderstorm was making up just as we finished. It was so strange that I took 51 pictures of it and of how things inside looked in the bizarre yellow light, before it became too dark to take any more.

The sky was an intense yellow color

The crows were getting out of here

The kids enjoyed the fair although cattle entries are down this year over 70 head. I am sure the economy is to blame. Showing is expensive so it is one of the first things cut when farmers are hurting (our cows aren't there for the first time in 11 years.) They brought me home bread pudding from the grange booth, with which I am about to break my fast for today....


The fair has put in a new birthing center where calves are born each day and I guess that is a big hit. If I get a chance to go over it will give me something interesting to write about for the Farm Side this week. (Special thanks to a certain family member who bought us a state fair pass for Christmas so we can go to fairs at all.)


They had quite an adventure on the way home. They both spotted an odd reflectiveness in the road in directly front of them. Alan thought it was a guard rail, but it was in the wrong place. Before he could react, Liz hollered at him to stop and he stood that little blue pick up right on its nose. Believe it or not the thing in the road was a fire truck turning in to someone's driveway! Thank God for reflective paint on the sides or they would never have seen it at all until they plowed right into it. The night was foggy but it appeared to be driving without any lights at all. I wonder what was going on. I'll bet if the tax payers over that way knew someone was driving their fire trucks around in the fog at 10:30 at night with no light they would wonder too.




Anyhow, here are some pics of the storm. I don't think I have ever seen yellow light like this. Every single tree and flower had an eerie glow, but it was pretty in an uncomfortable sort of way. When the wind got up I was watching the bottoms of the clouds I can tell you....and lightning struck so close that although it was blocked from my view by the house, the ground lit up even in broad daylight.

Off to the south


Looking north while the storm was building in the west

Moooooony

***Top one is untouched...added light to the bottom two, to make the photo look like the sky actually did last night when Lizzy and I came home....