Make a Joyful Noise

Doing chores and cutting squares of denim here. Getting the Christmas cards out, almost on time.
Best wishes to you all. Hope your Christmas Eve is filled with everything you wish for, especially love and good times.

If you live in the snowy north like we do

You may need to resort to desperate measures to stay warm (including stuffing a squirming barn cat inside your coat)

Or you may just need to come indoors.

Sorry about the blurry flowers. I was hanging laundry on the bars in the parlor (don't ask...please don't ask) with the camera around my neck, while racing to get the bills paid in two lots. I had to get someone to trek to the post office for the first time in a week to get the second batch and mail the first batch...so I didn't take the time that I should.

What I See Out My Window

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Here are some of yesterday's dining room and living room window views.
Too much snow, huh? I wish I could say that I spent the day in my Sunday chair, but alas the stove was cranky and I had to do some wading, shoveling of wood and careful combusticating using FC's special Florida fatwood.
The fluffy precipitation can stop any time now as far as I'm concerned. When I figure out how to get it done I am going to send it up to Linda.

Anyhow, I took these pictures to submit to an interesting blog, What I See Out My Window.
The author of the blog posts pictures sent by people all over the world of the views outside their windows. He asked me to post a link in case any of you want to take a look or even participate in the fun with your own window views. He has pictures of everything from kangaroos to Northview Farm, so it is worth the trip.

Christmas without Cash

Is a concept, which, although tough on the merchant economy, has its upside

And its downsides

(No animals were harmed during the filming of this post
Or during any of the quilt making activities
Although there were times....)

As you can see, Alan and I have been makin' blankets, with some help with the quilting and provision of supplies by the girls.(If you are a pair of blue jeans, Northview might be a good place to avoid, as a seven-year collection of old worn out jeans has gone under the scissors this week.)

There has been pinking.

Filing of the pinking shears.

Sore fingers
Bruised knees
Blisters and bumps from too much gnawing away at stiff, stubborn fabric with not quite sharp enough scissors, (particularly the pinking shears from hell)
Much swearing at bobbins in general and the one currently on the machine in particular.
One large quilt is done.
Lap robes are emerging rapidly from the tangle of tattered denim.

Oh, and there is fresh apple pie jelly too. (See below)

I have one of these blankets that I made over twenty years ago. It is the warmest thing you could imagine.

Sunday Stills

Toast and jam

Lunch for Becky.
Bread by Liz, Jam by mom




See more at Sunday Stills

Free Snow

Here is part of an ad that ran on Craigslist yesterday.
I was so glad I took a second to click on the free stuff tab.
Wish I'd thought of it first!


I have placed several feet of almost new snow at the end of my driveway
Never skied on never peed on
come and get it
first come first serve


Here is another good one. (Have I mentioned that I love Craigslist...thanks Teri)

To the gentleman who helped my Blue Pontiac out of the ditch today off of Albany Shaker today. You were so nice to pull my car out with your tow truck, even though I offered cash you refused and did for free. Thank You! This spirit is what the season is all about! I will pass it along...Merry Christmas to everyone! Bless all of you nice people!

Mandy's Heart

Rurality has been posting really neat photos of animals with heart markings. Mandy's isn't quite perfect but we love her so much that it seems that way....

Yup, It's Farm Side Friday

Again

Writing was an adventure this week. When I started Tom Vilsack had not yet been announced for Secretary of Agriculture, but he was clearly going to be chosen. I wrote a whole bunch based on that premise, then, right in the middle of the hours before deadline, it was announced that he was the one. Can we say rewrite?

Photo Meme

This seems like a fun sort of meme and I don't have much for you today so I am going to give it a shot.
Thanks to Mrs. Mecomber for this one.

Here are the rules:
1. Go to your Picture Folder on your computer or wherever you store your pictures.
2. Go to the 6th Folder and then pick the 6th Picture.
3. Post it on your blog and tell the story that goes with the picture.
4. Tag 5 friends to do the same thing and leave a comment on their blog telling them about it.



The story behind the photo: Liz took me to a PBR rodeo a couple of years ago at the Turning Stone Casino in Verona NY. It was an amazing amount of fun. We met Cord McCoy for the first time that day. He is really a great guy and remembers Liz from that day, which is pretty cool. In this photo, taken with the little camera, workers are driving the bucking bulls right across the carpeted aisle of the casino with crowds of people looking on. Neat.

I almost never tag people for memes because I don't want to feel like they have to do them just for me. However, I would be delighted if any of you care to do this one. Just leave a link in the comments and I will update this post with a link to your blog.

Linda is doing this one!
As is Joce.
And Liz
Not to mention Deb
Ed too!
Also Jinglebob
And Aussie Oklahoma

Moving Heifers

We brought a bunch of springing heifers into the cow barn today. Over the next few weeks we are expecting a number of babies. Didn't go too badly, but not much fun either. They are nervous about going in stalls for the first time, except for the really tame show heifers, which of course aren't the ones we wanted.




This is Broadway. She will be needing a stall soon, but didn't get one today. She is half milking shorthorn and half Holstein. She will be the first one of this cross that we calve out and I am quite interested to see how she turns out. She will be having a half Jersey calf, which if a heifer might make a nice homestead type cow. Time will tell.

Milk Jars

I have been trying for a while to get a video of the two lines of milk surging into the receiving jar in the milkhouse.

Meanwhile Deb has milk in jars too.

She also has a new baby over at Tyler Farm that you might like to go see.
Anyhow, I still don't have my splashing milk video, but here is a little milk magic any how.


Milk jar


Now you see it, now you don't.

Someone Else's House

Nighttime view from my Sunday chair, which of late is also my supper chair. If you click and look out into the dining room you can see a towering pile of books, threatening to overwhelm the chair they occupy. That is the norm for this place. Books, books, everywhere and not a place to sit......

Hmmm

What is going on here?

Word Verification

The Jectists went crawk when they saw the slylow. It is considered unfoom tusign a recatist that way!

I used to hate doing word verifications on blogs where I comment. I know how miserable it is to be comment spammed all the time, but I never could read or duplicate those complicated constructions of incongruent consonants. Now many of them are almostwords and they are so much easier. I saved up up a few this week to tell you a story using them...and what fun I had! (But watch out for those unfoom recatists. They are rough on rats, I'll tell you!)
(Of course the red bolds are word verification "words")

Moonlighting

Yesterday was one of those days. Lately a lot of them are. The grain company piled the bags of cornmeal and calf feed they delivered in the manger in front of the cows instead of toting it back to the feed room. We have told them and told them. Ralph was right up behind the barn if they wanted to ask where to put it. I was right over at the house (didn't see them come.) It was a mess. The cows tore up a lot of bags and two cows ate their fill of corn meal. This will not be good for them.
Then Alan's chain flew off his chain saw. Didn't hit him, no harm done and we are grateful, but still.

Just one of those days. Read the dairy market outlook. Wish I had left it for Monday. It is so bad I don't even want to think about it. Dang.

We were going to go up to Romana's for grinders but said the heck with it and made hot dogs instead.

On the way in from the barn Alan asked me to come up to the stove with him while he filled it. Usually I do. We have a nice few minutes of camaraderie and it is pleasant up there. Some nights I am too darned tired or I need to get in the house and adjust dinner in some way. Then I don't. I wasn't going to last night. I was tired, discouraged and somebody needed to cook aforementioned hot dogs.




But I did.
I was glad. The full moon sparkled on the snowy mix of snowsleetandfreezingrain that fell during the day and looked like that flocked stuff they used to put around the toy trains in store windows. It seemed unreal, but it was breathtakingly serene. We practiced our coyote howls at that big silver moon and sent them echoing out across the smooth expanse of snowland to see who might call back at us. No coyotes answered but we didn't care. You could see every bush out there on the hills, picked out like a charcoal drawing. We worked on owl calls too for a while.
Who cooks for you!
Who cooks for you Sam Cook!!

It was fun.
I suppose I am too old for such stuff and I felt a little self conscious about howling and hooting at the moon, but I did it anyhow. Then I went in for the camera while he went in for his hot dogs (which Becky very sweetly cooked so I didn't have to).

(You can see the sparkles a little in this collage if you click)

My pictures didn't come out all that great but I will have them to remember howling at the moon with my favorite son at least.

And although I am by no means a slender little thing, that shadow is certainly not accurate....really it isn't....c'mon you guys, be nice....

Chicks and Balances

Farm Side Friday

Marvelous Mountains

When I saw the small version of this photograph of some mountains in this article, I thought they were mountains...you know regular mountains. Then I read the caption. They are not regular mountains, they are special mountains. The story doesn't have any surprising revelations, but the picture just astonished me...and made me say, "Holy...you know what!!"


***I wonder what kind of tax the EPA will put on the emissions from a pile this size!

Sometimes PBR Riders

Deal with things more challenging than the bulls. Read Reese Cates' blog on PBR (I was already afraid to fly but good grief.)

We have liked Reese since we first saw him...he is quite a rider.

Was the EPA Cow Tax a Fairy Tale?

Here is a pretty good story by a young man who writes for the same paper that I do. He did a nice job trying to find a balance between what was being said last week about this nefarious little sneak attack on farming and the "oh, no we never said that" crowd that is scurrying to retrench today. The folks he interviewed are good people and personal friends and acquaintances.

For a little background.... every farm publication you can think of raced into action around Thanksgiving because several Farm Bureaus put out alerts that the EPA was planning to tax cattle, hogs, corn and soybeans by way of placing regulatory fees on green house gas emissions. Carbon dioxide is expected to fall under that mantel and amazingly enough cows breathe. Exhale even. Farmers were up in arms. (I wrote about it here and in the Farm Side.)

As I understand it the outcry was tremendous and widespread.
Of course it was.
Such a fee or tax or whatever you want to call it would devastate the farm economy, which is already staggering under an insane commodity price roller coaster.

However, this week stories began to emerge wherein folks connected to various industries and to the EPA, said basically, "Who, us? We would never propose such a thing. We never did propose such a thing. Go home. Calm down. Don't worry. Trust us here in government to have your best interests at heart....it's okay now. We won't tax your cow emissions, never, never....ever."

To quote the title of an excellent blog across the river, Yeah Right!
And if you believe that I have this bridge in Brooklyn for sale (or maybe a Senate seat in Illinois). I am of the firm belief that the EPA had every intention of proposing such a rule and that they probably still do. However, when the trial balloon was so resoundingly shot down, they dragged themselves back to the drawing board to see how they could adulterate, and or hide, their agenda. At least thanks to the strong response by farmers and by Farm Bureau, they know someone is awake, aware and keeping an eye, or in fact several thousand eyes, on them. And that is as it should be.

Four and Twenty

Black birds sitting in a tree

(Or more likely four-hundred and twenty starlings and one lone red-tailed hawk over on the left side. He likes this tree despite the crows going after him all the time.)






And these teeny, tiny seedlings came from this fruit on my Easter cactus. I am so excited and hope I can grow them up!



It is raining and miserable today, with frozen mud and ice under the standing water puddles. Everyone is cranky and I am kind of enjoying the fact that nobody but me is home.