Sunday Stills...Water Tower

This, our village water tower, is on the road that runs right behind the farm. I ran up yesterday to get the photo, then took the other views of the misty mountains and hills behind us on the way home.

Chuck Jolley Gets it Right

Here is a long, but well worth reading article on the challenge of feeding the world's burgeoning human population. Many will find points to disagree with and experts to dislike. However, the basic dilemma is there whether we like it or not.1930's farming methods will not feed billions of people.

Sticker Shock (or why can't the DMV get glue like that)

Had a thought after reading comments on the married men sticker on the old Case yesterday. Would you believe that that sticker was on the tractor when I met the boss and didn't look much different then than it does now?

Would you believe that we will have been married 24 years next week? Would you believe that that tractor will not run in the winter and ends up sitting where it stalled last all through the cold months very year, so it has not seen the inside of the shed since the guys put in a new PTO a couple years ago? (And then it was only in while they worked on it.)

Why can't the State of New York find glue like that?

Both truck stickers bit the dust long ago...and now the one on the car is creeping down toward the dash and curling its little edges like a girl with a new perm. They should send scientists to analyze the one on the Case.


*****UPDATE: the boss says he remembers distinctly, for certain personal reasons, putting that sticker in place on October 13th, 1974.

What's Up.....

On the farm these days?

Birding is a daily delight. The wrens keep things interesting having fits every time we go out on the sitting porch. Alan says they even chase the hummingbirds away. No problem as there is another feeder they can go to. The male sings and sings, which is a great pleasure to me. We have a couple of sets of mockingbirds and their singing is an intense joy as well. The older male is quite a virtuoso, out cardinaling cardinals and surpassing robins at their own game.




Two calves yesterday, a bull from Sedona and a heifer from Consequence. They are both by the bull, Myrik, a Picston Shottle son. We wouldn't have minded using Shottle himself, but he is plumb out of our price range. We got a good deal on the son though from a nice fellow Liz met at Altamont Fair. We already have one yearling heifer already by him out of my ETrain heifer that is pretty nice.

The two new ones are both nearly all white with tons of speckles. I named the heifer Cameo...will try to get some pics at some point.




The guys got the Case 930 running and are using it now. Here is a video we made of it the other night. It is an amazing old thing.

Corn planting is done. The men will resume haying if it stops raining. What is it with all these cold, wet springs anyhow? As soon as June rolls around it starts raining and once it gets going it just won't quit!

Other than that we have been planting garden between the sprinkles and downpours, doing a lot of cooking, eagerly anticipating the advent of strawberry season and just farming along. The wild grape flowers are over and the pestilential, but incredibly sweet, wild roses are in bloom and the valley is as fragrant as a perfume factory. It is time for ice cream and long, sweet twilights and frogs and fledgelings.

June is my favorite month by the way!


Wow, here is a great piece on the recent protest at a National Animal ID System, or NAIS meeting. I am downright thrilled that mainstream farmers and ranchers are getting on board against this ridiculous, costly and downright dangerous program!

And here is more fun from Craigslist....

"Hi,

A local small farm family, recently helping out a larger rescue are taking care of several sheep and llamas. Looking for sponsors and/or donors to help with a new expanded paddock. We will place a plague to honor any sponsors. Can't keep sheep, adopt one of ours - we care, feed, shelter your sheep, yet you can visit whenever you want. Several lambs to choose from now. "

I wonder if you sponsor a pig they will place swine flu.


Still more....you have to watch this! Obama on my Shoulder


And even more (I feel like I should be on Twitter or something today, as many times as I have edited this post.

This is an actual photograph of an actual check we received today for a 96 pound Holstein bull calf. He was healthy, vigorous and well started. Here is an advertisement for less than one pound of beef jerky. Does anyone besides me see something wrong with this ?

(Almost) Wordless Wednseday

Yes, that is a stick. It is being sold as a bird perch. It costs $4.16. And I am in the wrong line of work.

I am Not Sure What This Means

But it has the feel of good news.



And here is more news on the sad dairy situation, this time from the perspective of one of the larger cattle auction firms that work in this area....

Passing it On

My dad is a lifelong birder. Not surprisingly some of my earliest memories involve seeing Baltimore orioles for the first time when we moved to the country. A barn owl in our old barn. Barn Swallows. Bobwhites. I will never forget our first feeder cardinal back before they were common up here. Over the past decade or so various teams of us have always done the Audubon Christmas count. We also eagerly indulge in an ongoing battle of avian oneupsmanship over who sees the best birds throughout the year.

Now Alan is joining us in this endless delight. He has started a life list and will soon surpass any ability I might have in IDing birds in the field. (It doesn't hurt to study this stuff in college and to have sharp young eyes to boot.) We took a trip for some dog and cat food and other sundries yesterday and birded all the way home.

Can you spot the duck?

He pulled off the road here, something I have always wanted to do but was afraid of the traffic. It was like Heaven. Birds began to pop out of the woods and swamp the minute we parked. Green herons, mallards, cedar waxwings, red winged blackbirds, robins, tree swallows, Canada geese, they paraded by one after another. We could have stayed there all day with the camera, binoculars and field guide.



Alas the perishables were getting warm so we settled for taking the long way home. He got two lifers along the way, a brown thrasher and a meadowlark. (We saw several of the latter) I suspect that helping him with his list is going to be much more fun than doing my own was.


I hope we can go again soon. I can't think of anything more fun and the price is right.
A little gas.
A little time.
Great company. What's not to like?

Sunday Stills....Silhouettes

Did we have fun with this one?
Oh, yes, we really did.
At first I thought I might not even try....so busy this time of year. Then once we got started I had such a great time that we ended up with a lot of them.
For more Sunday Stills, go here.

Saturday Morning Special

Good Grief-Mother Nature is Getting Kinda Raw

We tried off and on all day yesterday to get a decent photograph of this turkey hen. She kept sneaking in and out of the bushes playing peek a boo. We never did get anything decent.
This pic is taken from the living room window from this morning and that is the lawn.
And that pile of feathers and stuff is what is left of her. I don't believe the grey fox did this. I am thinking coyote. I am also afraid she had a nest out there somewhere......

Turn on

....the Cute-o-Meter. This is Liz feeding Shamrock and Shameless their morning buckets of milk. They are like hungry puppies and so tame they come running whenever they hear somebody call, "Babies!"

Shameless

(Okay, kid, where's YOUR milk mustache?)

What's Going on Around Here?

Lotsa stuff. Arguably this is the busiest time of the year. The guys are finishing up planting corn and are chopping hay for the cows and have baled one small load for the calves in the barn. Got the tomatoes mostly all in yesterday. Sheared a little on the old sheep....she loved it too. Lay there turning her neck this way and that so I could reach the itchy spots better.




Alan is progressing quite rapidly on replacing the piston in the Case 930. Hoping real hard that it will run when he gets done.





There are some odd doings as well. For example I was roundly and soundly cussed out on my own front porch yesterday morning. I went out to get a container to pot up a tomato for my mom. As soon as I got out there it started. Chatter, chatter, chatter. Rattle, rattle, rattle. The house wrens have decided to nest in the little ornamental bird house my lovely sister-in-law gave me for my birthday a few years ago. They are more than a little territorial. As soon as I went back inside the male returned to swing on the camel bells and sing me away. The diminutive female pounced back into her abode and nestled into her nest of feathers, fluff and sticks, bill tip tilted toward the door, covering her tiny eggs. They are going to have to share though....




Then there is that whole bartering thing. Becky's dear little Buff Orpington hen, Chick Pea, finally passed away, the last of her year's group. In the chicken world she was ancient. Her remains were left in the lane by the bridge between the house and barn for disposal in the morning. However, when we crossed to milk yesterday morning, her poor old body was gone. In its place was a fat (deceased) baby cottontail. Guess our resident fox decided a bird in the hand was worth more than a rabbit in the paws or something.

Anyhow, we had a good laugh about it. I still wonder why the fox didn't come back for the bunny...and what I wouldn't have given to have witnessed the exchange.
I wonder how long it stood there pondering....tender, but small bunny? Huge, but very old and tough as heck hen?
Feathers or fur?
Not exactly surf or turf, but maybe meadow or hen house? Grass or grain fed?
Did it try to carry them both?
I wonder, I wonder....

Milk Protest in Iowa

Here is another interesting article on current milk prices. It is worth reading all the way to the end....some real food for thought about the cooperative system and how it is affecting farm prices today.

Wordless Wednesday

Cold with Calf

Just another photograph having nothing whatsoever to do with the text of the post....

Becky brought most of my houseplants back in last night as I was in the barn late attempting to calve Alan's old cow, Voldemar. Calf was upside down, contracted tendons, I couldn't get it. All I could feel was one upside down hoof, no head, no second foot anywhere I could reach. Not good. I gave the old girl a second bottle of sub cu calcium and waited for the experts to get home....seems a guy the other side of Albany paid Liz a hefty amount of money to drive over and breed a cow for him. Her dad went along to see to her general safety while driving through the edge of the city so late in the evening.

When they got home our resident college graduate righted the calf and got it out. A heifer. I have been nursing this poor old cow for months, trying to save her. She has not done too badly up until a couple days ago when she went down and couldn't quite get back on her feet. Liz says the hormone, relaxin, loosens the joints so badly on a close up cow, that if they have problems to begin with they get worse. I have despaired for the last week of getting the calf safely and I am grateful to Liz and the boss for getting it done so late last night.

I am also grateful to Alan, who wants to give me the calf because I have tried so hard for the old cow. Baby is still in pretty good shape this morning, although she probably needs a shot of selenium.



******Take a minute if you have one and visit a new blog in the blogroll, Dino Giacomazzi. He has some wonderful videos of California farm life, including the birth of a calf.

Sunday Stills.....Powerlines

For more Sunday Stills go here......

Making up for my Rant

(Hopefully at least) by wishing one and all a happy weekend.


This wonderful rhubarb leaf bird bath was crafted by one of my favorite sets of aunts and uncles. It is one of the joys of my life to watch a blue jay or the local song sparrow take a vigorous flutter bath, then wipe their faces dry on the herb pots. It is a comfort to toads and a nice drinking bowl for local critters too. Someday I would love to try my hand at making some of them.

Just How Bad it is in the Dairy Industry

Read about it here in the LA Times.
For California just fill in NY or any other dairy state. Even the big, efficient farms are hurting and hurting badly. Prices are projected to decline still more in June.
Dairy month....yeah right...death of the dairy month is more like it.

It is literally costing us and most other dairy farmers more money to make milk than we are being paid for it.

A LOT more money.

We are among those who have burned through savings and credit and are watching the lifetime investments of more than one generation of hard working people melt like snow on a hot muffler. With beef prices so low, you can't even sell your cows, pay down your debt and get out. You are a prisoner of the economy.

Excuse my whining, but it is so darned discouraging to even get up and go out in the morning, knowing that it is costing us at least six or eight dollars more for every hundred pounds of milk than we can possibly be paid for it. I can't believe the milk inspectors still stop and ask for a new door on the milk house, fresh paint here, new hoses there. Ours said, "You know they want the place to look nice from the road (never mind that you can't see it from the road.) I wonder where they think we will get the money for these things. My late and exceptionally wise mother-in-law always said, "You can tell when the farmers have money. The first thing they do is fix up the place."

Well, I figure you will be seeing a lot of pretty shabby places over the next few months.
And empty ones too.
Lots of them.
I was really pleased to see such an article in a big city paper like the Times.....

For Dad

Sorry this one is kind of blurry....
but you can get an idea of the size of this chunk of Brazilian Amethyst
Dad brought back from their southern gold mining travels.
It is sitting on their Fisher fireplace insert!

My mom is strong and bright and optimistic, and someone I admire more than you could imagine. She could use some serious prayers right now and we are doing our best to supply them...

However, this certainly gives one pause for thought. Maybe we should get a permit or something.


****Update! You should go see my Sis-in-law's blog today! She has pics of my handsome little brother working on a giant statue at the UN. So cool! (Click on 'em for a good look.)

Rainy Days

We have joined the rest of the nation, or at least a lot of it, in being too soggy wet, too dark and dreary and just plumb too miserable, weather wise. According to a well known Town of Glen businessman there was hard frost there this weekend......Although rain is needed in some quantity, enough is enough. We are in the middle of spring planting and starting to hay and it can stop now, thank you.

However, being unable to garden, plant or mow left time for a little silliness yesterday.

Such as herding the one-footed rooster with Gael

Or looking for examples of optimism

Cat VS Cottontail




Buzzards VS Broadway

These things are so not happening guys......