Sunday Stills...Fences

I had to hit the archives this week. This is a fence that we were quite glad was there.....

And below, is what most of our fences look like this rainy, rainy summer.....



For more (and better) Sunday Stills

Dum Da Dum Dum....The Name

The naming hat has had its say. My new red baby's brand new name is Northstar.

Thanks to June for naming her.

Thank you all for all the great suggestions. Hope you will help again, the next time I come up blank in the naming department.


And in the pointless, but fun department, yesterday was not a great day. Weather issues, farming issues, general misery because it was still raining issues. Last thing at night, after chores were over, Becky and I ran downtown to do a few errands. We needed an extra copy of the paper for a friend, as the Farm Side runs on Friday. We also needed to pick up our own copy at the bottom of the driveway.

I always get a kick out of opening to the editorial page on Friday to see what title the editor has given each week's submission. This week I wrote a sort of tongue in cheek lament about leaving camp behind...I love the lake. Even though I love home too, it is always hard to change gears at the end.....Imagine my surprise when I discovered that I had, not only a nice title, (The Vacation's Over Blues) but a cartoon! Yep right in the corner, next to that lovely 11 year old photo, which makes me feel so good every single week, was a cute little drawing

It describes exactly how I feel! I drove home grinning from ear to ear after seeing it.

More on Moving the Biolab

Lawmaker slams plan for Kansas bio threat lab. (Thanks Elaine)

What puzzles me is why it took so long for legislators and quite a lot of the ag media to get all over this. England is a pretty small country on a not so large island. They probably had no choice but to place their research labs among farms and cattle.

Didn't work out so well for them. We already have a lab dedicated to the study of infectious animal disease.....on an island, in the ocean, far away from cows. So of course, the powers that be want to dump infectious material right into the heart of Kansas cattle company. What are they thinking?

Thanks

Thanks, Linda

Farmers Number 8

Check it out

HT Amanda Noltz at Beef Daily Blog

But wait! There's more! Here is legislation that is LONG overdue. Now lets see if they pass it.
And enforce it..

Water, water, everywhere

Here is Cameo drinking from the big girl water tub.
(The wire is over the window and really no where near her. I am just too short to miss it in the frame.)

It's wet!

There are times when we are glad of our hills....at least, although haying is shut right down until it dries up a bit, we are not under water like folks in the story above.

We got a lot yesterday though. Driveways washed again. I was thinking I needed to top up the garden pond...uh, not so much....

Deer in the headlights look.

Another milking shorthorn/Holstein cross,
this time a bull, which will be steered and raised for beef.

*******Keep those names coming! Getting some real great ones!

Name that Calf

As promised

Long time followers and Farm Side readers are probably familiar with the Name That Calf contest phenomenon.

The rules are simple. We here at Northview need a name for a new baby. You out in blog land are clever, inventive, and kind enough to be helpful. And of course, everyone, everywhere, is eager to receive the fabulous prize, which is to have a beautiful bovine go through life sporting the name you gave it.

In past contests, lovely Bama Breeze was named by Florida Cracker. Asaki, as in "this is my cow, Asaki," got her moniker from Mrs. Mecomber. Liz has several named by kind folks as far away as Oregon. Dalkeith, Takala, Maureen, Hazel, just to name a few....

Anyhoo, it has come to pass that I have a really nice calf, and no one can come up with a name that is quite....enough....if you get know what I mean. Nothing quite seems to fit...to have that ring that stands out just so.......

The name-ee is half milking shorthorn and half Holstein, sired by our shorthorn bull, Checkerboard Magnum's Promise. Her dam is a gigantic first calf heifer out of my Trixie family (ask Alan if she looks like Trixie). Mama's name is Frieland Chilt Encore, and she is sired by a Champion son, Chilton. Her dam is my old England cow, who sadly had a preemie while we were at camp, which only lived one day.

Shamelessly nameless is the color of a pale carrot, a soft, orangy red. Her face has a faint roaning pattern that makes it look as if the sun was shining on it all the time....and she has a few snowflake-like speckles on her legs. (I will try to get a pic this morning at milking.)

She was a total surprise to me. Although Encore's maternal grandsire was Citation R Maple, none of her other family members ever showed any sign of being a red carrier. A sure sign of carrying the gene for a red coat is having a red calf...recessive gene and all. This opens up some interesting possibilities, as England must be a red carrier too. She is an old cow, but, you never know.

I am going to say thanks in advance for all the wonderful names I expect you will probably come up with. I enjoy the connection I feel with my blog friends when I care for animals that you good folks have named. I get a huge kick out of the clever and perfectly good fitting names you have come up with too.....Liz has the naming hat (into which we put slips with your baby names) all primed and ready....

So, ready, set, go......

NAIS and Kansas FMD Lab

Two links to Cattle Trader stores.

One is a Chuck Jolley column on the popularity of the National Animal Identification system....or the overwhelming lack of it...



The second discusses the advisability of plopping the nation's animal disease research lab (think foot and mouth disease) down in the middle of Kansas cow country.



****be sure to click the link at the very end of Jolley's column about USDA and the word "no".

Homecoming Week

Being back from camp is always a challenge. I don't think we quite realize just how busy we are until we let it all go for a week. Then homecoming hits like a two by four to the head. This year it is worse than usual because of the dairy situation. The point of can't do it any more is rapidly approaching on farms all over the country and ours is no exception.

Alan has jumped into finishing up 1st cutting. They finished Hickory Tree Field yesterday, with one more big field and one small to go. It is still too wet to put a tractor in any of the new seeding, but we are praying the ground firms up enough to get that in.

We are so glad we only planted a little corn this year. The cost of putting it in is ridiculous since the advent of wonderful, wonderful (insert sarcasm) ethanol. And with this lousy weather, what they did plant looks two months behind. If they can get the first cutting finished up I guess there is some nice second to go after too. And that new seeding weather permitting.

The boss was worrying about buying corn meal this winter to replace the corn we didn't grow. I pointed out to him that the cows are doing pretty well on cheap (ish) grain and green chop. They ought to do just as well or better on fermented green stuff and the same grain this winter...so why worry?

Liz is tired from filling in for the rest of us for the past week. I feel bad for her. Alan came down several times and helped her milk, but the boss doesn't exactly leap into the fray during milking. She is planning her fairs....decided to show her Blitz daughter at Altamont and Fonda. She got a Roylane Jordan daughter from her, which is some solace I guess for being left with all the work. Her vacation will be the shows... Not my idea of restful contemplation but then I am a whole lot older than she is. I can remember dragging the ponies over to Fonda...and the cart...harnesses...hay...weeks, months, years of training. For a couple of little slips of ribbon (usually red, although Major Moves and I once brought home the blue for open driving.)

Becky will be off to Potsdam in 31 days. I think she is getting nervous. I know I am. She will be the first one of the kids to leave home....I am not sure just how folks deal with that phenomenon, but I guess I will be finding out pretty soon.

While we were away my Trixie family heifer gave birth to a one-half milking shorthorn heifer calf. It came as an amazing surprise to me as it is the loveliest carrot red you could imagine. I simply didn't suspect that Encore was a red carrier, despite her mama being a Citation R Maple daughter. Kind of neat anyhow. I am looking forward to seeing the folks who bought some semen from her sire from us last year. Wondering if they have any nice calves. Ours are amazing looking things. Wish we saw a rosier future, as I think we could make some pretty nice milking shorthorns with a little practice. The one we are milking isn't much of a tester, but she makes as much milk as a Holstein.

We are buried in calves right now. Liz has over twenty of them on buckets. Normally when milk prices are so low and we have such a barn full of heifers we would send five or six of them over to the heifer sale and pay some bills. Now they aren't worth anything. We got fourteen bucks for two nice bulls again last week. I have no clue how we are going to pay our taxes this fall as we count on heifers to fund that. Sorry to be so negative, but this is historically about the worst time dairy farming has EVER seen. I am tired.

On that note, I stumbled upon a good blog just before we left for camp. John Bunting is a well-known dairy speaker and his blog offers some insight into what is going on behind the scenes to create the current crisis. Check it out if you have a minute.

Macro Monday

For more Macro Monday

Sunday Stills....Toys

For more Sunday Stills

Home Again

Yellow Perch

Common Mergansers

My other home

Companionship

A little of this

And a lot of this!!

Sustenance

Transportation

Away...Wednesday

While the Farmer's Away...Tuesday

A Photo a Day

While the farmer's away

Sunday Stills....Awww Nuts

Good grief! This was such a hard one. Liz had some good ideas, but I simply drew a blank. There are no nuts around here in July except the ones milking the cows and driving the tractors and the ones hanging off the back end of some of the livestock...and sorry, but I am NOT going there. lol.
So above are some kind of nuttish things in the woodwork in the dining room....(well, they COULD be acorns...you never know.....





And my favorite nut, who volunteered for this photo and was in no way coerced.

For more Sunday Stills, go here....

My Dad Would Love This

He always has a lot to say about woman drivers

Deja Vu All Over Again

It was about 8:15 last night, I was setting up calf bottles for morning, Ralph was milking the bucket cows and Alan was up behind the barn getting feed with the skid steer. Down the farm road from the far back fields came four teen aged kids....dripping wet, freezing cold, covered in sloppy mud...and whatever else they had stepped in. We ran out to accost them, as most everybody that shows up trespassing is here for nefarious reasons.


They kept telling us how they got on our land from their friend's house and were walking the nature trails. After a while, we realized that they were well and truly lost, as they kept saying they came in from the west, when in fact they were from the housing development to the east...they were visiting from Albany and were on a "nature walk". They kept insisting there were laid out trails and mowed areas where they came onto the farm. Took us a while, but we finally realized they were talking about the farm roads and mowed hay fields.

They were terrified. We didn't mean to scare them, but as I said, we have never actually had benign trespassers before. Thank God they found the barn when they did, because they soon would have been blundering into temporary electric fence where the cows are. Had they not come down when they did they would have been hard to find out there, as although they had a cell phone, there is little signal up there. And there are lots of farm fields, ours and others, going south and west for quite some distance. Lots of wild brush land too.

Anyhow, it took a while to get them straightened out and waiting at the bottom of driveway for parental pick up. I suppose I should feel bad for laughing (even if I waited until after they were gone) as they were polite and really scared, but the manicured "nature trails" and mowed lawns were just too funny for words.

We finished the night by locking Foolish, who had the calf, in the barnyard for the night, as well as Mandy and her daughter Blitz. Blitz looks like calving tonight too and she will not stay in a fence with out her mommy.

When we came to the house Liz pointed out that this happened last year the night she calved.
However, these were the trespassers then. What a coincidence to have strangers show up during the same circumstances like that.

Camp

We leave tomorrow at noon. (Hope to see some of you there...you know who you are.)
Farming doesn't stop while I pack, and the days are so full and busy I barely have time to pick up the camera or spend a few minutes writing here.

I may not have mentioned it, but the boss was pulling the John Deere forage wagon through a particularly rutted bit of farm road last week when a front axle broke. When he called the local dealer about the part the price was way over five hundred bucks.
Plus freight.

Arrggghhh!! And the guy we generally borrow RR jacks from when we have a challenge like this was out of town. We brainstormed. The guys are running with only two wagons this year.
They need that JD.

But five hundred bucks! It was decided to take the part up to Broadalbin Manufacturing and see if they could weld it. If you ever need something like that done, I can't recommend those folks enough. They have big, complicated, metal machining projects going on all the time, but they have a soft spot for farmers and will fit in our little, but important to us, jobs as best they can. They do good work and their prices are very reasonable.

They repaired the axle and welded some kind of doohickey on it for $125. The guys borrowed jacks from my wonderful brother, (thanks, Mappy) who also cut them enough blocking to make what otherwise would have been a terribly dangerous job relatively safe.

And so they are running with two wagons again. They had a mishap with the bagger last week so we lost about sixty feet of bag. Thus yesterday during the storm the boss ran down for a new bag so he and Alan can set it up before we leave for camp. Teri has a pic of some of the hail that was around, but thank God it missed us. One of our friend's corn got hit last week and it looks like Sudan Grass now. In fact when we went by his place, not knowing about the hail, we thought that it WAS Sudan. It has been a very hard year to make forages, one of the worst we have ever seen.

I sure hope this weather pattern gets over itself and goes somewhere where it is needed.
Meantime....must pack.

Question

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Make you think of

This?