More Chuck Jolley

This week Mr. Jolley interviews Kevin Murphy about anti-agriculture activism and what response farmers can offer. As are many of Mr. Jolley's articles, this one is worth taking time to read.

I Hate to Say It

But the signs are all in place.

Foggy mornings.

Shrieking cicadas in the honey locust right next to the kitchen window. There are so many and they are so loud they drown out even the Thruway.

Gold finches in droves, tinkling from thistle to thistle. There are hundreds and they do the baby raising gig now when the seeds they like are plentiful....the other birds have gone silent, even the mockingbird....

Shrinking days....summer days are like wool sweaters. They are hot and itchy but you love them anyhow...and the hotter it gets, and the soggier, the more they shrink, until they are just too short to be good for much of anything. We are getting there fast, alas.

Fall is almost here...

Cecropia Moth Caterpillar?

We think so.

Cash for Clunkers

Dairy farming has its own version of this program. It is called Cooperatives Working Together, or CWT.

Just for Dairy Farmers

****And of course for consumers who are interested in what happens behind the scenes in the milk production industry.

John Bunting has had several posts this week on processor profits (up 176% this year at one notorious company) and how the International Dairy Foods Association, which represents the big food companies (which are growing ever richer at the expense of dairymen and women) have sent a letter decrying efforts by government officials to direct a little more cash toward struggling farms. Worth reading. I learn something every day.

Entries

Liz and I went over yesterday noon to make our fair entries, expecting as usual to stand in line for a goodly time. Amazingly there was almost no one there and getting entered was a snap. Same at the photo kiosk at Wally World. We printed up our photos and picked up some appropriate frames in no time. (I went with the silhouettes and frogs, along with some landscapes from Pecks. Liz chose rodeo pics.) Now I just have to choose between a chicken and the frog head close up for my 8x10. I printed both just in case. Took some Italian sausage soup to mom and dad while we were out and ran the other errands as well.

We had kinda, sorta decided not to enter Blitz in the fair. Lotta work and all. However, while standing in line I looked at the stack of parking permits. Hmmmm....cows at the fair means exhibitor parking. No cows at the fair means best of luck getting a place close to the barns. And after all, cows or no cows, the barns is where it is all happening.

I asked Liz, "How much extra just to enter one cow?"

She replied, " I don't know...it can't be much."

She knew all the particulars like sire, dam and DOB, so quick like bunnies, she made out the entry form right there in line. It ended up costing fifty-five extra cents to enter her big cow. We have to scare up a few bales of decent straw and get her trucked over (a whole mile) but looks like Maqua-Kil Blitz Mendocino is headed to the fair this fall.

Fair Entries

Today I guess I will be heading over to Fonda to make my fair entries. Last year I picked a few photos off of Northview, printed them and entered. They came in second, which was quite a happy making sort of event and I got a pass which is always quite handy. Then I gave the framed photos away as Christmas gifts, which worked out pretty well too. Thus I will do the same this year.

The fair is less than a mile from here so no matter how determined I am to stay home, the lure always proves irresistible, every single year. How can you pass up a chance to meet dozens of friends you haven't seen since last year, see hundreds of lovely animals (although if Altamont is any yardstick numbers will be down), eat lots of bad for you but oh, so tasty food, and partake of the atmosphere of a county fair? I know I can never quite resist.

So....now I need to choose some photos....I was thinking maybe these....or these....any suggestions?

Thank You

To CTG Ponies for thinking so kindly of Northview. She gave me this award yesterday

Pass the award along to 7 of your favorite bloggers, based on your personal preference.

I couldn't possible settle on just 7 of you folks to pass it along to....you all are special favorites of mine.

Thanks also to Linda, who told me how to do these award thingies! I never got it right before.

Le Danse Macabre

Would describe the weekend all too well. A little background....the kids have been showing cows at the Altamont and Fonda fairs since they were small. Liz was six the first time she led her calf of the year, Sonora, into the ring at Fonda. Last year the show schedule was scaled back to just Fonda, as gas money is scarce and Altamont is far away...(and there are other issues...if you show there you know all about it). Then, just for fun they entered Liz's Blitz cow back at Altamont for this year....just one cow, just to hang out with the kids who show and thus have some fun at the fair.

As soon as entries were made and the health work done, Blitz, who had just calved, came down with a 103+ degree fever and lost a lot of weight practically overnight. An antibiotic put her right, but not in time for truck in, which would be today. She will be all right and all but looks awful.

Okay, stuff happens. Everybody is tired anyhow and there is still Fonda in a couple of weeks. Maybe she will be fit by then.

Then we came in Saturday night to discover that a kid Liz has known since he was little, drowned in a pond while swimming with his brother. He shows calves for one of her best friends. Suddenly, cow stuff didn't matter so very much. Kids from the bunch that show together spent the weekend commiserating over the internet. I didn't know him, having scaled back my fair attendance as the kids became old enough to run the string alone, but that doesn't matter. Losing a kid is the worst thing there is. My heart goes out to the family and the whole gang at the fair. Not much of a year for the kids for sure.

Then comes the macabre part. As soon as Liz came in from chores yesterday morning her phone began to ring. It was Price Chopper calling the Barter and Donnan funeral home to find out where to deliver a meat platter. Strange, but things happen with cell phones. Then they called again. And again.

More people called for the funeral home. Where to park. When was this viewing or that? We tried calling them to get it fixed, but guess whose phone rang when we did.

By mid afternoon she estimated that she had received over thirty calls. Even the local telephone operator called to ask what the heck was going on. Liz likes to take a nap on Sunday. That was just not happening. Of course she could have turned off the phone, but there were friends trying to call over the tragedy over the weekend and she didn't want to do that.

Finally, I got on the Web and found a weekend phone number for Verizon. I won't discuss their weekend customer service operators, because this is a family blog. Needless to say we were not pleased with the disinterested response we got.

So I composed a kinda, sorta firmly worded email, which she fired off to the company. (Have I mentioned that I do firmly worded quite well and by this time we were pretty aggravated?) Within an hour the problem was fixed and the minutes that had been devoured by the misplaced calls were replaced on her phone.

And to be fair, it wasn't Verizon's fault. Someone at the funeral parlor accidentally routed all their off hours calls to Liz's cell.

However, it was a weekend of sadness punctuated by weirdness. Macabre is a good word for it.



***Update, just read the news...this is just a couple miles from us. Talk about weird.

And this from Jinglebob
I knew NY had issues, but dang! Just dang....

Sunday Stills, the Four Elements

Earth

Wind

Fire

Water

For more Sunday Stills....

Dickiebo Insisted

What do you do

When late blight takes out your tomatoes and potatoes?

You make fried green tomatoes and baked potatoes. Lots of them. Found a recipe for the former that involves baking rather than actual frying. Yum.

More Dairy Action, Schumer asks for Anti-Trust Action

Here.

***Thanks to Jean for this one

And here is a much more detailed look into the subject, from John Bunting's dairy blog. (Click on each page of the Feingold, Schumer, Sanders letter.) For all you farmers who have spent the last decade gnashing your teeth over failure to act on anti-trust issues in the dairy industry, here is a little something kinda, sorta hopeful. Now all that is needed is action.

This letter, from the three senators to an assistant attorney general, is pure dynamite. We all knew this stuff was going on, but to read the numbers laid out one after another is shocking! Even if you are not a farmer, this should tick you off. Every time you pick up a gallon of milk you are being deprived of competitive pricing, plus the farmer who produced the milk is being kicked in the teeth. Check it out.....

Hunting a Lost Calf

We found junior Holstein critter just south of here.

While the boss and Liz were at the ball game (they had a great time btw and the Mets won 9-0) Alan and I undertook to find a missing calf. Bubbles, a big Ocean View Extra Special daughter of mine, had a bull calf by SWD Valiant out in the heifer pasture a couple days ago. We let her stay with him for a day then went to bring her down...and couldn't find him. It's a big pasture with a big hill.

If we didn't find him quickly yesterday we were going to put her back out so she could find him for us, but that wasn't our top choice as we would have had to sort her out from about twenty or so young stock again and she is a very hard to handle critter. She is a big cow and will charge you. I was wishing we worked stock on horseback like our rancher friends. Then we could have made short work of the job.

First we searched the thistle patch at the bottom of the hill. You wouldn't think a hundred-pound, bright black and white spotted calf would be easy to hide. However if mama pushes one into a clump of thistles it will lie invisible and never move even if you walk past it a foot away. We once searched all day for one that was lying right under a forage wagon that we must have passed twenty times.

After plenty of scratches and scrapes from the miserable thistles we decided that it just wasn't in there and headed up the great big hill behind the house. He went east and I went straight south.




A few minutes later I heard a hoarse moo somewhere south of me. I couldn't see it because of a patch of wild roses the size of a truck. It may sound silly but I can do a pretty successful imitation of a mama cow calling her baby. I proceeded to do so. Soon I could hear eager little moos hurrying in my direction. I pulled out my dog training whistle and called Alan. (Yeah, besides using the shepherd's whistle for the dogs I have always called the kids with it too...you can hear it a long ways away...people in town always thought I was awful calling my kids with a dog whistle, but it always got them home when I needed them.)

The kid is a lot more likely to be able to grab a calf on the hoof than I am. He hustled over.

We still hadn't actually seen the calf, but he went down behind the clump of wild rose bushes to where we could hear it bawling eagerly for mama.

When it saw him it took off at a dead run.
Straight back at me.
I was wearing my camera, carrying Alan's 12 gauge and a sorting stick. Needless to say I didn't grab it but just got out of the way.....Looked like Secretariat sailing away back to the north over the hill and gone....feet barely touching the ground in that weird off center run that cattle have.

Alan said..."point where it goes for me and I will run it down."

I did and he did....at least a quarter mile over the top of the hill, down the other side and back into the original thistle patch. When he caught up he grabbed its hips and pulled it to a stop. It fought like a wild thing, which I guess it was, but he put the halter I was carrying on it and began to lead it to the barn.... after we looked for his hat for ten minutes or so...it was lost in the race.

All the way to the barn the little bugger attacked him, charging his legs and bawling and snorting. I was like a wild rodeo bull in miniature. I felt sorry for it so..... scared at not finding its mother and instead being pursued by such a strange blond wolf. All is well that end well though and it is safe in the barn where no coyotes or turkey vultures roam.

But oh, how I wish I could run like that. And a long time ago I somewhere heard a story about how the breeder of SWD Valiant lost her prefix and couldn't use it on the calf, which went on to be a highly regarded Holstein sire. Thus she used SWD, which stood for Sold With Dam, a common auction term. I have no idea if this story is true but I think I will name my little bull, Frieland RWA Bat Man....RWA for runs with Alan.

Just Another Wednesday

Late blight has been hitting the northeast in a big way, spread I guess from some tomatoes from some garden center. I grew my plants from seed, but alas the horror spreads on the wind and from the looks of the lower leaves yesterday I am getting hit. My potatoes are already on their way out. Fortunately they have developed enough for the potatoes themselves to be dug, so I dug a bunch yesterday and will try to get the rest today. They are quite nice. I hosed them off outside and they were sitting in a bucket by the sink when I heard...crunch, crunch, munch, munch....
What the heck. I am used to pork chops vanishing.
Bread doing a bunk.
But potatoes!
Who knew!

That sheepish look is because of the camera, not because I begrudge him a couple of spuds.

Later I was picking a batch of green beans for supper when I heard a hen turkey cut-cutting just feet away. It wasn't Lucy, who was down by the horse barn, but rather a wild one we have been seeing out in the horse field. I never did see this one, but I would estimate that she was within six feet of me hidden in tall weeds. It was kind of cool.

Right now a cardinal is whistling up a storm in the cedars by the front door . This is the first time one of them has used the acoustics of the front hall to amplify its song, although other birds do it regularly. You wouldn't believe how loud it is.

Farm Side deadline today, but there is so much going on in the dairy business just now that it shouldn't be hard to find material. Hopefully finding time won't be a problem either.

Someone special is taking Liz and the boss to NY for a Mets game today. The rest of us will be holding down the fort without them. Liz is over graining the cows right now, so I don't have to, but I will be doing it tonight. I think she is worried about me handling it, but I used to do it all the time....I am more worried about all the dozens of calves on buckets right now.

Things are Hopping Around Here

(Excuse the grubby fingers, this toad was brought to you by a hard working man)

And there is some discussion about just what the hopping things in question are. I never knew that we had Fowler's Toads around here, but Alan insists that some of the little guys that we are finding everywhere are not plain old American toads. (I am not going to argue with him. He is the college fisheries and wildlife student and I am just his mom.) They DO seem to have the diagnotic extra lumps in their wartiness. Whatever they are, and I suspect some of each of our local common toads, they are everywhere. You have to watch where you step in the driveway, as they blend in amazingly well and are hopping all over the place out there. I know some toad whoopee was being made in the heifer watering trough all spring, because I could hear them singing all night and half the day. I suspect there may have been some happening in the garden pond too, although I never caught them in the act and they are a pretty shameless lot.

The little ones seem to have an extra measure of cute that is irresistible. I found one when I was out feeding my dog Nick that was small enough to sit comfortably on my thumbnail with room to spare. I put it in the quart cottage cheese container I take the dog food out in (after feeding the latter to Nick of course). Then I took the container in to Becky and said, "Look, I have one little kibble left."

She glanced into the container, did a double take and began to carry on in utter delight. She is as tickled as I am by tiny toads. After a careful examination baby toadlet was carried out to the edge of the pond, where he was much safer than the center of the driveway. Later Alan brought a big one in to compare to the Fowler's on the Internet.....hmmm, spots here, spots there, I think I may, I think I might....be right about this toady tonight.

You see, I have raised my daughters and son right. They love herptiles like outdoor folks should. I am delighted by all these toads and by a baby green frog Alan found on the bridge. By the myriad garter snakes we find. Red backed salamanders (which I have known as plethodon cinereus so long that I have to think to come up with their English name). Milk snakes....although we haven't seen many of those this year yet. All the hoppy, slithery, scaled and slippery amphibians and reptiles that hang around us. I guess we are lucky that most of our local critters are non-poisonous and in the case of the toad, downright neighborly. It makes enjoying them so much fun.

The Expert Has Spoken

Thanks to everyone for an interesting dialog on the Glen Beck Cash for Clunkers story yesterday.

Kim Komando, the digital goddess, addressed it on her blog yesterday and you can read about it here.

And here is her conclusion:

"Personally, I think this is an example of what happens when lawyers aren’t properly supervised. This language is just so over the top."

Drink Milk, Live Longer

Thanks to World Dairy Diary

Milk drinkers live longer.

“Furthermore, childhood diets rich in dairy or calcium were associated with lower all-cause mortality in adulthood.”

Another recent review, in the Journal of the American College of Nutrition, made similar findings. It found that dairy products conferred an “overall survival advantage” against vascular disease, diabetes and cancer."

Have You Seen This?

If this is true, the government appears to be permitted to completely take over your computer if you log onto Car.Gov for the Cash for Clunkers program and accept the privacy statement. There seems to be a great deal of discussion on various sites as to whether the privacy statement exists at all and as to whether it says what Beck says it does. Some people think that it is only the dealer log in page that requires that you give up all your information to big brother...but even so...should Uncle BO be allowed to look into everything on a business computer like that?

Anyhow, I am not logging in there to find out.

I hope you will share your thoughts on whether this is actually in the privacy statement and if so, what it actually will mean to folks who opt into it. Meanwhile, I would avoid that site like a patch of radioactive poison ivy. Good grief!!

Macro Monday Revisited

Macro Monday