Busy day yesterday. Men cleaned the barn, fed cattle and worked on a plugged gas line on the 930 Case and a broken transmission fluid line on the 4490 Case (always something).
Liz went to Duanesburg for some guinea keets we found on Craig's list. Here's hoping we can raise them and have resident guinea fowl at Northview again. At one time I had around 70 of them. They provided much entertainment with their continuous state of avian hysteria, as well as teaching the horses not to spook at feathery bombs going off under their noses a hundred times a day. They also liked to fly up to the top of the 70-foot tall tower and sit there and shriek at everything that passed.
Meanwhile, I did the usual house chores and bookkeeping and processed some beautiful beets my dear brother and sister-in-law dropped off on Sunday. You'll have to ask my mom the story about me and my adventure with my first baby food, which just happened to be beets. Let's just say that I liked them and leave it at that (I'll never tell).
Meanwhile, after a historically cool summer it has gotten hot, in a fast and furious fashion. I took out the digital veterinary thermometer yesterday and stood in the milkhouse by the sink. The compressor was running to cool the milk and it was over 103 degrees there. I don't know how far over because I couldn't stand the heat long enough for the thermometer to turn off.
If the cows had their way they would just stay in the barn all the time with all the fans running....I wonder what all those animal rights folks who think it is cruel to put bovines in a barn would think of that! When we open the door for milking they crowd inside and rush to their stalls as fast as their feet will take them. Heading out the other way is just as slow as coming in is fast. Wish we could leave them in, but when they are in, stables have to be cleaned and bedded every day and the feed brought in...it just takes too much time in summer when there is crop work going on. They do have lots of shade and a creek and pasture to rest in, but they love those big barn fans. (So do we by the way).
All last week teaser clouds rumbled around the horizons, but it didn't rain. The guys went after hay like crazy, finished up a bag and got another on the bagger. Last night there was a new set of ominous boomers rolling by and Alan asked on the way out to chores if I wanted the computers unplugged.
Nah, just another empty threat.
Not
Within an hour it was pouring(just so you know, we didn't need it.) and we really got dumped on. Ramped the humidity up even more and it is predicted to get up in the nineties again today. Guess we are going to get summer all at one swoop.
The guys are so close to finishing up the hay and really need to bale a few thousand...it can stop now.
And I like it that way. The guys are starting a fourth ag bag today. Wish it were the fifth...or sixth... Crops are sure short with the terrible weather this summer.
We are so glad we didn't plant a lot of corn as what we have is terrible and we still have to pay the cost of planting, fertilizing and applying weed control to it. Sweet corn doesn't look too bad...if the raccoons stay out of it we will have some to eat and freeze in just a few days.
The boss brought down a skid steer bucket load of chopped barley and new seeding for me to bed the babies with last night. It was kind of mungey and nasty, but I am cleaning them out, liming the beds and bedding them up twice a day for their comfort and for fly control. I was running out of stuff to put under them. Anyhow, he left the bucket down and we had to fight to get it away from the cows. Something about it must have tasted good to them. What we rescued was nice and fluffy for the babies though.
We counted the other day and we have THIRTY-THREE babies in the barn right now. Some of them are yearlings that really need to go to pasture, but mostly they are little calves. Liz has been feeding as many as 25 on a bucket, which is a bucket load of work I'll tell you.
I enjoy the task of keeping the tiny ones comfy though. They are so cute. Often after their beds are clean they will stick their noses down into the fresh bedding and then buck and jump like rodeo bulls just for the joy of playing in it. I have to be careful what order I bed them in because the feet fly right past my head sometimes. It is so satisfying though, when by the time we finish milking they are all lying down with their knees tucked up, chewing cud and watching me work.
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.
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.
****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.
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.
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?
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....
Here. ***Thanks to Jean for this one And here is amuch 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.....
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.
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.
(Note the anti-Elvis wire covering.)
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