Climate Audit

Joated over at Compass Points has a good post on the broken hockey stick graph and other climate change shenanigans. Check it out.

Climate Audit

Popcorn Sniffing Dog

Needed at SUNY Potsdam.

Seems every few nights somebody burns popcorn in the dorm where Becky lives, causing middle of the night fire drills that last beaucoup long. Last night's took place around two AM...and it was raining.

It is cold there, colder even than here, where Liz and I just turned the furnace fan on for the first time this season. (The stove is always going for hot water and the plenum has been open to allow passive heat for a couple of weeks now.)

I gather that the non-popcorn-burning population of the dorm would like the culprit with the overactive microwave to be banished from all aspects of late night munchie reduction. They are becoming far too familiar with the appearance of the parking lot under the streetlights.

Thus the call for a talented canine to sniff out the offending grain destruction expert and bring the situation to a close before all the students (some in night dress ill-suited for the season) get chilblains or worse.

No Frost Yet

I am amazed by this. There have been threats all around us and a little ice on the cars a couple of times, but still no freeze. I am in no rush...personally... Fall colors so far are subdued, with a few brilliant reds and oranges here and there like flags at a rally. Mostly the hills are a dark, dark green rarely seen around here. I wonder what the 'Dacks look like. If anybody can get away to get Beck, maybe we will find out.

We are having a dilemma about the sago palms, of which I am quite fond. A small animal vet we use in dire situations sent around an email telling us that ingesting the leaves is fatal and incurable for pets. Therefore they aren't something we want to have accessible.
Meanwhile I like them.

No pets visit our bedroom...the door is always closed and only the cat can get upstairs anyhow. Gael is too lame to climb them. I want to bring them in and put them up there until they can go back on the sitting porch in the spring. No pets there either.

Alan wants to let them freeze and throw them away.

So they are still out there still, awaiting a decision or a hard frost, whichever comes first.....

Got Nuthin'

"Wanna buy a cinnamon roll?"
(Sometimes you see very scary things this time of year. Imagine what Halloween will be like!)

Or not much anyhow. The boss is trying to get the tire on the stock trailer fixed so we can haul a few select critters over to the sale to pay the taxes. He drove all the way to Middleburg yesterday to pick up the tire he had ordered. Got partway home and got to thinking that it didn't look quite right.

It wasn't.
Wrong entirely.
He took it back and they gladly ordered him another, which they said they will deliver today. Unexpected good service is always a nice surprise.

We had a mess of cold, miserable rain over the past couple of days. Makes for mud and a lot of wet clothes, that just won't dry. (Still better than winter.)

And what is it with the weather wonks anyhow? As soon as a new month starts they begin a new rain count. Thus if it rains 10 inches on the last day of the month and then is dry for a week, they intone gloomily, "We are down several inches for this month."

Do they honestly believe that all the rain from the previous month just went away, sort of like a torn off calendar page? They irritate me mightily.

Macro Monday

For more Macro Monday

Sunday Stills...Signs of Fall

For more Sunday Stills.....

Bright Sides

(After all the gloom and doom I figure I owe them to you)

Ever since we started showing at the Altamont Fair I have wondered about some night calling insects we first heard there. By the French Fry booth in fact...just down from the cider house...They make a scritchy, scrapey sound that is quite loud, but I never could pinpoint one to see what it was.

Then a few years ago I started hearing them here too. Probably they were here all along, but I didn't notice...maybe the multitudinous crickets drowned them out. Soon I found myself standing outside for a few extra minutes on late summer's evenings, listening and wondering.
What the heck was making that noise?

I thought for a long time that they might have been katydids, but the songs in online catalogs were never exactly right. It was frustrating.

The other night I was coming to the house in the early darkness, listening as usual, when one tuned up his song about three feet from my head. I spun around, flashlight probing, and there he was in all his green and buggy splendor, a gigantic katydid. So that mystery is solved.

Then there is the morning sun slanting across dew-soaked Queen Ann's lace...spotlighting the red six-bar gate and making it look like it was written in fire against its cowey background. Geese zig-zagging north, south, east and west, barking like a world full of beagles and turning the tame sky wild.

Finding dozens of minute orange, red, and gold crab apples adorning the tiny tree that volunteered along the driveway. Their colors are more vibrant than the sugar maples even, like delightful Christmas balls decorated in fresh fall colors. (They will show up tomorrow in the Sunday Stills post.)

An odd white caterpillar that wiggled so fast across the grassy ground that it was hard to get a picture of him. The wild turkey that for some reason visits the wood stove every morning. Chipmunk striped baby chicks in the calf pen. Mama is so funny, keeping them behind the gate by pecking at them amazingly hard. I think baby chick is the lightest substance known to man. They seem to move by levitation....especially when dodging that stabbing beak.

George and Laura, the fluffy white banty chickens Teri gave to Liz last year as baby chicks. They are always together and look so striking, like bright white feather flags everywhere they go. And tiny George, who could sit in the palm of my hand crowing the sun up (and down and all day in between) is king of all he surveys. Woe betide Mr. Fluff, or the speckly rooster or the brown ones if they step in his way or look crosswise at his precious Laura! He is one tough cookie for all his dainty appearance.

Every walk to the clothesline, trip to the cow barn, visit to the woodstove, or jaunt to feed the pony brings a wealth of sweet surprises to every passing day. Bright sides everywhere you look.

Finding Grace

I won't lie to you. Things are getting so bad here and on thousands of dairy farms...and farms being put out of business for little fishies...and all kinds of farms...and in homes where jobs are suddenly gone and lots of other sad and frightened places across this great nation, that despair is a daily companion. You talk....every day...about what kind of job you might find. What you will do if you give up.
At your age.
Your level of experience.
You don't sleep much.

I know there are regular readers in the same boat, finding it suddenly, unexpectedly, uncontrollably hard to get by. I won't name them, but I read their daily fear and sadness. There are plenty of people facing a lot worse than us. At least we still own the place and the cows and machinery. At least we have the option of selling them if we have to. Many don't.
I hope they do at least have the incredible good fortune that I do myself.
To be loved.
To know it.

This morning in my in box was an email with the words and chords to Steve Earle's Dixieland. My beautiful brother took the time to figure them out for me, so that should I ever find a minute to get out my guitar and tune it, I can play it. He sent me the song on a CD a few months ago and I fell in love with it. I have the best family anyone could ask for and I love them. Plus I know that they love me.That is grace and as long as that is there I know I have no right to complain.

Bell Weather??

How Can I Take This Guy Seriously?

Progressive Dairyman=a farm publication. Agriculture oriented. You would expect the editor to be familiar with ag terminology.

Wouldn't you?

However, in a recent article about us all being afraid to spend money we don't have, the editor makes a reference to a term often used in discussion of economic trends:

"The consumer confidence index is a measure of this trust. It is a bell-weather market signal and a self-fulfilling prophecy."

Bellwether is an old agricultural term. It refers to a castrated male sheep, which is used to lead a flock of sheep and has a bell on its collar. It is used today to discuss political and economic indicators.

It does not however, refer to a cumulonimbus ringing the wind chimes on the porch.

Picky, I know, but I am becoming very aggravated with any number of ag publications full of advice for farmers during this crisis. It is easy to sit in an office and say do this or do that, but not so easy to fulfull these suggestions when your checkbook has been running on empty for months and every dollar you make costs you two. I mean which one of the two you lost do you spend as that first dollar mentioned in the article? And what kind of weather would ring that bell?

California Water

The 39 MIlk Strike

John Bunting has links to incredible coverage of this long ago event. If you can take time to click the links and read the whole story, please do. I admit to having skimmed for now...deadlines loom and milking impends.....Somewhere in the hutch we have a picture of the boss's father and the father of one of our best friends taking part in this or a similar affair at about the same time. There were some terrible events back then...which the old fellow often recalled for us before his passing.

Wordless Wednesday

Cow in the Road

And I swerve to the left.



Well, actually it was goats in the road and we just followed the herd, the folks doing the herding and the police car up 67 until they got to their farm and turned off. Could have been a disaster I guess, but it was amusing for Liz and me in an otherwise not so entertaining day.

We were on our way back from the hospital where mom has been admitted. Her chemo is not going well and prayers would be much appreciated.



We asked Alan to run the long distance errand we had planned so we were free to go to the hospital. He willingly obliged but in all the excitement of hearing about his grandma, he heard Gardinier's (dairy supply) as Granger's (other parts and motors) and ended up many miles beyond Little Falls, kinda lost-ish. He managed to figure out where he went wrong after a bit, but by then Gardinier's was closed so he didn't get the part.

I guess Liz and I will go again today, as it is the drain trap for the pipeline washer and pretty essential to operations.

Macro Monday

For more Macro Monday

Fishing Mallet Pond and Looking Glass Pond

(Click for detail)

With college guys who were also taking care of lab work for terrestrial ecology class. (Middle pic in the first collage is college work-it just wasn't like that when I went). We saw newts, a red-bellied snake, Canada geese and assorted other common birds, some interesting fungi, an amazing sun rise, with light slanting across the corn fields and mountains and more beautiful scenery than is probably even legal. We saw Alan's friend's truck tail gate bobbing in front of us at great speed among stately trees and deeply ruts too. (I quickly learned where all the hand grips and toe holds are in his truck.)




They caught blue gills at Looking Glass Pond (Burnt-Rossman Hills State Forest) . I got bites, but missed them.





I took 84 pictures, which after severe pruning and editing came down to these collages and pics.




It was nice. They were nice young men and I was flattered that they chose to accompany Alan on a fishing trip he engineered for his old mother. (I tried not to put too much of a damper on their fun.) It was nice to hike down the long hill to Mallet pond. It was not quite as nice to contemplate climbing back up. However, the boys brought their truck down and gave us a ride back up...backwards all the way! Alan's friend can back up better than anybody I have ever met.


It was fun (more for them than for me) to run for miles down those narrow woods roads from pond to pond. Boys are braver than old ladies and there were times when the tree trunks were a tad too close for comfort. The hill up to Looking Glass Pond was so steep that Alan's 5-speed Ram 1500 had all it wanted to climb it in second gear (coming down was worse...).



I was amazed to find places like this that I had never even imagined existed and so close to home at that. I hope we can go again. Soon.

Sunday Stills, the Color Purple

For more Sunday Stills

The Great One is Gone

Mike
Thanks for fifteen great years,
old buddy

Milk Strike

In Belgium. But folks are getting pretty unhappy here too. We have had three different industry representatives here this week, from banking, feed and grain, and the milk cooperative, and they have all painted a grimmer picture than the worst I have ever told you here.

Especially the latter fella and he is in the know, up close and personal. He talks to farmers all over the region every day....He told us about so many farms selling out that he knows of, one after another, and so many more that never even planted their fields this year...just grazed the cows on all the land and they are selling when the grass is gone. With beef prices so low and CWT dumping thousands of healthy dairy cows and heifers into the meat market, I wonder what they will get for their herds. Not much I suspect.


You should really click that link and look at the photo with the story. It made such an impression on me, that, having forgotten where I first saw it, I thought about it for a couple of days before doing some searching to find it and posting the link. I don't expect that you will ever see such a thing here....but it certainly is something.

Voter Intimidation

Even at the farmer level.

Yesterday I saw farmers who were afraid to sign an independent petition requesting an increase in milk prices. They belong to a certain large, national, so-called "cooperative", which told them they would lose their market if they signed it. That company controls a ridiculous portion of the market so they had little choice but to comply.

Something is rotten and it ain't in Denmark.

Meanwhile, check out this article. (HT to John Bunting)

Happy Birthday Mom

We don't dare come see you because we are all still sick, but we will be thinking of you and will call.

Love you!!!

Hope you have a great day!