Another Day Another Meeting

(The Potsdam Potties, an infamous yet entertaining display of yard art not far from the college. If I could I would consign animal rights groups to a venue like this.)

Thursday Liz and I spent all day and all evening at meetings....except for when we were milking on both ends of the day. (Yesterday we spent recovering from same.)

The first meeting was an animal welfare conference, which featured David Martosko, Kay Johnson-Smith, Cari Rincker, and Richard MCNally, as well as a number of other outstanding speakers. Evening was county Farm Bureau annual meeting, where we were both elected for new terms on the board of directors.

One of the biggest things I took away from the animal welfare conference was the futility of compromising with animal rights zealots. Moving the goal posts until there are no tame, captive, farm, or pet animals is their avowed agenda. Changing the way you do your job will not stop them. They don't want you better, they want you gone. Too many people simply don't get that, and I was delighted to hear speakers point it out.

I have long thought that well-meaning initiatives put forth by farm and livestock groups to appear more compliant with these groups are misguided, if not downright wrong. If you aren't doing anything wrong, why pretend that you are? Why give them traction to do you further damage? Why not educate the public as zealously as they do?

One thing that separates us from them is dollars. They have them. Most folks don't. And most of us work hard, have lives and are busy living them. We don't have time to lobby senators and congressmen and put our folks in Washington as czars of this that and the other thing.
If you have a few minutes watch this video and hear some of the sort of things we heard.

Today, it's "another day another meeting", this time a milk marketing cooperative meeting, which I must attend with our milk inspector. I am such a stay at home, happiest here in jeans and a ratty old sweater, puttering around feeding critters and taking pictures. However, there is an ancient truism that the world is run by those who show up. I feel that it is my job to show up whenever I can....so I'll see you tomorrow for Sunday Stills.

A Puzzle

Liz and I are off to a conference today to hear David Martosko speak. Hopefully we will see you tomorrow.

Meanwhile, a funny thing happened on the way to milking the other day. Actually we were in the living room, standing up, getting ready to go out, when something large and brown flashed past the windows.


All I saw was that it was big and really trucking, but Alan could tell it was a high-speed rocket-deer. It vanished into the hedgerow. Just as we turned away to go back to putting our socks on, it flew by again, racing in a sweeping circle around the brushy field. It stopped under an old pear tree and lowered its head to eat.
And for a few seconds it ate.


Then back into the grassy part of the field it ran, pronking, ducking and prancing, and digging its face into the grass. Back to the pears. Back to scrubbing its face. Another tour around the field at racing speed, then a repeat of all actions, with some facial pawing by a front hoof added in for local color.


I was completely bumfuzzled by the weird ungulate activities, but Alan and Liz both made sense of the doe's bizarre antics immediately.


Take one deer.
Add some chilly windfall pears.
Factor in some semi-dormant, but still cranky yellow jackets napping and nibbling inside the pears.

Priceless.

Sometimes People are More than Nice

Thank you Sara, you made my day!

The Mountains Revisited

They look kinda different this week. Now, about that Global Warming thing all you folks inside the Beltway want to tax us all into poverty over..........it's not even the middle of October yet y'know.

Too Early by Half

Must go out to milk now and take Beck back to college.
Do not want to.
Argghhhh........

Macro Monday

Do Click

For more Macro Monday....

100,000

By tomorrow morning, Northview should turn a hundred thousand hits on sitemeter. I wonder who it will be. Thank you to each and every one of you who made it possible....thanks also to all the folks who came by looking for information on how to grow lettuce and carrots indoors, shorthorn calves, names for calves and pictures of hot young PBR star, Reese Cates.


Here it is:

Domain Name		(Unknown)
IP Address		165.166.173.# (Info Avenue Internet Services)
ISP		Info Avenue Internet Services
Location		Continent : North America Country : United States (Facts) State : South Carolina City : Fort Mill Lat/Long : 35.0069, -80.9423 (Map) Distance : 652 miles
Language		English (U.S.) en-us
Operating System		Microsoft WinNT
Browser		Internet Explorer 7.0 Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 6.0; Trident/4.0; SLCC1; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; Media Center PC 5.0; .NET CLR 3.5.30729; .NET CLR 3.0.30618; yie8)
Javascript		version 1.3
Monitor		Resolution : 1280 x 800 Color Depth : 32 bits
Time of Visit		Oct 11 2009 9:12:59 pm
Last Page View		Oct 11 2009 9:13:30 pm
Visit Length		31 seconds
Page Views		1
Referring URL		http://familycow.pro...ex.cgi?action=recent
Visit Entry Page		http://northviewdiary.blogspot.com/
Visit Exit Page		http://northviewdiary.blogspot.com/
Out Click		this video http://vimeo.com/6939006
Time Zone		UTC-5:00
Visitor's Time		Oct 11 2009 9:12:59 pm
Visit Number		100,000

Sunday Stills...Photoshop

For more Sunday Stills

More Craigs List Funnies

Here

***You would think he would be looking to avoid it.

A Simple Truth

Yesterday in the Mountains

One of those very special brothers of mine offered to help us out with the challenge of getting Becky home from Potsdam for break. He was kind enough to take time from his work and home life and choir practice and all to drive for over nine hours up mountains and down, across night and day, so a college kid could come home and see her family for the first time since the 28th of August.



As always the Adirondacks offered up their best and shiningest as a reward for the long distance drive.



The trees lay across the mountains like the tawny pelt of some large wild thing, rocky, granite bones jutting up through golden browness. They seemed to shrug off a few leaves here and there as we passed like a lion shrugging off flies as it lay licking its paws on the Savannah.




All the colors of a lion swirled across them, turned luminescent by bright, thin sun. There were trees the color of pumpkins, lanterns,and oranges, with crimson cardinal flags from the swamp maples, and russet, gold and cinnamon from the many scattered oaks. Hickories splayed leafy brown and green fingers over swift, and silent waters, lakes and rivers turned blue jay blue where the sun hit, and liquid ink in the deepened shade.

Sacandaga River, Raquette River, sleek lakes by the dozen, I don't think I have ever seen them lovelier. The Sacandaga was showing its teeth after all the rain, with whitened fangs piercing the smooth indigo of its flow wherever a rock was hidden. Beck was in class when we arrived, and not answering her phone. We were looking for a coffee stop when I glanced across the road, across the campus, across a dozen others, and spotted her as instantly as one heart recognizes another. It was a grand moment I will tell you.





As we returned home and dusk fell, along about Lake Durant the catch-light waters let go their hold on the sinking sun and closed their shining mirrors for the day.

I love the Adirondacks. A trip across them is as much a treat as any theme park or holiday party. More in fact. Much more.

Thanks brother for the joy and the music and the good talk of old memories while we made new ones too.
And thanks for the special reward at the end of the day...the whole family together again, at least for a little while.....we love you muchly.

***I must also thank those who stayed at home and kept the work moving along, so thanks guys and especially, thanks Liz....hope old Mando gets it in gear and has that calf real soon.

*****I must also question. What is with the corner yard with bathroom fittings (you know, the most important ones) set at regular intervals with sunflower planted behind each of them? In downtown Potsdam that is? The traffic was just too heavy to get a picture, but we sure were puzzled.

From Grass to Cheese

A commenter left a link to this video yesterday. It is short but touching and does a good job on explaining what motivates folks to keep farming when times are hard. .

Wanna Get Your Patriotism all Fired Up?

Listen to the Cactus Cuties sing the Star Spangled Banner.
Thanks to Teri Conroy for posting this on Facebook.

At Least Somebody Gets It

Dairy meeting in Cobleskill yesterday (and no, we couldn't go, having to keep up with keeping up).

I hope all this legislative attention to what is truly becoming a widespread disaster comes in time to help our neighbors and us too. After talking to our lender, feed company reps, milk company officials and other farmers in recent weeks we are beginning to see that this situation is unprecedented. We are fortunate in some ways, not being as deeply in debt as is often the case. Still, we are facing decisions we don't want to make if something doesn't change and soon

Farms are going to go out of business. Lots of them. Soon. Here in upstate NY they are the backbone of the economy, perhaps the last viable industry before the area becomes a great big housing development, providing a nice place for commuters from the cities to live.

CWT keeps dumping thousands of cows into the beef market, keeping prices depressed so you can't even sell a few extras to pay your school taxes. I am really glad to hear that some legislators are looking into solutions, even short term ones.

Don't Try This at Home

Inside the heifer barn hay mow

Yesterday Liz and I continued our ongoing getting-ready-for-winter marathon. We took a break from food production and preservation to head to the heifer barn to bag up some sawdust and wood chips. Her goal was baby calf bedding. Mine was something to put in Nick's doghouse and run. (Come real cold weather, he will come inside, and have straw for when he is out, but for now sawdust is warm enough.)


While I waited for her to finish turning Mandy and Blitz out in the barnyard for the day I decided to start without her. Our heifer barn is an antiquated kind of tired-around-the-edges structure, which was once the milking barn for the farm that went with our house. Made for Jerseys, the stalls were too small for even Holstein heifers, so we replaced them with pens years ago.


During last winter, a gang of big heifers ran in and out of one of the pens as they wished and were fed outside along a fence. Over the course of the winter, a noticeable quantity of feed and its inevitable by product built up along that fence, which is right across the handiest way to the heifer mow where the sawdust is.


It has rained a lot this year.

I didn't think of that.


Rather than struggle through head-high weeds and grass, I started to cross that pile of feed and the after affects of feed with my grain bag and shovel. Yep, Nick was going to be comfy at night if I had anything to say about it.


I managed to take about eight steps out onto the "stuff". I could feel a little sinking sensation, but heck, how deep could it be? And if I used a sort of quick tippy toe action I ought to be able to get across.

Or not. Just about exactly in the middle my left foot sank right to the top of my rubber barn boot (thank God I decided to wear them instead of sneakers!)


I was really, really stuck. Could not move at all. Boot was about one inch from filling with water. Other foot was still on top, but mighty precariously so.

I hollered for Liz.


She couldn't hear me.


I couldn't just stay there until someone came, so finally I did what I had to.


No, it is not nice to be barefoot in those circumstances.
Yes, I am glad I had a shovel with which to extricate that left boot.
And yeah, after I finally got loose and got my foot clean and my wool sock back on and my boot back on I went down and chopped a path through the weeds and grass so we could get into the barn the other way.

I sure hope Nick appreciates what I went through for him.

Outside the heifer barn

Must...........Have........Coffee

I generally write all this stuff early in the morning before the house becomes a humming hive of people dumping clothes on the dining room table, floor etc., yelling for vice grips, dogs barking, cat howling for canz and mom hollering, "Get those shotgun shells off the kitchen table/dining room table/counter/washing machine etc."

Thus some of the typos are caused by my general literacy level (or lack thereof) and some of them are caused by coffee (or the lack thereof).

Should you be wondering by now where all this is going....yesterday, while going about a busy day involving bookkeeping, cleaning up after the weekend and making wild turkey soup out of the wild turkey I overcooked the day before, I planned a post about the joys of having a window over the kitchen sink.

And it is a joyful thing by the way. I don't know if anyone has ever done a study on how much time a farm mom spends doing dishes, washing and cutting up vegetables from the garden and boning out wild turkeys and other things, wild and domestic, but it is a lot. A nice view of unmowed lawn and shaggy heifers grazing under glowing maple trees kind of takes the curse off the boring if you know what I mean. (Add an iPod and it is almost fun....better than what everybody else did yesterday anyhow, which is cleaning stables.)

However when I sat down to write about it, I realized that every thought on the topic, except for the topic itself that is, had fled my mind. Plus the pictures I took for it came out about as humdrum as doing dishes is. (One of these days I will wash the window and knock down the big wasp nest on the frame).

So I will go get my first cup of coffee out of the microwave, let Gael in, since she is barking on the porch, and see if anything comes back to me.


Later:
Hmmmm, nope, nada, zilch, nothing.........the coffee is cold. The cat won't shut up because we are out of canz, and the other cats knocked a bucket down, effectively locking the back door shut and causing me to have to use farm wife ingenuity (not to mention colorful language) to get the door open.....My brain won't cooperate.....sorry about that.

Macro Monday

For more Macro Monday......

Sunday Stills....Happiness is

To me happiness is mostly about my family, but they are hard to get together in a bunch for a photo.
So happiness is also:




Frogs, (last one of the season I promise). They die if they try to winter over in the garden pond, so when it starts getting cold we take them out and move them to other wet and watery places...however two of them are being very stubborn. This one was taken to the creek over by the cow barn a couple weeks ago, yesterday he was back. He is so determined. I mean just look at that chin! And there is another one that keeps ducking under whenever I walk near the pond....they just don't know what is good for them I guess.




And hearts on cows. I love hearts on cows, and it turns out both of Liz's aged cows, Mandy, the Holstein, and Heather the Jersey, have hearts on their shoulders.

(I also am made very, very happy by my SWD Valiant heifer, Bastille, but I could not get a decent photo of her no matter how I tried.)





And here....I am happy here. There is no "bloom where you're planted" about it. I love my home. I love the valley. The fields, especially when there are heifers grazing across them. I love the nights and the days and the sky and the land...happiness is being lucky enough to live some place that fits so well.



For more Sunday Stills

Juglans Nigra

Or, wow, Mom, you sure are blind.

Some years ago a good friend gave me a number of black walnut seedlings that volunteered on his lawn. I really didn't have any place to plant them, so I gave a few away and stuffed the rest down into the mounds left by woodchucks in the wild field in front of the house.


When I say wild I mean that you really can't walk there because of the chuck holes, logs, brush etc. It was all I could do to crawl down there with a shovel and a bucket of baby trees.


Therefore they were on their own. Either they grew in the woodchuck holes....or didn't.

I never saw them again.

Until yesterday. Alan has been studying woody plants at school and has developed a real eye for juglans species. And those huge, really, really tall sumacs I have been ignoring down below the driveway, all the while saying that the walnut trees must not have taken.....are black walnut trees...complete with nuts!

I feel silly, but delighted to have big, robust walnut trees all my own.

Calling all Parents of College Kids (Caution/Mild Profanity)

What on earth do you do when your half way decently raised young-un is paired in a tiny college dorm room with a person who thinks it is just dandy to bring the BF back to the room and spend the nights in loud...well...use your imagination? We are not talking quiet and discrete and possible to ignore here...we are talking chasing each other around the room at three in the morning screaming and yelling and then....

I mean the beds are just a few inches apart. I am stymied. Heard about this kind of stuff and seen daughters of a number of friends forgo education at top schools to come back to local colleges and live at home so they didn't have to deal with stuff like that...and worse I guess. I know it's college. They are grown ups. Etc....but dang, the grown ups I know have more class than that...or most of them...or maybe I am missing something. Maybe these kids all want to grow up to be David Letterman.

Advice from those more experienced with college kids would be much appreciated. Up until this semester the kids have lived at home and commuted to SUNY Cobleskill, a fine school from which Liz graduated first in her class, which alas does not offer a degree in anthropology or archaeology.

We just don't know how to handle this...or how to suggest that our girl handles it. We were thinking of sending this extra-large economy-sized black belt guy we know...up to put in a quick appearance or something...however, it is getting to be not funny and we are about done with joking about it.

If the rest of the privileged, spoiled brats want to party, drink, smoke dope and so forth all through their time at college, cheating themselves, their parents, and the employers they will work for in the future, by not learning a blasted thing at college I guess that is their right. Damn if I think it's fair that they are cheating my kid too. Thanks in advance for what I know will be the best advice in town....and have a great weekend.