Sunday Stills...Odds and Ends

For more Sunday Stills....

Christmas Bird Count Today

The forecast is very mixed, with the potential for rain, freezing rain, flurries or sun...
or even all of the above. Here's hoping it is halfway decent and that we see the great blue heron that was just down the road from the folks' house on Thursday.

Had Christmas with the family yesterday and had the best time. There is just nothing like folks...and your own folks are the bestest folks hands down.

Hope you all had a great Christmas...will report on the bird count later.

A Quiet Christmas

With partying today...weather permitting.....

Merry Christmas from Northview Farm

We thank you all for making our Christmas so much more and are all wishing you much love and joy ....... friends and family together in heart no matter how great the distance may be.

Pizza, Pizza, Pizza

Liz makes the dough (she also took the pic above)

I make the sauce.

Here is the recipe for the dough. Liz puts in more garlic and honey and leaves out the onion powder.

There is a Ball Joint

On my kitchen table. It looks sort of like a heavy, black, shower head, but is proving much more troublesome to add and subtract from a certain Dodge pick up truck.

Yesterday a friend of the kids' spent his whole day helping in the attempt to remove the old one so that this new one could be installed. So far with small success. (Until he is better paid, I fed him...cookies...sweet and sour maple venison as per the earlier recipe, homemade applesauce and a pile of potatoes....best I can do....we are in the process of inventing a cookie recipe these days. We started out with the three-ingredient peanut butter cookie recipe given to us by a dearly beloved, really nice family member, who is at least as sweet as his cookies, and added oatmeal one time...chocolate chips the next...and yesterday a handful of coconut.....not bad so far. I'm thinking raisins for the next experiment.)


Here's to a better day today.

PS to all you kindly commenters....any time, any time at all..we do food fairly well and there is certainly plenty of the other side of the equation as well.

The Things You See

In a simple farm kitchen

DELAP Payments Processed Yesterday

I spoke to a friend at the local USDA office yesterday (she was kind enough to call me so I could put it in the Farm Side) and she said that they had processed these payments. They will be a welcome stocking stuffer (so to speak) for the nation's dairy farmers. The payments were calculated based on milk production between February and July of this year. This number will be doubled and paid at a rate of thirty-two cents per hundredweight.

Although there is no question that this is more than welcome, milk prices were $5.55 lower for that same hundredweight of milk than last year, meaning that hauling out of this hole will be a long process. (I heard estimates at a milk cooperative meeting I attended that said that it will take three years of twenty-dollar milk to even pull most farms even.) Prices have shown some slow up-ticking over the past two months, with class 3 hitting around $14.85 for December milk, which well above the low for the year. However, the all milk price for the year, according to Bob Cropp, will be.$12.75, still far below the cost of production.

Here's hoping the national and world economies recover enough over the next few months that folks can afford dairy products again....and that the big guys pay attention to the anti-trust investigations that are occurring and let some of their record profits trickle down to the folks who produce the products they peddle.

Macro Monday

With the same theme as last week's Sunday Stills, which I missed...this is one of my favorite Christmas ornaments and one of only four on the tree...so far...this one stays downstairs on the China closet door year round as I can't bear to put it away.

For more Macro Monday...

Thank You

Called brother and sister in law this AM to talk about some hay they are bringing us for bedding for the bossies. Something Lisa told me then has us all full of wonder and amazing joy (and kind of choked up also). Someone, we are not to know who....but someone that we have "met" here at Northview Diary...and in their home as well I'm sure.... somewhere away from here, but close in the way of hearts....bought us eleven more bales of haylage for the cows.

I am afraid that I don't know how to say thank you well enough. Actually, I barely know what to say at all....I am so overwhelmed by such an incredible kindness. The hay Matt and Lisa brought us during that terrible storm last week already got the cows up two hundred pounds of milk. a pick up (and we even haven't fed three bales yet) which sure is moving in the right direction. They love it and jump right up and start mooing as soon as we start to feed it. It means a lot to us that they cared to bring it to us....We are so lucky in the people around us and the people we have met here.

We have come to care for our blog friends as if they were family in a way...as if they lived next door, or down the street or across the river. We talk about their lives when we are working in the barn....their trials and joys...grand kids, horses, dogs and gardens...snow storms and sunshine, a world of wonderful folks at our fingertips. Politics and doctor visits. Snow storms and sunny Florida beaches....all enrich the fabric of our daily lives.

They...or perhaps I should say you...are an important part of our world. One of the best parts. I can never wait to get on the computer when I come in to see who has said what or what is going on. You are great folks and I am grateful for you.

This is more than we could ever have imagined though...

To the person who bought us these bales, thank you, God bless you, we are more grateful than I know how to tell you...Your caring means the world to us this Christmas, here's hoping you and yours have a wonderful one as well.

An External Combustion Engine

Is not a thing to be wished for.




And Tupper Lake is a long way from home.

***We made it home all right, but it was a trip from Hell. Becky is home to stay and I am more thankful than you could possible imagine that I never have to make that trip again...especially with a car that keeps catching on fire whenever you stop.

Sweet and Sour Maple Venison

Compile in a good heavy pan:

4T cooking oil
2T butter
1 large coarsely chopped onion
1 large clove garlic finely chopped
* Optional: a little lovage if you have it/celery if you don't

Saute until onions begin to turn clear

Add:

A couple of pounds of venison stew meat

Saute until brown

Toss in:

Italian seasoning to taste
*Optional: A little more garlic
* Optional: A tiny pinch of salt

Dump on:

1/4 C vinegar
1/4 C maple syrup
1/4 C Ketchup

When all ingredients are nice and brown and bubbly and the house begins to smell really, really good,

Add:

Two or three cups of water.

Seal the pot tightly with foil or a good, tight-fitting lid, and cook in a 325 degree oven until the meat is fork tender and succulent.

Around here that is for about as long as milking and chores take.
Anywhere normal it would probably be around 2 1/2-3 hours, more or less. Take care that it doesn't cook dry as the "gravy" is the best part.

Serve over rice or potatoes.

****This recipe is a happy accident I came up with the other day while working on 1001 ways to cook venison when your freezer is full of deers and you are out of beef. We really liked it and hope you will too.

Hmmmmm

DELAP Payments Being Sent

According to NY Farm Bureau USDA has said that payments will be mailed by December 24th.


Below is an earlier press release on the topic.

USDA Announces New Dairy Economic Loss Assistance Payment Program to Provide Financial Relief to Struggling Dairy Producers

WASHINGTON, Dec. 17, 2009 - Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack today announced the implementation of the new Dairy Economic Loss Assistance Payment (DELAP) program. The 2010 Agricultural Appropriations Bill authorized $290 million for loss assistance payments to eligible dairy producers.

"Through this program, eligible dairy producers will receive economic assistance that will help stabilize their operations during these tough economic times," said Vilsack. "I have personally heard from hundreds of struggling dairy farmers from all across our country who have been hit hard by declining prices over the past year, and now, we'll be able to offer them help."

Milk prices declined substantially through early-to-mid-2009, with the national price for milk averaging $16.80 per hundredweight (cwt.) in the fourth quarter of 2008 and averaging $12.23 per cwt. in the first quarter of 2009, a 27-percent decline. On average, the price U.S. dairy producers received for milk marketed in the summer of 2009 was about half of what it cost them to produce milk.

"The dedicated employees of the Farm Service Agency deserve a great deal of credit for acting quickly to provide this critical assistance to America's dairy farmers," said Jim Miller, Under Secretary of USDA Farm and Foreign Agricultural Services.

Eligible producers will receive a one-time direct payment based on the amount of milk both produced and commercially marketed by their operation during the months of February through July 2009. Production information from these months will be used to estimate a full year's production for an operation to calculate the payments, using a 6-million pound per dairy operation limit.

Dairy producers who have production records at the USDA Farm Service Agency (FSA) county office because they participated in another FSA dairy program do not need to apply for the program. FSA will use existing production records for February through July 2009 to calculate and issue their payments.

Producers who have not provided production data for those months to FSA, and have not already been contacted by FSA to provide such data, have 30 days, until Jan. 19, 2010, to apply. FSA officials estimate that more than 95 percent of eligible producers will receive benefits without having to fill out a new application.

A national per hundred weight payment rate will be determined by dividing the available funding of $290 million, less a reserve established by FSA, divided by the total pounds of eligible milk production approved for payment. Based on current information, FSA estimates that 875 million cwt. of milk production will be eligible for payment. The reserve will cover new applicants and appeals. The expected payment rate is approximately $0.32 per cwt.

To be eligible for DELAP, the dairy producer and the dairy operation in which the producer has a share:

• Must have produced milk in the United States and marketed milk commercially at any time from February through July 2009;
• Must have milk production data for those months;
• Must certify to all milk production produced and marketed by the dairy operation during that time.

Also, any dairy producer who has an annual average adjusted gross nonfarm income of more than $500,000 for calendar years 2006 through 2008 is not eligible for DELAP.

For more information and eligibility requirements on the new DELAP program, please visit your local FSA county office or www.fsa.usda.gov.

Better

Got nuttin' today. It is 8 degrees and sunny. The world is coated in an icy shield about three inches thick. Went back to wearing old sneakers to work as it is impossible to walk in hard plastic. It is good to see the sun shine just the same.

However, other folks have done better than I and have had interesting things to say this past week...

Liz has a good solid list that will help you know whether or not you are a dairy farmer.

Willow Witch has a story that will bring tears to your eyes and shivers up your spine.

Lisa is finishing up the barn loft.

Wish Linda a happy blogoversary.

If you drove one of those wonderful muscle cars...or just wish you had, go see Jeffro and dream of joys gone by.

Tomorrow Alan and I must go to Potsdam to bring Becky home....wonder what the Dacks will have to show us this time.

A Real Farm Take on FarmVille

This gave me a chuckle, but it is quite true. The farming games are a lot of fun and I play them too, but they are pretty far removed from reality (which is fine...they are games after all.)

Hope and Change

The dairy industry is changing rapidly these days, and in fact many days I feel as if it is changing right out from under us. I put a post up here on the Dairy Economic Loss Assistance Payment Program or DELAP a couple weeks ago, with a link to what was known at that time about this bail out for desperate farmers.

I soon started getting a few hits a day as people looked for news on the much needed assistance program. And since that day no more information has emerged...or not that anyone can find...and each day I get more and more hits from all over the country as farmers try to find out what is going on with it.

With all this change there seems to be little room for hope. Even if the government gets its payment into the hands of farmers really soon nobody is making enough to pay the bills....milk costs around seventeen bucks to produce and we have been getting ten all year. The price is up to thirteen now, but that isn't going very far to make up all the losses. We are all discouraged and grateful for any shred of good news that might come our way.

Yesterday we had another lousy day with a visit from our milk inspector to deal with some equipment malfunction that was damaging our milk quality. We pride ourselves on receiving quality premiums every month so that was a blow.

After a long day of coping with that and all the usual other stuff I stood outside the milkhouse door with Alan during the last few minutes of chores. I can't remember just why we were standing there, but we were right beside my shorthorn, Broadway's, stall.

I glanced over and noticed a curious bulge waxing and waning along her right flank. She is a bit of a skittish young lady so I had to be very slow and careful to lay my hand there (she milks off the other side and doesn't worry about what I do over there). I stroked the wiggly bulge. It thumped at me and slid around under her thick, red skin. Every touch of my hand elicited a more than equal and opposite push or shove in the other direction.

Then I had Alan put his hand there and pet her side a bit. You should have seen him grin as the bulge danced against his hand. At that point, big old BW started swatting at us with her tail so we stopped bothering her, but it is nice to know that there is a lively calf in there waiting to be born next February.

Hope. It is still there I guess, in the future, and in the next generation of cattle with which we will mingle our lives and dreams. I hope B-Dub, as I call her, has the calf all right....don't care if it is a bull or heifer; we will keep it either way as we need a service sire for heifers. Hope we are still doing this when she has it and haven't had to sell them to pay the folks to whom we owe money....

Milk Truck Roll Over

Right across the river. The boss's dear aunt heard about it on her scanner and gave us a call. Not our truck and no one hurt, but much excitement in the little village of Fonda.

Wordless Wednesday

Looking Forward

Becky will be coming home this week. I am looking forward to it more than you would believe. It just can't come soon enough.