Seeing Red

Got a real surprise yesterday. My Holstein heifer, Bama Breeze, was bred last year to our milking shorthorn bull, Promise, and finally calved. Not only did she have a lovely little heifer calf, but it was bright, carrot red. We have never seen any red in her family before, not a single sign of it, although she is sired by our O-C-E-C Lindy Fred bull, who is out of C Stewart Haven TT Fallon, who was a Triple Threat daughter (he carried black red). Not sure where it came from as the gene for red coat color is recessive and can hide for generations. Anyhow, she was supposed to be sold along with a package deal of several other shorty and Holstein calves, but all that red makes her a keeper.

Springishnenss

Banks of ice pile up along fast-flowing freshets of frigid melt water. Early on they took the form of fancy fans, frozen flat above silently gushing streams, but with the sun comes strength. The water undermines and smashes them, then piles them up for later melting. By mid-afternoon all evidence of their existence will be gone, only to form flat fans again as night comes down.

This is a season for getting up early. In the almost-morning, before the sun began its carving and cutting of lingering snow, the moon tangled itself in the branches of a straggling spruce, pulled free then sailed off toward the silvery horizon.

As early as then the chickadees and cardinal were calling, and not long later the white-breasted nuthatch tuned up with a sound as jungle-like as Tarzan. It is teetering on the edge of migrant time;Alan saw a robin and a bluebird yesterday on Corbin Hill Road, and geese are gathering in dozens, hundreds, soon-to-be thousands. They stop in all the un-gathered corn fields to glean and gobble before heading on for the tundra...or for the banks of the Mohawk, depending. I can't wait until the river thaws enough for them to sleep in the cove across from the house at night. They giggle and whisper all night like a lullaby in wild-part time and my sleep is smoothed by dreams of flying.


And it is good to see the sun.

I Was Wondering What to Write this Morning

And then I read our morning paper. This happened right down the road from here.....May I assure you, any map would tell you that we are nowhere near Canada but....

Liz on Lobby Day

Finding Friends in Far Places

I get great joy from writing Northview Diary and interacting with the people we have met through it. People have done us astonishing kindnesses that have truly changed our lives and shared our triumphs and tragedies. The world has so much more meaning when it is shared....

Now someone very sweet has sent me the loveliest gifts, a beautiful piece of her handiwork and some delightful seeds for summer gardening....(the cheerful cow is actually on a background of snowy white)

Thank you Dani, with all my heart!

NY State Retirement Home for Cats

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Search Engine		search.aol.com
Search Words		n y state retirement farm for cats
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How did I ever turn up on this search.....and why on earth were they asking?

Wordless Wednesday

Farm Bureau Lobby Days

Liz's Roylane Jordan Daughter, Gypsy

In Albany today. A chance to sit down with legislators or their staffs and discuss farm issues. I went for the first time well after I turned thirty. Liz is only 23, but she is there today, and this is not her first trip.

So, what do you think? Are we doing our kids a favor raising them to understand the affect of regulation on our lives, to comprehend the issues and to take action by showing up and speaking out, lobbying, attending meetings, joining organizations?

Or would it be a far, far kinder thing to let them stay fat, dumb and happy and let someone else do it?

I don't know. Sometimes it is a misery to be involved in the political side of farming. Downright painful and overwhelming and leaving behind of a feeling of total helplessness.

Sometimes there is great satisfaction. Yesterday a nationally-known figure, whom I won't name, because it is just better not to, used something I sent him in a certain campaign. (This would only be recognizable to me and three or four other people....) He didn't acknowledge me and it was better that he didn't. However, I plumb chortled when I saw it. Yeah! Sometimes you can make a difference, even just a tiny little bitty one.

So is it right to raise your kids to kick upstream like questing trout, despite the pain it might cause them, or to let them drift unknowing in the warm, soft waters of ignorance and uncaring? What do you think?

*****I know we will be missing Liz. With Alan in college just Becky, the boss and I will have all the chores. To me it is worth it though...

Seantor Darrel Aubertine on Dairy and the Farm Labor Bill

If you are interested in dairy and farm issues or especially if you dairy farm in New York, please take a few minutes to watch this video of the State Senate hearing yesterday on the farm labor bill that is being debated in the ag committee. Senator Aubertine clearly understands the problems facing dairy farmers today and he speaks well on them.

As a dairy farmer I am personally very grateful.

Drug Gangs Farming Our Public Land

This makes me just plain mad!

Farm Labor Rally in Albany Today

Don't Plow Us Under....Read about it here...

Dog Days of Winter

Nick

Waiting for a word

Kennel time,

And Chick


Waiting for a seed

Sunday Still....Fruit

For more Sunday Stills.....

Storm Related Disaster

The kids know the first farmer with the collapsed barn in this video. This storm has been truly horrible for a lot of people. Some other friends of theirs that they show cows with have been out of power for days and don't know when they will get it back.

Could This Be Fame?

The National Farmers Organization recognized one of our own this week.
Way to go cow girl!

The Snow Baby

Milking shorthorn heifer calf, by the Select Sires bull, Poker, out of Broadway

Snow Baby

Mockingbirds are tough folks....
click on this one if you want to see some of the heaviest snow I have ever experienced

We got a whopper of a snow storm yesterday. I don't know how else to describe it. Hard snow all day and slashing rain and sleet far into the night. The roads were so bad it took Alan half an hour to get from the school to Ice Cave Road. Church Hill was closed in town. The S-bend on Grovenors Corners Road was impassable without four-wheel-drive and there were police at both ends dealing with the cars that couldn't make it.

I would have hated to be an emergency responder person or a plow driver. They must have all been worn out half to death last night.

So, of course, naturally, inevitably, Broadway decided to finally have her nearly two weeks overdue calf. Of course she waited until night milking.

As soon as we could feel feet we could tell that it was coming breech. When a calf is born hind feet first there is some real urgency in getting it delivered in a timely fashion. When the umbilical cord is pinched or torn when the belly passes through the cow's pelvis, (a normal thing in a frontwards birth), the calf's head is still inside the cow. When it instinctively gasps to breathe it gets a big lung full of amniotic fluid instead of air, as would be the case if it was in the right position. Not a good thing.....

And getting a quick delivery done was made just about impossible by the size of the calf. It was HUGE. So big that after waiting in vain for hours for something to happen, when Liz and I tried to pull it we couldn't. Had to call the boss. Normally the calf's head acts as a wedge, widening out the birth canal and making room for birth to progress. In a breech birth, you have a couple of long skinny legs, which do not serve that purpose, then a huge fat butt, which acts more like a cork than a wedge.

This calf had a fanny the size of a month old calf. It was a lot harder pull than we like to see, but we got it in the end.
Incredibly it is a beautiful red roan heifer. After such a hard birth I didn't expect much, but it is standing up this morning, all spunky and lively. Momma likes it just fine.....and so do we. We will try to get some pics for later, although it is going to be a busy morning dealing with the aftermath of the weather.

Major Snow Storms Real and Imagined

The big news this week in this section of Upstate NY has been the two snow storms....one finished up its work yesterday, leaving us only a couple of inches (which is fine with me) but lambasting some of our close friends terribly.

The roads were appalling, but there was no reason that they should have been. When it is 36 degrees and snows, you will get a nasty frozen slush on the roads...unless they are properly salted that is. Then they should just be wet. Guess budget fun and games has that whole salt thing in abeyance, because Alan had the worst trip home in his college career Tuesday night and there was only an inch or so of wet snow to be found.

Now we are supposed to get another whopper today.

Unless we don't.

The weather oracles seem to have no clue whether there will be lots of rain, lots of snow, not much rain, not much snow, some of both, some of each or a balmy 80 degree day a la Bahamas (I am voting for that).



Meanwhile the kids are trying to get trips to the state Farm Show in Syracuse planned, but with such a shaky, iffy, useless questionable weather forecast they are hesitant to go.

I don't blame them. I would quite like to go myself, but with things as they are these days that ain't happenin'.



Meanwhile, C'mon spring...(or Bahamas vacation) We are ready! (I think I will make out a seed order today........)


****Update: Joated nailed it and it is nailing us!

MoreThanAMillion Dollar Cow

HT to Dairy Herd Management for this pair of great links.

Here is the story of a $1.2 million dollar show cow.

And here is Popular Mechanics breakdown on the ...er....mechanics of a big bucks bovine.

Wordless Wednesday

A Sweet Story of Cows and Neighbors

Rosemoon, of Moon Meadow Farm, was the first blogger to link to Northview, back in August of 05 when this undertaking began. Since then we have followed the story of her family, their farm animals and wonderful gardens with as much interest as if they lived just down the road, rather than in a far southern state, (where in theory it should be warmer than it is here).

Alas our southern neighbors have recently been battered by horrific storms and ice. A little while back their good family milk cow, Maude, fell on the ice and nearly died. You can read all about it on Moon Meadow Farm, and here is another story about it, and how neighbors and friends rallied to help save Maude. Farm people are good people no matter what state they live in.

All through Maude's ordeal, it was frustrating to be so far away and unable to offer tangible help. Every farmer dreads a down cow, it is so hard to deal with a critter weighing upwards of a thousand pounds that can't stand when it needs to. It looks as if this story is going to have a happy ending though and I am glad....