Finally Friday

Spring break just began so we have our boy home for a week...I am liking that.
The critters are liking the sunshine...

(Please don't mind Gael's semi-bareness. She is a very old lady and has become quite fur challenged these days.)

This Quote is Completely Insane

"We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it, away from the fog of the controversy," she told local executives."

This was reported to have been said by Nancy Pelosi speaking on the health care bill.

Food companies are required to put nutritional information on packages of food so people don't have to buy them without knowing what is inside. You can't buy a cracker without a calorie count. Most folks won't buy them without a price tag either. Why on earth would anybody be stupid enough to buy into a potentially life-changing bill like this one without knowing what is inside? Or having any clue what it will cost?

I am ashamed of our so-called leaders in Washington and appalled that my fellow citizens aren't standing up and screaming about this outrage.

Rumors

About the demise of the snow here.....are a bit premature....alas


My favorite rose quartz, which now adorns Mike's final resting place


And my former favorite Herkimer diamond specimen, which a certain someone broke with the lawn mower.



But we do have pretty rocks....er.....mineral specimens.

Dean Foods Buyout

Maybe or maybe not. Dean Foods is huge, handles a large percentage of American dairy products and is looking at anti-trust lawsuits. What will it mean if it is in fact bought out by a French company?

Cows that tweet.

An outstanding editorial on Hollywood and food activism

New York's new organic guidelines

Dawn Chorus

Kind of thin, but it is out there. Yesterday I heard the first tentative robin song from up behind the horse barn. (And my heart swelled to twice its normal size.) Around noon the first song sparrow tuned up (although there have been a few silent visitors at the feeder all winter).

This morning I went out at first-pink-dawn to attend to yet another barn check (no babies this time). There were at least four distinct robins caroling all up along the back of the yard. Two cardinals down by the neighbor's house. Song sparrows. First red-winged blackbird of the year singing down by the road. First grackle hiding among the starlings in the dead elm behind the heifer barn.

I know we still have winter left. Only one year since I have been at this farm (and so far there have been almost 28 of them) were we able to get out and build fence and get on the ground in March...and it is still EARLY March. However, the early bird gets the worm...or in this case the best nesting site...and it looks as if these guys are ready for spring....although probably not quite as ready as I am.

Brand New Chicken House

Sunday Matt and Lisa presented us with this nifty free-standing hen house. Liz and I moved the girls in yesterday and they seem to approve quite heartily. Nick showed the border collie's roots and origins by pointing it like any good setter might. He looked pretty funny out there on the lawn, front paw curled to his chest and tail gently waving. He is so fascinated by the hens that I have to remind him what he is out there for.

Update...we have lots of snow, it just doesn't show in this photo

Sugaring Off

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These days of cold, moon bright mornings, and sunny-windy-blustery days, with hard, sharp frosty nights are perfect for making maple syrup.I am always excited by maple sugar weather! Yesterday, standing out in the yard with Matt and Lisa, buffeted by a wild, west wind, it was easy to tell that it was sugar time. (They brought us down a wonderful little chicken house which will be featured soon.)

Back in the day my dad, brother and I tapped some trees and made a little syrup every year. I used to walk my tap line on snow shoes, dragging a plastic toboggan with buckets on it to hold the sap. Keeping the buckets upright was a cuss-worthy challenge. Later I acquired a fifteen-gallon barrel, which worked better, but was still heavy and hard to handle. And it still managed to roll off the sled about fifty times a day, no matter how I tied it.

Now we let a man who runs a local sugar bush run a tap line in our maple woods and he gives us syrup at the end of the run. He has tubing instead of spiles and catches more sap in a day than we did in a year.

Less romance, but I don't miss the sled.


An old milk bulk tank our maple guy has converted to catch sap at the bottom of our maple woods. We almost never see him, but can tell by the appearance of tracks and hoses that he is out working the woods.

Sunday Stills...Numbers

Pi

(And crow pi at that...or maybe pi in the sky)
For more Sunday Stills

Happy Sunday, Mom and Dad

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 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