****Update, my extra level of woe this morning was caused by being turned down for some credit we absolutely needed to stay in business. Our banker found another option this morning so for now....and I guess now is all we get to ask for. Thank you all of you for listening to me and caring. It means a lot.
No good things to report. Nothing good on the horizon. As I have written about other dairy farms giving up and quitting and good lifelong farmers ending up with nothing left.....hardworking farmers kidding and not in a funny way about becoming Walmart greeters... our own farm has been teetering on the brink.
The brink may be here. I am sad. I don't know who we will be after we sell the cows, if we end up having to sell them. I hope we can hang on. Green grass is so close...maybe four weeks...maybe less. Green grass won't pull us out of the hole, but it would cauterize a couple of the bleeding arteries.
If we can't last it out, well, we can't. Misery loves company and thousands of farms have folded in the past couple of years. There is nothing so special about our tiny operation to make us any better than the thousands of other farm families who couldn't survive on pay prices that are less than two thirds the cost of production.
For selling a goldfish to an underage piscesophile. You read it right. A 66-year old great grandmother sold a goldfish to a 14-year old, breaking highly enlightened and commonsensical British animal welfare law, which requires that someone attain the far more astute age of 16 to purchase a fish.
John Bunting linked to this live blogfrom the hearing yesterday. I am working my way through it as well as waiting for analysis from NY Farm Bureau to be posted. This is a complicated topic, but if something isn't done soon this country is going to change in a big way but not in a good way. Has the cooperative system been perverted until some coops work to make money from farmers rather than serving them? Will USDA do anything about this? Time will tell, but whatever it happens it is already too late for a lot of farms.
My work hat, from Allied Federated Cooperatives, the company to which we used to sell milk. Back in those days things were sweet. Plus pocket stuff...Swiss army knife and shepherd's whistle. Books....the best of things. Liz 'n' Jack. Bayberry
Teri gave this guy to Liz. I like hearing his crow and he seems to like his lodgings in the new hen house with the striking hens. Hope he can talk them into laying us some eggs.
Every now and then I open Charles Thurwood's 1874 pocket diary and compare his notations of what went on on his family's Fort Plain farm to what is happening on our farm in the here and now. Charles was a young man in 1874, voted for the first time that year. He and his family worked hard at farming, gardening and building around their place, but spent most evenings visiting neighbors and having fun.
"Windy but pleasant and i and til went to Mart Brookmans auction and we stade all day and our father boilt maple sugar 8 pounds got 3 pales of sap and 32 eggs"
Here at Northview, the sap run is about over, but the rest of the crew (excluding Beck and me) are going to Jim McFadden's auction on Saturday. It is windy, but pleasant this morning. The danged hens refuse to start laying...little do they know that if they don't get busy soon they are getting kicked out of the nifty new hen house to be replaced by some pullets, which I will find somewhere. There is no economy in raising your own eggs, but they sure taste good...darn it!
I bought Charles' diary way back when the boss and I were dating as a Christmas gift for him. It came from my dad and mom's bookshop, Tryon County Books. Mom is working hard at making an online catalog...if you are interested in history, hunting, fishing, shooting or any other antiquarian books, take a look. (I had the good fortune to grow up in a bookstore, reading Tarzan, the Hardy Boys and non-fiction animal science books well above my years....it changed my life in many ways)
***Thank you one and all for your excellent guesses. Many of you got very, very close. This is a photo, taken from a distance and cropped like crazy, of the sun shining through the dry winter branches, of a bunch of small box elder (acer negundo) trees. The shiny, flashy things are leftover seeds, called samaras..they are paired and winged a bit like silver maple seeds. I liked the way the setting sun was shining through them in an otherwise completely gloomy atmosphere one dark day last week. Thanks for taking time to have a go at the puzzle and have a great day.
Close popular camp sites that have traditionally been so heavily used that reservations are required for camp sites. Refund money already in hand. Turn away tourists who want to come to your area to visit and spend money and pay sales tax on everything they buy....
Close popular and important historical sites fondly remembered by generations of school kids who visited on school trips and touched a bit of real history of the region. One of the most important and oldest sites in our region is on the chopping block list, something which appalls many of us in the area. I have been awed every time I visited Johnson Hall, the home of Sir William Johnson, and ran my hand down the banister where the Iroquois left tomahawk marks during a battle there. Now the down state geniuses who are looking for ways to punish upstate taxpayers save money are closing it, along with a large laundry list of other parks and historical sites beloved by upstate folks.
As a family we do very few recreational things...we don't go anywhere much, we don't play very much. The Johnson Hall Market Fair has been one of the few activities we rarely miss and always love. From the salt potatoes to the cannon fire, from genuinely costumed Revolutionary War reenactors both Indian and English to the opportunity to purchase real, homemade soap and rare herbs for my herb garden, it has been a delight. Not so long ago my folks often attended wearing their full Scottish garb and participated in the fun. Here is a petition to save it.
Now, thanks to fiscal stupidity misfortune neither we nor anyone else will enjoy our parks and monuments any more. (I am sure denying kids yet another place to play outside and exercise will do wonders for obesity.) Area Chambers of commerce are appalled. They know that tourists equal economic activity. Private parks and campgrounds will not be able to take up the slack...
Petitions to save our parks will not be enough either. We need to do more to fix this situation. Lets do it! November is getting closer by the minute. When you go into the voting booth this year think about the kids that missed out on sunny beaches, seeing wildlife, enjoying birds and opportunities to learn the history of our once great state.
Throw the bums who are doing this right out and hire us some new ones...preferably a few who don't come from NYC and who have perhaps actually visited a park (other than Central Park), sometime in their lives. Preferably a few who are interested in serving the taxpaying public rather than lining their pockets and practicing for higher office. It's time.
Here is a pretty interesting article on what is happening in the dairy industry today. I don't necessarily agree with every bit of it, but it does point out some darned hard stuff.
It's Census Time....we all know there was talk of letting ACORN do a good portion of the Census, until they were discredited...I thought things might be better without them in the mixture. Hah! On Monday I got a nasty note from the Census Bureau informing me that I should have received a form by now and that filling it out is mandatory. Better send that puppy back and send it right now or else! There are penalties under the law if I fail to do so.
Except...except...we haven't got one yet. So I called the handy-dandy "helpful" phone number on the nasty little card. You had to say what you wanted to each voice mail situation...two choices...both of them wrong every time. Neither of them was EVER what I wanted. I never did get a live person....never got an answer as to what to do. I gave up...much aggravated.
Alan called the number back and found out (after expending much more patience than I have) that all the forms haven't been sent out yet.
The nasty letters are in the mail, just not the Census forms. Even if you used the option to request a Census form because you didn't get one, you couldn't request one. Part and parcel of the incredible ineptitude that this government has shown....I worked in the last Census as a Census taker. It was pretty awful so I quit after a few weeks. I just couldn't deal with them wanting one thing one day, then the next day changing it all around...the rules were all engraved in stone except when they changed them..... If you didn't mind putting up with a lot of BS you could be a Census worker....I mind so I soon wasn't.
I have read and heard about all kinds of glitches in this year's version of the nationwide head count. I suppose receiving the threatening card before the form is minor in the grand scheme of things but...
And here is a timely little story in the local paper about how hard they are trying to count certain segments of the populace.....
A sorta, kinda finished ducky, in front of some just barely started duckies
I have a new job, painting yard decoration animals for our milk inspector. I have no guidelines or patterns...this is just coming off the top of my head...which is amazingly empty just now. Outdoor paint is a lot harder to blend than artist's paint too, I can tell you. I hate to admit how long it took me to mix up duck foot orange on Saturday....and I got it right the first time. I am kinda, sorta dreading this....
I have one duck-ette just about finished. When I get her done I will post a photo....maybe......
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