Rain has Arrived

And it is cold. However, before it arrived yesterday, Alan got over twenty acres with the disks and the boss got half the field under the power lines done. It is still pretty wet, but they have to go if they can. Freeze warning for tomorrow night and everything is in riotous bloom. The pear blossoms are fulling open, the apples just beginning. I hope it doesn't get TOO cold.

Turkey Day

Photo by Alan, taken through the living room window

A new hen turkey has taken up residence here by the house. Last year's neighborly bird was taken out by a coyote or fox.....we missed her. Alan also took a terrific video which I will post when we figure out how to get rid of the audio of somewhat profane exclamations of amazement at her nearness (thanks, Boss).

Monday

They are talking rain....no monsoons please. We could use just about five drops to get the hay growing...

All day Saturday helicopters flew over and hovered nearby. I was home alone with Beck as everyone else was at the auction. I thought it was early for pot hunts, but maybe that was what it was....or they were trapping speeders on the Thruway. I wondered at the pontoons on one of them.
The truth was much sadder. A poor man lost his life in the river.

That darned river is more like an industrial-strength-type river than something friendly and comforting. I have fished from shore a few times, but it is just too strong and scary for me. If you throw a lure in it races away down stream like it was towed by a barge. I have nightmares about it....I really do, several times a year......It is beautiful too though, like a shining mirror glowing up through the new leaves on the cottonwoods, early in the morning when I look out from the office. I don't much like to get close to it though......and I am so sorry for the family and friends of the poor man.

Sunday Stills...Barns

Looking down the scary stairs in the hop house that I had to go up for some pics

Click to enlarge

I had fun with this one. No shortage of material around here and with the boss and most of the crew gone to the auction for the day I needed to go out and keep an eye on our domain anyhow.

For more Sunday Stills....

The Auctioneer

The boss got a call the other day asking him to help with auctioneer duties over at the Sprout Brook machinery auction. They must have figured he would be willing because when he went over yesterday they had a company shirt with his name on it all ready for him. Here he is in front of his tractor display case in all his finery. (Note the nifty hair cut provided by yours truly. I HATE cutting hair but I do it when I gotta.)

Wild Hearts

Pepto Bismol Pink Pigs

Even my sleep is haunted by wooden lawn art.

And other painful painting projects....actually I am beginning to have a bit of fun with the lawn animals as I do more of them....can't wait to be done and go play outdoors though. There are two more pigs, a cow, which is about half done...all these bunnies to finish and a few duckies to round out the zoo.




And a couple of gratuitous guinea fowl. These fool birds are terrified of me even though they see me dozens of times a day. I put a short video of them trying to hide as I stood in the hen house door up over on The View

Every Day is Earth Day

If you live on a farm. Today, morning milking and chores are done. Cows are filling up on baled hay before some of them go to pasture. We are introducing them to the lush new grass a few at a time to avoid the fighting that usually takes place. When they go out for the summer, some of them take it upon themselves to settle old grievances and fight like crazy. They can really hurt each other. The "fresh", that is recently calved and heavily milking cows, just want to go out and eat. The dry cows and those that aren't working so hard would rather raise heck. If there is any sound I hate it is the scrambling and scraping of hooves on the concrete in the barnyard as somebody matches up heads with somebody else while they see who will get tossed on the ground and beaten up. Thus the dries will be the last ones to go outside for the summer.




Today the boss will probably plow way up in back. Then the men will disk and drag the ground and pick the stone and later plant. We are not growing corn this summer because it has become insanely expensive to do so. Going to go with sorghum instead. Much, much cheaper and needs a lot less commercial fertilizer. We are hearing talk of lower fertilizer prices this year and so far it has been dry-ish (our corn has been wiped out by excess rain two years running and fertilizer prices have been obscene) so maybe we will regret giving up corn. However, I am sick to death of paying through every body orifice to plant it, getting a paltry harvest, and then ending up buying feed anyhow. Might as well save the dollars we pour into the dirt and grow something cheaper...if we don't get a good crop at least we aren't out all that money.




Been planting garden...a little bit every day. The weather has been really nice and it is tempting to go all out and just put it in. However, the last two years our last frost date was Memorial Day weekend one year and the TENTH OFJUNE (!!!!) the next. I am just not that much of a gambler.

Anyhow, here at Northview every day is all about the earth. Feeding it, nurturing it, gathering its harvests for ourselves and our fellow humans. We may not have any ceremonies to celebrate it, but we are just as much a part of Earth Day as any urban environmental activist who goes to a rally in the park today and then forgets about it for the rest of the year.

I Have Avoided This Story

Because I strongly support local 4-H and don't want to damage their image. (That is the only thing keeping this topic out of the Farm Side. Local 4-H leadership isn't responsible for this nonsense and local kids shouldn't have to suffer for someone else's idiocy)......However, I think it is time that I mention it at least here where fewer local people read each day. Here is Congressman Steve King on HSUS being invited to speak at the national 4-H convention this year.

"To invite an organization committed to the eradication of animal agriculture to its national conference is at best a mistake by 4-H and at worst a troubling concession to anti-meat liberals working for the Obama administration at the U.S. Department of Agriculture. There is no excuse for 4-H allowing an organization actively working against a staple component of 4-H programs and our diets to present at its national conference."

Everyone in our family is a former 4-H member, including the boss and me. When the kids were young we had a small dairy club of which I was co-leader. It was one of the most active in the county at that time. We sold hundreds and hundreds of boxes of cookies, attended Cooperstown Junior Show and Fonda Fair as a club, and won herdsmanship more than once. The kids all judged dairy cows and participated in Dairy Quiz Bowl as well...I served as the novice QB coach for a number of years.

Although I have been keeping my mouth shut and my keyboard quiet ab, I was outraged right from the start that national leadership offered a forum to such a blatantly anti-agriculture organization as HSUS. I hope they rethink the idea and never repeat the offense. The Congressman seems to agree.

"Now would be a good time for the young leaders of 4-H to present and pass a resolution through national 4-H that formally refuses to grant a forum to organizations that are anathema to the grand traditions of 4-H. National 4-H needs to fully understand the consequences of partnering with an organization committed to ending the American livestock industry."

Wordless Wednesday

Sometimes it is Exciting

To be a writer. Even a low-paid or not paid at all writer. With the power of the Internet and the clicking of the keyboard, anyone can make a difference...a real difference. I won't go into detail, because some of the things I do and the people I talk to....they are not bad or anything..but they hold highly controversial points of view. Not all journalists are created equal and there are people who get to say things that I wouldn't dare even mention. However, I can tell certain folks things that I find out in all my reading and researching...and they can give them the public attention they deserve.

I love it... when I see something making the news on Facebook or some place like that and just know....

The Song of Early

Border collie yawning that gap-jawed, noisy, whiny thing they do when they are all excited and eager and justcan'twait to go out doors. Hips swinging with pendulum of tail, ears drawn back in glee.

Border collie gleaming black-and-white against glowing electric greengreengreen grass. Border collie blowing a song sparrow off a swaying leftover dead weed stalk and up into the apple tree among the baby buds. It flies back down, he flies back through and sends it skying up again.

Breakfast Breakfast Breakfast time for doggies.

Grass jumping up tangle-foot tall, almost ready for cows to graze...today maybe? (Please let it be today...)

Dawn chorus. Last week a thin selection of early robins. Today almost a din. The little alarm clock bird is trilling its low key murmur.....softly...softly....day break whistle. (someday I will give it a true name...all I know is that it sounds exactly like Liz's alarm clock and fools me into morning every day)

White-throated sparrows conjuring up old Sam Peabody from every rose tangle and honeysuckle clump. Song sparrows seeking over the freshly turned earth of the gardens. Freshly turned garden...ain't THAT a fine thing!

Liz's boyfriend, who is pretty darned high on my list right now, brought down his grandpa's big ol' Troy Built yesterday, and spent all the middle of the day turning my bony weed patches into delightful swatches of smooth, crumbling, rich and ready to plant, dark black earth..... just begging for seeds. It is still too cold for tender hearted stuff, but radishes, peas and their ilk will be planted apace.

Yesterday the boss fixed the broken water pipe over #171 (who got an early vacation in the pasture, which she celebrated with much kicking up of heels and skirmishing with the handful of others who are out already) and the broken stable cleaner shaft, and brought home corn meal and soy meal and barn calcite to keep the barn floor from being slippery (in the house everyone spreads sand from their shoes, whether I like it or not...the floor is rarely clean, but it is never slippery).

Today the decks are clear. I should write, but I want to go out...fences, gardens, dirt or woodstove. I don't care what the job is....

If it is out...then I am in!

Baseball Hall of Fame

A dear family member took Alan yesterday and Alan took some pictures... Here is my all time favorite baseball player, former Mets catcher, Gary Carter

And here is a Lou Gehrig signed baseball

Sunday Stills...Potluck- Sassafras

Forsythias along the trail among the trees

Part of the college beef herd

One of the college ponds

It took a while...a couple months in fact, but I sold my sheep clipper set on Craig's List to a very nice lady, whom we met yesterday in a parking lot in town. Alas we have no more sheep, so I had no more need of them.

Then Alan took me grocery shopping. On the way home we made a side trip we have been wanting to do for a long time to the arboretum and ski lodge at SUNY Cobleskill (which the powers that be, in their infinite wisdom recently closed because of budget cuts. Great asset-short sighted administrators).

He wanted me to know what sassafras smells like. Rumor is that the crushed twig smells like Fruit Loops. However, the article says rootbeer, but I say, just nice...tangy...woodsy, outdoorsy. We brought my twig home, dusted it with rooting hormone and stuck it in a pot. Maybe I will have a sassafras tree in while.The pics are him running up the hill to get the twig and running back down in the rain and cold and miserable that has marked our weather this weekend.

Meanwhile I had a lot of fun and got some rain-darkened photos of the coolest college around. Where else can you find canoes and trout and rare trees and cows and sheep and horses and...and...and greenhouses and streams and so much stuff I want to go back to college just to play with it all?

For more Sunday Stills.....

This Week

Alan got all of the chisel plowing done and made a good start on the mold board plowing.

Liz met with the nutritionist because the grain for the last two loads has been far too crumbly and didn't stay pelletized. This load smells kind of weird too. Guess there are issues with the pelleting machine at the mill. We will be getting a price adjustment, but I feel sorry for her, because we feed each cow a separate ration, measured by weight and volume...and the weight and volume in a partially pelletized load is all over the place. Each scoop is different. It cost us a bunch of money on the last load as, due to the near impossibility of accurate measurements, we ran out of grain four days early.
Heck, I feel sorry for me too as I have to feed them this morning.

We were milk inspected very thoroughly and did a lot of sweeping down of cobwebs and liming of floors and general tidying up around the place. Also installed a new door on the milkhouse. Expensive, but it looks nice and the old one was...well...old....nice to work in a clean barn, but it would be nicer to have the fences all built.

Dealt with the police so many times we are really getting to know them. Our wires will never be found, but I am not quite as afraid to go to the barn as I was. We can't prove anything and will never know for sure, but some pretty good ideas have been formed about who and how. And our personal deterrent to similar activities in the future is finally in place.

I painted on the turtles and bunnies, got my garden seeds, the boss scratched up the garden nearest the house so it is almost ready to plant. Now it is too wet, but when it dries out the dirt is going to fly, I promise.

Enjoyed the birds, watched the tulips and daffodils begin to bloom and the grass get serious about growing. We had two cows, sisters in fact, that we were letting have the run of the place. They were getting stiff and klutzy and couldn't get up and down in their stalls. They are shut in the barnyard now, as they elected to head back to the sixty-acre lot and hide out one afternoon at milking time....almost a mile away. They were making lots of milk on that lush, green, grass, but we need them to stay home where we can find them...thus until the fences are wired up and good and hot they will be staying home.

And now...it is raining. All that sweet silvery warm weather is over for now and we are back to the monsoons. However, I have read the weather on the blogs of some of our good friends in the west and they are getting sunshine again so our turn should come soon. We have had so much rain in the past three years that we have fields we haven't worked at all in that time span. Alan finally got one of them plowed yesterday. I really hope we can get it planted this year!

And at least we haven't been facing weather challenges like this one.....any time I think my life is tough I take a look at the ranchers on the plains and prairies and know I have it plumb easy.

Stay warm and dry and enjoy the weekend!

10 Dairy Foods Myths Dispelled

Here is a list of the top ten dairy food myths and the rebuttal from the University of Michigan.

Here is just one:

2 Myth: Spinach is as good a source of calcium as milk. Fact: There is more calcium in 1 cup of milk than there is in 16 cups of spinach. One will need to eat more than 48 cups of spinach to get the recommended daily intake of calcium (USDA, 2010). Furthermore, milk contains Vitamin D which enhances calcium absorption (Wasserman, 2004).

Dairy Today Digital Edition

Can be found HERE

Did We Find the Great Cable Caper Perpetrator

Maybe yes, maybe no. Do you remember this story?

The person that the story above is about has only been on this farm two times....that we can prove.

Once was right before that telephone pole walked away.

The other time was yesterday morning at the almost exact time that the power cables were cut and stolen.

Did he come back looking for more things to steal and find the milk truck here and the boss and Liz delivering a calf, and so claim to be selling hay to look innocent?

Or was he in fact innocent? Just a coincidence that we haven't seen him here since 2006 and suddenly he shows up at the scene of our little daylight burglary drama?

I dunno...I am not much one to believe in coincidences the size of Chicago...can't prove a thing, I know what I think....

*****Oh, and a little addendum to the power pole story. The person in question was up at Hand's just after we noticed the pole missing complaining to all who would listen about how a kid that worked for him cut a new pole he got too short for the job he "got" it for........bwaahahahahaha....

The Things You See

********Or love in the great outdoors....

It is spring.

Spring is a good time to make babies if you are a bird, an insect, mammal or herptile.....or plant, as far as that goes...you wouldn't believe the pollen.

Thus I end up feeling like a voyeur whenever I go outside. When I came in for breakfast, Mr. Fluff, the big white rooster, was cut-cut-cutting, over a pile of chicken feed, as he lured the little black hen, Michelle, in for a hot date. He looked like a Matre D, spreading his bright, white wings and bowing and sweeping before her. He also looked kind of silly, but I guess he can't help being a chicken.

There are millions of mosquito wigglers in the garden pond....evidence of an assignation I truly don't need to know about. I put the sunfish back out to take care of that situation...she will get fat and they will get gone.

The big flocks of geese are breaking up into twosomes now and making plenty of noise about it too. I was just finishing up prepping Pecan to be milked this morning when a pair flew right past the barn window behind her. They were lovely against the light of the rising sun and their calls were purely haunting.

I was even nearly an unwilling participant in some of the lusty spring activities this morning. I bent over to prep a little black Holstein named Magic and she threw her chin on my back and started to just hop right up. (It's nice to be loved, but dang.) She isn't a very big cow, but even a little bitty cow in the mood for love is more than I want to tangle with. I jumped right out of that stall in a heck of a hurry and let the boss finish prepping her. (AI service has been attended to. We bred her to a bull from the eighties, Woodbine Ellason. He throws nice big, framey daughters, so maybe if she has a calf from this service it will be a somewhat nicer-looking cow than she is.)

And yesterday morning...I was out in the barnyard just at the break of day, sending ETrain, Encore and Bayberry back up the hill after milking. The sky was bright orange, fading to clear ice blue; the air was as fresh as ice water melting off a glacier. I heard killy killy killeeeees call coming from right over my head. I looked up and there was the kestrel pair, performing their mating flight against the brilliant sky. They swooped and fluttered in huge circles and figure eights, chattering excitedly, then landed in the dead elm to actually mate. I was awed to be standing there in the swelling morning light and seeing their wonderful flight...and I am so happy to have them still nesting in the barn.

Iceland's Volcano

Thanks to Facebook I have made a very pleasant friend in Iceland, so I have been following this since long before it reached the main stream news here. I hope everyone in her wonderful country is safe.....