Read about it here. Did you know that food stamps are budgeted under the USDA, the Department of Agriculture? Thus $73 billion of the ag budget goes to this program, feeding 40 million people per year....
The much-reviled subsidies that are actually paid to farmers are estimated by one source to total between $10 and $30 billion annually depending on disaster payments. Business Week said that last year (2009) it was $15.4 billion. Nuff said.
The men started haying yesterday and put 250 bales of beautiful, soft green first cutting in the mow. After a series of soggy springs some real haying weather is a welcome change.
Liz is twenty-four today....She truly is a cow whisperer too. She can even come over on my side of the barn and milk the miserable Encore, whose back is as high as my head and who likes to put her hind feet about that high too...without fireworks or drama. Happy birthday kiddo...we love you!
I gasped with dismay when I read Teri's headline this morning. We are fond of her creatures...even the ones we haven't met yet. Half the chickens in our hen house and our wonderful new Roo came from her flock. My very favorites, the late George and lovely Laura, grew from chickies she gave Liz a couple years ago. Sadly she and her friend and family lost all but a couple of their birds to a marauding fox on a spree last night.
C'mon along if you do. Alan needs to get some grass for the calves in the barn and he said we could ride along if we want to.
The grass is right up in the Thirty-Acre Lot, but we will go way back behind Seven County Hill, all the way to the back of the place just to see what we can see.
Wow, there are more bobolinks this year than I have ever seen before. There must be a dozen in this field alone.
And Red-winged black birds of course.
One of my favorite views looking north from the Sixty-Acre Lot
Some ground planted to sorghum/Sudan grass. it is just coming up, although you can't see it here
The Hickory Tree, for which Hickory Tree Field is named
Good thing the cows like dandelions. Case 930 the mowing trator
Here in the Northeast, in spring, the landscape runs to trees....lots and lots of trees. This is the view looking north from the sitting porch, the neighbor's Norway Spruce and some Northern sky in the evening.
As Alan was leaving the house yesterday on the way to an afternoon of that most sought after, beloved and popular farm job, picking stone, I asked him to take a minute to remove the plastic covering from the stained glass doors. I am too short to make a good job of it and I wanted to let the spring breezes have a free romp through the house.
I was out hoeing onions near the back door when he returned.
"Well, that was an adventure," he said, while wiping off his arm.
"What happened? Bees?"
"No I pulled the plastic down and a bird landed on my arm and pooped all over me."
"Starling?"
"No, baby robin...they have a nest on the pillar. I put it back up there"
The little darling stayed all day, chirping so sweetly. Such marvelous music from a barely fledged infant. Alas it was gone this morning, but I think the folks were caring for it down in the lilac bushes.
It joins a full complement of spring birds, except my beloved house wrens. Haven't seen or heard a one yet. But we have: Lotsa robins, starlings, catbirds, common yellow throat, yellow warbler, phoebes, willow flycatcher, white-breasted nuthatch, chickadees, barn swallows, cardinals, rose-breasted grosbeak pair, Baltimore orioles, Ruby-throated humming birds, Sassenachs, crows, grackles, northern mockingbirds, song sparrows, kestrel pair with babies in the heifer barn, chipping sparrows, gold finches, red-winged black birds, cow birds, chimney swifts, rock pigeons, mourning doves....just off the top of my head. We are much more blessed in the bird department than we deserve.
Have a good one. Haying starts today, provided the machinery all starts today.
As I mentioned in the previous post, Becky's show cow Lemonade, or Lemmie for short, had a heifer calf yesterday. It was the first purebred Holstein heifer she has ever had, after a series of bulls, and was sired by Roylane Jordan, a significant bull of the breed. The baby has the potential to really be something special and Lem is pretty special in her own right. (in fact she was sired by Ocean-View Extra Special.)
So we were thrilled. Mom is fine. Baby is fine. All is good.
But then there is the other cow that was kept in the barnyard with her and helped her in the great escape yeseterday. Cow #156, Consequence, or Connie. Nobody liked the way she looked yesterday so we gave her a pre-calving bottle of subcutaneous calcium. Last night we kept her down in the barnyard with Lemmie again (with a much reinforced gate situation).
This morning Liz found her rolled into a dangerous position and unable to get right...cows can die if their organs press on their lungs and heart....so she and Alan and the boss rolled her upright. She promptly gave birth to a tiny, healthy, bull calf. Obviously a twin. They tried to get another bottle of calcium on board, but she was having none of it and could run faster than they could, so they let her be. Lemmie took possession of baby number one while Connie got down to the business of having the second.
I just went over to check on her progress and found her with a huge ball of placenta-wrapped calf behind her. Sadly the calf was born dead. I am pretty sure that it had been dead a while before birth and was twisted up in the uterus behind the healthy calf. It was not stretched into the normal "diving" position for bovine birth and instead had legs stuck behind its head and turned every which way. No wonder she had been looking ill and more uncomfortable than is normal even for an extremely pregnant cow.
At least she has the live calf to fuss over and was able to stand and walk around. When we go out to milk, hopefully the whole bunch of us...minus Liz who is working at her new job...can get her in the barn and given that calcium. That is how it is with farm life...and all life I guess...you get the joys but they tend to be balanced out by the other side of living. I am going to focus on the Lemmie's new heifer, which Becky has named Lipstick, and get on with spring time. After a bit, Connie will get on with things too....poor old girl.
Morning milking, column deadline, Two springer cows in the barnyard ready to calve Phone rings BF's grandparents truck broke down Bringing it here so the boys can fix it Phone rings Liz checks springer cows They are both missing Broke down the gate and headed for the pastures Phone rings Power company calls from the front yard driveway and comes to check wires that they messed up last week While the GP's are still here Power lady needs to see the boss, But, of course he isn't Here that is Kids find cows and Lemmie has a heifer Power company leaves And the milk inspector gets here At the same time Traffic jam in the driveway Introductions all around and around and around Inspector wants his wooden critters Glad I have some done Bye, bye to four bunnies and four duckies.
Truck is finished, calf is a nice one, everybody goes home and the phone stops ringing. Throw together some meatballs and sauce for spaghetti Milking time again
***This is not by way of being a poem, but merely a list of the busiest day in recent memory. In between the boss ran for parts and ran for hay..twice..fixed the gate that the cows broke down.
Over at Carpe Diem blog. Author Professor Mark Perry pointed out the incredible increases in productivity among dairy farmers since the twenties.
Some of the comments are plumb interesting (if sadly uninformed) and well worth the time it will take to read them.
It simply amazed me to discover that we give cows huge doses of estrogen and that, since milk production has increased three times or six times or whatever, their udder size must have increased in similar proportion (good thing this isn't true or they wouldn't be able to walk).
I subscribed to the comments just for the entertainment value. Give 'em a read if you have time.
We are gradually getting everybody turned out. Lots of excitement today turning my sweet little Etrain's daughter, Email, out with the big girls. Email is nothing like her gentle-natured, pleasant, mother. She kicks with the back end and hooks and swings the front end at you if she thinks she can get you. Nobody is very fond of working around her....
She had the idea that she is pretty hot stuff in the bovine world too and fought with just about every cow in the herd. Most of them are bigger than she is and almost all of them are tougher. I suspect that by the time they come down tonight she will be pretty tired.
Much to my surprise I discovered that I was a finalist in a photography contest. I had completely forgotten that I entered and couldn't even remember what photo I submitted.......The final winner will be decided by voting. If you wish to place a vote for my entry you can do so here. There are a lot of really nice entries and I am tickled to have a photo chosen to be among them....mine is almost at the end so you will get to enjoy them all.
You can vote once per day until June 4th. I would be most grateful and I thank you in advance.
The weather is as perfect as weather can be...cool mornings with clear, bright, peach gold sunlight. Blankets of silver dew shining on the hillsides. Webs of glistening fog floating in the hollows.
The hummers showed up at the feeder less than a day after I filled it. They are very tame and I am thinking probably the same ones as were here last year. I feel bad if I accidentally scare them away from the sitting porch....no wrens yet, but I heard a cat bird. Watched the kestrel hovering over the long lawn, Maltese cross in silhouette. It is so good to finally have them back.
Cows are content with the new green grass and long days of grazing on it. They come in with udders full of milk, then rush back outside to fill them up again.
It is the best time of year and I won't let it be spoiled for me....planting potatoes today if all goes well.
We are hemmed in by race tracks here at Northview, with Fonda Speedway to the northeast and Glen Ridge to the west (it is not quiet on Friday and Saturday nights in summer....)
Last night the kids went to Glen Ridge, which is not too far from our west border, but a heckuva long way from the barn or house, both of which are on the east end of the place.
Out in the parking lot they saw a little yellow cat scavenging around for lost French fries and road kill hot dogs. They watched it for a bit when suddenly it dawned. That was OUR cat, Kashette! (Now we know why she has been gaining weight.)
While they were trying to puzzle out ways to bring her back home in the BF's pick up truck she vanished and they didn't see her again that night.
This morning she was right back on the porch waiting for her drink of milk. Probably needed to wash down all that salty race track food. Alan picked her up to pet her and she smelled like hot dogs. Wouldn't that have been a puzzler if they hadn't seen her out on the town?
We had been noticing a huge increase in drug arrests in the area over about the last year. I for one have been glad to read about them. It is pretty sickening when you sit on Main Street in the tiny little town across the river, waiting to pick up an order of Chinese food, and watching a kid that goes to school with your kids dealing drugs on the street corner. No sense turning them in...you have no proof and they have been in and out of jail a dozen times. It doesn't seem to change anything. However, eventually that one stopped his activities...pretty sure he is in jail again... and dozens of others started showing up on the front page of the paper with mug shots accompanying the story, which makes for real good reading.
I thought this story about some of how they have been catching them was really cool.
Went to a meeting last night and heard that it is time to start cutting hay if you want optimum nutrition. That is no doubt true in terms of numbers on a feed analysis sheet, but there sure was some head shaking among the farmers sitting around the tables. Guys who do a lot of baling pointed out that you would have quite a time drying it.
We may not rival Tennessee for wetness, but we have had a real mess of rain in the past few weeks. Thanks to the couple of weeks of warm weather early, we have a lot more grass than we did at this time the past two years, but taking a tractor into a tender hay field would probably leave ruts that would last for years. We sure need a little dry off.
I planted peas yesterday and some more beets. The garden has been coming on very slowly. The radishes just got their second set of leaves and they have been up for at least a couple of weeks. A lot of corn around the area has been frost damaged pretty badly, but the crop specialist says it usually comes back even if it is frozen right off to the ground.
Cows are going out on a new pasture this morning. They haven't been in it for a couple of years...thanks to absurd amounts of rain...and I am hoping they remember where the fences are. Cows will run through even a very strong fence sometimes if they aren't familiar with it but will stay inside nothing more than a few loops of wire if they know where it is and they aren't hungry.
When are the folks who keep reintroducing this ridiculous bill going to figure out that a political career in Queens, the Bronx or Brooklyn does not prepare them to understand the economic realities of farming? (Other than maybe Old McDonald's). Although it would in no way affect our own farm, as we hire no outside labor, many fruit and vegetable growers would be devastated with little benefit to workers.
However, to people used to politics as usual it looks so good on paper (and in the paper, of course). Pedro Espada the Senate Majority leader called the earlier bill, "my legacy." Guess he still wants to leave upstate with a nice legacy of economic problems caused by the failure of someone from the Bronx to "get" agriculture.
The "new" bill, introduced bySen. George Onorato of Queens, (a farm district if I ever saw one), changes a couple of words...and I do mean a couple...from the original bill....
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