July 4th Milk Dumping Protest "Dump the Milk Day"

I had been hearing rumors of this protest here and there but this is the first I have seen actual published material on it.

A "Blizzard of 1099's"

Deep in the bowels of the health care deform bill, (and yes, I did mean to type "D") is a nasty little provision that will have every farmer (and other small business folks too) in the country sending out 1099s to every single entity with whom they do $600 worth of business in a year. This will make a sickening mess of bookkeeping for thousands of farm women like me, (and yeah, men too) who would much rather go hill potatoes than hunt around for tax numbers and do paperwork for the feds. It will cost businesses ridiculous amounts of money.

You can read a bit about it here.
And here
And here

Hold on to your stomach because this is really going to be ugly.
Don't we wish more people had read the stupid bill before they voted it into law? Um, yeah....

Sick

Not me, Alan. Woke up at three AM yesterday so sick he had to crawl to the facilities. Call for help? Of course not. He slept all day except for chores, in which he insisted upon participating, and was somewhat better, although still under the weather last night. Poor guy.

His dad worked alone and got a lot done just the same. Fixed the rollers on the chopper so they were the correct distance apart, chopped for the cows etc. I did bookkeeping and worked in the garden. Plugging away at hilling the potatoes. I never, ever leave enough dirt between the rows. Never. Side dressed my little bit of sweet corn with nicely composted cow manure. Weeded the peas, cursed the bunny rabbits, which demolished an entire row of beets.

We were hoping to bale today, but it is really cloudy and feels like rain.
Have a good one.

Saving Scooter

Scooter eating bits of bread

The big steer having a whole piece.

Regular readers may remember how poor Bailey had a six weeks premature calf not long ago. Alan named him Scooter and we have been raising him as best we could. We suspect that rather than being caused by some pathology, the early birth was caused by big, nasty heifers beating on the more timid animals. Bailey is a real wuss like all daughters of the bull Ricky that we had born here. Poor Scooter didn't even have teeth when he was born, but as you can see in the picture he does now.

Being born so early left him a bit compromised, but Becky has been faithful in his care and he has thrived, all things considered. Then yesterday he didn't want his milk very much. He seemed to be chewing his cud so we weren't too worried until the end of milking.

I had taken the camera and some bread to the barn to take some photos of the steers, heifers and calves eating it out of our hands. They love bread and go about half nuts if someone walks in with some. It is like dropping big pennies in a huge piggy bank...slices of bread are tiny compared to the mouths of cattle. Alan even offered Scooter a couple of tiny pieces and he ate them eagerly.

A few minutes later though Al ran out in the milk house, "I've got to give Scooter some water...he can't swallow his bread."

I explained to him how to put his fingers in a calf's mouth, on the corner where there are no teeth and to press a little on his palate so he would spit out the bread. However, he couldn't seem to do it, so I took over. To my surprise the poor little guy had a huge mass, not of bread, but of hay, plugging up his whole throat. It took some fiddling around to get it out without getting bitten by his tiny, razor sharp teeth, but I was able to. His relief was marked and he drank a bottle of water like it was going out of style. Apparently, although he has teeth, they are not quite up to the job of chewing up a lot of hay yet and it all got wadded up in his tiny throat.

I was so glad that Alan gave him the bread so that we realized what was troubling him. I hadn't been to worried about him not wanting his milk as he had just figured out how to work the big cow water bowl and we figured he was full of water. He seemed to be fine last night and polished off his evening bottle like a champ. BTW, that bottle is a two-liter Mountain Dew bottle with a lamb nipple rather than a big old calf bottle...those are too big for him.

Sunday Stills, High, Low

From low looking high

Low

For more Sunday Stills...

Happy Father's Day

Thanks Dad for the love of learning and the curiosity that has and does drive me. My life will never be dull....and a happy day to all you fathers out there. You mean a lot to your wives and kids and this day is just one way of showing it.

***The folks are here this weekend with their amazing array of rare books. Stop by and visit if you are in the area. If you can't visit enjoy their month-long online book sale here.


A bit off topic, but by the way, I read some of the drivel that was printed about this show and I was embarrassed to live in NY state. Good grief what ignorance.


It's okay lady, we gun people don't want idiots like you near our guns, so it all evens out in the end I guess.

The Roof is Done

Which means a lot to me. A couple of years ago we lost a couple of sheets of roofing steel. Couldn't seem to find any contractors that wanted to bother with it and the boss can't climb so...we just lived with the leak. then a severe storm early this year peeled off a good third of one section. The leak became an indoor water park, so much fun in a rainy season like this one. Once again we called contractor after contractor to no avail. Most of them promised and promised and promised, but were simply too busy to be bothered to actually show up.

Then the boss called a few Amishmen, got estimates, and within less than two weeks the job was done. I wish you could have seen them work. They were like squirrels. Really fast moving squirrels. Where I suspect "English" contractors would have erected scaffolding on the main barn where the damage was...very high in the air btw...the Amishmen put a ladder up by the milk house and scurried over the lower roofs until they reached the junction with the big roof and went up that way. I could not stand to watch them. They sauntered around on that high roof like it was the barn floor, no hands, no ladder, no nothing.

I would never have believed the job could be done in a day, but they arrived around seven in the morning and by four in the afternoon the tools were packed away and the new steel was shining in the late afternoon sun.
It was awesome.
They used lumber we had stacked in the heifer barn against just such a repair and had to tear the stacked pile apart to get boards long enough to fit their needs. When they finished, despite the boss telling them not to bother, they re-stacked the whole pile...for which we are grateful.

Hopefully the new roof won't leak (although we certainly don't need any more rain to be testing it) and it will stand up to the ferocious winds we seem to get every few weeks now. Time will tell.

I had to laugh this morning when I came down the stairs. I always pause on the landing to see what it is up out in the yard. This morning Mr. and Mrs. robin were lounging around under the big blue spruce. For the past few weeks their single young one has been following them around like a fat, speckled beggar, importuning them for food all day long. Apparently he finally went out on his own and they were loving it. The male was lying on his side in the driveway, for all the world like a barn yard chicken at its leisure. The female was popping around self-importantly, chasing English sparrows away from him. It was hilarious and I wish I could have watched all morning. Alas the cat was howling for his breakfast and if I don't get the old dog out promptly in the morning she makes me wish I had.....

Have a great day!

Hustling

The Amishmen are here to work on the roof. They arrived when we were about half way done with the morning milking. First crisis...bees in the beams. Alan is off to get bee spray. They are hurrying around getting ladders up and tools in place and two by fours out of the heifer barn. Those men can really hustle! I am very glad I don't have to follow them around for the day.

Second crisis, Neon Moon walked right through the electric fence, just because she could. It was hot and she was getting shocked by it...she didn't care. Tore off about fourteen insulators so the boss had to drop every thing and go fix fence....ah well...never a dull moment.

One Hungry Planet

Storm

Yet another wild storm with torrential rains last night. No hay is being made.
See the little dingle-dangles hanging down under that cloud? In the seconds before I took the photos, I was just sitting down in my Sunday chair to enjoy a wonderful anniversary dinner provided for the boss and me by our Becky. First bite of delicious calzone from Romana's had just been cut. I glanced out the window and saw this huge, pregnant, ugly thing hanging down from the big, black thunder cloud. The wind was already howling, folks had scurried to close windows, and the sumacs were lashing the windows like whips.

Having watched many tornado chaser videos, I ran for the camera. By the time I got back to the window, the bulge had been reabsorbed into the cloud and all that was left were those two little wisps...which were rotating around in a circle. It was over in an instant and no more than a glimmer of what it could have been, but this has certainly been a summer for bizarre weather.First a hot dry May (for which I was grateful as we got more work done every day than we can do in a week now). Now a cool, absolutely soggy, sorry June. We can't seem to buy two dry days in a row and keep having to turn the heat on to take off the miserable chill and dry the house out..

At least a man brought the steel for the barn roof yesterday. Of course the men had gone off for parts for the engine rebuild on the 930 so there was no one to help unload or to tell me where it needed to go.

Wednesday Thursday Friday?

This is nuts. It is bad enough that there are parts of America that are too dangerous for the average Joe or Jill to visit due to urban violence, but how can there be places we can't visit because of foreign crime? It is unbelievable that anybody finds this acceptable. How can they declare national wildlife refuge off limits to the citizens who pay for it because nobody has guts (I wanted to use a better word here, but I'll be nice) to offer our people security and safety? Just read the initials of the title and you will know what I am thinking.

Wordless Wednesday

Dogs Gone

A fat blue folder of dogs long gone
Doggone them for leaving
Their place by my feet
For not being puppies
And herders
And guarders
For leaving me waiting behind here at home
While they move on to wide fields
where cows always come running
whenever they roam.

Reading through pedigrees,
Floss, Wisp, Nell and Craig
Davy, Bobby, Sadie, Robbie,
Whitelow Jan,
Dryden Joe,

Grand dogs of the past from Scotland and Wales
All gone now too,
Though their names ring behind them
From the hills and the sheep and the big sheep dog trials

Years ago all combined to make Mike, Nick and Gael
The three collies who worked here
for fifteen long years
Making chores easy and crazy and fun
Tracking in mud and shedding black hair
And lying there sleeping right next to my chair

Mike is long gone now and Nick's getting old.

Gael lies in the kitchen
in front of the gate
Too blind to be watching
Too deaf now to hear
But you still can't get by her
She'll find you no fear.

I was looking yesterday for a picture of a border collie to help me in painting the latest wooden animal project to come my way. In the course of the hunt I dug out my old training books, finding pictures of the likes of Wiston Cap (read the bit in this story about whistle training. I have seen it myself...a dog that knows nothing about whistles working to them anyhow) and so many other great ones. It has been a while since we had a dog here that worked, but when we did they were an incredible help. I really miss just sending a dog to move cows where we want them. Now it's do it yourself if you want it done, and cows don't respect middle-aged-going-on-elderly, ladies near as much as they do fast, young dogs with sharp, white teeth.

Nick at 11 is still eager and biddable, but I could never really use him on the milk cows. He likes to bite above the hock...right where the udder is...and so is not trustworthy. Gael is fifteen and past it all, except for toddling along behind me on the way to the garden.

Mike was a good one. Born knowing more about herding than I'll ever learn.
I didn't deserve him, but I am so glad I had him. As I looked at his registration papers I realized it was no wonder that he was such a terrific dog. Wisp was his grand sire...two time International champion...and I had the honor of working with him, training him, being trained by him. Damn I was lucky.
It was bittersweet to page through the books and registrations, old licenses and vet's receipts.
I was so privileged to have had such a dog...such dogs in fact...but I miss working with them. Their lives are too short.

We have four dogs now, all elderly, what with Nick and Gael, Wally the blue heeler guardian of the barn, and Sadie, the boss's late mother's old mutt, but I am getting the itch to get a puppy. You can't ever replace an old dog and no pup can fill their footprints....but a puppy grows....and learns...and leads you new places where you haven't been before. I'd like to find a puppy.

A working puppy, with the blood of the great ones running through him....
Training stock dogs was the most challenging thing (next to parenting) that I ever did (or more like tried to do). I had to learn several new languages from come bye and away to me to reading cows and sheep in a whole new way.
From training the dog to listen to me and convincing him to work with me to thinking where he needed to be and where I needed to be to make the cows go where we both wanted them without getting anybody run over. From knowing two lefts from two rights...his and mine (and if you want to get complicated, the cows' lefts too) to balance and pressure and outruns and drives.
It is a game I want to play again and I do believe that I am going to need a new dog to play it with.
It is getting hard to wait for him.

It has rained

It is raining. It will rain...and rain and rain and rain. Or so it seems. Work on everything has ground to a halt. No hay, no roofing, no gardening, nothing but chores and house work. Of course there is always plenty of those to do.The tractor pull was canceled so the guys came home and slept off the three AM start to the day before chores.

We have a lawn buck to go with the doe. He came peeking in the window and trotting around the lawn on Saturday. At least a four-point, thick with velvet. I suppose they may have something to do with the absence of tops on the beets in the upper garden...

And I leave you with some baby mockingbirds as I don't have much else to offer. We have all sorts of babies from robins to downy woodpeckers. They are the highlight of the season right now.

The Guys are off To Dansville

Big brother is taking Alan and the boss to the big tractor pull at Dansville today. Alan got up at three-fifteen and got the cows in. They were not at all in favor of that. Cows love routine and they resent and protest change, especially being asked to come in to the barn a couple of hours early. It took him over an hour to get them down. Then the boss and I helped him milk them.

A pic Alan took a couple years ago of our friend's tractor, the Supernatural.

I am hoping the guys have a great time at the pull...the girls and I will milk tonight without them.

***Update, the Dansville tractor pull was canceled and the man are back :(
This rain has a lot to answer for!! The guys got all the way to Syracuse before they found out.

Best Post Yet on the Gulf Coast Oil Spill

Read it here. FC is a Gulf Coast native...someone who lives it and loves it. Read his post...it will break your heart.

No Dairy Farms Left by 2024

Check out John Bunting's blog for some very disturbing figures.

Case 930

Coughed up a head gasket yesterday. It is the mowing/baling/hauling/you name it tractor...or it was.....good thing Alan is studying Ag engineering AKA diesel tech.

Egg Quality a Success in Ohio

Read about it here

Don't Forget the Book Sale

20% off through the month of June.....

***That is a small section of my dining room book shelf, not my folk's shop.