Sunday Stills...High Tech, Low Tech

This was an interesting challenge. We had dozens of ideas, the hay rakes next to an antique wooden hand one we have, the manure fork next to the spreader (abandoned for aesthetic reasons), and many others. However when this one sprang to mind, I knew it was the right one. Above find Barbossa, a bull. Admittedly a very small bull, a milking shorthorn/Holstein cross, but a genuine pure-D bull.

The tote he is checking out is the boss's AI kit. We do use bulls now and then, but for the most part it is the yellow tote that gets the job done today.

So, you have your high tech, AI, and your low tech, all-natural, old-fashioned ways to keep your cows milking and earning you money (at least in theory.)

***You will have to excuse the not so great quality of the shot. Barbossa was not very eager to be photographed and it is kinda dark in that part of the barn. The gratuitous cat is Tux, who hates to miss anything.

For more Sunday Stills.....

Where the Air Smelled Like Snakes

Well, actually it smells like snow. The forecast isn't calling for much, but the wind yesterday blew in something different in the seasonal scheme of things.

It looks like November.

It feels like November.

And it smells like November.

Guess it must indeed be November. We are holding good thoughts for a safe opening day and the rest of the season, for good weather to the west of us so friends in other states can get their corn harvested, a good herd health next week, and a fulfilling and happy Thanksgiving for everyone.

What are you hoping for this fall?

Dairy and Fruit Walmart's Strongest Categories

Read about it here. Glad someone is making money on milk.

Farmin' in November

Cows are sleeping in the barn nights now...they let us know when they are ready. Much easier to milk and feed, but the stable now must be cleaned more often. No new calves this week, but Neon Moon is on any day now status.

Still a few loads of hay out there, but the rain just keeps coming. If it rains two or three days every single week the fields are a morass and you can't drive in them. Would sure like to have the boss chop up the last of the sorghum too. What's left is too mature to make good feed, but it packs in nice as bedding. Can't get that either for the same reason.

Wood is being cut and collected. And a deal being made to have a man bring a bull dozer in to pull trees up out of the woods. A lot easier on the tractor, which was never made for that job. Alan is thinking of getting to work on the big dump truck and using that to haul wood...if he ever has time.

Bookkeeping goes on apace and I am sick of that I can tell you. Swore I would NEVER keep books. Now I have to enter stuff on two checkbooks and chart accounts and tear my hair. That is what I did all day yesterday. At least it is warm indoors.

Elvis is fattening up and looking like himself again. During his sojourn on the loose he lost about twelve pounds. I would say he has gained back nine or ten. He and Simon are not friends yet, which is interesting.... to put a happy spin on the situation.

And Nick, indoors for the winter, reminds me daily of why I like border collies. He is a grand old dog, and I would love him if he did nothing but hoover up all the scraps that fall.....but he does much more.

And there you have it...all the news that's fit to print.

Have a good one.

Oh, and here's a headline for you. Fonterra Hopes to Pay Dairy Farmers More to Cover Input Costs. Doesn't that sound grand?

Too bad they are talking about farmers in New Zealand.

I have been writing about it less, because it is a pretty discouraging refrain, but farms are going out at an awful rate. A big show herd that has been around about forever sold their cows and is selling the machinery this weekend. Not people that would quit if they could make a living, but.......

My Cannon

I have always wanted one...along with a tank, if I get really lucky. This is the season when that situation becomes most acute.

Southern zone deer season opens Saturday.

I love venison. We lived on it last winter, along with a couple geese and turkeys....My family has always hunted, harvesting a few of the many wild animals that graze our ground.

However, yesterday I was jumpy all day with the sounds of big guns booming all around us. I truly hope they are just sighting them in and not getting a jump on the season, but most years we find parts of carcasses way before it is legal to take them. The boss went up yesterday and took a look around and didn't see anybody, but the sneaky ones wear full cammo and you can't see them.

I have always wanted to set a cannon right on the front lawn facing down the driveway.... And I want the tank to safely chase down all the damn fools who ignore our posted signs and shoot everything that moves, the whole, it's brown, it's down philosophy.... Saturday the brown cows will have to stay in the barn. Last year Moments lost her calf to hunters peppering her, now she has finally had one and is milking great. We want to keep it that way.

I often receive lectures from hunters on other blogs about the honorable safe hunters. Yes, I know they are out there, but they are not the ones we encounter. The good ones mind the posted signs and hunt where they are welcome. The ones we meet know they are breaking the law, long before we ever see them and they just don't care. I don't have a lot of respect or liking for them.

Just for information here are the New York State Posting and Trespassing Regulations

I think I will print out a couple of copies for the boss to hand out to the guys he meets who are ignoring them......

This is the phone number to report poachers in the state: 1-800-TIPP-DEC

Anyhow, be safe out there....

Talking Turkey

88% of American households will serve one this Thanksgiving.

247 million of them are raised here each year, with Minnesota being the largest producer.

The average weight of the ones we dine upon is 16 pounds.

For everything you need to know about turkey, from thawing your bird, to cooking with the leftovers go here. Pages and pages of all things turkey and just plain fascinating.

Happy Birthday, Dad!

You are the greatest!

Amazement

Visiting the folks is always a great source of it. Becky bought this violin from her grandmother, who gave a short demonstration.

This instrument has tone and volume like you would never imagine. a note sounded from its strings made you feel as if you were in a concert hall.... I tried it at home and alas could only squeak.

Herkimer diamonds

Daguerreotypes.

And books, always books. We looked at several really cool ones........and that is not to mention all the wonderful love they hand out so freely. Sure was good to see them.

The Water is Already Clean

Farmers doing enough to keep the bay clean

According to this article, water leaving NYS for the Chesapeake Bay watershed ALREADY meets EPA standards as per their own monitoring stations. So why do our state's farmers have to make more expensive changes in the way they grow our food?

It is a lot like the whole thing with exhaust coming out of tractors cleaner than the air that goes in under new regulations. They are out of control and have totally lost contact with reality....

Jay Walking

Or scarfing sunflower seeds as the case may be.

Sunday Stills...Coffee and Tea Cups

For more Sunday Stills.....

We have quite a selection of old tea cups. Some belonged to the boss's late mom. Some have been given to me by several wonderful folks, including my own dear mother. These are just a couple of them.

Update: And here is my good friend Dickiebo's idea of a Sunday Still

Feral Hogs in Montgomery County?

Not feral, just some piggies we raised a couple of years ago

Or just one that jumped out of somebody's pig pen up in the Town of Glen? (Doesn't matter too much, because that is one of the ways populations of the nefarious things get started.)

Anyhow, Alan saw a loose pig yesterday, rooting around in the field of a farmer we know up there, not somebody that has pigs as far as we know, certainly not inside any kind of fence...

If you are missing a white pig with spots and a lot of hair, give us a call...we are in the phone book...and he can tell you just where he saw it.

Meanwhile, we are hoping that it isn't a symptom of a population of them getting started up here. They are already a problem in Pennsylvania and the NY Southern Tier.

They are bad, bad, bad I'll tell you. They ruin crops, kill birds, eat pets, carry a whole laundry list of livestock diseases and do all sorts of other nefarious damage. One of the kids' college friends got a good paying, full time job down in Texas doing nothing but shoot hogs, all night every night...and probably didn't even make a dent in the population.

As they trickle into NYS, probably from Pennsylvania, the DEC is asking that they be shot on sight, according to the article in the Evening Sun and what Alan has been told by DEC officers when he was in the Fisheries and Wildlife Program at SUNY Cobleskill.

Read more about feral hogs here.... and here

Here is a video

Frosty Mornings on the Farm

Milk Mustache

Accompanied by something of a real one

And the woodshed, the mustache guy single-handedly built for us.

Winston

Another calf born yesterday. It was an amazing morning with geese ringing up off the river through the fog like rather noisy ghosts, lower than the roof of the house and just barely visible, (but eminently very hear-able), and the air the color of a million-dollar pearl.

This has been the week for unexpected visits from assorted folks, from dear friends to the milk inspector. They are all good folks and we love to see them, but we sure had to scurry to keep up with things. The boss is working on getting in some firewood, and finishing up a couple of bits of hay. Hopefully the rain holds off a few more days. It sure is soggy out there.

Liz went up and got the new mama and baby while we were milking and brought them down. She decided to choose a name for the new one that fit the day in a proper way. This may be the first heifer ever named Winston, but she is a good 'un and we are glad to have her.

We had a real nice little half-shorty bull born the other day too, to Alan's Bayliner who is an own daughter of Whirlhill Kingpin, a bull from the sixties, which is quite an accomplishment. Bayliner is from Bayberry, so she is a half sister to my favorite cow, Broadway, dam of our shorthorn show heifer, Rose Magnolia. Alan named him Barbossa, which seemed pretty fitting as well.

Looks like another sunny day on tap for today, so when I get over the jet lag from being up until after midnight after a late and extremely exasperating meeting, I will be looking for a reason to work outdoors.....

Funny Stories About Cows

This is Neon Moon, not Stockwell, but you can get the idea.

Been getting a lot of hits from that particular search and it got me thinking. How about the guy who leaves his wife in the hospital the morning after an emergency Cesarean delivery and goes to the auction to buy a cow? Just for fun?

It made me plumb irrational I'll tell you. There I was in acute and lasting misery, all alone with my big red-headed baby boy and there he was having a ball and not even missing us. He didn't even call. Dang!

Well, the Good Lord got right back at him for that egregious transgression I can tell you. And the punishment went on and on.

We named the cow Stockwell after the folks we purchased her from (although she was registered and came already named, that name has long been forgotten). She was a really nice black one and milked fairly well, although she was quite light on her feet (she kicked like a twenty-mule team). Of course his mom and I were the ones that milked her most of the time so that wasn't too much of an issue for him.

However.....there was that whole jumping thing. You have heard of the Maryland Hunt Cup? Well that darned cow only lacked one requirement for participation...the whole actually being a horse thing...other than that she would have fit right in.

I won't say she jumped like a deer because she jumped better than any deer I ever saw. Walk right up to a stout, tall, corner post, and, from a standstill, fly right over it, land on the other side and get right to dealing with the other side being greener and all.

She was ALWAYS out. Never there when you wanted her to milk. Somebody always had to go bring her in separately....ever single day, twice a day...and that somebody was NOT me. I had a new baby and all....geez....

Still she was a good cow so we kept her. I don't remember what bull sired her first heifer calf, but she was long and black and elegant as well.

We didn't notice anything too unusual about the young 'un until she was a yearling and moved to the heifer barn. That was when, rather than going in the stable like we wanted her to, she jumped the gigantic concrete watering trough with a single bound. That thing is huge! Bam, right over it without touching a thing.

She showed the exact same propensity with fences as her peripatetic mama too...saunter up to the corner, pop up into the air and stroll away.

The boss had enough of chasing them one day, threw them both on the same trailer and hauled them over to Little Falls where the auction was at the time. The men hanging around there were so astonished that he was selling a pair of such beautiful cattle that he got all kinds of offers before they even went in the ring. I think the auction company owner ended up buying them for a real decent price.

Meanwhile, I gloated.......I still do. Forgiveness is a fine thing and all, but I guess I never have quite forgiven him.

A Child of the Fifties, Sixties and Seventies

It is great to see Facebook filled with flags and notes of remembrance for our veterans. It was not always so... Sometimes change is good. Thank you to all who served and to those who do so today. We pray for your safe return to your homes and families.

Wordless Wednesday

The Dog and the Dynamite

Can't seem to find a picture of Beethoven,

so here is Tucker, his mentor (taught him to eat rocks) and partner in crime.

****This post is for Jinglebob, with apologies to those of you who have already heard it.

See about ten years ago the state made a real mess rebuilt the road from here to town and did town over too.

It was pretty ugly. Businesses went out of business because folks couldn't get to their doors over the holes and mud and destruction. We lived down in town then and came here to work each day. During that time, getting there was a lot more than half the hassle fun

The project took about half of our front pasture for fill under eminent domain, which required that they work right in front of the driveways. Some days between the flag men between here and home and the workers in our yards and roads it took an hour to travel in either direction...a mere mile.

At the time we had the huge monster of a dog described in the last post. He was a friendly sort and loved the excitement. After a while the workers came to like him too and fed him sammiches and played fetch with him.... but that was later.

One fine morning the boss and I headed home for breakfast after chores. The foreman of the job warned us as we went down the barn driveway that there would be a short delay due to them having to blow up more of our pasture. Okay, that would just about leave us time to run home and eat and get back to work. So we threaded our way through the mile of traffic cones and bull dozers and dozing flag folks, ate and headed back to work.

Alas, by then no traffic was being permitted up this side of the valley. 5S was closed. The Thruway was closed. Nothing was moving. People were fuming and thumping steering wheels in grid lock that would have fit in fine in Los Angeles. We joined the parking lot.....and we sat and sat and sat. Time moves differently in a car while waiting....we waited a very long time.

Finally, hours later, we were permitted to return to the farm.

And there we heard....the rest of the story.

Seems the construction fellas put their charges out, all along the cliff in the pasture, in order to blow up more of that good old slate and dirt that used to grow grass for our cows.

And seems that our 120-pound big black dog went out and sat down on one of the charges, calmly contemplating the view out over the river. He had hung around cows long enough to learn how to ruminate real well. He ruminated while perusing his domain.

And every time one of the workers went out to try to shift him, he raised his upper lip and rumbled.... just a little. (He was one of those "smiler" dogs who grins at you, showing lots of fang. It looks like snarling to some.)

Stalemate.

Very long stalemate.

Time is money so eventually the head guy, who was a bit of a dog person, went out and took the old boy by his collar and led him out of the way.

Boom! And all was well....well except for the pasture, which is now mostly located about a half a mile away under the new road.

We had a good laugh, over it, although we didn't get much done that day (neither did they) and I got a good column out of it.

When the old dog passed away the boss buried him out on what was left of the bank where he stopped progress......and several dozen construction workers...and an Interstate and a state road and a couple of busy farmers....dead in their tracks.

I always admired that dog....

On the Porch this Morning

Chickens stealing cat food. How handy that I just happened to have Nick in the house. Nothing like a border collie for removal of unwelcome poultry.

Found old Stormy dead there when I took him out for the first time. Not a tragedy or anything, just one of those things. She was not a pet by any means, just a scruffy old working girl, retired, long, long past her ratting days and it was just time.

In a way it was almost a relief. No one has any idea how old she was, but she wasn't a young cat when the boss's mom passed away and it has been nine years since then. If I had to guess I would say thirteen or fourteen at least. It is a lucky farm cat that avoids milk trucks and foxes and coyotes, owls and clumsy cow feet for that long.

And she had a kind of on and off relationship with good health, and was probably the ugliest cat we ever had. She also had a long history of stealing kittens from her kin, Wild Thing, who vanished this summer. Wild Thing also stole from her so there was never any knowing which one actually owned what kittens. They hardly ever raised any anyhow, being absurdly inbred. I don't think there is a single cat left now from that era. You see, we never knew it until just before he died, but a dog we used to have, a big homely behemoth in black, named Beethoven, used to kill any new cats that came to the farm. Strays or drop offs, I guess they were intruders in his mind.

We NEVER saw him do it, but every now and then we would find a cat corpse in the barn or out in the field. They looked untouched. We worried about disease...but we never knew what was going on until he was gone and suddenly the "disease" was too. Thus our barn cats had no outside blood for at least ten years, and were all grey or black, wild as heck, and dumb as rocks.

He also caught wild turkeys, no small accomplishment for a 120-pound dog. He would start a flock flying, usually downhill as they are heavy birds, run like heck to the bottom and grab one when they landed. He ate the whole thing, feathers and all, which resulted...oh, never mind what it resulted in, trust me you don't want to know. Woodchucks held no fear for him either and he dispatched them with a snap (maybe he thought they were cats.)

He was the guy who held up the road repair job by sitting on the dynamite too, but that story has been told before so I won't go there again. He babysat the kids...wouldn't let them go down the slide until he thought they were old enough, and walked grandma to the barn and back every day, letting her use him as a prop and helping her up if she slipped. A good dog back in his day.

Anyhow, sorry about the ramble......have a good one.