Lucky

The Mid West took a shellacking this weekend in the weather department. We were threatened but lucked out in the end, with just a tad of ice and some drenching rains. Miserable, but nothing compared to a blizzard.

We were also lucky in that the boss told the guys over at the auction last week to give him a call if a really cheap stock trailer came in. They did and we got this for way under two thousand. It is really old, but not at all decrepit and will serve us for a bit and keep us out of the hands of the uncaring and unscrupulous among the haulers. I am grateful as heck for that.

More Ugliness on Eastern Livestock Meltdown

It always seems to come back and bite the little guy.

Sunday Stills....Pets

Click for detail

Notice the hard working border collie staring at his prey... lots of eye. Below find the prey. Nothing like a dog that works cats.

For more Sunday Stills.....

Thinking Thankful Thoughts

I have been lately. So many of you who come here to read about life on our small family dairy farm have helped us in amazing ways over the past year. Friends, family, people whom we have never met, but who would certainly be friends if we did, have helped us put another year behind us....still milking cows, still doing what we do, despite all odds, and they have not been good odds. When we ran out of feed last winter, people helped. People called from far away to offer help. You were so good to us, who had done nothing to deserve the goodness.

It was humbling...there were amazing acts of kindness. From seeds for the garden, neat things to plant from far away, to kind words of support when the world seemed black and frozen.

You are good for our hearts and our home and our lives and I just wanted you to know that we have not forgotten and we thank you every day that comes....

Definition of a Farmer

I could add a few to this. Farmers have to wear a lot of hats these days.

The Better Half of Snow

C'mon, you knew there had to be one. It can't be ALL bad..only almost....I am not a winter fan, less so after taking a crashing fall while taking sand in so the cows had better footing (guess I should have sanded where I walk first). However, despite the bruises and bumps, there is an upside to this white stuff all over the ground.

Tracking, reading the unfolding story of what happened in the night, out in the yard while we were sleeping. There the crook-legged hen left a garbled trail over to the porch to steal cat food. Here the rooster scratched for sun flower seeds under the feeder. It is like gossip written in blue and grey against the white....every one's secrets revealed.

This morning's tabloid offered a probable explanation of where Triton went. Triton was a lovely cat Alan brought home not long ago. I really liked her....what a hunter.

Then one morning she was just....gone....we never saw her again.

This morning a set of large, like German shepherd-large, canine tracks, led from the bank of the creek right across the heifer road and all the way to the house and beyond. Right next to the cars and the back porch where Triton lived.

Canis Latrans. Bold as brass, right up to the house, right up to the hen coop, right past the pony barn. Although we have three dogs, they are all confined in warm places for the winter. None of them left the tracks. I knew there were coyotes around; you can't miss hearing them, but I had some idea that they stayed out in the field....waiting for the cats to come to them.

Hah! I swear if the door was open they would probably walk right in the living room looking for Elvis and Simon.

There are also bunny tracks out there, but very, very few compared to most winters. I guess that is the better half of having a coyote in your back yard. Besides cats, he apparently eats rabbits too.

Still.....

Duck ID

Practicing up for the Christmas Bird Count. Here is a nice page of duck identification information. (I wonder if there will be any open water at all by the time the count rolls around!)

Cold Feet on Plum Island?

Maybe

Food Court Hallelujah Story Revealed

Last week I posted the video of the flash mob that performed Handel's Messiah in a Canadian food court (it still gives me cold chills when I listen).

Here is the story behind the video.

NY Farm Bureau Annual Meeting

Is on this week. Here is a nice story from the front:

NY Farmers donate 4.7 million pounds of food

Wordless Wednesday

Steckling

Not a sugar beet...nor a steckling either

A steckling, a steckling...my kingdom for a steckling.....

But I will most happily settle for a nice definition of a steckling from any of you wonderful agricultural folks who happen to stop by. (I am working on this week's Farm Side and need to talk about beet culture.)

Sugar beets are not exactly big business in upstate NY and the Net has been helpful, but not absolutely so, in my quest to write about the recent federal court decision on GMO beets.

Thanks in advance for any help you are able to give. Quotable quotes about the beet industry would be most welcome as well. You can leave them in the comments or email me at threecollie AT gmail DOT com.

Ethanol Hurts

On one hand my car runs so badly on it, seems like all we do is buy dry gas.

On the other hand we are paying prices for concentrates (grain) for the cows that we would never even have imagined just a couple of years ago. Between the cost of feed and the high price of all kinds of fuels it is a daily struggle just to survive...a very discouraging struggle. I personally would like to see the government go out of the food for fuel business.

Here is a story about the issue with a lively discussion in the comments.

Good Morning

From kinda, sorta, snowy Northview. I guess the western end of the county really got dumped on. We just got a little bit...enough for me for sure, but just a dusting. At least it wasn't rain. It was a fairly quiet weekend, which I spent working and enjoying the company of my boy, Nick. Doesn't look eleven does he?

The Border Collie Dilemma

Seems to have been solved without any decision on my part. The female broke out of her run at her home and went and found her own boyfriend.

Sunday Stills....Pot Luck

Lots of fun this week!

For more Sunday Stills

Rustlers Caught

Suspects were apprehended in calf losses in Minnesota. They wanted to start a dairy farm and decided to get an unconventional start. Check out the comments...sure had me shaking my head.

Cha-cha-changes

What is with people wanting to see what I look like anyhow? I am not thirty any more and will never be again...not forty or fifty either...I sneaked through Sunday Stills last week without too much misery. Then I got the news that my old editor (a nice guy with a great sense of humor...he always came up with cool titles) is my new editor now.

And he wants a new picture to go with the newness of the editorial page. I have soldiered along writing the Farm Side since 1998...lots of wise cracks and parentheses (just because I like 'em) and the same picture of my grinning face....for all those years. And every year I would chortle to myself....hehehe...they haven't made me change my photo yet. I was just thinking that the other week while undergoing the agony of having my picture taken for SS. I guess I laughed a couple days too soon.

I took a bunch yesterday. (I have to send an assortment.) It hurt. Think old. Think weather-beaten old. Grey even. Think weather-beaten, wrinkled-up, grey even, whistling distance of 60 farmer's wife.

Ouch. I was enjoying my fantasy dag nab it! Above is my favorite so far....that really isn't me....really it isn't.....

Something to Write Home About

Nick

Rev. Paul has a post about the Iditarod. If we can just get to the other side of this whole winter thing we have that to look forward to. I do love sled dog racing and the Iditarod is the big one. We used to go to sled dog races all the time around here. We would stand in snow banks with freezing toes, watching the dogs go by on silent feet, only the sound of their breath and the swish of the runners to mar the silence of the winter woods...nothing like snowmobiles that deafen everybody for miles around. I miss it.

That Amish fellow that we heard wanted to mate my Nick with his dog has come forward and contacted me. I am afraid I am getting cold feet about the whole deal. Nick is a good dog and well worthy of passing on his traits, but I wonder what will happen with the resulting pups. One would come to me, but what about the rest of them? Will they be stock dogs on his sheep farm or dumped on the pet market, where good working border collies do not belong? I am going to have to talk to him some more I think. Meanwhile Liz picked me up a DHL booster and I vaccinated Nick, just in case.

I do want a puppy...and a puppy from the bloodlines we have worked here for nearly two decades would be perfect but.....

Truckin'

Years ago we lost a good deal of money at the hands of an unscrupulous cattle trucker who switched our cows with his own and sold our heavier, larger animals as his. We got the smaller check. As cows aren't weighed at the farm and he wouldn't tag them we had no way to prove this. However eventually he switched a huge 1400-lb cow for an 800-lb one and we fired him and bought a trailer.

We hauled our own ever since. However, we loaned our trailer to a neighbor, his barn burned, and the trailer was damaged in the fire. Recently the metal began breaking down very rapidly...so we decided that it was not safe to use and hired a different trucker to haul a cow to the sale yesterday.

She was a big one, one of mine naturally, my Encore cow out of the Trixy family. I really, really hated to sell her in the first place. We just couldn't get her pregnant and she was mean as a snake....bills to pay so she had to go.

First the trucker couldn't get backed up to the door of the barn. Mind you, Alan, at twenty, can back a bumper pull stock trailer in, one try, on ice, snow, you name it. ...I think he could prolly do it blind folded. The ground was clear, the barnyard all scraped and nice .....This guy had a goose neck and couldn't get it anywhere near right.

He finally set up with his open door out into the barn aisle so the cow had to turn and go around it and squeeze through a little bitty gap to clamber into his filthy, stinking, wet, slippery mess of a trailer. I got the boss to make him pull out a little because I knew she wouldn't do it. It would have been hard to load a show cow that way, let alone a gigantic loony-tune like Encore (she ended up weighing a few pounds under 1500.)

Then I asked him to let me throw some sand on the trailer...he had mats and it was just a morass, wet, obviously slippery. I hate to make a cow ride thirty miles sliding around like they were on a skating rink.

He flat out refused! I mean the sand was right there. The shovel was right there. I would have done the work so he didn't have to!

He said, "Oh, I had a cow go down there this morning...she got right up...." Patronizing as heck. What would a woman know about loading cows anyhow?

I was so mad I could have spit. Of course when we brought her down the aisle, the damnfoolidiot trucker got right out in front of her waving his cane. So....she wouldn't go around the door and jumped up in the stall with my beautiful Broadway, my very favorite cow in the world, just diagnosed pregnant and doing no harm. And proceeded to bang the heck out of her.

Getting Encore out and on that truck wasn't pretty. She didn't want to go, she was a lot bigger than we are and the trucker got her all stirred up and mad.... I didn't blame her a bit.

And then he wouldn't tag her. So there we were...once again trusting that we would get paid for our big cow and not somebody else's little one.

As soon as that trailer door swung shut, I just stomped off to the house fuming. Man was I mad. The boss hurried through his work and went right on over to the sale barn and stayed and watched her sell so we were sure to get the right one. Kids and I did the night chores without him...which isn't really all that big a deal. She did sell right and we got our own check and not somebody else's...only brought 44 cents a pound, which was a good bit less than I was hoping for, but that's an auction for you.

I 'll tell you what though..... We are either patching up that old Corn Pro or we are finding a used stock trailer. When the boss and I load cows, we set up gates, we put sand in the trailer (which is backed up right square to the door) and on the barn floor and we are quiet, and quick and in the right place at the right time. It has been years since we had any rodeos loading. The cows go down to the door and jump in and we close the door...nuff said.....We even got the big, horned, beef steer on the trailer last week without any fanfare, although I admit we were worried about him. There is no reason to do it any other way, except laziness or sheer, screaming, incompetence. I will not go through that again....ever.....

So if you hear of a used trailer for a reasonable price...stock style, give me a shout. I had all I wanted of truckers yesterday.