Later Thursday

Thursday

Lakota's new baby boy with Tux, the opportunist

Is sometimes my second favorite day of the week (after Sunday) because I am caught up by then....usually.

But sometimes I am not so caught up. And Thursday is just another day......Another storm in the offing for tomorrow, geraniums to plant, dreaded house work to dig away at. (Why is it I get a lot of satisfaction out of sweeping a barn aisle or sluicing out the milk house but hate every swipe of the broom or mop indoors? Ugh!)

We experienced a significant and quite notable sign of early spring last night though. Just about last dog turning out time of the evening a powerful, pungent and real CLOSE odor wafted into the kitchen. I think the perp may have actually been on the back porch at one point.

Thus Nick and I will be doing leash walks again until the air clears and he or she takes his stinky little act down the road.

Depeche-toi

That is what I call this guy. He has a partner named "Hurry Up". They meet me every day when I go out to fill the feeders. You may need to click the first two shots because of the cluttered background....sorry about that.

PS, I don't know if it is clear, but that is my feed scoop that they are landing in. I was holding it in one hand with the camera in the other.

Tuesday Edition

Cold again, or still, or whatever. Around zero I guess. I dragged myself out in the dark for morning barn check. Everyone but me has the dreaded cold/flu thing, so I could hardly expect anyone else to do it. Beautiful morning though. By the time I was done the sun was just rising like a peach and melon watercolor, washing the land with light. Old Mr. Fluff was crowing his heart out and ringing the morning in. The tracery of foot prints in the snow showed only cats and no foxes nudging around the hen house (unlike yesterday when some varmint was clearly looking for a free lunch right outside the windows.)

Everyone in the barn was fine. Heather was nice and warm and standing over her baby chewing her cud. Evidence and Lakota were not showing any sign of calving right away. I stopped to give Lakota a nice scratch on the poll, which she seemed to quite appreciate. It is getting to be an itchy time of year, with all of them shedding like crazy, and they love a good scratch. (You should see my dark blue work pullover...covered with enough hair to stuff a sofa.)

You would probably get a good laugh out of Bama Breeze and Carlene when I milk them. They stand side by side, so I go up between them to milk.

Bama is a real pet and always turns her head around toward me, soliciting a good neck rub. It only took a couple days before Carlene got the idea from watching her and decided to get in on the action. (Cows solicit each other to scratch their necks with their tongue, by stretching their neck toward the other cow and bunting and nudging...they groom each other quite a lot.) Now if I have time I can stand up between their heads, digging my fingers into their furry necks, as they turn this way and that to get the best angle.

Bama even licks my back when I milk her too, practically knocks me out in the aisle sometimes. (You would never guess that the same cows will stomp you flat if the mood takes them.)

Anyhow, the sun is up, it is time for chores....wonder when maple season is going to start.

PS, I think the peacocks started eating yesterday. They tipped their food table over twice, I believe getting up on it to eat. Guess I will have to make it more secure. Liz called the man who got them for me and it turns out that they have not been fed by hand, having lived free on the farm they came from. Thus they simply don't know what my food is for. I think I will go around the house and catch them a jar full of these darned box elder bugs that wake up whenever the house gets warm and crawl all over everything. That would make a nice treat, don't you think?

So...

Found a brand new Jersey bull calf with Heather last night when we went out for chores. The boss had left the barn about ten minutes earlier and nothing was going on, so I guess the old girl didn't waste any time. Shame that it was a bull, as Heather is quite a well-bred critter and has nice daughters.

Then Liz's ongoing battle with bronchitis took a nasty turn. Poor kid looked terrible with eyes like bloodshot grapes and all red and sickly. Her BF took her to the emergency room around 8PM and they kept her all night. She is allergic to so many antibiotics that there are few possibilities for her. They put her on Zithromax and a lot of prescription cough stuff and sent her home to rest. Hope she feels better soon, poor kid.

And it is and has been snowing again, not too surprising for February but not much fun.

I am afraid I am going to have to send the peacocks back to the farmer who raised them. They simply do not want to eat anything I feed them. So far: sunflower seeds, cat chow, dog food, shelled corn, cow grain, puffed rice cereal, apples, alfalfa hay, everything I can think of or find suggested on the peafowl boards. They won't even look at it. If anybody knows any tricks for interesting them in food, please, please let me know. I love them...the most beautiful birds I have ever been around...I want the best for them.

So.....have a great day, and I hope to see you again tomorrow for another episode of fun on the dairy farm.

Sunday Stills...Graveyards and Old Churches

Indian Castle Church

239 years old, vandals once tried to burn it, but it was saved

Newspaper stories about the fire

Below several monuments from Fiery Hill, Fort Plain, NY

White zinc monument

We had quite an excursion planned for Saturday to take photos for this week's challenge. Then the boss got a bad cold and the weather turned crumby and so the archives will have to suffice. Good thing these are subjects I have found interesting in the past.

For more Sunday Stills.....

Yesterday

This cold weather seemed so far away.

Now it looks as though it's back to say.

So relieved by yesterday........

Yeah, it was sixty yesterday and I didn't care a crumb whether it was anthropocentric global warming, a delayed January thaw, or just a fluke. It was wonderful. Went outdoors in the mud luscious and puddle wonderful as often as I could.

We have all been moaning and groaning about how hard it is to get anything done...no energy...just want to crash and burn all the time.

I can tell you now it is weather-related. A few hours of warm and sunny and the work almost (but not quite) did itself. Had a lovely phone call from the boss's dear aunt, who is just a huge favorite of mine, which added a certain special something. She is such a sweet person.

Back to cold with wind, but the nice weather was a reminder that better days are coming......and I don't think I smell like a pea cock any more, but maybe I have just gotten used to it.

Peacock Poo

Pervasive stuff indeed. Just ask me.

Just ask anyone within six feet of me.

A couple of years ago a person with whom we do business offered to get me a couple of pea fowl from a farmer he knows who has quite a few running wild on the place. I have always wanted a pair....

The gentleman finally caught them and they arrived today. The first thing the hen did was rocket around in her cage spattering me liberally from head to foot with pea hen by-product she had produced during her very, very long ride here.

Of course I had just done a large quantity of laundry and was down to my last dry jeans and sweatshirt(no drier, I use laundry bars). After I had them comfortable enthroned in the old hen house it took me about two seconds to get to the house......I couldn't stand my own company. It's sweats and a couple of old sweaters for me until something dries.

Worth it though. Pea fowl are so beautiful close up they seem like something from another world. They never fail to dazzle me.

Hopefully the hen house will keep them safe from foxes and coyotes and fishers and whatever all else wants them for dinner. Meanwhile, I still smell like the south end of a northbound bird. Any suggestions on getting that gone?

Hen feathers

Been so Darned Fool Busy

Haven't even had time to get pics off the camera. This is a really awful shot of a common redpoll, only the second one I have seen this winter. It was about dusk and this was taken through the window so......I guess you'll have to trust me that it is actually a redpoll.

The weather is warm at least for today and there is much to do. We seem to be acquiring a pair of peacocks so I had to get the hen house that Alan and I built ready for them. That is kinda, sorta done, although there is more left to take care of.

Have much company coming in the next couple of weeks so cleaning is an ongoing, if largely futile, project. Doesn't matter what you do, they follow you around and mess it back up again. We did get the boss's newspapers picked up anyhow. Tied up three large bundles just from the landfill around his chair. Found my missing pot holders and several pairs of his dollar store glasses which was good.

Well, back to the salt mines. It won't clean itself. Enjoy the sunshine while it lasts!

The Last Thing I Do

This is Carlene....back in the day.

She is now a big cow and just had her first calf a couple of weeks ago.

She decided to stomp on Alan last night and stepped on his hand.

He has a perfect set of dew claw marks on the back of it. Isn't she cute?

Before leaving the barn these days is check ears. I go around to the fresh cows and grab their ears to see if they are nice and warm or cold and clammy. It isn't fool proof but it is a pretty good way to check for the beginnings of milk fever, or hypocalcemia.

Of course we are always on the lookout for more serious symptoms of the metabolic disorder so common at calving time, but the cold ears sometimes give us a head start on treatment. It is far better to get a bottle of calcium on board before the cow is down or has stopped eating.

Right now I am keeping a close watch on Egypt and Verona who both had calves a couple of days ago, as well as checking Lakota who is due in a couple of days. And Heather, ditto. Come March we will about be living in the barn because so many cows will be calving.

Wordless Wednesday

Global Warming

We hazit.

Or we did for a grand total of around twenty hours. Temps in the fifties and howling winds. It felt like March. Now we are back in the deep freeze (or deepish anyhow) at 12 and feeling like just like January.

The warm wind did dump a goodly part of the snow off the barn roofs...which is good.

I looked out the window just after breakfast and saw heifers running toward the house...which is not good. Snow fell on the roof of their pen, spooked them, and they climbed up on a pile of frozen feed and jumped out. Came right over to visit us. Of course, as is nearly always the case when somebody gets out, the boss was gone, so with the help of whomever hadn't left for work or school, I chased cows in my house shoes.

Again.

For today it is cold and windy and the windows are all iced up. Global warming is just a distant memory. As Alan always says, I do my share. I drive an SUV (nothing less will do the driveway). So where is my share of global warming, anthropocentric or otherwise?

A second calf was born yesterday to one of Alan's cows, Verona. Both of yesterdays new ones are bulls.

A Farmer Valentine

Millions and millions of mostly imported flowers will be sold.

Rivers of chocolate have been poured into molds, packed into fancy boxes, and purveyed for high prices all across our nation.

That is all fine and dandy. In fact my girls bought me chocolate and I am enjoying it immensely.

However, I wouldn't trade the farmer version of a valentine for anything. This morning boss got up several hours before chore time. I thought nothing of it. Sometimes his knees hurt so bad he goes down and sleeps in his chair so as not to awaken me with his tossing and turning. Sometimes he takes his worries downstairs for the same reason.

However, this time he had one of those feelings animal caretakers get. Something wrong in the barn. He went out on a hunch, figuring to check on the big cow, Verona, who looked like maybe calving last night when we left the barn.

She was fine. It was my young first calf heifer, Egypt, who needed a little assistance getting her baby born. He delivered the calf and made them both comfy and came back to the house.

Where he made a cup of coffee (he doesn't drink it by the way) and brought it up to where I was still asleep, entirely ignorant of all the drama in the stable.

I can't say I drank it up there. Habit dies hard and by the time he got in from the barn it was time for me to get up, so I did. Thus I am sitting here at the computer enjoying it and thinking that farmer valentines are the best kind available.

I wonder if the new calf is a bull or a heifer.

Sunday Stills....Spring Preview

This is a great challenge. I think we all need a little spring.

For more Sunday Stills......

Heat Wave

Twenty-four this morning.

Above

Yay! I am tired of living in a meat locker, where you could just turn off the fridge and use the kitchen table if you wanted to.

And there was a house finch out in the pear tree yesterday, singing his heart out.

Singing! Can you believe it! Not cheeping, not chirping, not peeping or beating his little head on a tree trunk because he is so sick of the weather (oh, wait, that was me), but singing! I loved it.

Slim Pickins' and Fat Pickers

"Hold my beer, watch this!"

Please to clickie

I was wrapped up in a blanket, freezing and snuggling in my chair when the boss began to give me a play by play of the wild turkeys in the rose bushes on the edge of the lawn. Finally it became irresistible to get up, get the camera and get some documentation of the crazy things these birds do in winter. They are plumb hungry. Here is a video of two of the dozen or so that came in, tight rope walking on the twigs as they pick rose hips.

Visitors

There were many yesterday. (Most of these photos were taken at the full extent of every bit of digital and optical zoom I could come up with so they aren't the greatest.)

One visitor left while I was running for the camera. He or she was right up at the edge of the lawn. I saw large, fuzzy ears between the branches of a clump of box elders. I was doing the dishes....and looking out the window over the sink. The ears twitched back and forth in a display of great alertness. At first I thought I was seeing a very short deer.

However then the critter moved out into the open, its thick, puffy tail so heavy with fur that it looked like an effort to hold it up out of the snow.

A red fox with the plushest fur I have ever seen, hunting in broad daylight. He kept looking up the little box elders and sniffing the bark. Wonder what he was finding there.

Burning Food

Read what California dairy blogger, Dino Giacomazzi, says about ethanol

Weather Signs

This often leads to

This

Back when I was working at my first dairy farm job my boss taught me many weather signs. One that has held true in almost every instance is that if snow clings to the branches and wires either wind or rain is close behind. That sure was the case yesterday and despite how grueling the wind was I am glad that it wasn't rain. Hate to think what that would have done to all the thousands of snow-covered roofs in the region.

Do you know any other interesting weather prognostications?

Wednesday

Out before stardark to check on the heifers. We put the last two springers into the cow barn late last night. You never know if they will get into trouble in new stalls so...

Crispy cold. Officially winter, because I finally gave in and got out my brother's old red college scarf. It is a favorite of mine....how I envied his "cool" when he wore it back in the day...so I only wear it when it is just too cold to go without it. Couple times a winter...I want to make it last. It is only around zeroish this morning, but the wind makes it feel plumb glacial.

Scarf did its job so it wasn't too bad walking over. They were both fine, lying properly positioned in the stalls and calm. We will have to watch them real closely for a while though.

Yesterday every twig, branch and wire was all hung with thick snow, a harbinger of either wind or rain...and we got wind. Boy, did it ever howl. It was so loud that when the men came in to sit down for a while late in the afternoon they couldn't hear the TV over it. It was sucking snow off the heifer barn making a cloud so thick you could barely see the barn through it. Hope it is calmer today. Stay warm!