Supposed to be a Farm Blog

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Yeah, this is.

In theory at least.

But I can't get away from my fascination with other stuff.

Thus you will have to suffer with more birds etc. They put the glitter on otherwise very cold and miserable days. Last night I lingered in the last rays of sunset listening to a thousand, or a thousand dozen, or a bazillion geese down on the river urgently shuffling around before sleep. I have been hoping every night and daybreak for a woodcock but not a peent or a whistle had I heard.

However as I marveled at the geese in their many, with more winding in all the time, I heard the musical whistle of timberdoodle wings, right over the house. The boss was coming across and I pointed it out to him...not too impressed. Oh well.

He was heading up to his aunt's house for his last thing at night, every night, chore of filling her stove with wood, so we talked and listened to the peenting for a minute. The bird flew right at us just as he closed the car door.

Sadly that seemed to scare him away and although I froze my ears for a good long while I didn't hear him again. Here's hoping he will return, even if his stomping ground is a little farther out in the field than right by the lawn where he was last night.

Speaking of birds...turkeys...yeah...we have turkeys. So does Jeffro.

Sounds of Spring

You will want to turn your sound up, as this was made just so you could hear the din of this mixed flock of red winged black birds, starlings, grackles, and whatever that little yellow thing in about the middle is....gold finch maybe....

I was out with Nick and these guys were tuning up in the tree right by the house. Loud enough to hurt your ears almost.

Meanwhile we are wishing that winter would go into remission. The normal daily temp for this time of year is 46. Instead we are getting up to low single digits and not warming up much all day.

Sunday Stills the Color Blue

There is so much blue around the Northeast in March. Blue Jays, blue skies, blue fingers and toes (yeah, it is 7 above this morning, trust me, we're blue). Alas, skies are out of the equation and the blue jays elected not to show. So here she is in all her glory, our son's beloved, Bomber Blue. She has her own Facebook page and the whole nine yards. Sorry about the mud but she is a boy's truck and it is mud season.

And doesn't Mom look nice in blue? I thought so, so I took a whole bunch of pics of her

What is that scary thing?

For more Sunday Stills......

Babyland

Two calves yesterday, a heifer to Hollywood, a bull to Baja.

Busy, busy. Hollywood's had a leg back, but Liz and the boss repelled it a little and got the leg up. As soon as all was clear she sat right down and got it born. Hallelujah.

Several-many moons ago I bought the boss a bull calf for Father's Day, Keeneland Astre Pat. There is quite a story about him, as I went to the sale and he was purchased for big bucks long before I could even get in a bid. Then at the end of the auction he was put up for sale again. Seems the individual who purchased him the first time thought he was a heifer. I got him bought for about a fifth the original price.

Not to be outdone, the boss bought another bull (O-C-E-C Lindy Fred-ET) from Oneida County Embryo Company, a son of the famous Stewarthaven TT Fallon cow (one of the most incredibly beautiful cows I have ever laid eyes on. We saw her at pasture when she was quite old and she was like a Bonny Mohr painting. Silky black hide over a fabulous frame with wide, sweeping ribs and a rump like you wouldn't believe....just wow!)

We raised them, had them drawn at Dependabull when they were old enough, and have been just a tad competitive about whose choice was best ever since.

KPat made a lot of heifers, middle of the road milk cows, nothing special, but sturdy and dependable. The Freds are big and black and framey like grandma, but a tad mastitis-prone.Oddly enough the best daughters of either bull were out of daughters of the other bull. Turned out to be a great cross......Hollywood is out of an old KPat daughter and her baby is by Fred. Really nice calf.

Which made our little competition kind of silly I guess.

And my new favorite milk cow, alongside my beloved Broadway, is a Fred daughter out of my old Citation R Maple cow, England.

Fuzzy little Egypt was a loon when she was young. Abso-positively nutso. When we had to do anything whatsoever with her she freaked and we had a rodeo. However, after she had her baby she turned into the bovine version of a happy puppy. When I milk her she turns her hairy black head around to be scratched and loves to have me pet and fuss with her. I can't believe she is the same cow. Needless to say she is treated like a big baby and called Boo boo and all. (Yeah, I call my cow Boo Boo, what can I say?)

Off to the barn in a couple of minutes who see who has gotten up to what in the night (hopefully they all just finished their hay, slept and chewed the cud, but you never know.) Have a great Saturday.

Hairy Butt

Hairy woodpecker that is. We have downies all the time, but this pair of hairies is the first in a long while. I heard them before I saw them..their chinking call is quite different, louder and more musical, than that of the downies. For some reason the female spent at least ten minutes guddling around under the stones in the herb garden the other day. Photo was taken through the window so it isn't the greatest, but I guess you can get the idea.

Things are in a sort of holding pattern here. Mud, sunken driveway, hard to get at the feed. Just waiting for better weather to bless us. It is always thus in early spring.....however, I visited the garden section while picking up a few things at Wally World yesterday.

What a sweet renewal! Red flower pots! Green flower pots! Dirt! Peat pellets! Seeds, seeds, seeds! Felt like a kid at a carnival.

Life was worth living again... I am going to save up and have me one of those glazed red flower pots with the nice water catchers, yes I am. Wouldn't it look nice with a bright, cardinal red geranium planted in it? And I just happen to have a baby one out on the kitchen window sill.

Snow over Mud

Stuck milk truck, gravel hauled in, feed hard to get out, but the sun rises are sure fancy...

Dad Says

We have to call him George now, even though that isn't his name

Here is an interview with the folks about the gun show this past weekend. Very nice....except that his name's not George.

And aren't George and Alice a fine looking pair...with nearly sixty years of marriage behind them!

The Flashlight

In her job as a milk inspector, Liz visits many farms each day. A number of her farmers are Amishmen. Such was the case one day last week when she stopped to perform a routine inspection. As she checked out things in the milk house, she observed a grain truck blowing corn meal into an overhead bin in the barn but didn't pay too much attention.

When she finished in the milk house she pushed open the door into the stable to check on things there.

The door was wedged almost completely shut. She crawled through into the stable to see what was wrong. Corn meal was falling from the open bottom of the grain bin chute and had piled up against the door. The farmer's mules had pulled the chute open with their teeth. Thus as the trucker blew the grain into the bin it flowed down onto the stable floor below, right in front of the cows, horses and mules.

She tried to get the trucker's attention but he couldn't hear her over the noisy truck.

So she climbed up on a cow stall and hammered the chute shut herself, twisting her back in the process.

Then, because the animals were eating the feed as fast as they could gobble, she raced to find the farmer.

He was not at home, but she knew he farmed with his brother, so she drove down to his house and roused him instead. Kids with shovels were just climbing into her truck to go sort out the mess, when the missing farmer arrived driving his horse and buggy.

She said he left her truck in the dust, pounding down the road to his barn to save his livestock from overeating on the rich corn meal. Those standardbreds can fly when they want to.

She offered to help with the clean up, but he thanked her over and over and said that she had done enough just closing the bin and running for help. At least a ton of corn meal had spilled onto the floor but that much again had been saved by her quick actions.

At home that night she realized that somewhere in all the excitement she had lost the fancy little flashlight she uses to check the inside of milk pipes and such. She figured that it was gone forever somewhere in the mess of corn meal at the farm.

However, a few days later our milk truck driver dropped it off right in our milk house. The Amish farmer had found it and made sure to send it home on the truck so she would have it if she needed it (he has the same driver as we do.)

When she turned it on she noticed that it was brighter than it had been....the batteries had been going a bit dead...so she popped it open....and there was a set of brand new batteries.

Spring is Sprung

A soggy snow robin

The grass is friz

And I know just where the boidies is.

Right on the feeder

It's sprung all right! in the wrong direction!

Happy Birthday

Alan is 21 today. If you see him out and about with the Blue Bomber (or hear him, which is a distinct, if unfortunate possibility), I hope you will wish him a good one.

He has done a lot in his life for someone so young, from putting up much of our cow feed and rebuilding tractor engines to putting food on the table in the form of game (Mr. Headshot) when we were too broke to pay the butcher toprocess a beef for us. He can turn a rooster into dinner, build a fine woodshed or whisper heifers into standing still to be milked.

He has me humming Hinder songs as I wander about my work.

I think I'll keep him.

Have a great one big guy and take good care of you!

Zero to Sixty

Fireworks?

No, just a shiverish photographer and a sparkley moon

In bird.2. Less than a week ago there was nothing going on around here in the bird department. Now there is an actual dawn chorus, even if it is only the penny whistle of the titmice and the woodwind robins, with a few raucous jay squawks tossed in. The robins actually wake me up.

You won't hear a single complaint about that though. What a way to start the day.

I know everybody got out to see and photograph that incredible moon Saturday night. However, it rose so late here and it was so darned cold out, with a lazy wind (the kind that goes through you rather than around), that I didn't get much.

I sure saw some though. I got up around two AM to have a look around and you could read by the moonlight.

Indoors.

I checked.

Outdoors, tangled in the stark darkness of the honey locust branches, it looked as hard and round as a polished diamond.

Blinding

Bright.

Kind of crystalish. Not like any moon I knew before. Cold too. It got down to ten, which is pretty chilly for March around here. Perfect sugar weather though.

Sunday Stills..Canine Companions

The original three collies, Gael, looking sheepish,

Nick with his back turned,

and Mike hating the camera, but doing what I asked him.... as always

Mike, "killing" the cat dish

Gael bringing home the bacon..... er......chicken

Two Bears, the cracker dog

Nick!

To a dedicated dog person this is a fine challenge indeed. Nick is the only one of these dogs still with us, except in fond memories, of which I have a million, each less likely than the one before and all true. Dogs have been good to me.

The little brown dog, Two Bears, was an amazingly clever little girl, who got her son, Bobby, to dig out woodchucks for her by barking in his ear. We were always having to go get them out of hedgerows, where she stood on the surface barking and barking and barking, while he dug until his toes bled. As far as I know they never actually caught one, but that didn't stop them from trying.

For more Sunday Stills.......

Killdeers and the Big Old Moon

Big moon

Killdeers lament across the heifer pasture, still snow, still snow, still snow. I want to tell them to come down on the lawn. Every footstep there crushes the rotten snow like a stomping Sasquatch and leaves a new bit of open ground behind.

The lawn at sunset

There are plenty of footsteps too. Cabin fever cure here I come. I am out making footsteps every chance I get.

The river thrusts itself east and south, bank to bank and bulging, crammed with authority granted by thousands of streams and rivulets, swollen far beyond capacity by a little rain and a lot of dying snow. Black birds, cardinals, grackles, geese, geese, geese, from before dawn to after dark, swirling, rising and falling, screaming to be heard over one another. And robins shuttling everywhere, busy, busy.

All the culverts along the highways are still chock full of ice and snow so there is road flooding everywhere. Just west of the farm a huge whirlpool churns busily over a clogged drain. I swear it would suck down a car if you drove in there. So we don't.

The boss and I undertake to get some calf medicine and shavings for their little beds and inflations for the milking machines. The things we see, the things we see.

Wouldn't you think at this budget-busting laying off of everybody season that the guys moving little teeny tiny crumbles of ice that is going to melt anyhow, would not have a pay loader and a bunch of trucks and a large crew of workers out doing a job that a farm kid with a shovel could cover in an hour? Or even better, it was almost sixty...the stuff woulda been gone by morning. And they wonder......why we wonder.....

Come almost-night a moon with a big reputation rises over the horse pasture. It doesn't look that big. Maybe tomorrow when it is full.....

Just as I have had enough out on the lawn as the sun is setting time thousands of geese fly over, yodeling the wishes of their hearts across the sky.

All during our trip I looked in vain for snow geese. Now this morning as I edit the photos from last night I find that the gigantic flock that stretches so far is in fact a flock of snows. Cool

See, they really are snows

Stale Peeps

An Easter tradition since the nineteen eighties.

Big Red

The new calf, a son of Spungold-R Frolic Poker, full sibling to last year's Rose Magnolia.

Out of Broadway

Seeing Red on the Day of the Green

Here is somebody who wears green every day

As a Facebook friend pointed out the dairy markets are crashing again. It was looking as if we were going to see some decent prices this summer, which is a great thing for little farms like ours. Although we milk year round, we are just a bit on the seasonal side, with a lot of cows calving right now.

Then the mamas go outside to graze for the summer, fresh and ready to make a lot of milk for us on that nice green grass. For those circumstances to coincide with good prices would mean we could pay of some of the poor folks to whom we owe money and maybe do a few of the things many folks take for granted.

Alas, I guess those futures markets were just idle speculation, tempting dairy farmers into thinking things might be okay for a change. You can read ongoing discussions on all the factors involved in the dairy markets here.

So we are seeing red the about market messing around, and we are seeing it in the color of our bottom line.

We are also seeing it in the lovely mahogany-and-white of the big bull calf born to Broadway last night. He is sure a beauty! Of course he decided to be born at midnight after a six-hour struggle on the part of his mama, so I am even more jet-lagged than after the time change. We took it in shifts to walk over to the barn and check on old B-Dub.

For hours and hours and hours, nothing was happening. Then there were feet and a nose when I made the last hike. I assisted a little just because she had been laboring so long, but she would probably have had him okay without me. He is so huge I had to call the boss to lift him over the gate in front of her so she could lick him off!

As time goes on I like the milking shorthorn cattle more and more. Six hours of hard labor and B-Dub jumped to her feet the minute he was out and swapped ends to moo and lick. Six hours of being hard labored upon and he was shaking his head and sneezing and trying to crawl up to her face in less than a minute after birth. The red ones are hardy cows indeed.

Happy St. Patrick's day to everyone! I am using the circles under my eyes for my wearing of the green. With all the McIntosh's and McGiverns and Ferrins and such in the family background, I figure there is green enough right in my blood.

Something About the Season

Common redpoll

He let me walk right up to him

while he stuffed his beak with sunflower seeds

It is grey, muddy, soggy, gloomy, a bit on the nippy side, and I don't care one bit.

First turkey vulture-last week

First Killdeer-about ten minutes ago

Robins-everywhere

Grandma Peggy's daffodils up by the corner of the house-check

Eggs-hens are laying them

Warm enough to toss the roosters outside-yes (three roosters to four hens is a terrible ratio.

Yep, technically it is still winter, but March is so much closer to spring than February

National Ag Day

Let's party!

In New York

Cats with Thumbs and Clever Little Border Collies

Da typist

You know I am an animal lover. Been that way since I was so small that I thought my grandma's little Spitz cross was the size of a Saint Bernard.... I can remember just nicely being able to hold on to his shoulders.

I couldn't believe it when I saw photos after I got tall* and found out that he was a little bitty thing that today I could scoop up under one arm and walk away with.

Anyhow, I have always shared a special connection with animals, especially dogs.

However, today provided the most amazing in a lifetime of uplifting interactions. I got up this morning, jet lagged and grumpy from the time change, to find that Nick had enlisted Elvis the cat, Wally the cow dog, and several of the more knowledgeable among the cattle, and written my newspaper column for me.

Yeah, turns out Elvis is a secret member of Cats with Thumbs and can keyboard. They did the research and the whole nine yards. Can you believe it?

They even copied and pasted in a couple of good quotes. And you wanna know what they wrote about?

Turns out the animals hate the time change too. So much that, according to Nick, Keebler the Shuttle Cat made 350 trips between the barn and the house forwarding (and backwarding) information.

Thanks, guys! You really made my day.

*Okay to head this off at the pass, all you wise guy family members can hold the smart remarks about just how tall I am not. I am at least tall-ER than then if not actually tall.

Atall.

Sunday Stills....the Letter P

Pretty Painted Pony (the latest lawn art)

Promise of Plenty to Come

I was going to do the Peacocks, perfect for P, but the sun was out of town all week, so....

For more Sunday Stills......


***Update, after the coffee kicked it hit me that I could photograph the peacocks using the flash....

Peacock Pantaloons

Peacock, a very flashy guy