June is Dairy Month

Thank you girls for all the good things you make possible.

Thank you Broadway, Dalkeith, Zinnia, Cider, Lemonade, ETrain, Camry, Egypt (BooBoo) Carlene, Bama Breeze, Bayliner, Magic, Bailey, Booth, Verona, Heather, Balsam, Bayberry, Consequence, Blink, Spruce, Asaki, Pecan, Baja, Zulu, Armada, Evidence, Syracuse, Boston, Lucky, Bonneville, Neon Moon, Monday, Blitz, Mandy, Hollywood, Moments, Lakota, Foolish, Detroit, Sugar, Lucky, Licorice, Chickadee, Gracie and all the Northview girls...and all the other, red, brown, black and white and roan cows that work hard to keep us in cheese, ice cream, and cold, fresh milk.

Stars

I pause on the stair landing every morning and evening to look west and mark in my mind the weather, the weather to be, the heifers social life and whatever birds may be whipping across the yard to hit the feeder or popping up the drive searching for bugs or singing on the phone wire.

Last night the sky above the barn was dotted with a handful of stars.

After a relentless month or more of grey and gloom and rain and rotten weather I was stunned. I hollered down the stairs to the guys, who were still up that there were stars. Stars! Can you believe it?

And we actually had a nice day yesterday. Field work was done. The first hay was chopped, just a pile on a bale wagon to feed the heifers in the barn, but actual 2011 grass was harvested. GFs and BFs visited. Liz did a mighty cook out for supper (which turned out to be a cook in as the grill suffered some sort of fatal set back) and all in all it was for the most part a normal day.

Normal...not something we have seen much of lately. I would not mind a little more of that.

Thank you

To all who served or who serve now.

Where would we be without you?

Indeed, who would we be without you?

Here a Chick

Laura surprised us with five little chickies....just as we had decided that she was sitting on infertile eggs and were going to switch them out with a peacock egg. Wouldn't that have been fun? Laura is a tiny little white Cochin bantam hen.

Sunday Stills...Weeds and Grasses

For more Sunday Stills......

Texting While Driving

B-Dub, smarter than many cell phone owners

and she doesn't even have opposable thumbs

Has GOT to stop.

TWO of the kids' friends have been hit from behind by people texting in the past week alone...both by people going at high speeds. Thankfully, even though one boy was on a motorcycle and was flung a great distance, both are okay, but this is nuts!

How can you drive without keeping your eyes on the road? I can barely look away from the road when I am in the passenger's seat for Pete's sake.

A Tornado Watch

Will keep you awake if you kid is out in it. Hadn't seen the GF in three days so it was simply an essential trip...for the kid that is.

The air was heavy with the scents of summer, soft and humid, redolent with grape and falling lilac, sweet with honeysuckle and the last of the apple blossoms. A few mosquitoes buzzed hopefully and the sky was alight from horizon to horizon. I kept opening the porch door to look out and test...storming yet or only threatening? Coming soon or giving us a pass this time?

It was hard to sit and quietly read with the grass outside flickering, white, black, white, black like some bizarre neon bar sign advertising trouble.

Only a few stray drops of rain pattered down, but the lightning never seemed to let up. In its own way it was beautiful, back lighting one cloud, spotlighting another, with colors never seen in the day time spectrum. It was easy to see why our cows don't worry about the fireworks at the fair or race track. They have them right over their heads during storm times like this.

Eventually I crutched my way upstairs, phone in one pocket, flashlight and book in the other, to try to get some sleep despite all the weather action.

Then the wind hit. Like a wall. The house shook. The bed shook. The lights went out. The lights went on. And off. And on. And off.

And on, so I crawled back down the stairs and we turned on the TV weather and called up the kid.

He was on his way home. The Doppler map was pulsing with red and orange and purple where the hail storms were.

The kid got home with tales of a barn belonging to folks we know with its whole front blasted out into the road by the wind and trees down everywhere. We were pretty darned happy to see him.

By the time we went back to bed it was mostly done with its destruction, although the power went out some more. We need some normal, calm, dry weather around here. It has rained at least a little and often a lot for many, many days now. And, naturally, it is going to storm again today with rain in the forecast for every single day of the coming forecast.

Cowboy and Boats

Jinglebob's entirely hilarious post. You have got to go read it.

Happy Birthday Elizabeth

Now when you travel to distant cities for National Farmers Organization you can get a rental car and see the sights.
Love you!

And to add to the ongoing drama the boss was attacked by a cow yesterday...he came in and told me that I probably would have been calling the undertaker if it wasn't for the cow in the photo above, Mandy. Mandy is Liz's retired show cow, kinda dumb...or so we thought...but very sweet. Yesterday cow #171 charged the boss when he was calling the cows...from behind...

He heard the slurping of running hooves in the mud and turned around to see her racing at him with her head down. He didn't have a stick (he never does) and couldn't move in the mud...he has trouble picking up his one leg anyhow. As he watched his life flash before his eyes a big, black bolt slammed 171 right in the side, nearly knocking her down.

Old Mandy had seen her charging and ran in and nailed her before she could get to him. Every now and then a cow will do something like that and just astonish us. They aren't big on communication, don't wag their tails or sit at your feet. Still they must relate to us in some way, perhaps as especially dumb calves or weak and stupid herd mates.

Now the debate is on about what to do with the offender. We are short on cows and she is a good milker, dry right now and due for a calf in a couple of weeks. My vote is to send her over to the sale just the same. I would rather be short on cows than short on husbands. Others think we should maybe put a ring in her nose like a bull and let her drag a short chain from it so she can't run with her head down. For now at least she is going to stay in the barn anyhow.

Maybe It's Just a Sprain

Trust...or maybe I just look like a bump on a log

So

Started these from seeds from my cactus two years ago.

I broke my stupid foot (smart foot is still fine...probably because it is smart.)

It hurts a bunch, but will not get me out of work...well it would, if I would but I won't.Last time I broke foot bones was the day the boss had an emergency appendectomy. That wasn't great either. Oh, well.

I am not smiling.

All the News

That's fit to type.

Got a surprising, but very welcome call yesterday, that the 4490 was not only ready, but the bill was reasonable. Didn't take the guys ten minutes to be on the road to go get it.

Tyler, Liz's old horse came home last night, to a gigantic new box stall built by Alan. We used to have a pair of almost 18 hand Belgians that lived in tie stalls in the old barn. He took down both of those stalls and turned them into one big box. I will get some pics later, but other than hitting himself with the hammer he did a real nice job.

The rain continues, so the time spent cleaning up and building stuff and flower gardening goes on....all well and good but it is past time for the crops to be planted, vegetable garden in and haying started. Will this rain ever end? We are beginning to wonder.

We are breeding cows like crazy now...if they all catch we will be fielding calves left and right next February or March. Busy, busy. We had five in heat Sunday alone.

That is Bama's new baby, Cinnamon Twist, in the photo. She is NOT that color, but rather a dark, rich mahogany color. I don't know why it is so hard to get true color photos on the milking shorthorns. Once in a while I get it right, but rarely.

She is about the smartest calf I have ever seen. She was eating grain and hay before she was two days old. Now she jumps up and down if she sees me kicking hay into the mangers. And she knows her name. She can be sleeping and you call "Cinnamon-n-n-n" and she jumps right up and starts bouncing and calling. What a little sweetie!

Self Portrait

Blocked

For some reason some people are getting a message when they try to visit that Northview is private and invitation only ...and some are not. I don't know how to fix this...it is not set to private on the settings page, and of course I don't want it to be private. Y'all are very welcome here and pretty much make my day...every day.

Can anyone help?

Sunday Stills...in the Sky

Thunder sneaking up on us

See the bunny?

Front porch

This was a surprisingly hard one, just because of the rainy weather all week.

For more Sunday Stills.....

The Mighty Mohawk

At Fultonville, calm as a sleepy oyster...butter wouldn't melt in its mouth

Looks pretty calm west of Lock 12 too

The lock

Somewhat less calm

Yeah, downright churny here

Is strutting its stuff. The paper says opening in this area is delayed again due to at least six inches of extra rain.

We stopped at the gas station here in town and then at Lock 12 to take some pics yesterday. Some contrast. I can vouch for what the story says about debris. There was a huge sort of island of logs and such...big logs...above the spillway. Woulda kept me in firewood for a couple of months once it dried out. However, to say that it is inaccessible...yeah... It will be staying there far as I'm concerned. The river is full and roily and wild, full of mud to the east of us and very high. I don't like it much.

Something's Gotta Give

(Rudeness is not confined to humankind.

Witness Baja shoving Broadway off a particularly tasty patch of grass)

If you smack yourself in the mouth with the claw end of a hammer.

Prolly a tooth.

Yeah, the stall-building fiasco project went south yesterday. Way south. I was just charging up my iPod and planning a productive day of cleaning and getting plants planted when Alan walked in all bloody and broken. He had struck at a stubborn staple, embedded in old, dry, oak, and the hammer rebounded and whacked him dead on, right in the mouth.

So we spent the day in a far away city waiting for an emergency dentist to tell him he needs a special filling which will cost a bunch and which also has to wait until they can fit him in for it. Not very dramatic.

However..... We were sitting in the treatment room awaiting the doc, when screaming erupted in the waiting room. And I don't mean just a gentle little shrieking. I mean full force, F-bomb spewing outrage. The upshot of the edited version is that some lady (and I use that term loosely) brought her sister who had had a "procedure" earlier in the week. The latter was now in a lot of pain, nobody would talk to her on the phone, she was going to *&**** sue, she was going back to find the (*^&&& doctor (insert shoving match with office staff here) etc. etc. heavily laced with profanity that would curl your hair. Yow

I was honestly afraid and thought about closing and trying to lock the door on the room we were in. I had visions of weaponry beyond bad language and felt captive there in the little room.

I also had visions of tattooed, dyed, spiked and pierced scary people out there in that resounding waiting room, forcing their way back to shoot or otherwise inconvenience us.

Imagine my amazement when the "girls" in question managed to shove their way into the passage outside our door. They were probably a few years older than I am, perfectly coiffed, dressed conservatively in expensive clothes, and looked like grandmas on their way to the grocery store.

Dang, they sure didn't sound like grandmas. Or at least not mine. I felt terrible for the office staff and the other patients, some of whom I guess were as scared as I was. This was not just rudeness. You see rudeness. This was craziness. I later overheard the staff saying that they had had no phone calls and would have gotten the women care if asked. Just craziness.

Oh, well, it wasn't your usual dull wait for a doctor.

He's Country

You know you are country when your school has a tractor day and this many tractors show up!

Go here to see my nephew, Kegan, driving his dad's tractor to school.

Sorry, Can't Resist

Male Baltimore Oriole with oranges

Male Rose-breasted Grosbeak

More bird photos. They are so tame this summer. The female Baltimore oriole actually lets me walk around weeding the flower bed by the feeder while she eats. It is fairly easy to sneak up on the others.

Green Day

Look What they found in the back of the barn

Had one yesterday. After all my moaning yesterday morning, we had at least ten hours with no rain and the sun came out. Yay!

So I ran around digging and planting and playing in the dirt and overdid it and crashed like a baby after chores last night (would have loved to crash BEFORE chores, but alas....)

We finally sat down to supper around nine and by the time we were done eating it was sluicing down again. I was using a plastic sled to haul tubs of plants around yesterday and it is half full of water, at least an inch, this morning....

Oh, well, it was perfect for rinsing off my bare feet after I chased the stupid chickens off the freshly worked garden dirt at five-thirty this morning.

Speaking of the chickens. Next Amish auction they are leaving us. Except for Laura and possibly Crooked Leg that is. CL had a nest full of ready-to-hatch eggs in the horse barn..you saw her pic a couple of weeks ago. Those witches and their boy friends chased her off day before yesterday and ate all the chickies right up out of the eggs. Becky caught them at it, too late to stop the carnage.

The kids are doing over the back of the horse barn, building a ten by something or other stall for a horse Liz got last year. We really didn't have feed for him so she boarded him up near where she lives...full board...and he lost so much weight under the "care" of the people there that he looked pretty awful when she pulled him out. (He is about 27 years old.)

So she moved him to a place with a lot of pasture and he was getting most of his weight back and looking better when she started having trouble with some neighbor folks. I won't go into detail, but can we just say, unreasonable and unfair? Poor old man.

So finally the boss relented and said she could bring him here as long as she buys feed for him.

If the kids want to do the work there is a pretty big field with a lot of grass that we are not using. Just needs fence. There is a run in shed and everything. We used to run heifers there and then the old horses when they were alive. However, it is right near houses in the village so we don't risk putting cattle over there any more and it is pretty much too hilly to be worth working. However, if they want to get the fence back up one old horse would be in hog heaven with all that greenery.

And there you have it, all the news that's fit to print. (Oh, and Dani, I am going to plant sweet peas this morning if the rain lets up! Thanks!)