The Bluebird

I was worrying yesterday on several fronts, family illness, frozen stuff, stuff that is going to freeze if that stove doesn't hurry back from Wisconsin, and just in general because it is my nature. I am a gloomy cuss especially in winter. 


Went into the parlor, which is where I dry my laundry on laundry bars....a slow process without the furnace.


I was dismayed to see that some geraniums I started from seed last spring are pretty frost bitten around the edges. Was debating whether to move them out into the living room or just let them go and start new next spring. 


Suddenly there was a bright flash outside the window.


The mockingbird.


 Mobbing somebody who dared trespass on his hallowed territory, which takes in the long lawn, the entire driveway, the field below the driveway, the other side of the house and pretty near any place he feels like being a tough guy.


 I paused to watch and there it was...a lovely bluebird perched in the little poplar by the driveway. It hunkered down a bit under the mocker's onslaught, but you could tell it wasn't daunted by all the flare and flash. My heart flew with it as it pumped its wings on down to the sumacs.


That's my daddy's bluebird there. It came to tell me to be hopeful and prayerful and positive and that he is okay at least this time. Love you dad.

This morning I am dragging plants out of the parlor and putting them wherever I can find a spot. It may look kind of funny to folks who visit, but it is just too cold for them in the unheated parlor.

PC

Oh, no, not that PC. Never on this blog. No we found a notebook computer for under three hundred bucks yesterday, so for a change I am not borrowing Becky's. (Thanks so much for sharing for so long Beck...)


Hopefully it will do all we need it to. We are going to have a go at installing the word processing software I need to use pretty soon. Hopefully it will handle it and I can get back to writing on the Farm Side whenever I want to.

Have a good one! And stay warm.

Judge Denies Dairy Farmer Suit

You probably have to have a dog in the fight to be interested in what is going on here, but this is pretty big news on the dairy farm scene.

Phone Call

At not quite midnight. "Why are there cows on the lawn?"


"Cows? What cows?" (The cows are all but a couple indoors).


"Well, heifers then, it's dark, I can't see what they are, but they are all over the lawn.


"Must be the heifers off the hill pasture. All right, your dad is still up and dressed and I'll be right down."


Rustle from the bed beside me. "Oh, wait, he's not up after all. I never heard him come upstairs."


Race downstairs...well, gimp and limp...as fast as we can. Throw Jade's Carhartt on over my robe and sweats. (Thanks Jade, it is really warm.) Add rubber boots, umbrella and flashlight. Good to go.


My main contribution was to tell the guys I think there are seven of them to find and hold the flashlight. Actually there are supposed to be eight, but we couldn't really count them in the dark and rain anyhow. 


Thanks to their instinct to stick in a herd, unless we missed the stupid Jerseys, any that didn't get caught in the round up will be standing by the gate waiting to be let in. The two Jerseys are the most Godawful bunch quitters I have ever seen. Whenever I do a head count, there will be the requisite number of black and white ones, two bright red milking shorthorns and no little brown cows.

Anyhow, we are not sorry the boy got laid off for a week and stopped off at his girl friend's place on his way home from Jersey and the Big City. His timing was perfect. The escapees were just heading down the driveway when he arrived and stopped them with his truck. 


***Photos are still from the Friday bird count. We sure are lucky to have such pretty territory to count over.

Something Fishy Going On

While indulging in the Christmas bird count last Friday, we stopped by the Hale Creek Field Station, where there are often small birds, ducks and maybe an occasional heron to be counted. Nothing but a few chickadees this year, but there sure were trout!

Where the Boy Works

Each day. Don't these remind you of the first scene of the second Crocodile Dundee movie? He is right down there by the East River pumping concrete grout to stabilize the ground.

Merry Christmas from Northview

Best wishes from all of us here at the farm. The spirit of the season has been in evidence more this year than I have ever seen before. So many folks doing wonderful things for others, even total strangers. You read of this in other places, but even right here in the neighborhood stories abound of random acts of wondrous kindness. I applaud the kind and caring people who have done so many things for others.

30th Anniversary

Of the Johnstown Christmas Bird Count yesterday. The weather was not so hot and the traffic was horrendous, but we saw a huge number of geese on farm fields and in the sky, a few mallards, and a nifty red-bellied woodpecker, among a bunch of the usual suspects. (Those are robins in that tree)

I was tickled to be able to pish the wood pecker out of hiding right from the front seat of the truck. He was doing gymnastics trying to see what was making that funny noise.

 The Mallard mob

Thanks to mom and dad and the brothers for making it possible, by driving, navigating, providing a warm, welcoming home base (complete with homemade spaghetti, which was mighty fine) and all the stuff that makes the count go smoothly.




The poor economy and the high cost of sunflower seeds was made very evident by the dozens of empty bird feeders, some of them ones that we have counted for years and years. I am sure the birds aren't much inconvenienced, as there is really no snow yet and lots of natural food, but it was a bit of a handicap for count folks.

Audubon Christmas Bird Count Today

Raining, supposed to snow...gotta go milk my string first. brrr...

I Get Around

 Sunny Samaras

And today that is just what is going to happen. Shopping, meetings, all sorts of insanity. Some people...you know who you are...actually Christmas shop before the week of Christmas....not us.

Downy woodpecker in the spotlight

Got an updated map for the bird count this morning and I don't think it is right....it is like the whole count circle shrank. (Think I will just use the old map. lol) At least we have people to do the count as it looked like we weren't going to for a while. Now if that darned storm will just hold off.

Jack, Just Because

This is an old pic, but one of my favorites, so here it is again.

Yippy Skippy

When I came indoors from yet another trip to fill the tiny little pseudo stove yesterday there was a message on the answering machine.


Our real stove will loaded on the stove-moving truck next Tuesday. No idea how long it will take to make it east or for our stove guy to get it on HIS truck and haul it down and hook it up, but the days of freezing are finite or so it seems.


I am happy. Even my eyeballs are getting cold.

Kateri Tekakwitha

This story is probably a little off-topic for a dairy farm blog, but we grew up Catholic and Kateri was born just a little bit down the road from here. Her shrine is right across the river and we pass it often, when we head up west for supplies and groceries. 


Her name was as familiar to us when we were school kids learning area history as those of Sir William Johnson and Joseph Brant. To read that she is finally to achieve sainthood seems fitting and proper and maybe even a little personal. She feels kind of like an old friend.


She was a lady of this valley a long time ago, but still....if she had looked South across the river from the Mohawk village or "castle" of Caughnawaga where she lived part of her life, she would have seen the hill where our house and barns sit today.

Nice Christmas News...NOT

So we get a call today that a person, who shall remain nameless (nobody you know) messed up the milk checks and we have to give back some of this month's pay.




 This tiny little clerical error will be nice Christmas news for hundreds of farmers in the region. Some of them make a lot of milk and probably owe back thousands. Which, because of high input costs, is certainly already spent.


 Everyone makes mistakes, but this is a big one.

Sunday, no Stills...until maybe later

This is my morning....noon, night, in between.... starting fires and filling this thing, which Alan built, which is hooked up to the piping for the outdoor wood stove...which is in Wisconsin. I have to keep the piping from freezing so when it gets back from its tour of duty we can hook it back up and it wil work.


This morning it was really cold, so I started the day at 4:15 to turn on the little electric heaters and get this thing going. There were still a few coals left from last night and the water was running as it should be, but there was also snow on top of the barrel.


It took a long time to start the fire. Certain individuals are very stingy about cutting me kindling....and although I am a sort of harbor chick, I don't run the chain saw.


It is going now, hissing and banging, as the hickory is wet and takes a while to get warm enough to just burn...hopefully in an hour or so I can turn the furnace fan on for a little while and warm the place up a bit.


Sure was pretty out this morning though. It snowed between dog out time and me out time, so I made the very first tracks of the morning. No traffic so I could hear the businesslike chatter of the creek..not frozen yet.


Woke up a bird which chirped irritably at me before going back to sleep. I have an old pine pallet I am chipping up..not much left of it...for kindling. The scent of it was as strong as turpentine, but sweet too, as the newspapers singed its stubborn edges and teased it into ignition. It was kind of nice in an Amish pioneer sort of way.


I will try to get something for Sunday Stills when the sun comes up but no guarantees. Tried to get a pic of a random Santa waving by the road side yesterday, but traffic was just too busy.

Murphy Was Here

Our dairy supplier was due Thursday and didn't show. We were out of the powerful liquid cleaner we use for the pipeline and bulk tank. Not good...or wait, maybe it was....

You see, there are no substitutes, and the equipment must be cleaned and sanitized every time it is used, so we made a road trip up west to get a small jug to tide us over.

While we were at it we shopped.

I don't get out much. Kind of need to be here most of the time...so when I do, watch out.

People were looking at us funny in Price Chopper I can tell you, as we perused the ham and jam and spam and bought...well. a lot....

But the cupboards were pretty bare and now they are not so much and that is always a wonderful feeling. Plus I bought some goodies at the bakery outlet for the boy to take back south with him.....yeah...if that big bundle of blankets is any indication, he is home for a couple of days. He was out with that certain special and very sweet young lady so we didn't get to see him last night....

And, of course, while we were gone, the dairy supplier stopped....of course he did. So we won't run out of pipeline soap any time soon. I wonder if his name is Murphy.

But, it's all good...

Shivery Brr...

Howling wind today and all last night too.

I have a heavy metal lawn chair, the old fashioned, nice and sturdy sort, out in the yard. Guess it is time to bring it in as the wind picked it up and whirled it around and left it a good long way from where it belongs.

It's All Relative

Here in the USA we are continually bombarded by animal rights messages. This is cruel, that is cruel, the whole keeping of animals business is cruel....even though most management methods have evolved over generations of time, since farming and livestock keeping began. Remember veal? AR groups convinced folks that it is cruel to eat veal, so no one does. And bit by bit the vegan beat goes on....

One of the big buzz makers is confinement housing for sows. It is done to manage the potential for disease and to keep big pigs from crushing little pigs, but AR groups have used our anthropomorphic feelings about how we would prefer to live to change the face of hog farming.

Several states (usually states with very few pigs and not too many farmers) banned the practice, thanks entirely to animal rights groups' media campaigns.

Meanwhile, in other countries, where such anthropomorphism is a luxury too expensive in the face of real hunger, things like this are going on. People hungry enough to willingly and knowingly eat pork from pigs that died of a contagious disease probably aren't worrying too hard about the housing system where they were raised. They just need food.

It is all relative.

Simple

But smart. Here is a great idea from a farmer/rancher guy that is so simple it seems obvious and yet I had never seen it done or thought of it and I'll bet many other folks hadn't either. He simply floated an old basketball in his water tank so he could see if it needed to be filled. Brilliant!

Golden Love

Straight from Florida