Sunny Day

Still having heating issues but the sun is shining, it is really nice outside and not bad inside. The fan motor is in Albany awaiting pick up. Barn chores are done, cows out and eating, stalls bedded for tonight and everything tidied up.

Still awaiting our first calf of the year from Pecan, and as always hoping for a heifer. Pecan is bred to a bull we had years ago, a son of Whittier-Farms Ned Boy named Foxfield Doreigh NB Rex. Besides the Ned Boy he had some Triple Threat back there on the dam's side and threw a lot of black reds. We bought him at an auction when Liz was a baby, and although he is long gone, we still have a unit or two left of him. His daughters were always kind of round-boned more than we like and not the nicest-natured critters on the farm, but they were tough and lasted a long time.


We were all sad to hear of the passing of Gaige Highlight Tamara, a famous New York Holstein, bred and owned by folks the kids have often showed with over the years. In fact her owner let Liz take her in the ring a couple of times at the Cooperstown Junior show when there were more cows going in than there were hands for the halters. She was a spectacularly beautiful animal.


Tamara has sons in AI, 15 EX daughters and was scored 4-E 97 in her own right, about as good as it gets.....truly one of the great ones. So sorry to hear of her passing.




***Very sorry about the old photos. With the death of the desktop most of my photos are hard to get to, so......

Dog Rice

Now and then we run out of dog food for the three puppies, Sadie, the boss's mom's old pound hound, Wally, the Blue Heeler devil dog and Nick the border collie. When that happens, someone cooks "dog rice", which is simply homemade rice seasoned up with this and that. 


When the doggies eat this we add leftover meat juice, fat and other good things saved just for doggies.

Frost sparkling on the window

When we eat it, because it is after all just people rice prepared with dogs in mind, and it always smells incredibly good while cooking, we eat it with butter. And last night, with sausages chopped up in it.  The doggies love dog rice days.


So do we.

Re-Stealing a Meme

I missed this on Look a Baby Wolf, but caught it on Jeffro's blog....


Haven't done a meme in a long time, but this is too good to pass up.


Quoting from Lee Ann: 


"Take the first sentence from the first post of each month of 2011. That’s your year in review. Tattle on yourself with your link in the comments if you give it a shot, particularly if yours works out better."


January: To all our good friends around the town and around the world.


February: Yeah, it is storming...again... For the most part for the past few weeks we have just caught the edges of the big storms that have pummeled the region. 


March:We love pancakes!


April:The boss left early, Alan is at school, everybody else has to work and TWO cows are calving simultaneously. 


May: About what will happen next.


June:This morning bloomed sharp and cool, with whistling winds and bright, thin sunshine.


July: We lost a hen last night up on the bowling green (yes, this old Victorian homestead sports an actual bowling green...not that, other than mowing it, we have a clue what to do with it.)


August: The more I read about this program the less I understand it and emphatically the less I like it.


September: Folks said that they were much too young to fall in love.


October: Jinglebob posted this link on the real result of letting folks exercise their Second Amendment rights.


November: Milk?


December: It is. 

Warm

We are. Despite the stove guy NOT CALLING US that the stove was back at his shop...he didn't want to come up our driveway because it is muddy and there are some bushes that might scratch his truck....local folks got our stove back home for us.


The boss called stove guy day before yesterday and got the news. We were not exactly happy, but at least we knew that it was in New York State.


The boss then called a really, really, really nice businessman in town who offered to let the stove guy drop it off in his yard on the flat....which was done.


Then that man dropped his own work in his busiest season of the year, in the busiest time of that season now that it has frozen up, to bring the stove up with his logging equipment and very carefully set it in place. He also gave us some wood. He would not take any money.


Alan and the boss plumbed and wired and messed with stuff all day. The water hoses Becky and I carefully sequestered in the milk house against the day froze the minute they took them outdoors. And blew up. Alan had to go buy more hose.


The underground stove hoses I have been keeping thawed by burning a fire in the little stove thingy Alan built froze as soon as the men dismantled it.


 "Hot Hands" hand warmers, hot coffee, hot mac and cheese and all Alan's grout clothes from his job in the city were needed to keep them going. The boss banged his hands up working so stiff from the cold. I don't think either of them needed any rocking last night, but I put hot water bottles in the beds so they were extra warm.


It took them from eight in the morning to evening milking time to get it functional...of course cows had to be milked...the girls and I did that. And fed, which the boss and Liz and I did. And of course the cows broke things and created havoc and got out of the feed yard fence just for fun.


But then, but the start of evening milking, Alan was building a fire. There were still some frozen hoses and some assorted bugs with the plenum to work out, but by the time we went to bed last night we had honest to God and thanks to God HEAT.


We left it on all night, something which we never do, and I got up to a warm house. I am sitting here, comfortable. Genuinely comfy, cozy, and contented. It is like being reborn to joy. I don't think I will ever take being warm enough for granted again.


Thank you to everyone who helped, everyone who thought of us, cared, prayed, worried etc. and especially thank you Hiram for bringing that puppy home for us. We will see you repaid somehow and soon.

Grandma Says

Eat your greens!

Sunday Stills...Happy New Year

This is my favorite shot of the year. Or at least I think so. I love birds and hummers are among my very favorites. The two that hatched at our place this summer were nearly as tame as chickens, but  lot more fun.


As to my photographic hopes for 2012. I hope I have the camera with me when I need it and that the birds will hold still and the flowers will shine and the light will be right and things will fall together. If they don't, well, I will still have fun and I hope you do too.


Happy New Year to Everyone!


For more Sunday Stills......

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.