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Looking for Lawn Mowers

Liz's fiance likes lawn mowers (and he sure can mow lawns well, as the hay field turned golf course outside my window will attest) so she was perusing Craig's List looking for cool ones one day last week.


They had been thinking of getting a pony recently. Their jobs and finances make big horses problematic, but ponies are cheap and easy and can be a heck of a lot of fun.

However, I am not quite sure how she landed on a pony while seeking little tractors, but she said, "Look at this one, mom, isn't she a cutie?"

And she was, a sweet little pinto, with a pretty head and a kind eye. They went down Saturday to take a look and hauled along a trailer just in case. It was a saga of flat tires, nice guys at Sears who bumped them up in line since they had the baby on the trailer and all, but by almost dark that evening the little lady was stepping carefully down the ramp, checking out her first sight of cows, then launching into lawn lunching like she owned the place.

Only Liz would go looking for a lawn mower and end up with a pony. 

Welcome to Northview, Diamond, AKA McCall's KL Crimson.


Here is her mama


Big brother


Her home farm


Dad

Sorry that these pics are not the greatest, but it was nearly dark when she arrived.

Sounds of the City

White-crowned sparrow

At four o'clock this morning I heard a donkey bray. It was underneath the window and not too far away.


Then they started banging garbage cans; it sounded like an army. And monkeys started howling. I can tell you they're not charming.


I woke right well and thorough. No going back to sleep. It sounded like the city. Or a thousand blatting sheep.


Someone was doing surgery without an anesthetic. And the monkeys didn't like it; it was getting pretty hectic.


Then suddenly the penny dropped, though I got up anyway.


And damned those stupid peacocks for the way they start their day.

Sunday Stills...Vintage

I puzzled all week long over what to use for this challenge. Not because I don't have anything vintage, but because we live in an antique house, with antique barns (the cheese house that used to stand where the road is now, was one of the first in the state) and I grew up in an antique store. Plus the boss's mom loved old stuff.


Finally I decided upon this bronze horse bank I have had since I was 8 or so and snagged it out of Montgomery's Antiques, bought and sold (or that is how I thought of the folks' first store when I was a kid). 

I have loved this old guy a long, long time, from my horse crazy childhood to now, when I just appreciate the graciousness and craftsmanship of an era long past.


For more Sunday Stills......

And speaking of horse crazy....wait until you see the registered Shetland pony Liz found on Craig's list while looking for lawn mowers for Jade. Diamond's full brother was 2005 New England Pinto Horse Assoc. Shetland halter pony and color pony champion of the year. The new baby is turning three this month. If she turns out anything like her big brother she is going to be quite a girl. And what a sweetheart! Talk about luck.

Somebody New at Northview

Lots more later when I have time to edit photos.

Because I Can

Random photos

Scraps of Spring

Wake up robins, phoebes in the eaves, woodchucks on the lawn, tulips here and there...but what's up with the vultures?

Same....er, stuff....Different Day

Hezekiah

Hi, my name is Hezekiah Yoder. (Not only am I a garden gnome, I am an Amish garden gnome.) 


And the kids in this family are BRATS, brats I tell you. They bought me for the lady of the house who just happens to hate garden gnomes. (She thinks they are kinda creepy like Mickey Mouse and clowns, not sweetly tacky like pink plastic flamingos.)


Anyhow, even though they showed me to her when I came home last night, and warned her that she was going to be surprised by my grinning countenance when I showed up all unexpected, she brayed like a jackass when she opened the microwave this morning to make coffee.


It was great! The boss came running out of the living room to see what was wrong and she almost fell on the floor laughing.


However, there is a certain irony in all this as the perpetrator of the crime and purchaser of moi was out turkey hunting with his buddy and missed all the hysteria. 


I wonder where they are going to hide me next.

Shaggy

Shagbark hickory tree and nut shells.

Rain, Cows to Breed, Green and Growing

I hate to even think welcoming thoughts about rain, it scares me, but it was getting dry again. Heather and Pecan were playing merry-go-round last night and will need to be serviced this morning. 


Hoping Heather will have one more calf, but if she doesn't she has earned her retirement. Liz will take her up where Jade pastures his horse and she can live out her days there. The boss has decreed that Mandy can stay right here even though she will probably never milk again. 


As I write this I can look out the window over the sink to see the cows striding down to the gate to come in to be milked. They are slicking up quick on nice, green grass.


Anyhow, the rain is getting the grass bumped up to full speed, especially since it has warmed up a little....been pretty cold the past couple of weeks. Lilacs are coming into bloom, apples and pears look as if they survived the multiple frosts over the past few nights. I surely hope so.

I was Accosted

By these guys when I was walking fence last Saturday. I thought they had a nest but I was wrong.

A Sunday that was Monday

 Sassenach left over from Sunday Stills

Worked my morning off yesterday because of green grass and our too-small, inch-and-a-half milk pipeline. The girls are working hard with all the lush new feed and they make so much milk that they flood that skinny little line.


All the milkers fall off, and the cows kick and jump on them, and you have to dump the vacuum trap, and milk runs all over the floor, and there is a mess. 


On and on and on. It can happen several times per milking.


However, if someone spends the whole milking in the milk house, thumb on the pump switch, turning on the transfer pump every time a new surge of milk gushes into the receiving jar, you can get through milking without any drop offs.


I appointed myself Sunday morning pump switch engineer in chief and, with the company of my iPod, spent a fairly peaceful morning. However, the rest of the day was pretty much a Monday, only dressed up nice for the weekend.

Lucky jumped the fence Saturday night and bruised her udder, requiring much treatment both morning and evening. Plus Velvet finally decided that she can walk, but not well enough to make it out to a stall to be milked by machine. Thus the kids put a halter on her and tried to get one of the bull calves to take care of the job. However, the calf wasn't hungry and didn't cooperate, so they haltered her and hand milked her.

She is such a pet that she just let them do it, but with all the doctoring and all, we didn't get out of the barn til after nine PM. The boss was grateful that we did all the work on Saturday while he was off being an auctioneer, so he was going to buy everybody pizza for Sunday supper. However, by 9 they all wanted to go home or go in the house and crash.


So I made tuna sandwiches. Maybe tonight we will get the pizza.


Pretties seen for Sunday: Boss and I walked up in the day pasture to bring down the cows for night milking. Sun was on its way down and glinting off the river to the north, surrounded by trees like a sapphire on a sea of green. In all the years I have worked here and all the trips up the hill I had never seen it like that. It was blindingly beautiful. The land will surprise you that way ....new lovelies every day.


Then Jade and I were holding gate while the boss brought in bales. A set of turkey vulture septuplets sailed down over the barnyard and the same setting sun gilded the lighter parts of their under wings with golden fire. Who would think that a close up of such ugly critters could be so stunning? We stopped to watch them teetering back and forth until they headed west to their roosts on the mountain.


All in all it was a normal day of up and down and good and bad.....that's farm life for you. Insane but beautiful.

Sunday Stills...Beauty in the Beast

 Pestilential wild roses....verminous, but very green

Thistle

 Common Grackle, stealer of eggs and nestlings

 Nasty garlic mustard, an invasive, alien weed

Box Elder Samaras, a native, but very weedy tree

 

Cow birds and an English sparrow stealing seeds

For more Sunday Stills

Ocean View Sale Catalog

Can be seen here


Or here I think this one is a little easier to use.


Online bidding

These cows are just breathtaking, icons of the Holstein breed. We have used a number of Ocean View bulls over the years and they have made us some fine daughters. Mandy, Lemonade, Camry and Foolish are just a few of our Ocean-View bred animals. Liz visited the farm while she was in college and brought home a lot of great photos and wonderful memories.


Just paging down the catalog, looking at those gorgeous cattle and reading those world-famous names gave me cold chills....really....

Blessings

Are even more so when completely unexpected. After the glory of yestermorn, we went into the stable to find little Velvet, the downer heifer, with her head caught under a gate. She had been pretty good the night before, not quite able to stand because of milk fever, but not awful either.


She had been eating hay and quite bright eyed. After they got her out from the gate she lay flat on her side, legs in the air, and bloated. Nothing moved but her eyes, and so cold. Not good at all....


I got Alan to rig a pulley system to roll her up on her chest and the boss put the core of a round bale behind her to hold her there. We wrapped her in hay, ears to tail, and gave her grain and hay. 


She did eat, but in my experience once one gets that far down the wrong road they don't very often find their way back.


I was sick. Really, truly sick. I had such hopes for that poor little girl.


Velvet's dam was an old black cow that belonged to Alan. Her joints went bad when she was carrying her last calf and it took constant nursing for weeks to keep her getting up and down and eating and drinking. That kind of job often falls to me because I simply can't stand to give up on an animal. I have a connection to every single one of them somehow, and I cannot rest when something is wrong. It will drive me crazy figuring out how to fix a sick animal and it breaks my heart when we fail.


 I sometimes try past the point of stupid. I tried real hard with old Volemar and managed to get her through to calving. Then her baby, who would be Velvet, presented with a leg back and all twisted up wrong. Liz had to race home from several hours away to help everybody else in the family get the calf born.


Because I had worked so long and hard trying to save the old cow, Alan gave the calf to me. Sadly old Voldemar never got up again and had to be humanely euthanized.


Velvet became such a pet she would walk right up to you in the yard to get her head scratched. We all loved her. To even have her get down calving about killed me...and the  kids too, who are so fond of her. To see her at death's door truly did me in.


Then midday yesterday another cow of mine, Lucky, calved. It was a heifer. This year has sent us a real dearth of heifers and this one is a lively little girl by the Maxwell bull...It cheered me up a bit, but I was still depressed about Velvet. Kind of took the shine off the other two successful birthings.


At evening chore time we had a lot of hiking to get the new mamas and babies to the barn. When we were done I asked the boss, who was putting down grain, how Velvet was doing.


"She's just lying over there," he pointed. I looked at the feed through panel on the pen.


There was a shaggy black head sticking through, as its owner kneeled to gobble grain. I guess she had had enough of feeling sorry for herself and decided to eat Corolla's grain. Velvet was up and taking nourishment.


And downright eagerly too.


Joy


 I could barely contain it. We gave her her little black bull, she fed him and tucked him under a fold of hay. He lay there next to the round bale end with only his head sticking out, looking quite satisfied with himself. She went back to scarfing up grain and looking quite content.


Sometimes miracles do happen and they are surely welcome. I don't know how much longer we will be able to keep dairy farming. Prices are terrible, we are getting old fast. You can't just keep on losing money forever. The kids can't take over...they have to have off farm jobs to survive for themselves. However, as long as I live I will treasure moments like yesterday's when I saw my little Velvet standing up.

A Thousand

A picture is worth a thousand words or so they say. And I would have given a thousand bucks (if I was rich as Buffet) for a camera this morning early on the hillside, up behind the house.


See last night we had a lousy evening. A good heifer calved and was down at milking time and we were all running around like three-headed border collies, taking care of her, and milking and all that goes on each evening. By the time we finally got inside the homemade spaghetti sauce had kind of lost its charm....


When we brought them in, I noticed old Boston was looking like calving and mentioned we ought to give her a bottle of calcium before we turned her out. Then I forgot all about it. So did everyone else.


I remembered when we finally turned out, just at dark and I saw her hustling up the hill like her fanny was on fire.


Great. One of our best cows. Ten years old, a Comestar Leader daughter, out of one of the best show and milk families we ever had.


I was up long before daylight worrying about her. As soon as the sun began stretching silver fingers across the grazing cattle, Liz, the Boss and I were out bringing the herd down to eat some baled hay in the barnyard and looking for Boston.


Liz found her quickly; she was fine, grazing with a wet new bull calf hopping along beside her. Liz called but her phone cut out.


It was so cold that I had run back in the house to get the Boss his winter hat (and to get mine...and some gloves....and a polar fleece vest). I hurried out to make sure Liz was okay....hustled up the heifer hill as fast as I could.


And there they were, the most beautiful tableau you could imagine.


The farmer, hands in pockets, hoodie pulled tight against the wind. Liz, hands in pockets, pony tail whipping in the freezing gale, both spotlighted against the skyline with Boston and the baby before them. The grass was green as Ireland with the tips gilded as if on fire. Killdeers were screaming and the sun was flinging mile-long shadows from their feet to the woods on the west.


It took my breath away to see them standing here...good news, good folks, a good old cow with her eighth calf beside her. And all the glory that God could give us stretched out in every direction, free to drink in as we would.




We left Boston to her baby....he's a bit too young to walk to the barn yet. She was grazing good in between licking him off and mooing at him, so she should be okay for a bit....but how I wish I had taken the camera along to take that picture.

You Did It!

The Department of Labor today announced that it is withdrawing the proposed farm youth labor regulations that have raised such a tremendous uproar over the past few months.


It will instead work with 4-H, Farm Bureau, the National Farmers Union and FFA to develop a safety education program to reduce farm accidents.


This is great news indeed. It is thanks to the thousands of farmers, folks who understand the value of farm families, and some legislators, including Senators Grassley, Thune and a number of others who wrote, called, made posters and worked very hard indeed, that this decision was made.


Now excuse me for a minute while I do a happy dance. (HT Ray Bowman on FB)

From the Dept. of Labor: "The decision to withdraw this rule – including provisions to define the 'parental exemption' – was made in response to thousands of comments expressing concerns about the effect of the proposed rules on small family-owned farms. To be clear, this regulation will not be pursued for the duration of the Obama administration."

Baby Leaves on Driveway Trees

Elm and cottonwood

More on DOL Youth Labor Regulations

Here is the best argument against these regulations that I have read so far. An excellent read!
HT/Ray Bowman on FB