Sunday Stills...Summertime

This challenge offered an amazing array of possibilities. Another fun one! Summer time is go time on a family farm. Putting up hay, putting up and keeping up fence, feeding, cleaning, milking the cows of course. It never stops. I do pause though, pretty much every day, to photograph the interesting sights I see, to try to capture the endless beauty around us, to try to catalog our way of life before it is gone...along with birding, it is my favorite thing....and of course I could never leave out our week at Peck's Lake....

For more Sunday Stills......

Breakfast

Hurry!

***There are several piles of haylage and feeders full too, but they always rush in as if someone was going to pull their plate if they didn't hurry...all business these girls.

The Danger

It has been heartbreaking to read the news lately. A farmer we know from quite near here was killed this week at a very young age by a swarm of ground bees or wasps while he was mowing brush. Another farmer near here was recently killed in a tractor roll over and another well-known Holstein breeder from the state was also killed by a tractor while working on machinery attached to it. We didn't know the latter two personally, but the first gentleman was a fixture in the area from a really nice family that we have known all our lives. Now this story. 

Farming can be a great life, if you love the outdoors, if you like to be challenged, if you like to work hard to make a real difference to the world it can be everything to you, truly a way of life....but it is dangerous. Farmers are often ridiculously tired and very stressed, by money worries, weather, the pressure to get crops into the ground and then tended and harvested. Many of the things they do are inherently dangerous and doing them while tired and distracted makes them doubly so.

Large farm animals can be and usually are reasonably gentle, interesting, fun to work with, also challenging, but often in a good way. You can have a very rewarding relationship with even the largest one. However, they can hurt you and sometimes they will. 

That same sweet cow that you can walk up to in the pasture for an ear scratch will run right over you if she is panicked or knock you down and stomp on you when she is in season. The gentlest ones that never kick or crowd at milking time can kill you with a swing of her head batting flies off their back in the itchy summertime. In fact the ones most likely to hurt you that way are the tamest ones. They aren't worried about your presence in their stall and they literally forget that you are there. (Imagine if they had horns!)

There isn't one of us here at Northview that hasn't come out on the short end of a kick or a bite, or very much the most often, gotten run over by a frightened or angry horse or cow. I've even had my nose broken by a carelessly flung tail. We all have  scars and joint damage to remind us of things animals have done to us over the years. We are lucky though, very, very lucky. We are still here to be reminded of how dangerous farming is.

My heart is truly aching for all these families, but especially for the folks we know best.....and all you farmers and ranchers who stop by to read now and then...you be careful out there today.

IBird

My little brother blessed me with a gift card for a recent landmark sort of birthday.

My son bought me a smart phone.

A couple of days ago he also helped me through the process of buying and installing the iBird Pro app on said phone with five bucks from the gift card, which made for a sweet combination.

 I love it. As I already own a selection of field guides, which I read for fun...yeah...really, what I wanted was the recordings of bird calls and songs. 

Already yesterday I used it to back up a tentative ID in the back yard. I was pretty sure I was hearing a great crested fly catcher, but it was so much quieter than most of the ones I have heard. Played the call on the phone. Yep, that blur over in the little elm was a great crested for sure.

He wasn't a new bird to me or even new to the 2012 Northview Backyard and Barnyard count (stalled at 51 with the addition of a ring-billed gull in case you were wondering) but it was cool to really be sure, right on the spot, what I was hearing.

The app has turned the phone from something I mostly use to text back and forth with the kids when they are away to something I am not going to be forgetting in the barn again any time soon. I think as I practice using the app it will become even more useful. I would recommend it even for strictly non-pro birders such as I am.

Da Troof and Nuttin but da Troof

Not the truants, just some cows and heifers eating breakfast

Yesterday's post featured the girls leaning on sorting sticks and about a football field's worth of temporary electric fence. If you haven't read the comments suggesting possible scenarios...they are excellent and worth your time.

Speaking of temporary, that fence was VERY temporary. Within ten minutes after we finished using it there was nothing to show for its ephemeral existence but a bucket full of rolls of wire with a LOT of surveyor's tape on it and a couple of bundles of fence posts.

See lightning fried one of the fencers and let the big, horned heifers out into the night. 


I am honestly afraid of those big horned heifers. They are big, and, well, they have horns.

Thus even looking for them wasn't high on my agenda. However, they very obligingly, after eating some hostas, wandering all over the lawns leaving fertilizer, and putting hoof prints all over everything, went up in the unused pony yard and lay down.

All we had to do to catch them was close the gate. 

However, they couldn't stay there. No watering trough, no shelter, way too small etc.

How to get them down the great distance between where we wanted them and where they were. Four driveways, multiple stretches of lawn, only a few of us to chase them, no horses, no ropes, no working dogs any more.

And I am afraid of them. It was an uncomfortable conundrum.

I thought about it all through milking and breakfast after chores and finally came up with an idea. Maybe we could build an electric fence out of the lightest wire we could get, some step-in posts, which we already had and flag the heck out of it so it looked like a lot more than it was. We could make a sort of alley to guide them back to the heifer barn.

We proceeded to construct just that and lined up the cheap help for the melee. 

There actually were a few moments of excitement...enough for this week's Farm Side at least, but they did mind the "fence" and we got them back where they belong without too awful much drama.

Can we say thankful....why yes we can.

Wordless Wednesday

Tell your own Tale

We had some excitement here yesterday, the actual story of which I am using for this week's Farm Side. However, if you would like, this is your chance to write your own version of the tale, right here in the comment section. Please have at it!

***Disclaimer-no farmers or livestock were harmed in the filming of this wild adventure on the back and side and front (etc.) lawn.

Organic, All-Natural, Off the Grid Garbage Disposal

Bwahahahahaha!!!!!

Here.... good friend Florida Cracker is at it again with his innovative and everlastingly clever inventions. He must have put this together in his LAB-oratory. If you don't read Pure Florida you should!

Sunday Stills....Sports

This was a fun challenge. My favorite sport at this time of my life is birding...as if you couldn't guess. So here is a ruby-throated hummingbird who chose to share the garden with me the other day when I was picking herbs to use in cooking dinner. This year we have a passel of incredibly tame ones that buzz all around us if we go near the feeders. I swear if you are not careful you will end up with one in your ear. I love them!

And another unconventional, but oft indulged in sport, wherever there are cattle, is fencing....so in honor of the Olympics, here are pics of the two days this week that Alan and I spent at the practice of that.....sport.

For more Sunday Stills......

Sorting off the Interlopers

                                                                                           Heather


Last night Liz 'n' Jade and Alan were standing around outside the milk house talking while Beck turned out cows and I saved calf milk. The boss was milking "bucket" cows. I went out to open the heifer pasture gate and put up the electric fence.....


Pet cows tend to see people who are standing still as folks in need of a job. Thus old Heather was by Liz, holding her head just right for scratching and a tame young heifer, Clair, was getting Jade to pet her. Both cows were behind the speakers, just sneaking a little social grooming, and not intruding on the conversation much.


Liz offered to do the gates for me, so I paused for a minute to laugh about the cows hanging around the folks just as if they were joining the conversation. 


As soon as Liz left, Heather, deprived of attention, came over to Alan. However, he didn't suit her, so she very carefully, very sneakily, tip-toed over behind Jade. She stuck her head neatly between him and Clair, and then sliced that heifer away from him like a surgeon. She probably weighs at least 900 pounds...possibly more, she is good-sized for a Jersey...but she squeezed herself between him and Clair so neatly that he didn't even notice the exchange. Didn't bump him in the slightest, although she physically moved Clair plenty.


Soon he was petting a big ol' Jersey head instead of a young Holstein and Clair was wondering what the heck happened. I was the only other one who noticed and got a good laugh out of it.

Brand Loyalty

Broadway last March, with her heifer calf, Bloomingdale...a Poker daughter

how I wish someone was taking a show string this year so she could compete as a junior heifer calf.

I will always be a fan of the Holstein cow. They are the go to cow in the dairy world, utilitarian and productive, hard working, and lovely.


However, the little colored cows sure do have a lot of personality.  


I don't like milking the pretty little brown Jerseys...seems like every one we have ever had is temperamental and persnickety...but they are excellent grazers and convert feed to milk impressively. We had a half-bred once...black Jerseys some call them...and she gave a phenomenal amount of milk. She was a witch and getting it out of her was life-threatening, but she made a lot of it.


The milking shorthorns are tough and beautiful in their red coats that shade from copper to burgundy. The ones we have come from a bull that threw a lot of milk as well.


Both breeds seem to excel as lead cows. (A lead cow is the one that takes them out to pasture and brings them back in for milking.) A smart lead cow can save a lot of running and chasing.


Yesterday morning we all stood around out in the barnyard waiting to see which cow found the open north gate first. New pasture...or one they hadn't been in in a month at least. There was new grass out there waiting for them..all they had to do was walk to it. First they had to find the gate. That's where the lead cow comes in.


We were taking bets it would be Heather, Liz's old retired Jersey, who found it first. Heather is a great lead cow; she knows all the fields, and tends to notice the gates.


Hordes of Holsteins walked right past the gate and collected in a group around the heifer pasture gate, which was closed. Heifers walked right on by. Heather came out and walked by too. They all began to mill around in confusion. Why was the gate closed?


Then out came beautiful Broadway, our oldest milking shorthorn cow. She walked right over to the open gate. Stopped to lift her tail while she contemplated what she was seeing. (Cows poop whenever anything happens..walk in, walk out, get milked, get fed, be hungry, pause to think for a minute...it all brings out the fertilizer production system in a cow.)


As soon as she had that out of the way she strode confidently off to the north. She knew what was out there waiting. Soon Heather saw her and charged right off the bridge as fast as her little Jersey legs would carry her.

Heather and Liz some colder time in the past

That's all it took. Even the young heifers who had never been in the big pasture followed and they were off. They came in last night with bulging bellies, and, hopefully, full udders...

Gathering, Growing, Storing

The men have been at it this morning and early afternoon. Planting the last field of sorghum, gathering in...or actually baling...a field of hay...and Alan has been storing the hay that has been made already in nice rows in the mow. It is too much for the boss to store it alone when the boy is in NYC so he has been just dumping it in. Now it will be right and tight, safer to get it out and easier to assess what is up there.

The girls are shopping and running errands...there is a wedding in the offing you know. And food is often needed even here where we grow a lot of our own.

 I am just holding down the fort, bookkeeping, housekeeping, food preparation, lots and lots of laundry, making up for two days out with Alan on the fence, which was fun...hot, but fun....and now my own work, which spent those two days piling up, is keeping me busy.

Take care....

Taken Unexpectedly Happy

Frieland LF Bama Breeze

By a Facebook post by a very nice lady I have met a couple of times, asking for dairy judging terms. It reminded me of the days when the kids were involved in Dairy Quiz Bowl, Dairy Judging and the Dairy Ambassador (Dairy Princess and Court) program.


At the time I'm sure it was challenging to cart them to all the myriad practices and barn meetings and public events, where they dished out ice cream and great big farm kid smiles, but somehow I have fond memories of those hectic days.


And I love the way the terms for dairy cow judging roll around in my mind even now. (You can't help but learn while the kids do, and I coached the novice quiz bowl team for several years....loved those novices! They were so eager and interested and fun and even on the years when the team didn't do well, they always won on some level.)


Sharp and clean through the throat, sharp shoulders, straight top line, wide at the hooks and pins, sweeping rib, deep rib, correct set to the hocks, deep bodied, great body capacity,  heart girth, wide chest floor, dairy character, sharp and clean throughout, high, tight, wide rear udder, excellent udder attachment, smoothly blended fore udder....I could go on all day with the terms the kids had to use when giving reasons for their choices in dairy judging. The younger kids could just choose which cows they liked best in a class, but the seniors had to give spoken or written reasons and were judged upon them.


Liz went to state several times for both horse and dairy judging, and also went to state for quiz bowl. Becky was a junior and was placed on a senior team at the regional level. She placed high enough that she would have been an alternate for state had she been in the right age group. We all took the dairy stuff pretty seriously and I guess it stuck.


I sure do still love to look at a beautiful cow. Sometimes I go to the Harvue website just to look at Frosty.....


Anyhow, it was a nice little trip down memory lane...

The Drought

The grass in the shady, damp lane is much taller than it is up where the sun gets at it all day.

Is going to hurt pretty much everyone even if it starts raining all across the country within the next five minutes. Corn is already being imported from Brazil and our grain price is sky rocketing. I shudder to think what food prices will be this fall, winter, and next year.


Here in Upstate NY we saw a bit of what it has already done when Alan and I went out to walk and clear electric fence yesterday. We (really he...I carried tools, kept him company and took pictures) inspected and cut brush out of the wires, propped up a couple of tired posts and fixed this and that. We got over about half of it...it's a big field...before the old lady petered out from the hot sun and we came back down. It was time for him to go get Becky anyhow and the boss needed him to help unload hay that he had baled

Anyhow, the grass was as curly as the fur on Gil's back and not much longer. There were more wasps and bees than weeds and thistles.


This is not at all normal. The cows have been out of that field for weeks...maybe even a month. In an average year, even in the doldrums of summer, there would be grass at least up to the top of your ankle and weeds as high as your head anywhere the dirt was exposed by cows making paths and such. 


Nada.


We did see a nice selection of birds though. Lots of gold finches, indigo buntings, turkey vulture, red-tailed hawk, mourning doves, brown thrashers, song sparrows, some unidentifiable small warblers, crows, starlings, pigeons, cardinals and probably a couple of others I am forgetting. No good pics though. They weren't feeling friendly and the light was so bright...

We will try to finish up today. The cows will get a few days supplemental grazing while the other field recovers. It is just barely worth the effort though.....

Not for Profit

I think this indigo bunting is crying the blues

Dairy farming that is. Read about it here and bear in mind that feed is just one of many costs involved in caring for cattle.

Fire

Across the river last night. We heard the whistles and then when Alan went out on the porch he could see that the villages were entirely full of smoke lit up by the street lights like a scene from Hell.


Word on Facebook last night was that Fonda had a hard time getting to the fire because of the closing of the railroad crossings. If it is true it is chilling.


Even if it is not true, something similar WILL happen. You can't cut a town in half and leave only one heavily congested route and not have it end badly. It is simply appalling that the railroad is fighting so hard to limit access to such a large part of the village of Fonda. Tragedy is almost inevitably going to ensue.


The state really needs to step in and come down strongly on the side of the people who live in the two villages and the leaders they have elected to represent them, rather than bowing down to a large, distant, corporation that cares nothing for Fonda and Fultonville.


So sad for the poor folks who lost their home last night.

Counting

Speaking of miscounts, this little guy only has one antler

Can anybody help me with the reason for this? (Not the antler, the miscounts on this blog.) I enjoy watching the number of folks who visit Northview, what brings them here, and what they read. I have been noticing lately that the number of hits counted by Site Meter has dropped dramatically. However when I looked at the Google analysis of the site, not only is it showing MORE hits it is showing a LOT more hits.


For example this morning Site Meter is showing 26 and Blogger's internal counter is showing 149. Both sites are set to ignore my own visits. I am thinking of simply ditching SiteMeter. What do you think?


Hmmmm......

Standoffish

Click to embiggen...if you really want to see a wasp that close.

This yellow jacket not only wanted to feed from the hummer jar, she thought she owned it too. No matter where the poor hummer tried to land...there are several feeding spots...she ran after her fiercely. The hummer finally flew away, discouraged....which is when I got out my little can....of wasp spray.

Sunday Stills...Fade to Black

This is from the archives, alas, no night shots this busy, hectic week. Thanks for the good times with Sunday Stills these past few years with Ed and Linda. Word is that The Crazy Sheep Lady will be taking over as fearless leader of this fun photography whirl and man am I ever grateful.

Just a little black on the back of this common loon as he takes a quick dive

 I have loved Sunday Stills from the week it began. Often the whole family has joined in offering ideas on where to find shots and even volunteering to be in them or taking me on road trips to line them up. It is simply wonderful that this adventure is going to continue.I hope more of you will join the fun.

Smiles

Days here are often fraught with crisis and worry. It is simply the nature of a family, a business, (a family-run business at that), dozens of animals, lots of machinery that breaks on a regular basis, and a life that depends largely on weather.


However, there is always something to make you smile, even if sometimes it is only watching the sun go down, knowing you are done for the day...unless the cows get out...


I smiled the other night when Northstar backed out of her stall into the bright sunlight. She is such a little dear heart and so brilliantly red orange, like a bovine ball of fire.


 Her mama was one of the meanest cows I ever bred or owned. She would kick out head-high at the slightest provocation. Came way too close to killing several of us before we finally sold her. 


Norrie is friendly, quiet and gentle, stands calmly to be milked, learned where her stanchion is within three or four days of having her first calf, and to top it off she is just so darned pretty.


I don't know how to describe her color. She is half milking shorthorn and half Holstein and her color is like melted copper that shades to almost purple-mahogany when she's out of the sun. Her coat is so slick and smooth I often my hand over her hip when I milk her, just to feel its silkiness. (A lot of cows don't like that and will react quite unfavorably. She doesn't seem to mind a bit.) She actually seems to like people.It gives great pleasure just to work around her and looking at her beautiful self is an added bonus.


Then there are the young downy woodpeckers. I keep suet out all year in a big feeder made from the folded hardware cloth top off an old gerbil cage. They have found a little hole and go INSIDE the feeder to choose the tastiest bites of suet for themselves, while the parents wait outside. Always worth a smile, and after several generations at our feeders they are absurdly tame and don't mind me watching.


And the hummingbird wars. There are at least five young ones and sibling rivalry is rampant. They buzz and smack into each other like pinballs in a machine. They narrowly miss my ears!


The indigo bunting singing his heart out from the top of my favorite blue spruce. Walking the pup on the long lawn and up in back, watching him explore new ground. Hearing the ponies nicker from the stable and the peacocks scream from their barn. Watching tiny Strawberry, who seems to be a mini-calf, tugging and banging away at her bottle, guzzling her milk like a champion.


Yep, lots of things to smile at around here and I'm thankful for them all. Hope you all have a good one.