Unrecognizable

When the shouting is over, whatever will serve as a Farm Bill is finally in place, and the dairy industry shakes itself out of this particular set of doldrums, I don't think you will recognize it any more. There are big, big ideas being sneaked into print in magazines and the agendas of meetings to get us used to some things that are not going to be good for us in the end. Extended shelf life will make all things possible....China is working hard to get their dairy industry off the ground. I am here to tell you there is speculation about importing dairy from China going on in high places. If that doesn't worry you.....

Between editorials I read, to which I won't link today because I don't even want to give them that much credibility, and what we are hearing from government officials, things look beyond grim. Certain editors and powerful officials want dairy farmers to accept the lowest possible prices and a do-over of both the Federal Orders and standards of identity for dairy products in order to keep people drinking milk. Of course people consume lots of milk in the form of cheese yogurt etc. but fluid milk sales give them a stick to whip us with so.....

I entirely agree that new products and new ways of serving dairy are good concepts and the pricing system is a mess, but blaming farmers for wanting to be able to make a living selling milk is ridiculous. I read years and years ago...before I was even a dairy farmer...that our own increases in efficiency would eventually kill us. That may be coming to fruition now.

As an industry we are walking away from the discussion leaving the health benefits of milk over other beverages on the table, and crying about prices being too high for consumers instead. Where are the comparisons between the price of a gallon of bubbly sugar water (soda), or even just plain water drawn from the tap and put in a fancy bottle, and a gallon of healthy, vitamin and mineral-rich, protein-filled milk? Where are the comparisons between the value of each of these to a healthy diet?

I can answer that question. They are on Facebook and Twitter being shared among farmers. Preaching to the choir. 

Why is someone at DMI, which spends our mandatory check off dollars, telling us that we must accept lower prices and doctored up milk products, when they are supposed to be promoting the value of milk in the diet? That is a real puzzle. They claim to have our interests at heart, but they want to get away from the gallon jug. I wonder.

It has gotten so many farm magazines are no more than mouth pieces for processors. I shudder to think that the folks whose salaries are taken right off the top of our milk checks to pay for "promotion" are thinking the same way. I am almost glad to be at the end of a career in this industry rather than at the beginning.

The Things You See

Becky bringing the new bull calf down

An ash tree devouring an insulator

The house from above and behind

The boss bringing down some tools for Alan

On heifer pasture hill. If if doesn't rain too hard I expect we will be out there again today. I have my indoor stuff for the most part caught up, which makes it easier for me at least.

The Birds of Yesterday

Habitats are Us

I accompanied Alan on yet another fencing expedition yesterday and found great joy, greater perhaps because it was entirely unexpected. We had chased or rescued cows all the day before....no one was in a very great mood.

We were no more than got half way along the first line of fence, when we found we were surrounded by birds. Migration is in full swing and the trees were bristling with gold finches and fall warblers. Soft, squeaky pishing lured them close enough to narrow down the selection of species.

By way of their incessant singing and iBird Pro on my phone the majority were discovered to be magnolia warblers. Other yellow-rumped species were probably also represented.

At the top of the hill there were flocks of flickers, rafts of robins, blue jays abounding, and lots and lots of other birds everywhere we looked. 

It would be hard to estimate how many birds we saw, but there were at least hundreds. I imagine there were many more that we didn't see.

I suspect the sheer numbers of birds and the variety of species are because of the large assortment of habitats available here on the farm or on surrounding abandoned farm land. There are open pastures, dense woods, open woods, brushy areas growing up to woods, and scrub grassland. Something for everyone, whether it is clusters of intense black riverbank grapes, a plethora of insects, or grain left undigested by the cattle. 

It sure was a treat for a birder...and I can't say enough about iBird pro. You do have to narrow down the selection of possible IDs for an unknown bird, but once you do, the calls and songs feature is invaluable.

Working for the Man

Midnight on the farm. Day spent on daily chores and tearing rosebushes out of fence lines. Saw a lot of good birds btw.

Cell phone rings on the head board. Liz has a rejected load of milk and has to go NOW to pick up a sample to get the producer back on the truck. She has to stop here to pick up some of her stuff....head's up so we won't worry when the truck pulls up the drive.

Ah, I love that panicky, heart-slamming-fear-moment when the phone rings at midnight. I feel bad for her, but she is on salary and must do whatever they tell her to. I sort of begin to fall back to sleep. I will wake again when she comes in the house, but it will be okay....sort of...

Then the other phone downstairs rings.

WTF? and no I don't mean Wednesday, Thursday etc. Rush downstairs, but not fast enough to pick up. However, they leave a message. Of course they do. It is another milk company in an area code very far from here calling ME because Liz was on another call and they had to leave a voice mail.....and they want to be very sure to get a hold of her to tell her about the rejected load. She is already on the road, but evidently someone needed to spread the panic around.

I was thrilled.  You know you can usually get back to sleep after one middle of the night awakening, but after running downstairs....forgeddaboutit. 

I returned the call and apprised the nice gentleman from the other company in the other area code about the status of the crisis  and I think I was even reasonably civil.....for midnight at least....I suppose someone had awakened him inconveniently too. I did ask him to take my number off their listing though. I have fielded milk company calls before and not minded. Sometimes she is out of range with the cell and they have left messages for her with me.

But at MIDNIGHT!!! On a dairy farm!?! Ridiculous.

Anyhow, later in the day, after I finish the Farm Side, and milking and chores without Liz, who got back to bed at 6 AM after driving all over the state, I will probably put up pics of our day in the field yesterday. migration is in full swing and we had lots of company.

The Best Laid Plans

What with the wedding this weekend and assorted other business, I had a lot planned for yesterday. Laundry gets to be an imposing problem when nothing will dry and everybody is muddy, so I had a lot of that stacked in heaps all over the place.. 

I wanted to make soup.

I needed to do books. It is always nice if I get some quiet time and think up a topic for the Farm Side early in the week so I can get a start on it.

And so on....I dug right into it as soon as I got up and got back at it as soon as morning chores were done.

I was making such nice progress......and then the boss noticed that the heifer yard gate was lying flat. No heifers to be seen.

So we hiked through brush and fields and up and down roads for hours. Finally found them and got them home, but it took most of the day. (Thank God for cell phones, which are an incredible aid when you can't see the cows or the other people helping you with them. Wish the boss had one.)

Came in, went back to work on the soup, which had been on hiatus while we were hiking, showered and changed to make sure I hadn't picked up any ticks. Doctored my many small cuts and scrapes...shorts are not the best outerwear when running through the jungle, but that is what I had on so...

Picked burdocks off clothes. There were a lot.

No more than got started and the boss came storming back in. Hollywood was stuck in the round bale feeder. Becky and I got our boots on as fast as we could, but by the time we got out there she was out. 

However, the other cows had spooked and run over some of the cows and stomped them into the mud. What a mess! We could have used the whole US Congress, taking turns, to get the mud off them. Alas, they didn't show up so we had to do it ourselves. Sure went through a lot of paper towels! So far at least, it appears that none of them were seriously hurt, although I can't say the same for the round bale feeder.

I am not sure just what you would call the stuff we had for supper last night, although I don't think it was soup. There was plenty of it anyhow and we were glad to have it. I got the boss to wire up that gate with heavy barbed wire. Hope it holds.

Farm Bill vs Parity

Fiery Hill, where the boss's mom grew up, just a stone's throw from the wedding,

So as I understand it, everybody wants dairy farmers to jump on the band wagon and insist on passage of the Farm Bill, most of which will go to pay for food stamps and various other programs to feed the needy.

"If you don't lobby hard you will lose MILC," they  (including the very folks who supposedly represent our interests) cajole us.

But, wait, I have read, and had already been thinking all by my ownself, that no Farm Bill means a return to parity pricing, which stems from laws in the early decades of the previous century.

Parity would mean $38 dollars per hundredweight. Right now we are getting in the high-ish teens, $17 per HW for Class III. On my calculator 38 is a lot more than 17...or even 20....but then I was never much good at math.

So let me see now. If we lose MILC it only will be for three months until January before parity may kick in. MILC is a make-up program to try to match the cost of making milk to the paltry amount the current regulations allow us to be paid.

 It pays a percentage of that cost, and although welcome indeed, does not bring the price of milk anywhere near the cost of producing it. 

Many farmers much preferred the now-expired North East Dairy Compact, which raised prices at the farm gate by enforcing the passing along of some of the money paid for milk in the stores to the people who make it. It didn't add very much...a few cents...to the cost of a gallon of milk at the grocery store and it merely forced the middlemen to hand it along instead of hanging on to it. It made a huge difference at the farm.

It took money out of the market instead of out of the taxpayers. Quibbling among states that don't even have a fluid milk market worth mentioning quashed the Compact a while back.

Now we are told that we should lobby like heck to make sure we get supply management dumped on us and a new "insurance" program, and to save MILC, which only makes up a percentage of what we are losing producing milk, so we make sure that we don't get paid what it actually costs us to produce it?

Makes sense to me.....NOT!

Sunday Stills....September Signs of Fall

 Hezekiah, the traveling Amish garden gnome crashed  attended a fall wedding.

 As did grandpa and his first grand daughter.

There were real Amish too....

For more Sunday Stills.....

This Says it All

As They Begin

Their life together....best wishes to the happy couple....

Hay There

Looks like the rain is putting a stop to all efforts to get in hay. They say winter won't start until the swamps are full...it sure is working on it. Rain through Monday according to the forecast, not the best news for crops or wedding, but whatta ya gonna do? Good thing they have a tent I guess.

Normal frequency and duration of wordage will resume after the hitchin', the trips to NYC, hair cuts, baking, cole slaw cutting, and all the other crazy commotion swirling around the place these days.

Kittehs

Our logger, scrapper, trader friend delivered a mama kitty and two teen-aged kittens to our barn yesterday. Mom is  black and white, kitties are sort of tortie-calicoes; all are lovely. 

They are enthroned in the milk house just now in the interests of letting them learn where they belong......

They are already accustomed to an outdoor home life with coyotes abounding, so maybe, hopefully they will be smart enough to avoid predation. 

Goat

This story kinda got mine. 2009 was one of the worst years for dairy farmers.....ever. We all burned through way too much equity trying to somehow stay in business. Many of us have not begun to dig out of that hole even now. I am not sure the author intended to suggest that we should enjoy prices that low if they increase fluid consumption, but I sure hope not.

Also fluid milk is far from all of the milk marketing story. For one thing our price is based on cheese sales on the CME. Cheese consumption has climbed steadily over the past decade, while prices fluctuated all over the place. 

And notice the suggestion of shelf-stable milk there? I see that trend as a way to import a lot more milk, displacing a lot more domestic milk from the market. Components brought in under all sorts of names already displace millions of pounds of domestic fluid milk, contributing in all likelihood to the demise of many family dairy farms. 

Alternately cheap West Coast milk could show up in our markets quite easily too. If your milk will keep for six months without refrigeration you can move it a l-o-o-o-ng way before it spoils. It's already happening down under.

Considering the conditions under which milk is produced in many of the countries from which we import a lot of stuff (remember China and melamine? Their dairy industry is rebounding rapidly right now.) I shudder to think of the future.

Thanks Folks

Morse Clouds

I am combining an array of your topic suggestions for a sort of a kaleidoscope of a farming week with a wedding at the end. Kind of fun. So thanks. 

A hint of what to expect on Friday....Liz's cell phone auto correct thinks it is a veterinarian and continuously replaces hernia with harmonica, causing much inconvenience during a texted discussion of diagnosis and treatment. A quick check of the calf in question revealed no musical instruments, so we are turning it in for malpractice.

Hi, My Name is Foolish

Foolish

Watch out for that tail!

"Did you hear what the boss said?"

Topics

We have a wedding this week. My head is already spinning even though I am only responsible for cookies, which I have made so many times I don't need a recipe.

It is cold and foggy and muddy. It is not nice to milk muddy cows. And it is cold.Did I mention the cold?

The days are getting short, fast....grump, grump, grump.....

So I am begging for help, please, please, please.

 I need a topic for this week's Farm Side. Gotta crank out a thousand words by Wednesday noon on something farm-related. My boss is extremely generous in interpreting what constitutes farm-related btw. From greasing the mow elevator the the Chicago Mercantile Exchange to the dog having puppies in the car and the potential for opening an amusement park with mud wrestling, it has all been done over the years and accepted for publication. I could take a week off but I hate to.

Been at it since 98 and sometimes I just come up blank....right now is one of those sometimes. I do believe the fog in my brain is ramping up to match the fog in the back yard....thanks in advance.

Sunday Stills....Music

Music ruled my life until I started farming. Always in some band, playing some instrument, badly, but playing it, in some high school auditorium or a bar or club somewhere...or practicing in some cellar or garage or any place that would put up with all that noise....this guitar has taken me many places since I bought it second hand for $75 a very long time ago. The fiddle was my mama's and now belongs to Becky. The CD was a delightful surprise from my brother that made my day and the several days since when I have listened to it. Thanks!



For more Sunday Stills......http://sundaystills.wordpress.com/2012/09/16/sunday-stills-the-next-challenge-music/

This Dog

Scours the floor for little rocks...which the kind folks who surround me track in with alarming regularity. The small ones he simply devours. The larger ones he chomps and crunches and drools over until he gets someone's attention and they exclaim, "Trade!"

Then he drops his tasteless morsels and hurries over for a softer, friendlier snack. I think we have created a monster.

He does it with hats he steals too.....and towels.....

He's nabbed two biscuits off me in the last five minutes.

Small Pleasures

There is such a feeling of something impending these days, and along with it a sense of endings. I find autumn both stimulating and uncomfortable.....

I guess the boss is going to stop trying to bale hay and fall to chopping and bagging it. Hopefully the rains don't get carried away and he can get some of the second and third cutting that is out there stored away for winter. It is good stuff.

Been chopping it green right along and feeding it to our girls morning and night and they are doing great on it. In a wet year green chop like that tends to go right through them without doing much good, but in a dry year it puts the fat on their backs and the milk in their udders.

It is a treat for a farm heart to walk behind a line of contented cows each morning and evening, milking machines in hand. Seeing rows of smooth, tight udders, full of good wholesome milk, waiting for you to step up in the stall, gently prep them, each with a separate, clean, paper towel and disinfectant solution, then dry them, strip out a couple shots of "fore milk", and attach the milkers. 

They actually milk out quicker when they are producing well, and are happy for your ministrations for the most part, although there are always a few who ignore you as they stretch and quest for that last pellet of grain each day. 

I can attest that it hurts to be stepped on or slammed across the head with a hard, bony tail. Broadway is irritable until she has finished her grain and will kick me intentionally if I interrupt her....and of course she is the first cow on my string so I have to. Still it is really comforting to see them doing well.

It is not the glow of great profits, although it is nice to every now and then make enough to pay the bills. It is the delight of working with animals that you love and being able to do it right. Knowing that they are comfortably doing what they do, in partnership with you doing what you do brings a deep satisfaction that new clothes or a new car can't equal. Nothing shallow about a good cow.

The boss was saying the other day that he didn't think he would miss them much if we had to sell out though. They are stern task masters and he is tired.....getting worn out from decade upon decade of hard physical work each day. The knees don't bend, shoulders ache, especially the one he broke, and he can barely lift his feet to step over stuff any more. 

The mid-sixties are not an easy time to do what he is doing. He has been milking cows since he was a little boy and driving tractor for field work since he was nine. It gets harder each year I think.

I told him that I would miss them and badly though....but then I came late to this business, only 34 years of milking cows for me to his fifty-plus.

It's the Economy

Yeah, there is all this talk of recovery, but it sure wasn't in evidence yesterday when we went wedding present shopping. One of the crew is getting married next week and we figured we had better get at that little job before their fifth anniversary rolls around.

There were six cars in the entire Sear's parking lot. Six.

There was almost no one in the whole Rotterdam mall. You could have run a team of huskies, ten dogs strong, right up the center of any of the aisles and not tangled anyone in the traces. You could have held monster truck races....a tractor pull...a full-length circus parade, complete with elephants and kangaroos, and only discommoded a half a dozen folks.

The set of cookery we purchased for our young un', (who is a significant cook, having learned from toddlerhood at the knees of her grandma, plus filled in for her mama-who-was-in-the-barn many times) ended up being marked down $35 bucks by the time we got done. Everything else was deeply discounted too.

The food court, where once you would have felt like you'd been footballing by the time you fought your way to a table with your food, purchased from any of an amazing selection of stores, was bare. No Merry-go-round. Four restaurants left of the many, not even a McDonald's any more. And THREE people at the tables.

The whole mall was gleaming clean, but there were many empty store fronts. I was wondering if the aliens were carrying people off from there or something.

Maybe you have all seen this empty before but it was a shocker to me. I don't get out much......normally my shopping is confined to grocery stores and Wally World, which are both always bustling. 

I had not recently been in a place where people buy their wants rather than their needs. From the evidence at the mall yesterday, people are needing, but they sure aren't bothering with wanting any more.

Or they just don't have any discretionary money any more, which is pretty much the same thing. I have to say that I was wishing I had some of that spendable stuff myself yesterday. I could have done the best Christmas shopping ever for a couple hundred bucks.

Oh, well, as my dad always says, better days are coming.