Sunday Stills.....Textures

Had to hit the archives for all but the first one. Busy times....

For more Sunday Stills......

Birdie Gras

Chickadees enjoying Mardi Gras

We have a terrible problem with House Sparrows, known here at Northview as Sassenachs. The come in hordes, eat all the sun flower seeds and drive away native birds like chickadees and gold finches.

I have tried various strategies over the years but nothing has kept them away for long. Then Cornell University ran an article on bird feeder halos.

Seeds 'n' Beads

I am not particularly handy at building stuff and the men are busy so I gave some thought to how I could come up with something similar all by my lone self. A search through the hutch revealed a treasure trove of Mardi Gras beads from Miss Alpert's French class (a wonderful lady who left our kids comfortable enough speaking French that Alan was able to give directions to tourists of that nationality down in NYC).

I cut them into strings, fastened them around the feeder with clothespins and haven't seen an English sparrow (that's what they were when we were kids) taking a seed since.

I don't know how long the effect will last, but now that I know the concept I think I can keep baffling them.

Thank you Project Feeder Watch for the solution to a problem that has had me not filling my feeders much this season. What a delight to watch song birds again instead of those devilish Sassenachs.

Sometimes

I had to see this in Holstein World, when it is right down the road at Hudson River Tractor.
 I never go anywhere..
Isn't it clever? We stopped and got a pic of our own yesterday

As we go about the work I realize why we keep doing it. It certainly isn't for the money. 2012 was the least profitable year for dairy farming recorded, worse even then the disaster of 2009, not because of low prices but rather frighteningly high input costs. Milk to feed ratios are appalling, the worst ever seen. 

And believe me, we feel it here. Despite being tiny and very frugal and do-it-yourself-ish, times are just awful. Just when you think it can't get any worse it does.

And yet, we keep soldiering on. Partly because we can't figure out how to get off the merry-go-round and still have a living of any sort and partly because of nights like last night.

All the kids were home. They are all actually adults now, with off farm jobs, but they all come home as often as they can, to help in any way they can. Of itself that would be enough reason to slog ever onward. We certainly could not do what we do without them.

Last night they were all laughing and raising heck so hard the cows were skittering around a little wondering what was going on. (And our cows are very used to nonsense having grown up with a basketball hoop on the side of the barn, bicycles in the barnyard etc. etc. Many of the show ring veterans are happy to be employed as comfy couches when they are lying down, having grown accustomed to people napping on them at fairs and shows over the years.) 

They were playing with kittens (and yes, when those tiny paws poke out of the holes in the little cardboard kitty box, they do have tiny claws on the end and will snag you like a burdock). They were teasing each other, singing and silly, and arguing over who was going to take the outside cows up the hill and how the hay would get thrown down.

It was all hard work and yet it was a festival of family fun as well. They are all cool people in their own right and we sure wouldn't see much of them if it weren't for cows and the conundrums they cause.

I am going to look back and miss all this someday. I won't remember the check book that won't ever balance. I will remember the fun and foolishness and kittens and calves and snow geese going over and sounding like Santa's sleigh up there. 

I am going to miss it all a lot. 

(And please don't think it is always like that...sometimes the arguing is just as loud....)

Pens

Yesterday we cleaned em, or at least the big one anyhow. I was dreading the job. The wind was whipping like a cut snake, dragging icy cold across the region, setting the mud like concrete, and generally spreading misery in its wake. Outdoors was not really someplace I felt any great desire to be. You aren't quite outdoors when cleaning pens but you might as well be.

My job is to keep the heifers in the pen, yet out of the way of the skid steer, which barely squeaks through the door and can just, by the skin of its bucket, turn around in there, while the boss scoops up and removes the poo.

It involves a lot of trusting the driver, hoping the heifers behave, and paying very close attention. Six seething not-quite yearlings. One cowboy skid steer driver...although he was very careful yesterday...and little old me, all dancing around the pen together...... choreographed manure handling at its less than finest.

It went well though. The heifers were cooperative....for heifers at least....and we were done in less than an hour. Now they have a nice clean playground and a couple of new friends, as we added two that had outgrown their stalls. Liz has one less water bucket to lug.

Next we brought sand into the barn. We keep sand in the front of the stalls for traction when the cows get up and down and so their knees have padding. Our barn is designed so there is exactly one way to get that sand where you want it and that is with a shovel.

So we shoveled. Then we put down wood shavings in the stalls and left the barn looking nice and bright and tidy.

The only downside was that I missed my old dog Mike. He wasn't a perfect pen dog, being a bit too quick and impetuous, but it was a lot more fun when he was in the mix. Not necessarily safer or more efficient, but very entertaining.

I am still debating the wisdom of a puppy when Nick passes. I am not sure how to function without a border collie at foot, but I am sixty and lame in most joints. Some days I wish I had an oil can like the tin man just to get me going. They are active and need direction and work......hmmm........

The Mighty Mississippi

Is so low that the Army Corps of Engineers is blasting out rocks that stick up. It may have to close to shipping in the near future. This will mean no grain going south and no fuel and fertilizer coming north.

Now a group of senators are asking President Obama to cause the release of more water from the Missouri River in an attempt to save shipping on the river. Hopefully he will take heed.

Growing Lettuce Indoors

I get a lot of hits on that search term, which is kind of cool. This year I have three pots, this little one that graces the windowsill over the kitchen sink and two big ones in the living room. This one won't produce a salad, but there is enough lettuce available for a sandwich or a snack pretty much all the time. The big pots are more productive.

Anyhow, if you want to grow lettuce indoors it is ridiculously easy. I think a nice pot of well-started leaf lettuce would make a cool Christmas gift for almost everyone. It's not like everybody already has one or anything.

Alas, I never seem to think of starting any for gifts until it is much too late. You could probably get some going for this year if you started right now though. Lettuce is quick to sprout and you can begin thinning leaflets almost as soon as they come out of the ground.

You can read previous posts on indoor lettuce:

Here

And here
And here

Weird

Turn up your sound to hear thousands of geese cackling all at once. This video was taken while I was standing on my porch btw

  Weather. It was miserably cold at the beginning of the weekend but by last night it was so warm we were shedding layers in the barn like flannel confetti. The fans, which are on thermostats were sure running. Kept the cows in anyhow. No need for them to be out in the rain and it was sure sluicing down.

The amazing goose invasion seems to have departed, leaving behind only a few down feathers that floated to earth as they passed. I took a couple more videos...nothing sharp or clear, but just enough to give you an idea of how many there were and how much noise they make. There sure were a lot of them.

Other than that, we are just slogging along, literally right now, what with the mud generated by all that rain. I'll let you know if anything interesting happens......

More Geese

Just at daybreak.....they looked like snowflakes

A portion of the flock rafting on the river

They spent the night and hung around half the morning. Wow!

Snow (Geese) Along the Mohawk

Please excuse the less than stellar quality of these shots and my lack of talent as a videographer. It was dusk and these were taken from the porch shooting towards town, which is a good ways away. There must have been five thousand snow geese whirling and swirling above the bridge. Pretty amazing.

***Check out the single dark bird among them at the beginning. I believe it is a bald eagle.

Slacker Saturday

Nothing to report. It is cold and we woke up to a little snow. Al had to work today, but at least he is off tomorrow. It costs him money to work Saturdays because taxes erase the extra ten hours worth of hard, outdoor work he puts in...which kinda stinks, but that is all just gonna get worse next year. We're rich ya know.

Meanwhile a thin east wind blew all day yesterday and into the night and showed me the chinks in my defenses against the cold on that side of the house. So I ran around with my trusty staple gun and plastic and hung a couple of curtains where I had taken them down to let the light in for the summer. Made things a little better.

Hoping the boy can get the Christmas lights he bought hung soon, so I can plastic up the door to that porch. This house was built as a summer home and it sucks the cold inside and holds it in its mouth like a kid with the last piece of watermelon. I am plumb fond of polar fleece and the nice down vest I got as a door prize from our favorite veterinarian at their picnic. And yes, I wear a hat indoors.......

Anyhow, hope you are warm and dry and well fed.......

More Good Stuff

Frieland Ex-Spec Lemonade-8 years young

A whole lot about agriculture right here.

Meat Made us Human

Or at least the habit of eating it along with cooking our food helped us grow larger and more complex brains.

The Kitteh Asks

Baby Pics

 Blitz's new one by Morty

Rockin' her purple calf coat

Foolish's bouncing baby boy

Between bouts of bookkeeping I offer you pics of some of the recent additions to the herd.

Feel the Magic

Although it has been a frantic week for farming, chores are taking at least an extra hour twice a day because of new mothers and babies, it has been a magical week for birds.

This time of year they are not all spaced out making nests and raising chicks and they have time to come close to us and hang around. I was at the kitchen table with the girls the other day and heard geese low and urgent. Although I skipped grabbing the camera and wished I had, I got to enjoy a moment of amazing beauty as waves of them raced south right over my head as I stood on the porch. 

They were so low I could see the webbing on their feet tucked up against their belly feathers. There is something mysterious about a Canada goose bent on business, even if they do spend a lot of their time making messes and raiding corn fields.

The little chickadees have kicked the tameness up a notch, what with the darned Sassenachs stealing all the sunflower seeds. When I step outside and the feeder is empty they swirl around me in a cloud of hungry. Even the goldfinches seem extra friendly, maybe because of the cold.

And I swear I heard and saw a pair of fish crows yesterday. They flew over the barnyard heading north and cawing in the weirdest high-pitched voice. Certainly didn't sound like regular crows at all. If I was positive they sure would be a nice addition to my little bird count.

At any rate it is nice to have the birds around to lighten up the atmosphere, what with cold and mud and extra barn work. And the price for enjoying them is certainly right.

Cold with Drama

Yeah, chasing crazy heifers, running around in the frozen mud after new milkers. Liz got her truck sidelined by a set of amorous deer having at it on the highway last night. She didn't hit them, but she did have to hit the ditch.

Never a dull moment. Not too much time to write....sorry about that. Back at it soon.

Tanked in the Name of Clean Milk

We'd been seeing some numbers we didn't like in our quality reports. We pride ourselves on shipping top quality milk and win Super Milk more often than not. However, lately things didn't look quite right.

We changed the milking machine liners out, ran extra sanitizing rinses of everything that could be washed and looked for problems everywhere we could.

Finally Liz decided that there was some milk stone build up in the milk tank that needed to be addressed. Even our longest scrubbing brush wouldn't reach.

So......she climbed through the port in the top of our thousand-gallon bulk milk tank and scrubbed it by hand. Said port is about two feet from the ceiling and not really big enough for much traffic, making for some interesting gymnastics, especially when it came time to climb back out.

She is a little taller than I am but not much. There was a point when I was wondering if we were really in trouble with a nice young lady stuck in our tank....however, eventually we got her back on solid ground.

And hopefully those number will improve now. 

Never a dull day on the dairy.

Back to Work

Not that we really get to stop; milking and feeding go on every day no matter what.

Still there is a huge difference between going out to the barn to set up the machines, put down hay, laugh at the fool kitties doing their silly things and all, and parking in the cold, dark office to pay bills.

A hateful job that. Thus this farmer hates Mondays as much as any office worker.

 I suppose I shouldn't complain though. The commute isn't too bad. The only traffic is a sleepy old border collie who would still like to accompany me anywhere I go if only he still could. Poor old man.

Or the pup is out of his kennel, tripping me as I go through the baby gate that confines his havoc to the kitchen. At least I get to pass the Christmas tree that Alan brought home and he and his lovely girlfriend decorated the other night. It is a balsam fir and smells delightful. What a pleasure to walk in the door!

Anyhow, at least the Thanksgiving turkey has seen his last....made into a pot pie last night and shared between the two families. He was a tasty bird, but I am ready for a change. I cooked it the day before the holiday and boned it out and put it in small bowls to cool with a little turkey juice. Reheated perfectly on the big day and made the preparations just a little less insane, what with being able to use the oven most of the morning for other stuff.

Stay warm!

Sunday Stills....Animals in Black and White

It is always easier to start with animals that are black and white to begin with.

For more Sunday Stills.......

Catchin' Up

Old Blondie...finally

Hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving. Ours was nice although we had to chase a cow and a heifer that got out. I would have much preferred to stay in my Sunday chair sleeping over my book.

They are in stalls in the barn where they will stay for now. I went up in the dark to jury rig the fence and couldn't even find where they got out. Deer had been in the electric again, darn it and tore out a big strip though. I couldn't fix that as I was armed only with a stick and some baling twine.

It was kinda neat out there in the dark. Lots of rustling and creaking in the shrubbery to make me think!

Yesterday some of the clan want shopping, some of the clan went hunting, one went to an off farm job and I stayed home and put on a nice audio book from this site to listen to while I did housework. I chose The Secret Garden, which I have read dozens of times, but you surely get a different feel for a book hearing it read aloud. No skipping whole paragraphs as you do if you are a habitual speed reader. Sure makes the time fly by.

Then about when I was done with my indoor chores I looked over to where Liz's retired show cow, Blitz, was hanging around the barnyard for the day.

Oops, there were feet! Not just her own four, but two other long, skinny, white ones protruding from her posterior. I didn't want to bother her so I checked her every now and then from the window. About a half an hour later there was a huge white calf with her.

Little did I know that the boss had had to help her deliver.....he did so in between my checks and I never even saw him.

The baby is a nice heifer by Stouder Morty and Liz is very pleased. I believe that she named it Cruise.

From Liz's phone

Alan and his friends went deer hunting but only got a coyote. We seem to be overrun with does this year and no one has a doe tag so they are getting a pass.Truth be told, I haven't seen a buck at all since mid-summer, although no doubt they are out there. 

Anyhow, have a good weekend and enjoy that leftover turkey.