Morning Off with Heat

Have I bored you to death yet with our saga of heating or the lack thereof? If so, sorry about that. However, this morning to turn the furnace fan on and almost instantly be comfortable, was amazing. Showering without shivering....ditto.

Things have settled...dare I say slumped...into an equally boring routine around here. Not much to write about.....Same old feed the cows, milk the cows, shovel the result into the barn cleaner if they miss the gutter, and do it again in the afternoon.

They tend to illness more in winter than summer just as we do. So we doctor here and we doctor there. Some days it adds quite a lot of time to the twice daily chore routine, but it has to be done. Last night Liz's potential show calf, Cruise, was acting a bit like a colicky horse, kicking at her belly and trying to jump over the front of her stall. We diagnosed a belly ache.

She is of the Mandy family, and although outstanding milk cows and not too shabby in the show ring, they are dumb as rocks.

Maybe dumber. It is an endless management challenge just keeping them upright and taking nourishment. They are truly not smart enough to take care of themselves like ordinary cows and must be pampered and fussed with continuously.

Thus last night we had to cobble a new front on her stall, rendering such activities as injuring herself trying to outrun her sore tummy somewhat more problematic for her. And thanks to being out of the forty-pound bags of bicarb we buy for the cows, Beck had to go to the house and raid my baking soda to help her feel better.

The boss tossed a handful into her reluctant mouth and we gave her a pail of nice warm water. She is fine this morning, thankfully. She will prolly get over not wanting bicarb. Her mama, Blitz, and her grandma, Mandy, were always crazy about the stuff....they would eat a bag full if they could get to it.

So, not much happening, which is fine with me. Have a good one.

Great-Grandma Julianna's Christmas Tree

I never met my maternal grandfather's mother, Julianna, though I sure was fond of her son, my grandpa, such a fine and caring man.

This Christmas Mom presented those of her descendants who have their own homes, and thus their own Christmas trees, with ornaments from Julianna's tree. 

The photo is of one of her trees, complete with candles, and if you look very closely, ornaments like the one pictured. 
Mom thinks it was taken around 1905. This seems so special to me. I already have a couple of ornaments from my grandma's tree, and now this one from great-grandma's. Isn't that cool?

Warm Air

How I feel today

We has it. Long story, but regular readers and family members know we have struggled for years to heat this monster house. Last year one furnace burned and the other exploded, but even before that we just couldn't get adequate heat from the plenum in the cellar to the freezing rooms upstairs.

Day before yesterday the guys spent hours on the phone with suppliers trying to decide what sort of furnace fan to buy to replace the one we have, which hasn't done its job in ages. One of the calls they happened to make was to our diesel supplier, whom they figured might have some old one lying around we could buy cheaply. They just left a message that they wanted to talk to someone...on the phone...to see what might be available.

To my surprise we were finishing up milking when some fellows from the latter company stuck their head in the barn door. Rather than trying to compare apples to pomegranates over the telephone they stopped by to see what we actually had in the cellar.

In the course of reading numbers and measuring measurements the mechanic part of the duo said, "Something doesn't look right here....let me try this..... "

So he did. And presto, instant gales of hot air gushing through vents in rooms that haven't seen a breath of heat in five years or more. You wouldn't believe the dust! The darned thing was wired so it ran backwards. We think we know who did it...a representative from another company who has not been invited back because of other instances of glaring incompetence....but even with the fire almost out because the boss let it get away from him the house is warm.I wonder if the explosion in the big oil furnace was caused by this.....

I can't begin to describe to you how wonderful it is to have heat. It was so cold that I was afraid the canned goods would freeze in the cupboard. I wore all my outdoor stuff indoors and was STILL cold. Last night we sat around and relaxed....actually relaxed, in comfort, peace, and harmony. It was delightful. 

I can't thank those two unexpected callers enough.

Extreme Hand-Me-Downing

Lots Going On

Too cold and too busy in the barn to get much done about writing it down though. Sorry. When the house gets up above fifty and the government stops plaguing us for reams and rafts of data, expect pics and story on a fabulously cool antique Christmas ornament we received this year, the amazing food our daughter feeds us and discussion thereof, and a little about the bird feeder wars.

Just for example, a favorite pastime in the barn is to torment each other with detailed descriptions of what we are cooking for breakfast or supper, while we are at work in the barn. It always seems as if you get hungry while choring........ 

Liz is a master of this fine-tuned method of torture. She yells menus involving homemade lasagna, hot garlic bread, fascinating salads, and more across the barn to the rest of us as she feeds calves and milks her line of cows. Her new husband seems to have fallen into a nice life.....

We try to retaliate with descriptions of homemade chicken soup, afloat with fresh onion tops, harvested from the pots grown in the kitchen, and scattered with fresh parsley ditto. She goes up north every little while and gets us all boneless chicken breasts about half the size of the New York Daily News, which translate into incredible meals no matter how you cook them....so far chicken and biscuits, chicken and potato soup, chicken this, chicken that...it's all good....

Rosie Update

After her visit from our trusted veterinarian and the increase in the dosage of her antibiotic, she seems much improved. Her milk production has picked up a bit and she is cleaning up her hay and grain and looking much perkier.

Thank you all for your kind thoughts and good wishes. She is a nice girl and we are quite fond of her.

Sure was nasty cold yesterday. Area readings ranged from -3 to -10. Not sure how cold it was here, but we spent still more time buttoning up more cold air leaks in the barn and thawing water bowls and hoses that froze overnight. 

Alan licked the heifer hose freezing situation anyhow. He took the whole hose down and coiled it in the milkhouse, which is heated. I will have to drag it out tomorrow, but at least it will work.

Didn't get the Farm Side written this week, not a great start to the new year. We were just too busy dealing with Rosie and I was too cold to mess with it. I have a bit written on the Census of Agriculture for next week though. I'll keep working on that so I won't miss another week. What an intrusive pain in the backside that is! It is going to take us days to gather and input all the data. A lot of people aren't doing it and I don't blame them a bit, but it is required by law and I am a little nervous about potential consequences if we skip it.

Hope you are warm and dry and safe.

In Local News

Liz 'n' Jade were texting me about this last night as it was going on. Took a while for it to show up in the news though. Th kids as well as many neighbors had seen and heard the dogs and mentioned it to folks in positions of authority over time.

Wonder if "puppy milling" was all that was going on there......

Waitin' for the Vet

It's a long story, but poor Rosie needs some doctoring beyond what we can provide.

Update....A little backstory from Saturday. I wrote this then, but waited to post it until now, because I was afraid things were going to go way south on us.....so this is from last week: 

Sometimes you just know...one look at my lovely Rosy and I knew she wasn't right. I noticed yesterday that her udder was a bit overlarge for a heifer not due to calve until February and we had already planned to move her to a stall in the cow barn this morning, just so we could check things out. 

This morning she was clearly in labor and not progressing one bit. I hate to see an animal straining and nothing bulging outward in the back end. It can mean all kinds of stuff...all bad. Twisted uterus. Head back. Leg back. Both legs back. Tangled up twins. What it doesn't mean is anything good.

She was happy to go into an empty tie stall. We left her alone to settle for a while, then the boss palpated her. At first he thought she was okay. Second check revealed a leg back. I won't bore you or gross you out too much with the details, but the calf was a dead preemie. A dead calf is much harder for the cow to deliver than a live one and a tiny preemie is even worse.

I felt so bad for poor Rosie. In order to help her....and hopefully save her life...we had to hurt her. She didn't understand the needles or the efforts involved in getting the leg and head.,....which was twisted...aligned so her baby could be born. I am thankful that Alan and Liz do the whole team work thing so well. Without them it would have been a lot worse i fear.

When all was done, we had to move her to a stall on the other side of the barn because she kept crawling under the tie rail in the first stall.

Hopefully she will pull through all right and it would be a nice bonus if she comes into milk and gives us a lactation. It about broke my heart to watch Alan lead her around the barn on a halter. Even though she had just been through a terrible ordeal, she paraded like the show cow she is, head up and proud.

Back to the present....Rosie did great for a couple of days. She came into milk and ate like a champion. We put her on antibiotics, just in case. 

Then yesterday she went off feed. Our vet came in to see her today and diagnosed a uterine infection. She had a temp of 105!

Thus she received some anti-inflammatory medicine and will get a higher dosage of antibiotics for five days. Her milk will have to be diverted from the tank for quite a while for that reason, but it will be well worth it if she recovers all right.

A Dairy Happy New Year

Thank you for stopping by for a visit each day! It has been a great pleasure to get to know so many nice folks here and I hope the coming year will bring more of the same.

And for all of you with triskaidekaphobia...well, you have my sympathies for the coming twelve months

Snow Art

Whenever the snow sticks to everything as it has done the past few days you can about count on it that you will soon have wind and lots of it....or maybe, once in a while, rain....

This time both storms resulted in every single blade of grass, tree limb, and even animals, being quite coated. Even the burdocks looked like cotton balls with teeth. 

And since it is much too cold to rain, here comes the wind. 

The wind is an artist. It carves the soft comfort of mounded snow into harsh, sharp edges, glaring bright with slanting light, and glittering in the evening moonlight.

It is a sculptor of the fantastic, leaving wonder in its wake, and a dancer across the highways, jitterbugging skirts ashake. 

It weaves the light fantastic on the way home from family Christmas fun and music, but it hides sweeping treachery beneath. One tomfool, damnfool skates right through a busy field of it. There is ice underneath you turkey...he nearly slides right into us. Jade 'n' Liz are good team drivers...Jade has the wheel, but Liz is watching too.... they miss him by a whisker (a kinda small kitten's whisker at that) and we arrive home safe and happy.

I think I will stay home tonight.

Sunday Stills...Five Best of 2012

For more Sunday Stills......

Thankful

For fleece and flannel and good goose feathers! Furry things, fuzzy things, warm, woolly, and wondrous things.

Yep, Carhartt, Dickies, and all their brethren, they're our best buddies during all this weatherin. 

Holy...er....Holy Unprintable!

For all you dairy farmers out there..... John Bunting's Dairy Journal linked to this page from the Milkweed, which details a meeting with some CME officials. I follow JBDJ faithfully to keep up on the real deal in dairying, and am grateful to the good gentlemen who are keeping it going during John's absence.

Besides reading the main article on the page, you won't want to miss the little inset at the bottom right, about the dairy farmer's milk check being incorrect. Talk about a Holy Cow moment!

Seed Catalogs

Yeah, you could almost warm your hands over the covers and you can sure fuel your dreams with the colors. They sure know just when to send them to get you all fired up and pulling out the plastic. They kinda clash with the snow though.

I had a new idea for the growing vegetables indoors scheme. I'll betcha you could do radishes in a flower pot in a bright window real easy. I am going to give it a go.....not that I even like radishes.

 Got to bring a pot in off the front porch before we seal it off though. We have left it open for Christmas lights, but they are down and put away....time to close out more of the cold.

Anyhow, the first cup of coffee sure tastes good this time of year. Well, actually it tastes good any time of year, but the warmth is extra welcome. We didn't even turn the cows out in the yard yesterday. Alan rolled a great big round bale inside and we unrolled it in the manger and let them eat inside. Just too darned cold and nasty and we were afraid the barn would freeze up without their big, warm bodies inside.

We will have to decide about today.....

Kinda Confused

Like good little puppets we scurried around yesterday getting ready for the storm apocalypse. No matter what comes it is always right to be prepared.

And I actually believed the hype this time. Radar screens looked nasty and the storm looked like a big one.

Well, it is snowing, has snowed and will snow some more. The roads will be awful, I guarantee it, prolly mostly because budget cuts keep them from being plowed and salted enough. There is talk of freezing rain, sleet, and thunder.....

But as I looked out at it this morning I realized that, but for the press frenzy, this would just be snow. Back in the day, when we walked to school uphill both ways, barefoot, we got storms like these starting in November and carrying through until whenever spring decided to stick its toe in the door. At least one a week. I can remember learning to drive in Gloversville with the snow banks so tall and thick the roads were one-way and resembled tunnels more than highways. That was snow.....

As for this stuff, "sakes, it's only weather."

They were feeding these guys when we stopped at the hatchery Sunday.
Quite a thing to see them jump.

Hope you are all warm and dry, well-fed and safe.....

An hour Late

The snow was supposed to start at 7, but it wasn't until 8 that the wet, small, penetrating balls of precipitation began to pelt down. Not sure what to call it....not exactly sleet....not really snow. Cold and wet though, cold and wet.

Wonder if this storm will be the real deal or another media event as many of them have been the past few years.

Anyhow, chores are done, everyone is home, Becky made mac and cheese with ham...her special recipe...all is well. Hope you are all safe and warm and dry.

Winter Storm Watch

Because everyone likes to snuggle with the doggy, INSIDE his crate

Yep, for today and tomorrow. 

Yesterday was pretty much normal....except for a couple of welcome naps. 

However, Christmas doesn't stop work on a farm or even for those involved in keeping your milk supply clean and safe. Liz, who is a milk inspector, spent most of yesterday morning on the phone dealing with issues involving one of her farms. She was frantic, but all was smoothed over in the end, or at least delayed until today. She will be spending the whole day on the road, hopefully safely, getting things all straightened out.

I am working on this story for the Farm Side. What a mess! What a witch hunt. I hope that now this family can get on with doing what it was meant to do...grow food for hungry people...instead of spending all their time and money in court.

And it is cold. Not Alaska cold. Not South Dakota cold. Just New York cold, which is cold enough for me.

A Card for You (From Cevin and Friends)

Because I Can

Merry Christmas <  click me!

A Pretty Big Day

Daybreak over the field behind the folks' house

We fielded two teams yesterday for the first time ever for the Mayfield South section of the Johnstown CBC. The weather was expected to hold bird numbers down, but although we missed quite a few common species, we saw some great numbers of certain birds. It did snow off and on all day and the light was simply awful. Matt and Lisa chased around for a long while after the bluebirds, because they could barely see any color on them at all.



There were two hours of walking, 77 miles of road travel, some pleasant conversations with nice folks walking dogs about what the heck we were up to, and one yelling at from a guy who didn't like us scoping out the mourning doves in his apple tree.

In no particular order we saw:

Common Crows 
Tree Sparrows
House Sparrows
Song Sparrows
Gold Finches
House Finches
Black-capped Chickadees
Ring-billed Gull
Herring Gull
White-breasted Nuthatches
Rock Pigeons
Tufted Titmouse
European Starlings
Common Redpolls
Mourning Doves
Mallard Ducks
American Turkey
Canada Geese
Dark-eyed Juncos
Northern Cardinals
Red-tailed Hawks
American Kestrels
And Matt and Lisa walked our aunt and uncle's farm and added:
Eastern Bluebirds
Cedar Waxwings

American Robins
 plus adding to the numbers of many of the other above birds. 

Dusk, back at their house again after a long, long day