Let's Have some Fun

Sunday Stills....Face Time

For more Sunday Stills......

Not just another pretty face

Wild man...or so he thinks

Baby robin

Baby Peggy

You May be a Farm Girl if

BTW, this is Liz's arm

You run over to the milk house windowsill at the barn to get a roll of Vetrap to doctor on your arm, upon which you have poison ivy, or wild parsley poisoning, or some other natural, outdoor, chemical, nasty burn.

You are certainly a farm girl if it doesn't bother you that it is calf scours yellow.

And, yes, Virginia, there are beans. Beans for dinner last night. Another big bowl in the fridge waiting to be put up today. One half row almost ready, the picked over rows putting out a few already, and at least three more rows in the upper garden not in bloom yet and needing weeding, but growing. 

I am seeing beans in my sleep.

Busted

Got rain? Why, yes, or at least yesterday we did

They caught the people who...allegedly....shot up our neighbor's tractor.

Now if they can just find our other neighbor's baler.

First Day on the New Feet

Over the Mountain

And Through the Woods

Past the Feeder Wagon

Hey, I'm Getting Good

Ma-a-a-a, Hey, Ma-a-a-a-a

I'm Right Here, Shut Your Pie Hole

Picking Wet Beans

Baby turkeys

Is frowned upon because of the potential to spread disease to the plants. However, there was no choice yesterday. There were so many ripe and no promise of any dry weather to come. At least most of them were more or less dry and there sure were a lot of beans. I filled my two biggest bowls, and there is another big piece of row to go.

I just ran out of steam. Today we will process and freeze them.

Hoping strongly that the curled leaves on the tomatoes in the upper garden are not caused by late blight. If they are, kiss that crop goodbye. Seems we only get good tomatoes maybe one year in three, even if I plant them in new, clean ground.

Ida Red

Oh, well, I put in some more lettuce yesterday as the first crop is almost gone. You can grow a lot of lettuce in a small barrel or flower pot and it gets a lot less buggy that way. I should probably think about starting a couple of pots indoors too. I always wait too late and we are without lettuce for a while in the fall.

Not much else going on. Haying is very slow because of the relentless rain. C'mon now, it does not have to rain four days a week on my account. Or even two. Although the whole green-as-Ireland thing is very beautiful this summer, there are a lot of farmers desperately trying to get their crops in.

It could let up for a bit....just sayin'
  

Vitis Riparia

See What I Mean?

I know, I know, these are not beans, but believe me, there are beans out there.....

Garden Gathering

Monday rain

After a morning flurry of writing, bookkeeping, housework and similar routine, I ventured out to the lower garden to pick some stuff for salad for supper yesterday

Tuesday clearing

Um, yeah, the beans are ripe. Romano beans, yellow beans, burgundy beans. There are a lot of them.

Guess we will be working on filling the freezer for winter, if it dries off enough to pick. 

After evidently being blown down by the wind, the squash is once again upright
First little crookneck picked for last night's salad

Bama is still keeping us waiting, although a check a few minutes ago revealed a certain pensive look, and restless shifting that may augur something.....maybe....she is sure bagged up nice and doesn't look bad for an older cow.

Meanwhile, the turkeys are growing pretty well, the laying pullets look quite nice, the chicks and poults down in the brooder are getting feathers, the red-tailed hawks up in the heifer woods are up to something...they scream and skirl all day. 

Miss Peggy picking out a piggy on her farm girl blankie

And the indigo bunting is singing..all day too..and even after dark...up on the wire by the northwest corner of the house.

Just another day.....in Paradise.

Bama Update

Bama still has not calved. I am wondering if she has a bull in there....I don't think she has ever had a bull before, so I guess she is due. Not enjoying the waiting though.

She really wants to go back to pasture and tends to sleep by the barnyard gate in hopes, I guess, that someone will open it and let her go out there. It is a big pasture though, and with only three head grazing it the grass is very, very thick and tall. She is a pretty old cow and we don't want her calving out there at the mercy of the coyotes, which are, as always, plentiful.

Storm World

Zipper, one of the beef steers we are raising. if he had been a heifer,
he would have made a show calf, and a nice one.

Another set of thunderstorms churned the valley like a blender last night.

The lightning was blindingly enthusiastic and the thunder rolled, and rumbled and grumbled for what seemed like hours.

Made for a restless, not good sleeping night, and did something...or something did something...to my squash patch. One plant is all twisted up and tipped over and another doesn't look too good. Dagnabbit. That squash looked fantastic....yesterday....

But alas, he was a bull

Sunday Stills....Through a Window

Barn window and kitchen window for me.

For more Sunday Stills.......

The Shores of Home

A pair of giant  boots greets me as I walk through the dawnlight kitchen with the Daisy Doodlebop. 

Both my feet would fit in one with room to spare.

A laundry basket that is not mine next to the counter. A baby swing, a lambie rattle, piles of books I have not and will not ever read.

Signs that a family lives here. Our boy is home from the wilds of Washington DC. Peggy perches in the kitchen most days, and Becky keeps her books close and her other books closer.

I read all the time people whining about their grown children moving home for a while due to the bad economy or unexpected circumstances of all sorts. All I can think is, for Heaven's sake, suck it up. Not too many generations ago life was fluid. Family ebbed and flowed around a grandparent center, like seas washing on the shores of home. 

I love it that our kids all come and go. Sometimes it gets crazy, but even when everyone is home this house is so big we still have two empty...well, unoccupied, they are far from empty....bedrooms. There is room for everybody and some to spare.

Everybody is gainfully employed and doing their part to keep America moving and growing. Building, fixing, feeding and cleaning up our country. Nuts and bolts jobs of which Mike Rowe would approve, with skills that are being lost all too quickly, as people walk away from the land and the tools that tame it.

And I get to play and flirt with dear Miss Peggy, who has recently discovered that she has feet, which never get lost unlike her binkie and bear, which elude her baby reach a hundred times a day. Feet are always right there handy to play with if she gets bored.

Life is good.

The Waiting Begins

Cinnamon

Thanks to some very kind friends we got to keep my older cow, Bama Breeze, rather then sending her when we sold the cows. The auctioneer said that even though she was expecting a calf, she would probably be sold for beef, because she is a three-quartered cow, that is, one of her "faucets" doesn't work right.

You can milk a cow with that problem, just fold over one inflation and milk the other three, and we did and will, but many farmers don't want to take on such a cow.

It was hard to part with any of them, but Bama has always been a big favorite of those of us who milked her...mostly me and Becky. However, our friends made it possible for us to keep her, for which we are most grateful.

She is, as far as we know, due to calve the 28th. Last night she was bagged up tight and this morning the cows didn't come down, even to the gate, near which they usually sleep after they are done grazing.

Liz, being brave, as she isn't used to it, took Jade's four-wheeler up to find them.

They were okay, and she brought them in, but Bama looks as if she may calve today. Thus we decided to keep them in the barnyard where they are easily accessible if help is needed and we put our beef heifer, Cinnamon, in a stall in the barn. Her favorite pastime is abusing poor old Bama and it wouldn't be good if she was butting her and shoving her around while she is having her calf.

So today we wait. And check. Maybe tonight too. Maybe all next week. You never know with a cow and they just won't tell you.

Things are Hatching

Downsizing from Dairy

With only two milk cows left, I guess I can't call this place a dairy farm any more. Of course we do milk old Neon Moon, for the house and for the calves, and some day Bama Breeze will have that calf....but there is no hungry herd waiting in the barn any more.

Thus I changed the template of this blog...finally...to reflect that...and took off the "not your average stay at home mom..." part too. Coming up on the ninth anniversary of the day I decided that it would be fun to blog. Guess you could call me a stay at home grandma now.

This does not mean that agricultural activity has ceased at Northview Farm. We are as busy as ever, I swear. The boss is making hay between the rain storms, and has managed to keep most of what he has on hand from getting rained on...quite an accomplishment this year. He has always made good hay. 

Lots of gardens. Lots of woodchucks. They are eating all our beets!!!! We picked peas and beans yesterday before the storm and had them with dinner. Yum.

The kids have the place full of poultry, including turkeys, chickens, and guinea fowl....and of course, the old peahen.

 You should have seen us the other night when the red sex link hen decided to dump all her brand new guinea keets out in the yard and abandon them.


It was evening chore time, calves to feed, the cow to milk, the pipeline to clean and sanitize...when the drama happened.

The poor little keets were just hatched, some of them still damp, and they could not take even a few minutes without heat. Thus Becky put them all in her shirt while the rest of us ran for.....stuff.....

A pair of light bulbs in a holder that we use to keep the milk pump from freezing in the winter. A lead cord. Newspapers. Wire. Etc. Etc.

Within a very short time an emergency brooder was built, and most of them survived and thrived.....although it does puzzle me every time I come downstairs in the dark and see the light in the heifer barn.

There are plans for other animals, as  time allows. We have always raised good pork, and we have two cows to supply milk. The kids want lambs. I love sheep, but the boss is not enamored, so that is on hold for a bit but....

Other than taxes and paying off the remainder of what it cost us to make milk the years after 2009, we run this place very cheaply. A good part of day-to-day living expenses could probably be paid with the income from diversified livestock. Or we can eat them ourselves. Even when we couldn't afford to butcher a beef and were living on game that awful winter, we ate well.....

So anyhow, things have changed, but they have remained the same too...

Little Things

Can mean so much. Last Saturday, Alan took his sister, his fiance, and a friend to NYC for a quick tour of the most popular sites. While they were at the World Trade Center Memorial, they took the time to find this name on the wall....Carl Anthony DiFranco.

Cold chills ran over me when I saw this photo in a text he sent me.

You see, I feel as if we knew this young man, who perished so suddenly and needlessly in that horrific act of terrorism.

Thank you kids, for being so incredibly thoughtful as to interrupt your day in the big city to find and photograph this for me. It meant a lot.