Memories

My folks were not farmers, which is fine. I grew up surrounded by books and history, and never felt the least bit removed from the wide world, and the events of the near and distant past....from the Revolutionary War to the finding of the first known dinosaur eggs, it was all there in the book shop and the antique shop...

However, I still got to grow up on a farm, as my beloved aunt married a good farmer, and all the cousins and my brothers and I ran tame on their farm.

We all got to visit yesterday for a family reunion, which fostered the reliving of a favorite set of memories....of family and fun...and the making of new ones, with two hay rides, pork barbecue made by my brother and his lovely wife, lots of babies, and cousins and cousins and more cousins...and aunts and uncles and lots of love and fun...

When things got a little quiet for a bit I treated myself to a tour of the barn, which, when I was a kid, seemed like a mysterious paradise dropped down to earth for my personal entertainment.

There were cows back then. Burgess Black, Jessica, and dozens of others whose names I've forgotten.

Baby calves that would suck on your fingers. Barn cats. A series of dogs, the most memorable of whom was Yoki, a sort of collie shepherd cross, who was known, upon occasion, to fetch down the cows, a feat which impressed me no end. 

A childhood visit to the farm was like water on the desert to a city kid born to farm, although I surely didn't know it yet.


And if we ran out of domestic critters to spoil and pester, there were fields full of bunnies, and snakes, and a creek with fish and frogs and tadpoles and dragon flies, and, and, and.

There were whippoorwills to lull us to sleep at night, or keep us wakeful, replaying the wonders of each day in our young minds, as we snuggled under feather beds, in the warm, sweet, country dark.

Yesterday the barn was empty, except for a spooky black cat that ran out as I walked in....and cousins. There were delightful little cousin's kids' kids playing under the haymow where we played when we were little. The hay is put up in bales now, but when we first visited, there was loose hay and we were allowed to hide up there, and hunt down the hidden kittens, and even jump out when the mow floor below was stacked with fluffy stuff. Tarzan had nothing on us.

I was taken back by the barn chart hanging near the door. When I was little I studied the bulls whose photos were there, for planning matings of the Holsteins that lived there. What made this one better than that one, why, why, why? Little did I know I was storing up knowledge for a future of my own. 

(I can remember reading Hoard's Dairyman while sitting in my uncle's chair, in the living room. I always had to be reading something....and if I ran out of books, there it was....who knew that all that gibberish about corn and cattle would mean so much some day.)

The barn was perfectly tidy, and haunted only by happiness. I wandered back to the warmth of the party, heartful  with thanks that I got to grow up in such a wonderful place.

A huge thanks to my aunt and uncle who made it possible and to their kids who shared them and their home with us. And thanks for the party too. That was really something....Good times, good times....

Sunday Stills....Crowd Work

This is a little late, but better late than never I guess. This is one of the two hay rides at our family reunion today. Lots of kids and grown ups pulled along behind my uncle's Johnny Poppers, a JD A and a 60.

Much fun was had by all....I walked....I have spent enough time on hay wagons to last me. 

For more Sunday Stills.....

Good Morning from Northview

Where things are humming. Must be the young entry is off the nest and in the air. Although the one in flight looks like a female, the faintly barred throat leads me to believe that it is a young male. It certainly is inquisitive, as it gave me a good looking over and was noodling around in a geranium about six inches from my ear.

A Day in the Weather

Of Upstate NY

Bet You Can't Do This

Russia and the Price of Bacon

No doubt my view of international trade from here at the kitchen table is more than slightly simplistic. 

However, I was just reading a Meatingplace article about how the Russian ban on food imports from the EU (and just about everywhere else on earth...wonder what that will do for food prices for folks living under the sign of the bear???) is going to increase competition with the USA for Asian pork markets. 

Lately our pork has been a hot commodity in places like China where they don't do quite as good a job of raising it as we do.

Now, what with porcine viral diarrhea decimating piglets on our hog farms, and pork being a kind of dicey business to be in in the first place, I wish our farmers well, and hope this doesn't hurt them too badly. Having been in the dairy business almost all my life, I am familiar with how over-supply, even manufactured oversupply, fomented by counting the same milk twice and all, can cripple an industry.

However, maybe, the price of bacon will drop a dime or two.

And yes it rained again yesterday, despite it being sunny and nice nearly all day. Six times at my last count, although it could have been seven. Friends to the west of us said that it has rained every day for ten days... and they said that a couple of days ago. Makes putting in baled hay utterly impossible.  Worst of it is, twenty miles from here they haven't had a drop and are putting up hay like it was summer or something.

And BTW, if you see our man Jade Schultz, wish him a Happy Birthday!

Heat Index

If I have heard the term at all this summer, it has only been a couple of times. There may have been two or three days when we whined about being too warm, but it has been the coolest summer in my memory.

We never even took the cover off the little air conditioner. There have been other summers when we sweltered along without it, trying to save on electricity, but never have we just not wanted it.

Many evenings are so cool that I come down in the morning to find all the inside doors closed....virtually unheard of in this big house, designed so well for natural air cooling (which is no fun in the winter!!!)

This morning, I realized, that calendar be darned, it's pretty much fall. Last night as I walked to the barn there were pockets of cool, crisp, clear air in every shady area. Crickets and cicadas are screaming. Little brown warblers are showing up in the hedgerows.

The grass on the hill behind the house has turned pinky-gold; I just heard a chickadee, cardinals and other cold time birds are beginning to hang around too. The sun comes up, all lazy and slow, as far south as the big cherry tree in the hedgerow between us and town.

On one hand I am so not ready. We really need to get some hay made or it is going to be a real tough year when tax time comes around. On the other hand it is really nice out.

Oh, and thank you so much to Jan of the Poodle and Dog blog for this lovely post about farming. She gets it!

Cattle Rustlers right here in New York

We figured when we heard about these calves being stolen  earlier this week that they were taken right down to the sale in Central Bridge and were long gone.

However, the nefarious, nasty, mean, dirty, rotten sons of guns that rustled them at least took milk replacer to feed them too.

So maybe they can be found, although probably not. 

If you hear, or see, or know anything about this lousy crime, please contact the authorities.

Things are getting pretty bad when somebody cuts a gate to steal little baby calves from a farmer.

Work Interrupted. Post Interrupted too.

These two look like mother and baby, but instead they are full siblings, sired by Checkerboard Magnums Promise, out of Frieland LF Bama Breeze

This was meant to be published yesterday.

Rain again. The last load of hay didn't get unloaded into the barn.

I dragged the barrels over to plant some new lettuce, but that isn't happening. And forget picking beans or squash.

Liz is trying to clean the horse and pony barn for tomorrow, when the veterinarian will come to do the health work, Coggins, rabies vaccination, etc. on Diamond and Jack who look to be going this year.

It will be the first ever show for Jack, a teenager now, which should be downright interesting.

However, storm after pop up storm just keeps pouring down. And when it rains, it rains HARD.

So Liz is getting wet, and I am watching a soundly sleeping Peggy, which is a pretty good thing to be doing on such a wet day....and making spaghetti sauce for supper. That too.

Monkey Cage

See the Flower?

Sometimes this place feels just like one....and not at a well-run zoo either.

 From visiting Walmart to pick up Liz's new glasses, only to find that the non-English speaking clerk who called gave us the wrong info, so it was a wasted trip, to Alan going missing....his phone was just dead and he had to work late, but he was in Manhattan....so there were several people pretty worried about him.

And Daisy, who came to us last year at this time, unneutered, and has remained that way because her health is so poor, coming in season and turning into a raving lunatic, not fit company for Martian monkeys.

And deadline.

See the Birdie? (There is one btw)

And the boss needing my computer to watch the Fasig-Tipton sale, so I couldn't restore what little sanity I maintain, with my silly little games.....

See the Bug? Can you tell I have been spending a lot of time talking to Peggy?

Well, yesterday was a day best forgotten.

Hopefully it will be a little calmer today.

Speaking of Muck

It is never a good idea to bite the hand that feeds you. Or to donate a couple of thou to an organization dedicated to doing away with your best customers.

In this case, Muck Boots employees held a fund raiser for HSUS, then the company bragged about it on their page.

You are probably aware that, despite all the cute puppies and kittens they use in their ads, that organization dedicates most of their funds to pensions for staff, fund raising, and destroying animal agriculture. 

They are busy right now in Missouri fighting against a right to farm law.

And who wears their boots?

Farmers. 

Epic fail it would seem to me.

Anyhow, I suspect that the uproar resulting from this is going to leave the Yellowtail Fail in the dust. Lots of people drink wine. Wear barn boots? Not so much.

Dairy Carrie covered it well

Brand New Tractor

New turkey tractor that is. All natural lawn mower anyone?

Bopping to Scotland the Brave, played on the pipes.
Uncle Alan is teaching her right.

Mushroom Madness

Yeah, they were growing on the valuable organic fertilizer, produced daily by our obliging horses.

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.