Shortcut

What happened?

Through the old feeder wagon.

What do I do now?

Maybe this will work

Dang

Banzai! 

Ma-a-a-a, ma-a-a-a, you'll never believe what just happened to me

Cruel and Unusual

The stolen calves were finally found, but four were dead and the three remaining are not in the best of shape.

This just makes me sick. From photos of the barn where they were stolen, they lived in the best of conditions before they were taken. The place looked clean and bright and comfortable.

Now some jerks, for want of a better term, are alleged to have neglected them unto what was undoubtedly a horrible death.

Calf care is a highly skilled task. They are babies and need consistent and appropriate feed, care, and housing. Every little detail is important. You can just bet the farmer knew what height to place their feeders, what temperature to feed their milk, and what to watch for in the way of problems.

No doubt he understood the necessity for the esophageal groove to close so that the milk went into the abomasum and not the rumen, and how to achieve this goal.

And the need for warm, clean, dry bedding and freedom from drafts and damp. He surely understood animal husbandry. These brutes certainly did not. 

 I hope they throw the book at whoever did this ugly thing. 

Is it Wednesday Already

I can scarcely believe it. 

So busy. 

It has been nice, so the boss has made hay. The mow has been slowly filling up all summer, as he fought with the horrible weather, week in and week out. He has worked more Sundays this year than he ever did when we had cows. The weather pattern has had only Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday having any dry weather, so he has had to bale and store on Sunday...just no choice.

Rainbows for Linda

I've been putting up squash and beans, moving things off the honey locust tree, which alas, has to be cut down in a couple of weeks, moving my rock and herb garden, which live among her roots, and watching over the coordination of moving a pony east, the two ponies we already have to the fair...and...and...and.... The big blue spruce is going too, but I am not so attached to that one.

The air has been autumn-cool, and nights downright chilly. You can see your breath and that of the cows if you walk to the barn in the morning. Fat little Marv goes to pasture each day with his mother and Moon and his big sister, Cinnamon. He is like a little piglet, round, robust and red, red, red.

Fall migration is kicking in big time. Warblers are much in evidence, grackles are gone, haven't seen a swallow in weeks....they should be leaving this week or next, but the boss says he hasn't seen one when he's been raking hay, for ages. They are great company when you are alone out there on the tractor, swooping right across the hood and whirling over the windrows, as they seek out the bugs your wheels and equipment stir up. I just watch and enjoy, but he used to like to auction them off, taking each fleeting bird as a bid, as he practiced his bid calling.

Turns out that the darned chipmunk can climb the arbor, to which I have been moving the bird feeders from the honey locust. The chickadees aren't thrilled and neither am it.

Yesterday was interesting. I did beans on Monday, so Tuesday was squash day. I was right in the middle of boiling up a big bunch of them, when Becky called home from the restaurant where she works. Something was up with the village water, and they were having to replace all their water with purchased water.

Oh, now isn't that just grand? As it happens we have village water....

I was darned if I was going to quit in the middle and dump all that work, without more information, so I just labeled all the bags of squash that I made. 

And, sure enough, along about ten PM we finally heard that there is a boil water advisory for the village....always nice to be the first to know and all.


Seems it's an issue with the chlorination though, so I will wait to toss the squash...and the beans I did the day before..... as this has been ongoing I guess...until I hear the results of the tests for bacteria. Because everything is probably actually fine. 

Meanwhile...bottled water...and trying to be very careful for the baby's sake.

Peggy Fix

She eats carrots like a starving wolf. Not quite as crazy about applesauce and bananas. 

This Works

Really well too. I use my phone to play music while I am working, but ear phone cords are annoying, and without them it doesn't have the greatest sound, nor is it very loud.

However, I saw somewhere on Facebook, no idea where, the idea of putting the phone into a glass to amplify it.

I used this big measuring cup instead, and not only was it louder, but the bass was much richer, and the sound was improved all around.

So easy.

So effective.

Twenty-five Years is not Enough

Forever would not be enough. Besides the evil perpetrated against the poor little children, kidnapped by these alleged fiends, a terrible crime has been committed against the whole culture of the Amish people, and against the rural mindset everywhere.

If they are not safe in their own yard, then where is there safety and sanctuary?

In the same segment of Upstate NY, where, when a neighbor loses their barn to a terrible fire, everyone, even strangers, pitches in to help in any way possible, including the Amish, who will help with the rebuilding, monsters prowl, hunting small children as if they were prey.

The court system cannot protect the innocent in this case, but I surely hope it can prove the guilt and provide the punishment for the alleged jackals among us.

Sunday Stills....Flashback

One of my brothers telling fortunes

My dad, who was known as "Big Chief Step in....yeah that..."
because of an incident with the floor in the bathroon, which was full of Yatha's puppies

Aunts

Look, a horse, a Standarbred I once took care of, name Sheepshead

One of these is not like the other....it's an uncle.
Five extra points if you know which one, and which uncle it is.

Grandpa Lachmayer, one of the nicest folks you could ever know

These are by no means the oldest photos that I have taken, but they are some of the oldest ones that I still have. My aunt and uncle bought my brother and me each a Kodak Instamatic camera when we were small kids. 

I started taking photos right away, but I suspect that very few of them ever were actually developed. These are all from 1972, taken at a family Halloween party that year.

For more Sunday Stills......

Arrest Made in Amish Kidnapping

Two people were quickly apprehended in the kidnapping of those poor little Amish children.

I am glad they caught them and have them locked up, but I shudder to think what their reasoning for this abominable act might be.

And to people who reviled the parents for having the girls running the farm standwhile they did chores....they were not doing anything wrong by working right at the edge of their own yard.

 Kids play near their homes all the time, or go to the park across the street, or run over to the neighbor's for a minute. Kids can't be in their parent's sight every second of every day. We were super paranoid about stranger danger when we lived down in town, what with the Thruway exit less than a mile from the house, and motels and truck stops surrounding us. People picked on us about it all the time.

And yet the kids, by the time they were twelve, still spent a certain amount of time out of our sight. Inevitably.

The blame lies squarely on the perpetrators.

Whining About the Heat

As last winter stumbled to a reluctant halt, bringing frost into late May and leaving us kind of shell shocked from weather miseries, everyone said, "The first person to complain about the heat is going to get......" 

Fill in your own nasty fate. I heard a lot of them.

Instead, here it is the middle of August, the Dog Days. 

We should be whining about the heat, and stressing the grid with excess air conditioner use. We should be threatening to bash the first person who complains about the cold, when winter finally brings relief from the summer furnace.

Instead, last night, I asked the boss to go down in the cellar and turn on the valve that diverts hot water from the outdoor wood stove, into the furnace plenum.

Yeah, we have it going as we have used it to heat water most of the summer, but the furnace part is always shut off, as, if hot water goes through it, even with the furnace fans all shut off, passive warm air seeps upstairs.

And, you know what? It feels good.

He'll probably have to go back down in a day or two and divert it back to its usual path, but for now the house is not damp.

It is not dank. It is not chilly and shiverish and too darned cold for a little baby.

Yep. Now, where's my flannel shirt?

Found Safe

Last thing before bed last night, just as I was hollering in to the boss, Jade came running out of their part of the house with the same news...the little Amish girls were found alive, and evidently okay.

Mystery abounds though. The language barrier between people who speak modern English and the folks who speak the old version of German that they use is so great....

I hope they find the perpetrators promptly though, and that they are punished appropriately. 

Story from the Daily News

And Fox News

And from ABC

It even made the Daily Mail in Great Britain.

We all went to bed in a better frame of mind. I know the little ones were in the back of my mind all day. Poor children! No child should ever have to deal with the terror they must have felt, and they were perhaps even less prepared than their "English" counterparts might be.

So glad that they are back with their family.

Bucket List

A while back I asked Alan if he would take me to a parking lot somewhere and let me step behind the wheel of his year-and-half old Camaro.

For one reason and another, usually that I was busy, we didn't get it done until today.

Um, wow!

I grew up in the muscle car era...took my road test on a Pontiac Firebird, routinely drove a '69 Chevelle, and have driven all sorts of other cars and trucks. 

And I can drive a standard. In fact my first car was a bright orange Chevy, 3-on-the-tree 1/2 ton pickup. I even had another old Chevy that had been converted...by utterly incompetent kids...from an automatic to a standard. That one would only start on hills, and had flat tires every day. So I rotated my tires, myself, every day, and knew the location of every hill in three counties. (Normal tire rotation does include getting the one that isn't flat out of the trunk and putting on the car, right?)

However, I admit I was really nervous about driving his six-speed beast, even in a parking lot.

I did it though.

Didn't stall it a single time.

 Didn't get out of second gear either, but with more room I could have. 

The sweetest car I ever drove. So smooth, so nimble, so much more power than anyone could possibly need. It's probably a good thing that I never owned a car like that.

Magnum

He was my magical first horse. I rode him everywhere....the kids still moan when we pass down some distant back road and I say, "I used to ride Magnum here."

He came to me as a two-year-old and stayed until he was over thirty. I can still recreate him in my mind, from his one white hoof to the whorls in his hair. We were pretty good friends....to say the least.

Yesterday he was brought back to me....literally.

A dear Internet friend in a distant state conspired with Liz to recreate him as a merry-go-round horse and sent him to me as a complete surprise.

I got cold chills as I opened the box.

Isn't he beautiful!

Amazing.........and thank you.....

Amber Alert

It appears that someone has kidnapped two little Amish girls from a roadside stand in St. Lawrence County. The alert extends to counties adjacent to ours.

This is simply horrific. I can't imagine the terror those little ones must be experiencing.

That Pesky Animal Rights Video

Yet another, oh, those cruel dairy farmers, video surfaced yesterday. I haven't watched it, but it is said that it showed cows walking in deep manure.

Dairy Carrie took an intensive look at it and found a number of discrepancies, which would probably only be noticed by an industry insider. She pretty much discredited the video, at least for anyone who understood cows.

Then this morning a farmer on Facebook shared this local news story that completely debunked the whole thing.

Animal control and the Department of Agriculture stepped in, took a look and found no basis at all for claims of cruelty.

No basis. Just hype. They did mention a few housekeeping issues due to recent bad weather, but you'll get that, trust me. It doesn't equal abuse.

To me, this just makes other undercover videos that much more suspect than they already were.

Hooray for Carrots

Teenagers Make you Tired

Did you clean your room?

Do not let me see you out here again until it is done.

Well, that ought to keep him out of my hare for a little while

MA-A-A-A, my hears hurt. Look, They're all pink!

MA-A-A-A-A-A

And you can't get away from them.....

Sigh

Even if you are a cottontail.

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.....