Along with the garden pond that I often mention, which is really merely a pseudo pond, we also have a couple of real ones. The largest is up in the cow pasture and another is tucked away in the corner of the old horse pasture. That field has rather grown up to brush since the old horses died, but it is still nice up there.

Today I trawled my way through the burrs and goldenrod looking for wood to heat water for showers. When I made it to the pond I found myself wishing for a seat from which to enjoy the tranquil quiet there, while resting up from wood pursuit. Although the day was warm and fine, the grass was soggy from last week's snow and not very inviting.

I thought that I might climb up in Alan's tree stand and sit there for a bit, but then I saw my old mounting block. The block began life as half of a steel barrel that was used for watering heifers and then morphed into a handy object with which I gained enough elevation to get up on Magnum's back. That was after I closed the gate that separates us from the neighbor with whom I used to ride regularly when I was younger and still had the old boy. I had many a fine adventure after I made the transition from standing on that barrel to sitting knee locked on those strong black shoulders. I sure miss the old guy.

He is buried under an apple tree not too far from that gate now, so I rolled the barrel under the gate and across the field to the pond side. It was heavy, but worth it, as I now have a nice spot to sit and watch the clouds roll by and listen to the birds. If a cat's paw of wind plays with the water as it passes it is just an added bonus for my secret entertainment

A wonderful Thanksgiving to all my family, friends, and strangers who stop here. I felt too lousy this year to invite company, though I missed having folks in. The bug we have all had this fall is just relentless and keeps coming back to wrestle us all down. Maybe we'll feel better by spring.

What a quirky holiday this is. Only an American mom would not find it bizarre to get up really, really early in order to saute celery and onions, mix them (by hand of course ) with wet, squishy bread, dump in sage and pepper and stuff it all up the butt of a bird the size of an ostrich on steroids. As if it is humanly possible to eat that much turkey. As if anyone really wants to.
And then to spend the rest of the morning cooking (or watching the kids cook) all sorts of things that only get prepared and eaten here once a year. Like real mashed potatoes. Ambrosia salad, which requires about six different ingredients never found in my cupboards except in November. Gravy. Yams. And so on.

Things I am grateful for this Thanksgiving: The obvious of course; I love my family, our home and our lifestyle. And the dogs and cows and all. (Most days at least.) I am also thankful to the friends who provided fresh apples and squash from their orchards and gardens to aid in our holiday excesses. I am grateful to be toasty warm today because the guys brought in some wonderful hickory yesterday. I am grateful that I have to go out and run around the barn milking cows for a couple of hours so I can work off some of the turkey (that last is a lie but it sounds good).
For the sky painting itself a thousand shades of grey as a squall blew in this afternoon. It made a glorious backdrop to the dry grass blowing under the snow in the old horse pasture outside the big windows. The contrast between bright snow and stark cold trees made me glad for my comfortable chair. Not having to be on the road in said squall, when so many other folks were, was good too.
For a daughter that bakes tasty pies, which I don't, and a son who can carve turkey so I don't have to. For my other daughter milking my string all alone this morning so I could stuff that fat turkey's fanny full of bread. She doesn't really like to do any of the milking except prepping, but she did it anyhow. For leftovers and tomorrow to enjoy them, I say thanks too, although I am sure to be sick of turkey real soon.

This is a corn harvest run by the draft horse club around 1986 in Lykers Corners. Ray Putman with the team of Belgians

What a day we had yesterday. I had a doctor's appointment in the AM and then did some essential shopping. (With five dogs, one does NOT want to run out of dog food too often.) By the time I got home I was way behind on my daily chores, so I got right at the laundry and dishwashing. I had no more than comfortably gotten started when Erin, a favorite young heifer of mine, walked across the pasture, obviously trying to deliver a calf. (My kitchen window overlooks that field.)Behind her were four other heifers, in an amorous mood, and making her life miserable. They would not let her lie down to have her baby.

I went right out and hollered at them, which stopped them for a bit. However, nobody was around but me, so there wasn't much meaningful that I could do to keep them away from her. I sat on a dog house roof with binoculars and kept a close eye on things anyhow. After a while the kids came home and Ralph came in from the field. He fed the rest of the heifers to get their minds off trouble. Then he and I brought poor Erin down and put her in the cow barn. We are kind of crowded right now, with a lot of calves scattered around the barn, so there weren't any empty stalls. We turned Mango out to use her stall, but another heifer, Wichita, pulled her head out of her stanchion. Erin seemed to want to go there, so we let her. Wichita and Mango went outside with a couple of other heifers.

The guys started cleaning stables and I monitored Erin's calving progress. The long and short of that was that she didn't make any. She was exhausted from being pestered by the heifers on the hill and she was just plain too tired to push that baby out.

I decided to pull it. We like to give young animals plenty of time for calving, since it is better for both mother and baby to take their time. However, this baby looked as if it had a head the size of a watermelon and feet the size of footballs, and Erin had had enough. I grabbed a leg in each hand and pulled gently whenever Erin pushed. Alan kept asking to help, but I didn't want to hurry things, and my strength alone was just about enough force for the task. As the baby's head was delivered at least a gallon of fluid gushed out of her lungs so I guess it was a good thing I didn't wait to intervene. Then the hips engaged in Erin's pelvis and sort of locked in place. Alan's help was welcome then. Although Erin was pooped and the calf much stressed by its delayed entry into the world, by a half an hour later mother was standing and licking her baby, which was also on its feet and quite vigorous. The baby's head wasn't really big at all, just swollen from the prolonged labor. She is a milking shorthorn cross and we normally sell those. However, Ralph likes her so I guess she will stay. I started milking with a feeling of great relief. I really like Erin and I would have hated to lose her.

Then we noticed that Wichita had vanished.
Terrific.... full dark, gates all open because the guys were taking tractors through, and a 1300 hundred pound, almost pure white, beast just up and disappears like a puff of smoke.

It took us until nearly nine to find her. Alan and I drove the car to see if she got down to the road, then teams of two took off to hunt whenever there was a break in the chores. Finally she was discovered, calmly munching grass in the cow pasture. We figure that Mango chased her up there.

Alls well that ends well, but it is a good thing that days like that don't come around too often.

There is something serene about our stable on Saturday night. There is no need to rush with the last of the work. No one has school tomorrow; dinner is baking while we work. Becky makes the best macaroni and cheese I have ever tasted and I am looking forward to it as I sweep up to the cows. The cows are looking forward to their last meal of the evening too, a flake of hay apiece.

There are only four calves on buckets, Verona, the "name that calf contest" calf, gets a pail of water. Chateau, Spruce and Baja each get a pail of milk mixed with hot water. After Alan throws the bales down, he and I will parcel the hay out. Veronica, Verona’s mother is so greedy, she rips a big mouthful out of her piece, with a flip of her head, like a woman shaking out wet laundry.
When the cows are all fed Liz and I will pick up the calf buckets, wash them and call it a night.

Outside on the milkhouse step I look toward the house. It looks like the set of a spooky movie. A golden gibbous moon is just peeping over the ridgepole, between the inky Norway spruce and the side of the dusky tower. With lights glowing brightly from the windows against the velvet black it is dramatic and wonderful. It is welcoming too and I am more than ready to go inside.

I stop on the way and throw another six or seven blocks of cherry on the woodstove fire. The digital thermometer on the side reads 179 degrees; we will surely be warm enough tonight. I am really grateful for the cherry. It burns so much hotter and better than the wet, green oak I have been burning all week. Unless oak is bone dry it burns about like soggy sponge, hissing and spitting and refusing to get hot. The best it can do is smolder glumly and keep us kinda, sorta, not quite comfortably warm. Frankly, although it is better than no wood at all, I hate it.

The last job before I go in is to let Nick out of his kennel to race to the house like a cannonball unleashed. He is eager for his dinner too.

Lately we have heard a lot of complaints from our student there about the liberal arts teachers over at college. Several of them seem to like spending valuable class time spouting anti-government rhetoric and complaining about America. One teacher of an English composition class spends no time at all teaching composition. She merely assigns reading and writing projects and uses her classroom as a bully pulpit to bash the present administration and to belittle anyone who doesn’t share her views. Bush voters are called "Lizard brains" and she polls her class to make sure there aren’t any lurking there. Of course, there actually are a couple, but they keep their heads down and hope she doesn’t call on them.

She is very sensitive to minority issues and especially considerate of students from other lands, to the point of favoring them over native children. She has entirely separate rules for the two groups. She hates our culture and tells her students so, keeping them well apprised of their own shortcomings for having been depraved enough to have been born here.

I don’t like knowing that our tax dollars fund such behavior at a state run school, but judging by what goes on in several other classrooms, such behavior is the norm and is quite acceptable. It is pretty much the same in high school too. At any rate kids seem to survive it and I suppose it really doesn’t hurt them much as long as they are capable of thinking for themselves.

My biggest problem with this is that I don’t think teachers of this type bother thinking for THEMSELVES. Certainly there are plenty of problems in this country and our government is far from perfect. However, teachers can obviously say pretty much whatever they want to in the classroom. Even their students rarely argue with them, whether because they agree with them or because they fear reprisals in the grade department, I couldn’t tell you. But the teachers are free. Our Constitution specifically says that they have the right to say what they think. However, they just don’t get it that freedom of thought and speech is special.

Otherwise at least one of them would have noticed that very few other pedagogues are allowed such autonomy in their speech.

Witness the chemistry teacher in Saudi Arabia who was sentenced this week to 750 lashes and 40 months in jail for speaking openly in his classroom. According to Fox News, "Al-Harbi was convicted of questioning and ridiculing Islam, discussing the Bible and defending Jews."
Actually, according to Human Rights Watch, the poor man was only discussing current events with his class and happened to mention a couple of taboo topics like Christianity and the causes of terrorism. Had he lived in America he would have been granted tenure, handed a sweet pension and a terrific health insurance deal. He would have a nice car to drive and lots and lots of time off.

Instead I wonder if he will even survive his planned punishment.

Oh, good grief, it snowed last night and stuck. We have had the darndest year for weather in my memory, right on top of several others that weren't too hot either. First we had the driest summer in decades, especially right here at Northview. Folks all around us got a few showers, but we couldn't find a drop of rain. Then the monsoons set in. I have measured over seven inches of rain in the past three weeks alone. That is without even emptying the rain gauge every time it rained, so we certainly got more than that. Now the snow is lying on top of several inches of gluey mud. It makes it absurdly hard to even walk to the barn, let alone get any work done. Bah humbug! In the old days I would have said, "I am moving to Florida." Doesn't seem like such a hot idea these days.

I liked this fox picture so much that I painted it twice. This is the second attempt.

We were talking today about how different some aspects of our culture were when we were children growing up around here. Back then kids were turned loose to look after themselves when they weren't needed to work. We played wherever we wanted to and did whatever we liked as long as it was legal and we didn't bother anybody. There wasn't much trouble that sensible kids could get into, as long as they stayed away from the railroad tracks. However, Fonda was always a railroad town, and in those days it had a large contingent of hobos, whom we more commonly called bums.

Political correctness hadn't been invented yet, so it was perfectly acceptable to call them that. They for the most part were harmless, alcoholic drifters, who would do odd jobs for a couple of bucks if they needed money for a bottle. My dad often hired a couple of them to load furniture onto his truck. We kids took them for granted and were often grateful find change that they dropped in the alley behind the antique shop. After all soda was a dime and a real big candy bar only cost a nickel.

Only once was I frightened by a hobo. One night my younger brother and I were alone in the darkened shop, waiting for our parents to come take us home. A tall, spooky-looking man in a long black coat came and tried, very determinedly, to get the door open. Mike had seen him come up the steps and locked it just before he got his hand on the latch. We were terrified. There was no phone and we were all alone in the dark. It seemed like a long time before he gave up and went away. A few minutes later my Aunt Bev arrived to drop off my baby brother and I have never been so grateful to see anyone in my life. I am sure the old fellow was just at the wrong door, as there was a boarding house next door, but I didn't know that then.

When Ralph was a boy hobos stopped at outlying houses to beg a meal or maybe work a few hours or a week or two for their keep. They marked the gates and driveways of farms, to show where a good meal or a place to stay could be found, or where there were mean dogs, or stingy landowners. Ralph's mom was always glad to feed them when they came through and his dad often gave them work.

Can you imagine the reaction of the fine citizens of Fonda today, if elderly men wandered around in their own little world of alcoholic haze, with no means of support and no real home? If they slept on the steps behind the bar because they were too under the weather to make their way to a vacant shed down the way and wore the same dirty clothes for weeks? Something would have to be done. Some government authority would have to take action. Wait a minute. The bums are all gone so I guess someone already did.

I received the greatest early Christmas present this week. The delight of my summer has been my water garden, with fish, frogs, hummingbirds and pretty plants to look at. Listening to the music of the fountain and enjoying its tranquility has been a saving grace for each and every day too. However, now that fall is here, the water will soon freeze. The only plants left growing are a big English ivy in a steel bucket and the water cress. It has been very depressing to know that it will soon be encased in a coffin of ice. Spring is an awful long ways away.

However, I was talking to Ralph about wanting to start feeding the birds, but not wanting the sunflower seed hulls to contaminate the pond and he had a brilliant idea. He and Alan immediately put it into action. He ordered a nice, heavy mini-greenhouse from Farm Tek and they set it up right over the pond.

I will still have to run a small deicer all winter for air exchange, and of course everything will still freeze soon enough. However, for now I can put my lettuce plants in there and get a few more weeks out of them and I can start filling the bird feeders too. The blue jays have been screaming at me for weeks to get busy and feed them.

I suspect the pond will thaw much earlier next spring with the greenhouse in place, and as soon as the season warms a bit, I will move it and use it as a big cold frame to harden off my seedlings. I am so excited about the whole thing.

Thanks guys!!

It was almost dark and I was chucking blocks of oak into the maw of the stove, filling it before going over for milking. The dogs were with me for company as they often are. Gael was eyeing the chickens and Mike was lying near me watching as he always does. Suddenly I realized that Mike had dropped into a working crouch and was creeping away from me. Around the corner came a big yearling heifer, named Piper, that had escaped from the hill pasture. Even though she has never been worked by dogs and wasn't dog broke, she thankfully stopped when she saw Mike. I didn't even dare take time to close the stove before going after her myself. Once cattle get into the driveway there is nothing to stop them before they hit Route 5S or the Thruway. Capture is urgent. I got in front of her as quickly as I could and waved my arms to turn her away from the drive. Of course I didn't have a stick or anything else to impress her with so she kept trying to get by. The dogs were eager to get into the game and ran along beside me. I hollered at them to lie down and parked them under a hay wagon out of the way. I finally chased her over by the creek.

The only way I could think of to deal with Piper was to put her in with the bull and heifers in the heifer barnyard. While she cavorted near the creek, I cut the strings off the gate with my jackknife and dragged it open. Of course the heifers inside imediately tried to get outside. I blew my shepherd's whistle and screamed for the girls, who were inside the house, to come help me. Naturally they didn't hear.

Piper then ran off toward the gate of the cow yard. There was no way I could go get her and steer her through the heifer gate, while keeping the other ones inside all by myself. The bull was trying to join in the exodis too and I was getting kind of scared.

Suddenly, it was border collies to the rescue. Even though he can barely see, Mike ran, without any commands, around behind Piper and started to drive her toward me so I could push her through the gate. She put her head down to fight him. He grabbed her nose and swung through the air as she tried to shake him off. She started toward me, as requested, then changed her mind and charged up the hill in the one direction that wasn't covered. Like a black bolt out of nowhere, (or actually from under the wagon) came my little chicken herder, Gael. That was all she wrote. Piper ran through the heifer gate as if pursued by devils. I dragged it back into place and tied it up again. My heart was pounding like a hammer but I was grinning like a fool. I sure do love those dogs.

They were proud and happy and I guess they had a right to be. Two elderly dogs, both plagued by cataracts, one of them about the world's fattest and most outrageously lazy dog, but when the chips were down, they did what they were bred to do. We went back to the stove to close the door and then into the house for biscuits all around.

Saturday.
The weather is amazing for November. Last night a cricket was chirping, albeit hesitantly, when I came over from the barn. The frogs stagger up from hibernating on the bottom of the water garden and lie on the leaves just taking the sun for a while every day. The white throated sparrows are singing spring songs and the mum Frank and Vonnie gave me is blooming again. We are even still eating fresh lettuce from the pots that I planted by the back door a few weeks ago. I planted a winter mix from Pinetree Seeds and it is the tastiest we have ever grown. I pick a leaf almost every time I walk by just to eat out of hand. It is a wonder there is any left.

This warm, dry weather can last as long as it wants to as far as I am concerned. It is such a relief to have the seemingly endless rains over. We still have two corn fields that the guys can't chop because they are too wet. I sure wish they could as we really need the feed for winter.

However, as soon as they take a tractor into them water runs right out of the tire ruts. Maybe we should start growing rice! If they can't get them off they are going to mow down about forty acres of third cutting alfalfa and go after that. I sure hope the snow holds off.

Threecollies, Gael, Mike, Nick

Mike at work

Mike is different now, from the dog he was when he came here. He is old and loyal as only an old dog can be. He knows every nuance of my daily schedule and neatly anticipates where I will be at any time and what I will be doing. This morning, when I came here to the computer, he cocked his head at me, puzzled that I didn’t turn on the television 24-hour news station first. I always do and he knows and expects it. He heads to his kennel when it is time for me to go to the barn for milking. He keeps an eye on me at bedtime to make sure I don’t go up without him. He waits for me to put my glasses on before he gets up in the morning. I may go downstairs without them, but he knows that I will be back if I do. I don’t have to ask. He makes it his business to know.

It was not always like this. When I, in blissful arrogance, took myself off to buy a Border collie pup, I thought that I would be training it to work for me right away. I have had lots of dogs, smart ones, well-trained and delightful dogs. Dogs that I took from humble beginnings to being the best in their obedience classes, the best Frisbee dogs, the ones who knew the most and best tricks of all the dogs. However, a working Border collie, whose mama came right from the sheep-fested hills of Scotland with hundreds of years of have-to in her blood, was a whole nother story. One that it would take me quite a while to comprehend.

I thought I knew cows too, which is a good place to start when training a herding dog. Mike was born knowing more about moving stock than I will ever know. When he was in the nest yet, tumbling over his siblings looking for milk, his brain held all he would ever need to know to herd, except that loyalty, trust and devotion that he is full of now.
And that didn’t come easy. It had to be earned out on the hill and in the barn yard, working, learning and convincing him that he truly did have to work with me, even if I was really, really stupid.

I did everything wrong that I could do. I took him to stock when he was too young for one thing. He handled it and backed down his first cow when he was four months old. I stood in the wrong place at the wrong time and said the wrong thing. It took me a while to even figure out that I was dumb at herding. Then I strove to right that situation. I took lessons. I read books. I borrowed videos from NEBCA. I bought sheep and learned to love them, (some of them at least, but that is another story). At night I even dreamed of the choreography with dog and sheep that makes such a beautiful dance.

It didn’t make any difference. Mike worked and worked hard with that wonderful fanaticism that drives a Border collie to move animals. However, he didn’t work for me, or even with me. He just sort of worked around me, or over me if it was more convenient. Finally one day, after he had driven a group of heifers right over me a half a dozen times, I grabbed him by the scruff of the neck in the stinking barnyard mud, and while I was screaming at him, almost sobbing with frustration and misery something clicked. He decided that dumb as I was, I was his boss and he really had to stop killing me with cows. And I realized that I didn’t know a damn thing about herding with dogs and that it was going to be the hardest thing I ever learned.

When some one says that something isn’t rocket science, you know it is simple and doable. Herding effectively with a dog IS rocket science. In order to be a useful part of the equation the human being has to read cows or sheep-that is watch them and anticipate what they are going to do, and where they are going to go, before they do. The person has to learn right from left-the dog’s right and left that is, and learn the proper commands. It is not easy to keep Away to me and Come by straight when things are getting western and thousands of pounds of animal are headed somewhere they hadn’t ought to be going. The human part of the herding equation has to herd with their brain. The dog supplies the muscle and power and they already know too much. People have to learn it all.

Somehow Mike and I got past all the mistakes or most of them at least. I never got him backed off his stock enough to go to a trial. He never would just go get the cows by himself. However, he dog broke bulls and ornery cows, put heifers in and out of the barn, whether they wanted to go or not, and gathered the hills as long as I was there to keep him pointed the right way. He was so powerful that the barnyard heifers went right in the barn the minute I raised my hand to lift the latch on his kennel to let him out. They knew he was coming to put them in and they decided to just get it over with.

Then one day a couple of years ago he quit. He went under the tractor to move a cow, rather than doing what I asked. It took a while, but we realized that he has been kicked in the head so many times that he can’t see the cows well enough to work.
Heck, I couldn’t work them either if I couldn’t see them, and we have other dogs to do the job, although none possess his level of talent. We let him quit.

So Mike is retired. Now he dedicates all his skill and Border collie fanaticism to me. I am flattered to be the subject of his study, I'll tell you. I love him like a friend and more than any other dog ever.

I don’t get too cocky though because he likes the box of biscuits on top of the refrigerator almost as much.

The interior of the house..and the boss dancing.

Yesterday afternoon the sky was angry black with twisting, swirling clouds boiling above the cow barn when I went to work. A gaggle of gulls spun over the roof looking like something out of a Hitchcock movie. It was downright eerie. I remember when The Birds came out and the family watched it at Grandma Lachmayer’s house. I hid under the dining room table for the whole thing and couldn’t wait to go home. I like birds now, but this is certainly a disturbing season. This evening when I went over the sky looked like a faded bruise, all muddy yellows and harsh purples. It was the ugly precursor of some nasty, squally weather. The wind just howled around the barn. As we were milking the last cow the lights went out and the milking motor and fans all died. We were soon running around by flashlight turning things off and trying to get enough milk out of the line for the calf bottles. Poor Becky got switched in the face by a cow’s tail in the dark. Then the lights came back on and we hurried to finish milking Cisco and feeding babies with her milk. By the time I came back over to the house, by the light of a cold gibbous moon, it was so windy that we hustled whenever we had to walk under one of the old trees in the yard. They sway so far when it really gets blowing that I am afraid they will fall right over.

Lately there has been a broken five-gallon pail in the gutter behind E-Train every time we go in the barn. It’s been a puzzle how it got there. Every day, twice a day, I have moved it back behind a divider by the wall out of the way, and every milking it was back in the drop. However, tonight when I went in the back of the barn the pail was full of kittens, two of Stormy’s babies, having a whale of a cat-battle. Ears pinned and little paws pummeling, they skirmished over possession of the bucket. Now we know how it gets rolled all over the floor.
The five kittens right now are as cute as a batch of speckled pups, but they are always under foot. My favorite one already was stepped on by Balsam when she was walking out of the barn. They just have no respect for the cows and treat them like massive, inanimate objects. We pick them up constantly and move them to safety, but they are soon back in the cow beds or climbing stall dividers.
The mother cats, Stormy and Wildthing, trade babies all the time. Sometimes one will nurse all five, sometimes they feed each others and sometimes the litters split two and three and they care for their own. Since all five are some pattern of grey or grey and white I wonder how they keep them straight. The kids can tell them apart too. Alan carts them around in his shirt all the time, fleas and all. Ewww, I don’t want them that close to me.

How about all this rain? I was going to fill the water garden one last time before winter, but now it is overflowing. The guys can’t chop corn because of the mud; my firewood is all wet, we are keeping the cows in nights, laundry won’t dry and everyone is miserable. On the bright side, we did herd health today and checked nineteen cows for pregnancy. Amazingly, eighteen were pregnant.
This is exceptional and cause for much rejoicing. We can now expect calves from Straight Pine Elevation Pete, Blitz, Zander, Zenith, Extra Special, and a number of other good bulls, as well as quite a few from our old herd bulls. The wonders of AI are a remarkable thing. (We own no bulls currently, except for the milking shorthorn, Promise, who “lives with” the heifers). However, we are still getting daughters from Foxfield-Doreigh NB Rex, Hosking-Brunn MWOD Arvid, Cristman Chairman Mucky, Keeneland Astre Pat, O-C-E-C Lindy Fred, and half a dozen others that we owned over the past twenty years. We bought these bulls from some of the top herds in the state and they have done well for us. Because we can use them over a period of time this way, we get to see how the daughters turn out and can make better matings. If anyone tries to tell you that you can’t breed good cows from bulls that don’t belong to AI studs, they are full of hooey. Right now several of our top cows are from our own bulls, Frieland Rex Star, Frieland A Marge, Frieland CCM Marvel, and a whole batch of others. In fact the cows sired by our bulls are much better in feet and legs and udders than those sired by “proven” bulls.
However, we have some nice ones of the other kind too.

Sequoia finally had her baby today, a nice black heifer by Ocean-View Derry Zander. Liz was thrilled and spent quite a while drying the new one off, treating her navel with iodine and helping her to nurse for the first time. Then she put a calf coat on her and tied her next to my twins where it is nice and dry. We had to give her mama two bottles of calcium as she had a touch of milk fever. Actually she gave us so much trouble that we had the vet give her the second one. For a sick cow she sure could fight!

Much as I hate it, I guess I have to head out to the barn for another round of wet, nasty chores. I sure will be glad when the rain stops!

Liz has started a new thing and I think I like it. I am not sure we will be able to keep it up for long, but she has started getting up at three AM to bring the cows down from pasture and milk them really, really early. I have been going out between four and four thirty to help her, so that we are in the house by six. Then she can leave for college at seven. It isn’t even daylight yet when we get in. Today Ralph also got up and helped us, although we both wish he would get some rest. That is part of why she started doing it. He is just so tired out from trying to get crops in and she figured that he would feel better if he didn’t have to milk in the morning. He is a stubborn guy though, so I don’t know how far that is going to go. It is easy for me to get used to rising that early, as I did it for years at Hollenbeck’s. The extra daylight hours are wonderful for getting things done, such as writing in this blog.

It was kind of sweet coming to the house in the dark this morning, after I drove the cows back up the hill. The air still had the tang of night, cool, clean and sweet. A deep breath felt like a cold drink of water on a hot summer day. For a second I stood under the old cedar tree taking big breaths and reveling in it. The two roosters were having a crowing contest in the pear tree, even though the sun was no more than a faint promise on the horizon. At that time of day, the Thruway is about as quiet as it ever gets, so it was peaceful and pleasant. The only jarring note was the aroma of our local skunk. He met Liz on the bridge Wednesday morning when she was going out, but only hissed and waddled away. Must be a gentleman stinker.

A titmouse is chirping in the cedars by the door, a sure sign that, eighty-degree days to the contrary, fall is here. There are a number of winter birds coming into the yard even though I haven’t been filling the feeders. They are eating Japanese beetles out of the cannas and the seeds of the ornamental sunflowers and rudbeckia. Very heavy rains are predicted for this weekend and I am more than slightly concerned. There is still a lot of field corn and hay that we need to harvest and rain is no help to that effort.

Big bass and small boy