Rana clamitans gardenpondiensis

Beyond the horse pasture

Name that calf

Since an outrageous percentage of the calves belong to Liz anyhow, she is hosting her own darned "Name that Calf" contest over on BuckinJunction. If you are clever with names, give her a hand.

I wonder

This is truly a family farm. Before his parents passed away, the boss farmed with them his whole life. Then when we married (over twenty years ago) I joined the crew and the kids came on board as soon as they got big enough to see over a shovel.

Although it was a challenge to work together day in and day out and keep any semblance of serenity, I grew very close to his family, especially to his mom. I miss her every day, particularly buying her plants and flowers, and looking for special bits of china that I knew she would love when I visited garage sales. She was always so delighted with any gift, no matter how insignificant, that it was a real pleasure to come across something she would like. She worked hard at being a “good” mother-in-law. I am sure that I didn’t make that easy for her sometimes.

Today we went to the cemetery to “visit” the folks. I don't have the plants we put on their graves every year quite ready yet, but we were out and just felt like stopping. As we walked up to the graves from behind the stone I noticed that the earth had sunken a little and it looked kind of bare. The cemetery is located in very sandy soil that supports little in the way of grass. (Although the farm fields that come right up to the boundaries and even inside on the unused parts, have a thriving crop of rye, corn and oats this summer. It seems fitting for all the old farmers buried there to be surrounded by the chugging of tractor engines and the sighing of grass in the summer winds.)
I remarked to the boss that I should buy some Johnny Jump Up seed and plant the bare area, so there would always be flowers that wouldn't mind the mower and would come up every year in that special spot. Peg loved plants and it was a way I could have the joy of giving her some again. I knew it was a plan that I would carry out as soon as I could.

We stood and reflected for a minute, then turned toward the car, where the kids were waiting for us.

Suddenly cold chills raised a crop of goose bumps on my arms and stood the hairs up on the back of my neck.

There, right where I had been thinking of doing my seeding was one, single, perfect, dark purple Johnny Jump Up plant, its little cat face turned up to the sun.

There were no others anywhere around that whole section of the cemetery, just that one, on Peg’s side of the little square plot.

I am still shivering.

Take me to the asparagus

What a day…and it isn't even noon yet. First the cows were on high alert this morning. (Even though both cow and cooperate start with the same two letters, the similarity ends right there.) Don’t know if it is that we are going to get a storm later today or if the flies are starting to bite, but the boss and I both got switched in the face by dirty tails this morning. Several times. That REALLY hurts, and it doesn’t make you more cheerful to have it happen!

Then we couldn’t get Alan’s show cow, Bayberry, into her stall to milk her. There were just the two of us, and we just could not get her to let us lock her up no matter what we did. Liz had the morning off for her birthday, but she came over to help us feed calves, and even with her help we couldn’t get her to put her head in the stanchion. Maybe she is coming in heat.
Tonight hopefully she will calm down. Alan will have to go out and catch her in the field with a halter (she will only let him do that-nobody else), because we are not going to let her do the circus in the barn thing again.


While she was tear-assing around the barn being an idiot she went up into the manger in the annex of the barn and stepped on that little kitten in the picture below. Miserable witch anyhow. I think the kitten will be okay, but there was just no reason for all that misbehavior.

I am going to hide out in the garden today and try to get some stuff planted. Hopefully the asparagus will behave itself.

Two teenagers

There are only two teenagers here at Northview now (and they are both asleep). As of around 1:30 this morning or so, Liz has been twenty years old. As of last weekend she has been a college graduate with an Associates degree in animal science. (Four semesters on the Dean's list are in the bag, so to speak). As of the 10th she has been out of college for the summer and helping us here on the farm.

Oh, the clean mangers, calves moved to new stalls with automatic water bowls and daily help with the milking we have enjoyed. She is going back for her Bachelors in August, but for now it is a delight to have her home. Soon everybody will be on vacation (which is something of a misnomer for a farm kid, but you get the idea). Maybe we can even get a day in digging Herkimer Diamonds or collecting brachiopods this summer.

Anyhow, Happy Birthday, Lizzie; hope it is a great one. We sure do love you!

"Wild Thing" and one of the kids

Brand new "black red" baby from Salt Lake.
The black blob by her head
is her calf coat, which she took off herself.

Valley light

Good reading

Here is an interview with Jeff Soyer of Alphecca and Tarazet.

The man is plumb brilliant.

I wish I had one tenth of his genius and way with words! If everyone listened to his arguments in favor of Second Amendment rights, we would not be worrying about them being abridged.

Maqua-Kil TNT Hattie, named after my great grandmother

Wealth

Our oldest forwarded this to me and somehow it resonated:

What is the difference between the rich and the poor?

One day, the father of a very wealthy family took his son on a trip
to the country with the express purpose of showing him how poor people
live.
They spent a couple of days and nights on the farm of what would be
considered a very poor family.

On their return from their trip, the father asked his son, "How was the
trip?"

"It was great, Dad."
"Did you see how poor people live?" the father asked.
"Oh yeah," said the son.

"So, tell me, what did you learn from the trip?" asked the father.

The son answered: "I saw that we have one dog and they had four.
We have a pool that reaches to the middle of our garden and they have
a creek that has no end.
We have imported lanterns in our garden and they have the stars at
night.
Our patio reaches to the front yard and they have the whole horizon.
We have a small piece of land to live on and they have fields that go
beyond our sight.
We have servants who serve us, but they serve others.
We buy our food, but they grow theirs.
We have walls around our property to protect us, they have friends to
protect them."

The boy's father was speechless.

Then his son added, "Thanks Dad for showing me how poor we are."

Barbaro

Over the past couple of years we have developed the tradition of milking late on Triple Crown race nights so we can enjoy the excitement. Thus it was that two weeks ago we were cheering Barbaro on when he won the Derby, (mostly because I have admired Michael Matz since I was a horse-crazy kid and he was riding in the Olympics).

We were delighted when he won. However, tonight when the pre-race commentators began to sing his praises and chortle about how easily he would probably win the Preakness, I had the kids mute the sound on the television. Every farmer knows you don't brag and you don't take anything for granted. Ask a farmer with a barn full of hay, twin calves on every cow and a rainbow arching over his farm gate, how things are going and he will tell you, “Hmmm, not too bad I guess.”


It made me nervous hearing those city idiots predicting the race results before the horses were even saddled. However, nothing prepared us to see the horrible breakdown of that lovely horse. I will be very surprised if they don’t end up putting him down, although as I write this they are still exploring their options.


My heartfelt sympathy goes out to all the people who work with him. If you care for animals you have empathy for their pain; when they hurt, you hurt and you want to fix it right away. His people must be feeling terrible right now.

Idaho Wage and Hour Dept.

Sarpy Sam, at Thoughts From the Middle of Nowhere, has an important entry today on the oversight of proper wages way out west. This kind of thing happens here too.

The post is called "Half-Wit". It will only take you a second to read it, so click right on over.

Take a deep breath

Lilac on a sweet spring breeze.

Wow, yay Liz

Liz just got her grades for her fourth semester and she has a 4.0! We are so happy for her.

Paulo Crimber and Guilherme Marchi signing autographs at Turning Stone

A Champion? Maybe, maybe not.

What do you think?

When a guy who loses his wallet and sets the whole family to tearing the house apart searching for it, so he can drive up and get straw? And then finds it in his pants pocket. (You think GRRRRRR..!)

He was well paid back while building fence, by nearly stumbling upon a setting hen turkey, who flew right in his face and nearly gave him a heart attack. She then rocketed off through the woods careening off the trees and brush and making an awful racket. I can see the headline now, "Farmer done in by injury caused by collision with large black bird."

Is the most challenging material to get back out that gets sucked up into the dredges when the state is dredging the river to keep the channel navigable? (Bowling balls, which conjures up all sorts of interesting conjecture.)

Of a woman who claims to be sane, but buys a bull calf sight unseen, from someone in Connecticut, that she has never met? (Time will tell. He was delivered this morning; His sire is Calbrett HH Champion, so maybe he will be one too. Weirdly, although I didn't realize it when I bought him, his great granddam is a cow that the boss was contending bidder on at an auction way back when we still were doing the 4-H club. That was the year we gave all the kids in the dairy club imaginary money to spend at the Dairy Fashion Sale and they all bought the same heifer. I can not believe that through an amazing bit of serendipity we now own a descendant. Hope we can keep him growing.)

Of all this rain? (We do not need it and the people in Missouri do, so let's send it all down there. Then maybe we can get some more corn in.)

Thanks Mom

Today is Mother’s Day, a day we dedicate to honoring our mothers, who dedicate themselves to our wellbeing all the rest of the year. My mom visits my brother and his family on this actual day, so the kids and I did our mommy visit yesterday.

Mom was a rock to us kids growing up. No matter how crazy things got in our chaotic world she was (and is) always calm and reasoned. Patient. And loving. Always loving, no matter how awful we were or are.

Mom taught me to cherish family first and to realize that who we are is built upon a foundation of who there was before us. She has always worked hard to keep us connected with extended family and to help us understand how who our ancestors were shaped who we are. (It is sometimes easier to accept personal quirkiness when you know that a hundred generations of Montgomerys before you were similarly and equally quirky and weird.)

Although when I was a kid genealogical research seemed to be a deadly boring pastime, reading journals that she discovered, visiting cemeteries where long ago relatives are buried and tracing the dedications on their weathered marble gravestones brought the past alive for me. When you contemplate the Civil War in terms of your own family fighting there, then coming home to try to salvage their family farms, it ceases to be an abstract history lesson and assumes a reality that a list of dead strangers cannot offer.

I have my mother to thank for that insight. In fact I always wondered what drew me so irresistibly to farming. I came right out of the box loving animals and the land and growing things, even though I was born in the city. All the close relations were railroad men or factory workers so where did the farmer gene come from? Thanks to Mom’s research we found legions of farmers just a couple of generations back. I guess I came by the addiction honestly.

I have to thank her as well for dragging us kids along wherever my father’s passion for knowledge took them, although at the time sitting in the station wagon waiting at yet another antique store seemed somewhat less than scintillating. Because she kept us with her, I love books and living with antiques, and understand the imprint of the Iroquois upon the region (from many hours of sitting at digs sifting red and blue trade beads and fragments of "worked" flint and hand made pottery out of rich black dirt). I have seen up close and personal the abundant minerals that are hidden in New York’s mountains and streambeds, and in fact collected the ones in the links. I know all about Scotland and have visited the land of our ancestors vicariously several times. (And despite early-life immersion I still like bagpipe music.)

I love you mom. Keep up the good work!

Look what Alan found

Here

The new market

Went to a meeting of the new milk marketing cooperative yesterday. Alan was my escort and he can be quite a gentleman when he wants to (with time out to run out to the lobby and do some deer hunting on a video game.)

Nice enough folks, including some neighbors who are real good farmers and probably to know what they are about.. In fact we sat with some real engaging people, with whom we much enjoyed talking.

However, the sense of my fellow members having a real grasp of milk marketing wasn’t there. They seem to rely on their board for direction, which is of course what they are there for. Still I think, no, I know, that I am going to miss Canajoharie Cooperative and Allied Federated Coops. The independence is gone. Big brother is watching. Oh, well.

Best Food Nation

Here is a new industry driven website intended to tell the farmers' and ranchers' side of the food production story. I haven’t had time to read it all, as it covers a lot of territory from beef to potatoes, but it seems to do a pretty good job of offering a somewhat simplified version of the realities of farmers' stewardship of land and animals.

I think this kind of thing is the right way to go in the effort to combat the propaganda shoveled around by animal rights and other activist groups. I have found that nearly every time I make an effort to explain why we do something on a farm, even something that might seem a little weird or wrong to a non-farm person, they at least try to comprehend. However, even with a newspaper column, this weblog, and years of sitting with the show string at fairs chatting with the city folk who wander by, I can only talk to just so many people. Same for every farmer and rancher. There aren’t very many of us and we tend to be kind of busy. Activists on the other hand have huge budgets and massive numbers of volunteers and paid staff.

Maybe web sites like this, especially if they send out plenty of press releases to the MSM can help with the job of counteracting the garbage people have to wade through to learn about how their food is grown.

I am going to give Best Food Nation a link in my sidebar anyhow.

Another Day in Paradise

What do you say to a veterinarian who literally drops everything and darned near flies to your place to save a dying cow? Well, "thanks", comes to mind…along with, "good job", not to mention, "sorry the gate was still closed".

And that is just what we found ourselves saying this very morning along about at the end of milking. The day was already well on-the-way to over the top chaos. First the cows didn’t come down from pasture, (or at least none of the older high producers did). The boss had to go get them and be rather persuasive before they could be convinced that they really needed to come down the hill.

Then Hattie, Liz’s 2-year old Jersey show heifer sat down and had a bull calf right in the middle of milking. Not too bad yet, although it is tanker day and we did need to get done promptly.

While we were scurrying around shifting machines and washing cows, the boss decided to give some pregnant cows their routine injections of selenium. That mineral is quite deficient in the soil around here. We normally give all the cows a few cc's two to three weeks before calving, as it helps prevent retained placentas and other birth-related problems. Still no big deal.
Then about a half an hour later old Balsam, a successful retired show cow of Alan's, went right off the deep end. She began kicking her head, drooling great strings of saliva and began to swell up all over. She seemed to be having convulsions while standing up. We knew immediately that she was going into anaphylactic shock and needed epinephrine.

We didn’t have any. All we had was an Epipen that we keep on hand for Liz’s bee sting allergy. I called our favorite vet and asked if it would help. The dose was a fraction of what is needed for a cow the size of Balsam, but she said to give it anyhow and headed down our way.
I no more than got back to the barn with the medicine when the blacksmith arrived and needed help catching DG, (who despises men).

By the time I had him haltered Kris was already opening the gate herself, for which I humbly apologize.

A few injections later and poor Balsam was beginning to relax and stop swelling and I was beginning to catch my breath from all the running from the cow barn to the phone to the horse pasture and back.

Thanks to the quality of animal care that we take for granted from our veterinarian, Balsam will probably be all right. However, if she makes it through this episode and has her calf all right, she will certainly not get a shot of selenium next year. And I sure do hope things slow down for the rest of the day. I am too old for this.

Bulls walking through the hallway in the casino

East meets West

We visited a whole different world yesterday and to my surprise I liked it there. Liz took me to a Professional Bull Riding event at Turning Stone Casino up in Verona. I did not really want to go, as I am no big fan of bull riding, (I hate to see guys get hurt).

However, I can’t remember the last time I had that much fun. We got autographs from the riders, sat behind a woman who bred one of the bucking bulls, (who answered any questions we had about the bulls, contractors and contestants) and drank bad coffee in one of the cafes while we watched the people walk by. Cameras were permitted so I took tons of pictures, but the bulls were a lot faster than my shutter so most of them are just colorful blurs. Sometimes you can pick out a pair of horns or a cowboy hat though.

The contestants were amazingly well-mannered and pleasant guys, taking time to chat with each person in the autograph line and being incredibly courtly, (even the ones who were bleeding all over the table from the scrapes and cuts they got in the arena.) I might add that Guilherme Marchi is about as handsome as they make them, right along with having very charming manners.

I expected the casino to be embarrassingly glitzy and garish, but except right in the gambling areas it was hushed and elegant and very welcoming. We figure that farming is all the gamble a sensible soul needs so we didn’t even play a slot machine, but we liked the place and were impressed by the security.

Obviously with all that money changing hands a lot of guards and police are needed but they were unobtrusive, professional and actually quite nice. There was certainly no danger of getting lost in the gigantic place, as there was always someone around to ask how to get where you needed to go.

Liz drove, both ways, bought the bad coffee and fed me McDonald’s on the way home, as well as paying for my ticket for a seat in the second row, right in front of the chutes.
Thanks, kiddo, it was great! Let's do it again next year...and have Alan show me how to speed up the camera.

Turning Stone. ..fast bull, slow shutter.

Gael, the queen bean. 

Alchibah

I am trying my hand at a new kind of writing. So far it is a lot of fun.
Jeff at Alphecca is producing, with the help of all sorts of other folks, an online science fiction novel about forming a government and society on a new planet, in a new century.
Check it out at Colony Alchibah. I am sure you will have no problem figuring out which colonist I am playing.

Flower Drum Cows

The cows went out to pasture yesterday for the first time this year. When the old ones like Star, who at eleven is second oldest, Butternut, another senior citizen, and all the other veterans of many years at grass saw that the lower gate was open, they headed for the hills.

Literally.

It was not quite the same story with the two, three and a few of the four-year-old cows. They were much more intrigued by the fact that they could run for about a half a mile at a rip than by the new food source.

So run they did.

All day.

They ran up the hill. I looked out the window, not a black and white body to be seen. Five minutes later, with a thunder of hooves on packed earth, they were back, mooing at me, and staring as if asking what they were supposed to be doing.

Then they were gone again.

It was a noisy, busy day. Of course there was a bunch in the barnyard when the corn truck came so I had to hold gates with a big stick, since they thought all open gates were there for their entertainment.

An of course, when it came time to bring them in the barn for milking there was a conspicuous dearth of bovinity anywhere to be found.

The young ones were evidently still on the prowl though. As soon as they heard the grain auger they showed up at the door, wide-eyed and blowing.

However, the old ladies had to be escorted all the way down from the farthest hills. They knew a good thing when they tasted it. After a long day of vigorous grazing their backs were dotted with spent flowers from the box elders, wild plums and maples that are in bloom. They were quite contented and full of milk. I hope things are a little more peaceful today though.

No time to write

Accepted students' day, two weeks of college finals keeping the kitchen table under cover of a sprawl of books, cards and assorted study materials, the Participation in Government project wherein we must drive to and obtain signatures from every conceivable government agency for miles around, fence building, stone picking, herb planting, firewood, hay, calves and two beefers to go to the auction; it is just nuts around here.

It is hard to even remember slower days. The big conclusion from the PIG project is that there are way too damn many people working for the government in upstate New York and they all take LONG lunch hours. It was possible to find only about twenty percent of the many we searched for actually occupying their offices to get their John Hancocks. What with gas prices and how busy we are and will be, the teacher will have to make do with MY signature on a note detailing our search. I hope my kids never need to know where the jail and the welfare offices are anyhow. If they do, then I have been doing something way wrong all these years.

We are real proud of Liz who got an award for scholarship because of her GPA and being on the Dean's list all four semesters. Sadly she was too sick to attend the ceremony.

The bunny wrangler feeding a chickadee 

A good thing

My extremely handsome younger (not much younger) brother is doing a good thing for a good cause. If you have a minute check it out and maybe lend a hand if you are able. Thanks.

I am going to try to keep this on top for a bit, so read below for current post.

Beautiful Broadway 

Grazing a bunny on the lawn 

The bunny wrangler 

You be the judge

There is an auction barn too darned far to the west of here where the guys recently took some heifers to sell. (We don’t feel that we get a fair price at the mega-corporation-owned one that is more locally located.)

Anyhow, when they dropped off the critters last Sunday, all the bales of hay kept in the barn to feed the animals there over the weekend were plainly labeled,
"Not for Human Consumption."

I hope it was a joke.

The river is back in its banks 

Earlier this evening 

Oh, power pole, power pole wherefore art thou?

Someone took our telephone pole.
Lifted it, liberated it, loosed it from its bonds, somehow removed it without our knowledge.
A whole great big power pole, vanished into thin air like a puff of creosote smoke. We have been puzzling about the who and how since we noticed it was missing from the old calf pasture, now grown up to trees and honeysuckle, right in front of the house. The Power Company gave it to us when they replaced all the poles around here a few years back. It was pretty inaccessible, lying up on the hill across a ditch, quite some distance from a well-traveled highway and right in front of the house. Certainly we probably should have hooked a tractor on and dragged it up behind the barn, but who the heck would expect somebody to steal something as big as a telephone pole? It had to have been cut up with a chainsaw or heavy equipment brought in to move it. The thing was huge and it was maybe 150 feet from the front door!

How the heck did he do it neither challenged by us nor questioned by someone going by?
We have FIVE dogs, including Wally, who lives in a kennel and keeps us informed of what is going on even down on the bike path. How did we not hear them…or them not hear him? Probably came at milking time and got lucky that everyone was over at the barn at once. I guess we will never know the exact how, although we have a pretty good idea of the who. If by chance he reads this, yeah, we figured it out and you know just how we know. It must be hell to have that kind of reputation, but we hope you enjoy the pole.

This is all kind of funny to speculate upon, except that we did want to use the darned thing. Imagine going to all that trouble to take something that could be replaced by a couple of trees you could cut down right in your own woods. It boggles the mind.

Dixon, daughter of Dallas, grand daughter of Frieland LV Dixie. 

Too wet

We are getting a real cold miserable rain this weekend. The weathermen (who work indoors in nice warm buildings) are just delighted. Their livelihood isn't washing away.
It is true that it has been dry, there have been serious brush fires, and the grass needed some moisture to get growing.

However, this is ridiculous.

Overkill.

Too much.

It can stop now.

Heck, it could have stopped yesterday. (And early yesterday at that.) Our men had three fields all worked up and one gone over with the Perfectas and ready to plant to seeding. Now they will have to do it all over again. With the price of fuel, an extra trip with the tractor is not something to aspire to. Plus we have to wait for it to dry up again first before they even put a tire on it. Dang, we sure didn’t need this much water.

I left my wheelbarrow out where I was planting herbs Friday and there are six and a half inches in it. Allowing for the slant of the wheelbarrow, that has got to be at least three or four inches of rain over 24 hours . Wish I had turned the rain gauge right side up before this all started so I knew exactly.

Across the river on the flats neighbors just finished planting corn Friday. It is all under water now. I expect that they have lost it and will have to replant. Big bucks. I am sorry for them. But that's farming. You are ever at the mercy of the weather and the government.

The Paint big cheese 

Busy days, tame chickadees and hanging zucchini

Busy, busy days just keep coming at us full speed ahead. The new vacuum pump is like a dream though, and a very nice dream it is. The first few milkings drove us crazy because it is so quiet that is you can’t hear it at all inside the barn. Thus you have the sense that the milking machines are not going to work when you plug them in. They do, however, work just fine and we are making good time milking because we now have a huge vacuum tank as well. This gives us more of a vacuum reserve so the machines work better. Now if we could just get rid of the dreaded inch and a half pipeline everything would be practically perfect.

A small milestone in life up here at the farm. (Real small.) Although the boss and I have been married nearly 21 years and have worked together here even longer, we have only actually lived up here for about four and a half years. Before that we lived in town. Anyhow, I have spent a little time here and there, ever since we moved up, trying to get chickadees tame enough to land on my hand to take a seed.
That finally happened yesterday. Today they came right down off the clothesline to snatch seeds out of Alan’s hand too. It is so neat to have those tiny, but very brave, little creatures come close enough to touch. Hope the bird flu stays away and they are spared.

The boss planted one bag of sweet corn about four days ago and is going to try to get another bag in tonight while the rest of us milk. We hope to get a good enough crop to sell a bit this summer, but I will settle for enough to freeze a lot and eat homegrown corn all winter. Yum.

We were supposed to test tonight, but the tester canceled out, which is just peachy with me. Not having to rush around tidying up for that allowed me to get a bit of gardening done. I am really excited about something I saw over at Sunnycrest Orchard. They have hanging plant baskets out in the greenhouse, with zucchinis and cucumbers, loaded with fruit, growing in them. I have just got to try that. I am sure they need massive amounts of water and fertilizer, but I am going to have a go just the same. I can't wait.

Reasons for not posting much these lovely spring days

We are getting a new vacuum pump. It has been installed over the last couple of days and everything else has ground to a halt. This one will be located outside the milk house in an addition the guys built over the winter. The one we have been using was a replacement that a contractor (who BTW never came back) loaned us when ours broke down. It was located in the north aisle right behind the cows and it was LOUD! Deafening in fact. We all hated milking because of it. The boss made a muffler for our new one out of a 55-gallon barrel set in solid concrete. It that doesn’t keep it quiet nothing will.

The front end came out from under the White 2-105. For the uninitiated that is a pretty good sized four-wheel drive tractor. It doesn’t steer for beans with its front wheels falling off so…

It is warm enough to plant corn.

The corn planter needs two new cutting disks.

It is warm enough to plant some garden things. Like peas and lettuce and onions.

It is warm enough to play outdoors. This one is a biggie. How can I stay inside and write when the fish are awake in the garden pond, wonderful things are blooming, the liquid is vanishing out of the hummingbird feeder (haven't seen any hummers yet though) and the purple finches are back?
The answer is simple, I can’t!

A good joke

Dan Weaver has a pretty good Amish joke over at his place today.

Good morning 

I was too busy yesterday to have my picture taken but here I am today. 

An Almost Perfect Easter Sunday

First we shared a delightful meal with new friends, who are becoming good friends very quickly. The kids hunted Easter eggs, just a bit sheepishly because they think they are sophisticated teenagers, but they had a great time. Or at least they wanted to stop at every house that had an egg tree on the way home so they could continue the chase.

Then we took a short ride out to Lykers Pond to see what spring was bringing for Easter out in the wild world. The country sure had its Easter bonnet on. Red osier dogwoods, with stems like purple fire sticks, glowed against last year’s dry grass, wherever fields had lain fallow for a few years. Solid pewter poplars bloomed like stately candelabra along the edges of hardwood patches. Geese guarded every pasture puddle. Shaggy manes of coltsfoot blossoms brightened the roadside ditches and maple flowers out-redded the cardinals. It was just plain pretty with a nice mess of wind-tossed clouds overhead to top everything off just right.

At the pond we watched three muskrats so large that at first we thought they were beaver. They swam so fast you would have sworn they could outpace an Evenrude at full throttle. I stepped down into the woods to watch them cavorting and to admire the huge craters chopped into a dead tree by a pileated woodpecker.

As I stood in the dead grass and dried leaves, I thought to myself, ‘this isn’t the best idea I’ve ever had’. However, the muskrats came right up close and I forgot about the tickling sensation I felt on my knee for a second. I did look after a bit though but there was nothing to see….or so I thought.

All good things must end and soon we had to come home so the boss could feed the cows. I sat down to write about our adventures and felt that tickly sensation again.
It was a nasty, creepy, crawly, dangerous because-of-Lymes disease, deer tick!

Argghhhh.

Everyone has their phobias and ticks are mine. Just thinking of them gets the skin at the back of my neck crawling and sends me running for the insect repellent. Off! is my favorite perfume in summer, or you might think so from how often I wear it.
Guess it is time to put that right in the car for the season, oh, and the binoculars too. It is kind of dumb to go bird and wildlife watching without them.

Mike is getting older but the cow below is the one he and Nick shifted off the lawn the other day. She is a lot bigger than he is! 

Another new one 

The six-berry pie

I admit that I am kind of ambivalent about the Amish moving into the area. On one hand they do keep land in agriculture that would probably otherwise be developed. On the other hand they enjoy a reputation for good farming and good cooking that is pretty much undeserved. And they get away with a lot of stuff that us regular folks would get arrested for.

They abuse their horses beyond belief. It is nothing for them to hook up a Standardbred that is already lame in three out of four legs and drive it until it can barely stand, tie it up hot, throw a rug over it, and drive it back the same distance when they are done shopping. One that we know gelded a stallion he bought off the track and then drove it forty miles. If the horses don’t go they beat the heck out of them, and yes, I have seen them do so personally. They are not required to follow the same sanitation laws as regular farmers and yet can sell their products right out of their kitchens. They do not follow either hunting or trespassing laws. One friend of ours walked into an Amish yard last year and found five deer hanging….in the summer, out of season. Does, fawns, whatever they can find. However, because of the mystique of their culture it is all good and nobody bothers them.

Anyhow, some of the new group went to the new farmers’ market last week selling pies.

They charged ten dollars a pie. (Pretty pricey, even for the best of pies.) However, a friend who was there purchased one of those ten-dollar pies and took it home and served it, only to discover that the pie contained exactly six berries.

That’s right.

Six.

When I told the boss, he said, "That’s not a pie it’s a turnover."
To my, "huh?" he replied.
"A turnover from your friend’s wallet to theirs."
Yep, that about says it all.

Sheepdogs unite

Hopped up to answer the phone today and wouldn’t you know, it was a telemarketer who hung up on me before I could even say hello. However, when I put down the phone I noticed a cow on the lawn.

Not my favorite picture.

I called Mike, grabbed a sorting stick off the porch and hurried out to take care of the situation. Mike saw ol’ bossy the minute he was out the door and dropped into a crouch as he slowly crept in her direction.

I like to work him without commands sometimes, just to watch him use his wonderful mind to sort out a task, and I did this day. He knew where the cow belonged and so did she, so there was no confusion despite my silence. As soon as she spotted the dog, the cow raised her head and sauntered off toward the barnyard where she is supposed to be succoring her newborn calf.

However when she came to the parked horse trailer she stopped to commune with the heifers on the other side of the fence. She kept stealing glances at the dog, waiting to see what he was going to do.

Mike looked back at me wondering what I wished of him.

Run in and bite her, circle around and turn her, just hold her where she was?

I didn’t really want him to do any of those things. He is getting pretty old and slow and she is a nasty character, much given to fighting and kicking. I called him off for a second and released Nick from the kennel where he was spending the afternoon.
Ah, what a difference. One diffident old dog does not a posse make. However, one old dog who knows the ways of cattle, backed up by an impetuous youth with clean, sharp teeth, and a heart full of desire, and it's like the James Gang rides again.

Stubborn old mama cow lit a shuck for the barnyard and didn’t some back.

I called the dogs back with much praise and let them graze on the lawn for a while. Border collies sure do love green grass.
And I sure do like to watch them do the work they are born for.

The farmer is "on the land". 

Cheerleading for Spring

It is trying quite hard to be spring here in the great Northeast. However, it just can’t seem to make it over the seasonal hump. The daffodils are almost open, but not quite. Cows are almost shed out of their winter fur, but not slick yet. They are still spewing clouds of hairs into the air (and onto our clothing) all day long. Heifers haven’t even begun to lose their wooly covering yet, and are as shaggy as bears.

The gold fish are beginning to forage in the garden pond. Soon I will be able to set up the filter and the fountain and get rid of the slimy strings of algae that are slithering all through the normally clean water.
But not yet; it’s too cold.

I watch every day for the first green frog and listen at dusk for the peepers. Not yet, too cold.

The grass is showing tinges of green in the soft corners (especially on the lawn, where no one would get mad if it waited a bit). Soon there will be enough to turn the stock out into the pastures and stop paying through the nose (and other important bodily orifices) for corn silage to feed them and hay to buffer their rumens. However, turn out time is not quite here yet.

The ground is almost warm and dry enough to start working, but we face north so it is too cold and wet to start turning dirt yet. The boss had a go last week with the chisels and just missed getting stuck. Gotta wait I guess.

However, the maple trees are in full bloom, driving Liz into the depths of allergic-to-them misery. It is not good to be allergic to maple blossoms in upstate New York. Or at least not in April.

The buggy critters sure are waking up. Every day another hornet somehow finds its way into the bathroom and buzzes around on the floor. I hate to be cruel so I give them a ride down the "zoom flume" in our personal water park. What a way to go!

Anyhow, I am ready for the whirlwind insanity that is spring on a dairy farm. Bring on the sun, bring on the grass, warm up the earth, I am ready to garden. Call up the alfalfa, plug in the corn seeds. Come on Spring, rah, rah, ree.

Okay, who's been chasing the rooster? He won't hold still so I can take his picture! 

This was pretty painful this morning. 

Party Animals

We went to a very fine party last night, something that takes some serious planning on the part of a farm family. First the washing machine passed away unexpectedly the night before, requiring Herculean efforts to locate a replacement. (Its motor gave out from overwork, and a new motor costs nearly as much as a new machine. Plus we would have had to wait for a motor to be ordered.)

Thus we drove around all day finding and transporting the new washer, then came right home and began evening milking two hours early. Calf bottles were relayed from hot water bath eager pink mouths at warp speed. You never saw straw bedding being shaken out so fast. I swear, you couldn’t see the kids, except for the blur when they went by. We needed to get everyone through the shower and all primped and prettied up by 7:30.

It wasn’t easy but we got it done.
We were among the first to arrive.
The dinner was potluck.
It was a farmer party.
Farmers for the most part have farm wives.
And daughters.

Thus the food was pretty close to dangerously good. (Which was nice, since we missed lunch due to the washing machine hunting expedition.)
I am talking a serious threat to the waistline and cholesterol level. From about seven different salads to three kinds of meatballs with beans and filled breads in between, there was no reason to go away hungry. And that was before dessert. Which included cake….cookies….pies and cobblers…. Oh dear.

There was Karaoke. (And no, I did NOT sing.) However, after a substantial payoff, plus a promise that I would take him practice driving today, Alan performed Steppenwolf’s Magic Carpet Ride, (with his back to the audience.) I have a picture. Do you want to see it, even if it is a little dark and blurry?
Steppenwolf must have offered an undeniable assault to the eardrums of many present, who are a little more accustomed to George Strait than seventies hard rock. They clapped anyhow.
And he was pretty good.
For Karaoke.

We heard stories of genuine tragedy, and stories that were knee-slapping funny. We sat with people we had missed for years and didn’t expect to meet again. (They were forced out of the industry by hard times and family squabbles.) We saw babies, toddlers in cowboy boots, gawky teenagers, and old men with polished heads.

We had fun.
A lot of it. My face hurt from smiling.
I sure do like farmers.

Maddening

This kind of thing is infuriating. One big company messes up, not for the first time, and farmers all over the USA get it in the neck. Our milk inspectors write us up if they can stick a pencil through a gap in a milkhouse windowscreen and yet they can't tell if there are illegal bones in beef that is being exported? Give me a break.

Not much green grass here yet. 

Wanna buy a rabbit?

It is quite a thing when the local auction barn cancels its poultry and rabbit auction without notice. (Seems they are afraid of bird flu. Guess they expect it to arrive in upstate New York real soon.)

Anyhow Empire Livestock in Central Bridge did just that yesterday to the chagrin of dozens of buyers and sellers who showed up interested in trading small critters. There were rows of cars and piles of boxes as sellers wondered what the heck they were going to do with their spare bunnies and chickens. Buyers ran around asking, "Got a dozen chickens?" "What color rabbits you got there?" Talk about chaos! (Interestingly the small animal sale is still listed on the company website. Just scroll down to the Central Bridge Tuesday sale to see for yourself.)

Of course the company has the right to do whatever they want as far as their auction goes, and for the most part the small livestock sale was always a bit of a pain for the beef and calf sellers that keep the place afloat. However it is just plain foolish not to inform regular customers of the impending closing. And bird flu is a lousy excuse. It will probably get here some time, but selling or not selling rabbits in upstate New York isn’t going to change that one bit.

Anyhow, if anybody wants to buy a rabbit or two, Alan still has four of the five he took over to sell yesterday. He sold the other one to a kid in the parking lot who went over to the sale with his heart set on taking home a rabbit.

Home Alone

Kids all in school, the boss gone to get some firewood some friends gave us, nothing but peace and quiet. However, if you have ever seen our house, you know it looks, well, different. We also have an Interstate running in front of it, just on the other side of the state road we live on. This all leads to people, sometimes several cars per weekend, traipsing up here figuring to take a look around. (At least one walked right in the kitchen door to meet Mike teeth and all on the other side.)

It got so bad that when the boss’s mother was alive and living here alone, we put up large, explicit signs at the bottom of the driveway warning people that trespassers will be firmly discouraged.

Didn't work. I was just sitting here taking an innocent coffee break when Nick opened up. Wally didn’t bark, so I figured Nick was barking at a cat and ignored him. Then Gael barked. Mike barked because Gael did. However I didn’t see anybody, so I still didn’t pay any attention.
Then Nick really went nuts, way too much for a mere barn cat alarm, so I stepped out the back door to holler at him. And practically stepped on two guys. Creepy guys. One said, “I’m from (somewhere, didn’t catch it) Illinois. Are you familiar with that, Illinois, I mean?”

Well, gee, no duh, I am a hick from the sticks, why would I be familiar with the state where my brother lived for half his adult life?

Out loud I said, “Of course I am, what are you looking for?”

The jerk explained that he stopped at the neighbors and they told him to come up and ask if he could take pictures. Well, of course he could. I love to be home all by myself and step out the porch and meet a nice upstanding fellow who just happened to drive right by my “no trespassing, private drive” signs so he could take pictures of the house I just happen to live in. I mean, he couldn’t have taken them from the road could he?

I told them to be damn glad the boss wasn’t the one who came to the door, take a picture from the driveway and get themselves gone.

Then I wrote down their license number, came inside and listened to my heart pound for a while. They really scared me. And they had New York plates, not Illinois.
Thank God for dogs.

New Name

The hat has been consulted. The first name drawn was "Hazel", so Hazel it is. (A lucky coincidence, so I am told, since there is a certain someone, involved in a certain cow owner's life who has pretty hazel eyes.)

We are saving the name "Honey" for the upcoming baby (due next month) from Heather's other daughter, Hattie, if it is a heifer. Honey is such a perfect name for a little golden brown cow. ALL the names will go into the naming file for future Jersey babies. What an aid to this imagination challenged farm crew.

Many thanks to all who offered us great names for this new baby. She is a real character by the way. She takes her milk bottle so fast she flattens the nipple, and then butts it and jumps around in irritation when she can't get any milk. She will practically knock you over if you don't pay attention when feeding her.