Deer tracks

Hello Moon

Here is last night's rising moon, taken by Alan's binocular method. As you can see, younger hands are steadier hands. Looks kind of like a rotten jack 'o lantern.

Halp us Jon Carry we r stuck hear n Irak

Thanks to Cousin Scott for this answer from some soldiers in Iraq to the esteemed Senator's comments on their level of education. At least SOMEONE has a sense of humor!

Looking out the living room window

We were slumped in various locations around the living room, comfortable in our Sunday chairs, like so many limp vegetables when Alan spotted a white-tail buck (8-point, or so mr. bright-eyes says) and two does in the overgrown horse pasture just outside. They were a good 800 feet away, so even though we could see them quite clearly, we had little hope of getting good pictures. Kind of frustrating, since we love to share.

Then the kid had the inspired idea of lining the lense of the digital camera up with the lense on the Bushnell birdwatching binoculars....and amazingly, hey, presto, pretty deer pictures!

Smart boy, I think I'll keep him.

Retired cow dog at work

*Mike, eyeing a heifer though the fence*
*She is not dog broke and not a bit impressed*

*Young stock coming down to look at that glaring dog*

Sky

No NAIS noticed again

Remember this post?


Back in August, I thought it was a pretty big deal that Walter Jeffries' No NAIS.org was mentioned in Drovers Alert. Now the same website has been mentioned in this USA Today story.

I for one, am glad to see it. The very valid arguments against NAIS need mainstream attention and I am thankful to the hardworking farmers and ranchers ***who are getting it for us.

Even a state veterinarian, who is in favor of NAIS, admits that there are major flaws in how the program is set up today,

"As for arguments that the program is unconstitutional and a violation of privacy, "I can't counter that," Hoenig says. But he tells the farmers, "In an emergency, you're going to be coming to people like me for help. So give us the tools we need to do our job."


Giving them tools to do the job is all well and good, but they are asking for weapons of mass destruction when a BB gun would get the job done just fine.

***Update...upon further reading I realized that Sarpy Sam's No Mandatory Animal ID, which is linked with the word "rancher" above is also mentioned in the article. I didn't recognize it, as his url is different from the name of his site.

Happy Halloween

Another game for your spooky enjoyment.

Cat Bowling

For those who want to get an early start on Halloween festivities.***


http://www.itsga.com/fun/cat_new.swf


***For cat lovers, no animals were harmed in the making of this game. They were "spared".
***For non cat lovers, bowling for cats says it all.

I don't mind

It is a closely held secret how I feel about driving Becky over to the college for her Friday classes. Liz takes her other days, but has nothing scheduled on Friday so it is my turn. The other day the bookstore lady from whom Becky buys me a coffee for the drive home mentioned to Liz that she felt sorry for me having to sit in the car all that time.



Let's see, how can I handle such punishment week after week? It was so still this morning early that you could hear the leaves falling. They made a sibilant rustle like the pattering of a crisp rain at the beginning of a summer storm. The air was crystal clear after last night brought us the first real killing frost. Oh, we have had a few little ones that polished off the tomatoes and cannas, but last night it hit the mid twenties. Driving down the valley it was so clear that a church steeple appeared to be suspended in space like a knife on a string. You could spot pigeons soaring miles away in the pristine sky.



Oak trees unfurled a sprawling magic carpet of gold and red and chestnut across the mountains. Stark shadows sharply outlined those mountains in the brilliant slanting sunlight. The view was so beautiful coming down into the Schoharie Valley that it almost hurt to look at it.

Once I parked a scattering of crows dive-bombed the parking lot. Amusing to watch one alight on a slender, brittle twig and try to balance, flicking its wings and teetering awkwardly. One flew so close to the open car window that I heard the rustle of its feathers like a whisper of silk right next to my ear.


Canada Geese, flock after flock of them, crisscrossed the sky, flying low and fast. Or they wheeled, calling plaintively, over some body of water out of sight below the campus. I sat in the car, warm sun at my shoulder, a good book in my lap and no more work to do than to leap out of the car occasionally to snap another picture of the unfolding morning beauty. Poor me.

Sycamore leaf

This landed on the car right in front of Danescara when Beck and I were driving by today. We were on a wild goose chase to see a strange, long, wooden sail boat go through the lock at Tribes Hill. Somehow it got so far ahead of us that we missed it. We often make a run for the lock if we see a real cool boat going past the house out on the Mohawk. I sure would have liked to get a look at this one, but it was not to be. Nice leaf though. Big too, that is a full sized pencil there.

Congratulations Sam

To Sarpy Sam at Thoughts From the Middle of Nowhere, one of the best of the best, on three years of insightful blogging. He is one of my first reads every morning.

Wild weather

We had a few bright flashes of sunlight today, which was pretty welcome. The boss found at least one field where he could actually get some corn chopped without having Alan tow him with the White 2-105 4-wheel drive. A lot easier that way.

Sweeney vs. Gilibrand

Fired off the Farm Side this morning SIX HOURS before deadline. I am way proud of myself, but really, it was an easy topic and darned near wrote itself. Although newspaper subscribers will have to read between the lines to figure out who I was ranting about, I will save you the mental anguish. I was all fired up about the campaign between Sweeney and Gillibrand for the US Congress. Good Lord, those two are like whiny little kids, not an issue between them, but plenty of childish tirades and he-said-she-said trash talking.

I love to put the things Becky has learned in college sociology class to work in rating their honesty. She says that when someone is lying they tend to glance involuntarily downward and to the left. Watch 'em when they rant and rave. See where they are looking?

Thankfully, no matter who wins that contest neither of them will represent this district. We just get to suffer through their campaign rhetoric on television. Can't wait until November 8th!

FFA and the vegetarian

Not much time to write these days (broken stable cleaner, two sick cows, three feet of mud in the fields with corn harvest only just begun, seventeen calves in the barn and a partridge in a pear tree) so I will share another great story. This time you can read about the vegetarian animal rights activist who will perform at the annual FFA convention. Amazin'!

Another view back on the hill

* taken from Seven County Hill field looking west across the Sixty-Acre Lot*

Meth

Nothing funny about meth. Nothing amusing about the way it is showing up in rural areas like this. However, this story of how some young, er, dumb and dumber fellows tried to steal some Sudafed to make some is hilarious. Not everyone uses cat food in quite that manner.

Argghhh....

Talking turkey

Hunting that is. (Note the fashionable duct tape fastening the orange vest together. This boy has style.) I know there are those who don't believe in hunting, but we have at least two hundred turkeys on our three hundred acres. (They gather together in the winter and we count them so we know.) The two or three a year that we roast will not be missed...and they are fat from eating our corn and alfalfa.

Partly because he is an avid hunter, this boy knows every inch of our land like other kids know the ins and outs of video games. In this picture he was showing me where he shot three turkeys with one shot one time (quite by accident). He loves to take me out to share his special places...an old pallet leaning on the rocks in the Sixty-Acre Lot hedgerow where he can hide and watch the wild things go by, a puddle where a dozen green frogs lurk, waiting to plop into the water with a startling splash. The old dam, the owl tree, he leads me to them proudly when we have time. I have visited all these places before when I was young and eager, but it is good to see them again through his fresh, fervent eyes. He is a capable tracker and so keen of nose that he can SMELL where the birds have been. My nose isn't sharp enough to notice until he points it out to me, but he is generally right.


It is comforting in a way to realize that the nature walks we took the kids on when they were little, turning over rocks to look for salamanders and spying on birds, have come full circle. Now we are the ones being taken.

How bad the corn is

This morning the sky was lumpy and dingy grey as if someone had stretched a dirty sock across it. For a while the sun tried to spill down between the lumps, but by the time we were done with chores there wasn't a ray to be seen.

It is plumb depressing. It just rains and rains and rains. A flood watch is on for all day tomorrow. Again.
The river is already bank full from all the snow up west last week . Meanwhile the guys go out to try to chop corn and the fields are quagmires. They are getting two or three loads a day on good days and barely enough to feed the cows on not-so-good days. Yesterday the boss jack knifed both feeder wagons bringing them down the hill. Dangerous. Worse when it is the forage wagons that he is bringing down. I don't know how they are ever going to get the corn in if it doesn't dry up soon.

The picture is how bad the corn is in at least one field, from all the rain this summer. There are fifteen or twenty feet or more between the stalks on half of the field, none at all on part of it, then a good stand up where the drainage is better. Very worrisome.

Tragic news

The death of a fellow student* of our girls, the teenaged son of a favorite professor, has been rattling our world this week. This is too sad for easy discussion, so I will just let you read about it. The alleged perpetrator is not a student at the college, but notice that the police apprehended him in a dorm.


I feel so much sympathy for the friends and family of the young victim. Not much more to say about it.
*Correction, the Gazette says not a student, although the girls knew him from campus.

As requested

*Shagbark Hickories behind Seven County Hill*

Finally made it up to the top of the farm today to get the overview photos of the farm requested by mrs. mecomber and my dear friend, numberwise, (in Vitamin Sea's meme the other day). Becky and I took Mike and walked a good part of the way, but every now and then Alan picked us up with the truck, as he was working getting wood in.

The rides were most welcome. Seven County Hill is named that because you can supposedly see seven counties from there. You can certainly see quite a distance, although there is no telling what counties you are looking at. We saw many amazing and wonderful things, including a three legged frog, turkeys, vultures, and a marsh hawk.

*The three-legged frog*

*Looking out over the valley from the 30-acre lot*

Seven-County Hill

*Click for a better look*

*The villages of Fultonville and Fonda can be seen from here*

Here how the world looks from the top of Northview's tallest hill. On a day like this it is cold and windy up there, but it sure is pretty. We just missed a spell when the sun was playing shadow games with the clouds, making brilliant patterns of dark and blazing colors from the maples and poplars. When it is sunny and clear you can see several more sets of mountains behind the ones in the background.

However, by the time we got home from Bellinger's Orchard with some nice Ida Red apples, it was mostly all grey and threatening, so the pictures aren't all they might be. Oh, well, Alan and I had a great time poking around on the back of the big hill, which drops off in a very steep bank to a few fields in the back of the farm.

Pumpkin Tide

A lovely picture of a St. Augustine, Florida church, surrounded by burnished gold-orange pumpkins, was posted recently by Florida Cracker on his wonderful blog, Pure Florida. It reminded me abruptly of one of my favorite poems. I had pretty much forgotten it, since it was something I liked way back in college when being seen reading counter culture poetry was quite the thing to do. Still, the instant I saw all those pumpkins lined up in front of that beautiful edifice it jumped into my mind as swiftly as a leaping whitetail.

Here it is just in time for the Halloween season.

The Pumpkin Tide
I saw thousands of pumpkins last night
come floating in on the tide,
bumping up against the rocks and
rolling up on the beaches;
it must be Halloween in the sea.

from The Pill Versus The Springhill Mine Disaster 1968 by Richard Brautigan

What's up at the paper anyhow?

I dunno. A few weeks ago the Farm Side started showing up on Saturday some weeks when Friday is its normal day to run in the Recorder. That seemed to happen when I got real close to my noon Wednesday deadline before sending it, so I figured that I was not getting it done in time to make the cut for Friday. Then they started leaving off the tag line about me being a dairy farmer and regular columnist and all. I didn't pay much attention; this is a busy time of year and it just wasn't a big deal. However, a good friend was bugged by it and called the new publisher and complained. She phoned me after the fact and said he was very nice and told her he was sorry about it. I chuckled and thanked her for noticing and caring enough to take the time to bring the situation to the man's attention. As long as they kept paying me, I wasn't going to get too excited about it.


Then this week they printed it with no byline, no grinning mug shot, no tag line, no nothing, not even the name of the column. Come on now, how is anybody even gonna know what they are reading, except that at least it was in its usual spot on the side of the Friday editorial page? (If you actually want to see it you will have to spend a buck as the paper has a pay per view website.) There have been quite a few changes at the Recorder lately and maybe that is what is going on here. The masthead is bigger and has a nice drawing of a windmill. In fact the whole look of the newspaper has changed, mostly for the better I think. Still, I hate to see that look change so much that I am no longer part of it.

Are they trying to irritate me enough to drive me to full time blogging? Sort of a death by a thousand (paper) cuts type of thing? Do they hate me? Was it an oversight? Should I cry and pound my heels on the floor?

Or should I laugh and wait to see what they do next week? Yeah, that works for me. That's just what I'll do.

Doggone it!

I mostly mind my own business where other people's dogs are concerned. However, yesterday I was just plain perturbed by a doggy situation the girls and I experienced. We were at Wally World buying an elbow brace. I blew my right one a couple of weeks ago struggling with a barn door that had come off its rollers and it has been getting progressively worse. I parked, as is my habit, in the rows in back down near the swamp. There was no one else around.

However, when we returned to the van there was a gigantic blue truck parked about as close as it could get to our driver's side door.
And in the open back was a beautiful blond Doberman.

Loose.

Completely unrestrained.


She was a gorgeous dog, although there were several rather serious scars marring her lovely golden coat. She wore nothing but a choke collar (something I would certainly never leave on an unattended dog).

I felt strongly uncomfortable, despite having no particular fear of Dobies. (Some of the nicest dogs I have ever met have been Dobermans). However, I have worked with dogs all my life, and this dog gave me the willies. Determined not to show breed prejudice, I unloaded my stuff into the back of the car (including an extra-large bag of dog food), all the while keeping half an eye on the occupant of the next vehicle, who was about five feet from my face. The girls and I kept up a stream of nervous chatter about the dog and her presumed-to-be-idiot owner while we worked. When we done loading our things I turned to walk to the driver's door. The dog came quickly toward me and leaned out of the truck bed with an "I mean business" growl rumbling in her throat. She bared her teeth right at my face.
Needless to say I went around to the other side of the car to get in.

A few seconds later a man jumped into the truck and drove away with the dog still loose in the back. We marveled at his unconcern.


What kind of dimwit leaves a dog loose in the back of a truck in a busy parking lot anyhow?
And what kind of malicious fool does it with an aggressive dog? It certainly isn't fair to the dog, no matter how well trained and it isn't too safe for passersby either. I sure hope I don't meet him again.

Yummy

A new product has just hit the shelves in the Middle East. Its release was timed in order to coincide with the Holy Month of Ramadan. When this Camelicious substance reaches our shores will it sweep Coke and Pepsi aside in its wake? Will Mountain Dew be replaced by Desert Dew Drops? Only time will tell, but date-flavored camel milk may be the Yoohoo of the future.

Evergreen Cemetery

*Fonda, NY*

Catskill Game Farm closes

This is the last weekend for the big attraction and naturally the animal rights idiots are there protesting. The place has an incredible record of breeding endangered species in captivity, helping to assure their continued existence on earth, but there is always somebody who has to stand on the sidelines whining and waving signs. And of course they get the headlines and camera time.


I wish we could get away to go to the auction. Although I have no interest in owning an addax, a yak or a rhinoceros, they have peafowl, guinea hens and exotic chickens. I could go for something like that maybe. I certainly miss having guineas. Ours used to fly up to the top of our 72-foot high tower and cackle and screech for hours as they surveyed their territory. For some reason I found that amusing. They are also wonderful for curing horses of being spooky about noisy things bursting out of the bushes. They spend all their time in a state of frantic alarm and after a while the equines pay no attention to such antics... a big help in a region where there is an equally feather-headed wild turkey under every other bush.

Speaking of screeching. About an hour before first dawn today I was luxuriating in my cozy nest, fairly wallowing in the knowledge that this is my morning off. No need to haul cold, still-damp sneakers onto stiff, achy feet to trudge through what feels like half a mile of mud to where fifty muddy, cranky cows await. No need to work for four hours before breakfast and second coffee. No need to do any darned thing I didn't want to.

Suddenly, SOMETHING let out an awful wail that sounded like it was right beside me.
Close.
Real close.
I thought one of the kids was having a nightmare. It came again. And again. And again. I realized that it was outdoors, but it was the most unearthly sound you could imagine and it was right next to the house.

I woke up the boss and we jumped out of bed to find Liz about to pound on our bedroom door. It had wakened her too. Of course it was still pitch dark and the land was blanketed with dense fog, so thick you couldn't see across the driveway. Whatever it was it was gone by the time the sun came up, but I kept dogs in, much to their chagrin, until I could actually SEE them when I let them out. Chances are it was a coyote, but it just didn't sound normal. We have the wild brush dogs around all the time and although they have a pretty unearthly cry we are used to them. Could have been a rabid one or a dog that had been hit by a car and was running in the dark. There is just no way we could tell because of the fog. I went out on the porch for a while, but couldn't see at all no matter how bright a flashlight I had. I suggested that the boss take a .22 or something to the barn with them, but he didn't. I am not going out to fill the stove until the fog lifts. It's cold, but it isn't THAT cold.

**Update...along about noonish when Alan finally stumbled down the stairs (having the morning off himself and having stayed up to watch the Mets game in its entirety last night) blond hair puffing over bleary eyes and jammies hanging off his bony hips, we got....dum da dum dum......the REST OF THE STORY.

We asked him if he had heard those infernal Hellish shrieks that paralyzed the rest of us with shivering terror.


"Oh, yeah," he replied. "That was Gael* howling back at the coyotes out on the hill. I heard her but I was too sleepy to go down and holler at her."

*Border collie number three, in season and evidently in the mood for love...any love.

Danged dog!

Maple

Blogriculture

I stumbled upon a stellar West Coast agriculture blog yesterday, by way of checking out my Site Meter to see who visits here. Someone did a search for "dairy farm blog" and found both Blogriculture and Northview Diary.

Blogriculture is the blog of two writers for the Capital Press Agriculture Weekly paper, which looks to be a tremendous source of useful ag info. Interestingly, one of Liz's best online friends, a writer whom she competes with on Its Your Turn, writes for the paper as well. They were kind enough to Blogroll me, so I am returning the favor. Take a minute and check out Blogriculture and the Capital Press. I am personally looking forward to a promised upcoming post covering a very interesting trip.....

"We send me this weekend to an Oregon farm to watch a crane drop, from the equivalent of 10 stories high, a 1,000-pound pumpkin on a Mazda hatchback."

I can't wait to read that one!

Fall color as promised

*Lovely old carriage house down in the village of Fultonville*

*The neighbor's sugar maple*

*Staghorn Sumac down along the driveway*

Checkerboard Magnums Promise

This is our purebred milking shorthorn bull, Promise, perhaps an anomaly on a Holstein farm, but calving ease on heifers is important to us and his babies bring a good price at auction. Beautiful Broadway is the one red daughter we have from him. All the rest have been various combinations of black and white.

This will take you to a picture of Promise's 90 point dam.

Here is a picture of Promise before we bought him. Sadly his speckles vanished.

For laurainnj at Somewhere in New Jersey

Great Border Collie site

Carina shared this site with me. It is truly hilarious to anyone who has ever been around a BC...or even three of them.

The dogs at Northview

A recent comment from a good blog friend in Michigan reminded me that not everyone at Northview Diary can read the column I write for the Recorder, the Farm Side, thus not everyone has already been bored to death with our three border collies.

Let me rectify that situation. Mike was my first border collie dog. I bought him from a local breeder, who has since moved to the left coast. Mike Canaday also sold me Gael, who was out of the same dam, Floss, and sired by his open trial dog, Robin. I liked Mike so much that I bred Gael to Bill, Mike's sire to get my young dog, Nick. Floss and several other dogs in the pedigrees of the three collies were actually imported from Scotland.

Mike (the man, not the dog) once brought Robin to the farm with some sheep and another fellow, his dogs and a horse, to practice for the national sheepdog trial. He just let the sheep out of the horse trailer and turned them loose. The darned things bolted for the barn and raced down the cow barn driveway towards the road. Sheep are fast. My heart was in by throat. I was envisioning carnage with wool and lawsuits and jumping up and down, when Mike released Robin and whistled something. Within seconds, literally seconds, even though Robin had never seen our farm before and hadn't seen the sheep go, I was pinned against the gate by a milling, wooly flock. He had gone over the bank, through the creek, and down below the sheep to fetch them back. Those open trial dogs are plumb amazing!


Border collies of the real sheepdog persuasion, as opposed to AKC, where good looks are all important, can have any length of hair and be just about any color you can imagine. As long as they work, it is all good. Mostly black dogs are pretty much preferred because sheep can see them better and don't mistake them for other sheep. Two of our dogs, Nick and Gael, are of the shortcoated sort; Mike is a pretty boy. They never need grooming, he requires frequent unraveling.

All three dogs work. Mike as a young dog was quite talented, although he has retired himself now at almost twelve. However, they have no where near the skill level of dogs like Robin or even nursery trial dogs. This is my failing as a trainer, not theirs as dogs, although Gael is a bit weak for a cow dog. Training sheep dogs is the hardest thing you can imagine....like parenting with sheep.

Read Mike's Ten Tips page for a little insight into getting a Border Collie puppy started.

Websites about working Border Collies.
United States Border Collie Handler Assoc.
American Border Collie Assoc.

Blondie

*Here you go Liz, as requested*

A meme!

Sort of. A regular commenter on one of my three very favorite blogs, (Pure Florida) started a neat photo exchange thingie for this weekend that sounded like a lot of fun. So I am going to play along.


Vitamin Sea is Laura's blog, worth a read while you check out other bloggers all around the country who are taking pictures of their hometowns, fields, forests, oceans and rivers this weekend and sharing them with us all. I am just waiting for the sun to come up before I head out with the camera to see what I can find to photograph. It is opening day of fall turkey season, so I am going to stay near the house. Of course it is pouring.


Wish I had taken the camera with me when we went out bringing heifers down yesterday. We brought all the springers in with the cows, so we can put the open heifers in with the bull in a couple of weeks. It was SO pretty on top of the heifer pasture hill, with the trees just starting to change and all the little white churches shining their steeples out among them.

I was amazed to find that I was able to comfortably hike up that big ol' hill TWICE! We went up first to get a half shorthorn heifer calf that wild little Mary had hidden in a tiny cup-shaped hollow we call the calving grove. (Cows have probably been hiding babies in there for a couple hundred years or more, ever since this has been a farm anyhow.) Then we had to go back for Mary, who for some reason wouldn't come along with her baby. Every breath was like a cool drink of water on a hot day. You could just feel the air recharging your lungs. In the heat of summer that hill about kills me. In fall I was able to charge up it faster than the boss.....the first time at least. He had a bit more stamina on the second trip.


Our resident red tailed hawk screamed as he sailed above us and the other heifers ran along side us dancing at the fun of it all. It actually was fun....for work.

UPDATE: I believe after reading posts on other blogs that I am supposed to take requests....so what would you like to see photographed here at Northview Farm?

Fall colors are kind of subdued this year

Bunny

*For matthew didier

The dogs

*Mike and Nick, 3/4 brothers*

*Nick, who is not thrilled about the camera*

*For carina

*Gael is in season and can't have her picture taken with her son and brother...

Moth TV

The boss, a man with a true magnetism for low flying bats, (along with an intense horror of them,) came up with a pretty good reason why bats start showing up in the cow barn in late September.

The outdoor bugs are mostly gone.

(Except mosquitoes of course.) We always wondered why they come in, because they don't bother us until quite late in the year. However, now, around eight PM, they flutter down out of the haymow and dive bomb us while we work. They are just eating stable flies, to which they are most welcome, but with all the rabies around, we wish they would stay the heck away from our heads.

According to moth TV, the boss is probably right. On a normal summer night Alan and I can spend ten minutes watching our special television every night on the way up to bed, and never run out of interestingly different species of moths to exclaim over. Now one or two skittering up and down the glass of the window on the front stair landing it is a lot. For some reason that high window is like a magnet to them, although other lighted windows in the house are insect free. These creatures of the night are plumb amazing, a study in delicate shades of brown, tan and cream that is as intricate as a 1000 piece puzzle.


Anyhow, the bats drive us nuts as soon as it begins to get dark. The other night one actually landed on a white porcelain light receptacle and began gobbling up flies that were clinging there soaking up the warmth. I never imagined a bat landing to munch lunch, but this one hung there for several minutes until the light evidently got too hot for his little feet. Then he went back to buzz-bombing us. I can't say I am sorry that the little flying mammals will soon follow the bugs into hibernation.

Speaking of rabies, Alan saw what was probably a rabid woodchuck yesterday. It was fumbling and stumbling around on the ground in a most alarming manner. Thankfully he was on the tractor. Not so thankfully it was the first time he went out without his .22 all week.

New England Asters

*Sorry about the blurry picture, but this little green wasp or fly didn't sit still long and left very soon. Any idea what it might be? Perhaps a cuckoo wasp?*

Grain not to blame

Last week, the New York Times, which loves to hate conventional farmers, blamed the recent outbreak of E. coli O157:H7 in spinach on cows fed grain diets. The story carried the sensational title of "Leafy Green Sewage." Even though use of any fertilizer product that has anything to do with cows on leafy vegetables is strongly discouraged by the FDA (if not downright outlawed), the activist newspaper eagerly snatched an opportunity to bash animal agriculture.

Now an actual, real, honest to gosh, scientist has pointed out that they are full of hooey. On US Newswire comes a story, quoting Dr. David Renter, an assistant professor of veterinary epidemiology at Kansas State University, as saying, " E. Coli O157:H7 Not Limited to Grain-Fed Cattle"

Turns out that sheep, deer, bison, raccoons, birds and cows that live on grass and hay, not to mention the humans who harvest the crop and are often as much as a quarter mile from the nearest bathroom, can all carry the disease in their digestive tracts.

Shame on the Times for being so quick to trot out the latest in unscientific bilge for a blame game in such a time of crisis.

Spitzer not a farm guy

Days are getting very short, less than twelve hours of sunlight now. This means dragging a flashlight along to every milking and hard times getting any crop work done between chores.

I have been asked to aid some other farmers in drafting a letter to the NY Attorney General, Elliot Spitzer, about the current fad among milk processors of marketing so called BST-free milk. BST is a naturally occurring hormone, synthesized by Monsanto, and used by some farmers to increase their cows' appetites and thus their milk production. It has always been rather controversial, even though it is impossible to detect differences between the milk of cows that have been given it and cows that haven't. For the record, we have never used it here at Northview.

However, of late, some milk companies have asked their farmers to sign pledges not to use it so the the companies can market their milk as BST free (even though it really isn't, as all cows produce this hormone naturally). No problem there. We need to offer consumers what they want and if there is a market, good. And I repeat we don't use it here at our farm anyhow.

Problem is the milk companies are charging consumers a whole dollar more a gallon and paying the farmers not one cent for producing it for them....even though it becomes more expensive to produce milk without it. It is just another example of so-called farmer cooperatives becoming instead for profit companies and making those profits by stepping on the necks of the real producers of our food. I will gladly help draft the letter, although I don't expect that it will accomplish anything. Spitzer is busy running for governor, as he has been since he took office as AG. He has no interest in fairness to farmers, or as far as I can see in upstate at all. NY is bleeding dairy farmers like a gushing torrent, with farms all around us selling the cows and looking for new lives.
Unfair practices like this will just speed the death of the state's number one industry. The fools.

New Piggies

Liz and I drove over fifty miles one way to pick these guys up.

And ended up with these thrown in for free.

This is what happens....

when you try to take pictures of the guppies through the glass of the aquarium.

Tis the season

For all that winter is hurtling towards us like a frozen rocket (and yes I know that autumn doesn't officially start until tomorrow, but, trust me, winter is nipping at its heels like like a coyote on a white tail) this is a fabulous season. The air is so crisp and invigorating that it fair makes your skin tingle. When I have occasion to go outside to hang up laundry or fill the stove with wood, I don't want to come back inside. I think we are filled with the same instincts that set the Canada geese winging down the great flyways and the woodchucks and squirrels fattening up on alfalfa and corn. There is a constant, intense, urge to get something, anything at all, done and done right now. It is surely a restless time of year.

Every Friday it has become my task to drive Becky over to college and wait while she has three classes. You might think that three hours spent sitting in a car might come under the heading of cruel and unusual punishement, but it is nice in fact. I get to read all the papers in peace, and maybe a good book too, and the campus is tranquil and lovely. The girls both attend SUNY Cobleskill, an ag and tech school, which has liberal arts degree programs as well. It also has a renouned horticulture program, with much of the campus landscaped by students. Young maples are just now turning bronze and gold, flowers that are unfamiliar to me flourish in dozens of beds, and wonderful birds rustle in the shrubs.

In fact a small sparrow comes every week to torment me, hopping briskly back and forth along the curb under the front bumper. He is in constant motion and a frustrating puzzle. It is as if he were saying, "Nyah, nyah, bet you can't guess what I am."

He is right, I can't. Is he a chipping sparrow in fall plumage, or perhaps a juvenile? Probably not, although he has a dark russet cap reminiscent of a chipper's summer garb. Savannah sparrow? The notched tail and markings almost fit, but not quite. Something else altogether perhaps? I just don't know. He is always ruffled up as if recently injured and has a few upturned wing feathers that suggest the same. I even took the binoculars along this week to try to get a good look, but he is always on the move. It is really bugging me.

If we ever retire and can afford it, I would like to go to school at SUNY Cobleskill and study some of the horticulture and maybe fisheries and wildlife programs. They are just so darned interesting.

Fall

A coolish wind whistled through the goldenrod today. What heat comes upstairs from letting the hot water from the wood furnace circulate through the oil furnace plenum felt darned good. Everything is getting ready for the cold. Monarch butterflies like floating stained glass windows, teeter and tip on every breeze. There are a couple of early maples blazing like torches across the valley. I found the big wooly bear on the drive next to the compost bin. (Longest one I ever saw.) I don't think fall is going to wait for its official start this weekend. First frost won't be far behind so I am dragging house plants in a couple at a time.

The other night Alan saw quite a sight. A female coyote lay right in the middle of the farm road, in the second field behind the barn, nursing four pups. She barely bothered to get out of the way of the tractor, although her whelps hustled off into the corn. Wonder if she is rabid or sick with some other thing. Not normal to stay right there with a human around.

Another strange visitor is a bat, probably a little brown, that sleeps right downstairs in the barn, beside the vaccuum tank for the milk pump. What a weird spot to choose to sleep, as he (or she) is barely above head level, right out in the bright light, in the noisiest spot in the barn. It was so low tonight, clinging to the outside of a metal sheathed powerline, that if I had the camera with me, I could have made quite a close up. Of course it was over at the house. Naturally.

Wooly bear caterpillar

Question of the day. What does this guy's color pattern have to tell us about the weather we can look forward to here in the Northeast this winter? I am sure I don't know. Any ideas?
(If you can't see him well enough to tell, he was about the longest wooly bear I have ever seen with an exceptionally wide orange middle.)

Strange days

Sundae on the Farm 2006

Alan and I took a few pictures yesterday during the time when he wasn't carrying ice cream and I wasn't playing tour guide. As you can see a good time was had by all.

Another hazy morning

This picture of the water garden was taken a few weeks ago, but it still looks much the same. Hoping for some sunshine later for Sundae on the Farm.

19,000

Thank you to my 19,000th visitor, from Syracuse NY, referred by NYCO's blog at 8:06 PM today!

Horse auction

The boss dragged me across the river to a horse auction yesterday. I won't lie and say it wasn't fun, although I really didn't want to go. (Just lazy I guess). We came within about 25 bucks of bringing home a horse. (Whew, close one there.)

Anyhow, what an assortment of horses we saw. The migration of the Amish to the area brought a huge offering of draft horses of all ages and descriptions and there were a few local light horses and ponies too.

It was exciting. While we were standing behind the auctioneers' stand watching a pair of Halflingers being paraded at a high trot, I looked over at a commotion a few feet away and found myself staring right at a horse's belly button. Argghhh!!! A tall, flaxy chestnut mare was sunfishing right there among all the auction goers and horses waiting to be sold. Only the fact that a couple of big Amish boys were on her halter kept her from throwing herself right over backwards. We decided to go over by the grandstand until they got her through the ring. She was a hot one and I don't envy whoever has her in their stable today.

Just after she sold an Amish fellow brought in a little yellow colt. I was pretty sure it was a Halflinger, but it didn't have the refinement about the head you see in the hotblooded ones around here. It looked more like a miniature Belgian with a puffy little curly tail and thick, furry blonde ears. I liked it. It was very correct and seemed very quiet (could have been drugged of course.)

We watched a few more sell hoping to see what that one brought and then left. We were over in Fonda getting laundry detergent when the boss said, "I want to buy that colt."

O....ka-a-a-y.....we are about as broke as we could possibly be, milk prices are what they were in 1970, fuel prices aren't, and we already have two horses nobody does anything with. Still, the man works like a dog...two dogs maybe, and today is his 58th brithday. (Happy birthday, Ralph,we love you). So, I said, go get him, no more than four hundred bucks.

We rushed back to the sale where I sat in the car with a good Andrew Greeley book while he went in to see what he could do. He bid up to $250 on the little guy, then decided that was enough. A dealer took him home for $275.

Can't say I was really sorry. We knew nothing about the colt except that he was cute and had no real use for him. Still he was cute...... really, really cute. He had excellent feet and legs and was put together just right.


Horse prices ranged from ten dollars for a skeletal old thing that someone is hoping to rehabilitate, to near four thousand each for a pair of locally grown Paint showhorses. They must have sold a hundred head, and were still selling long after we left. You could hear the aucioneer's chant from here when the wind was right.

Finding my folks

When I first saw the picture below and a number of others that were given to my mom along with it, all was explained. I have always felt like a changeling child, dumped into my more conventional family from some weird place where girls like to wear boots and jeans and run around in the woods doing guy things. Heck, I have spent most of my five decades trying to outdo guys at what they do. I only got smart and let them take up the heavy lifting…and tractor driving, cow wrangling, ladder climbing, huntin’, fishin’ (wait a minute, I still fish and milk cows) and all that stuff a couple years ago. I haven’t owned a dress in over thirty years. (They damn well better bury me in blue jeans.)

Both my grandmas were lady-like. My mom went along with my dad whether he was digging rare minerals in the wilds of Canada or wearing the kilt and representing the clan at the games or carving or painting, lugging books into shows, or doing hands on archeology, but she was always a girly girl.
Not the kind of kid like I was, that brought in a dinner plate sized toad and dumped it in her lap when I was supposed to be on a date with that cute blond guy. Or had my big milk snake get loose at my graduation party and scare all the Lachmayer great aunts half to death. Or was the best, most un-tackle-able football player in our gang. Or played guitar in our garage band that graduated into a bar band that rocked any number of wild places, even one biker bar....where we played Born to be Wild for about three hours straight because we felt safer doing so. (After all some of our audience was out in the parking lot throwing some of their buddies off the roof onto parked cars...all in good fun, of course.)

I felt like a freak.

Until I saw the pictures. There were my great grandma, Carrie Montgomery, whom I never met, and a whole passel of great aunts, wearing rubber boots and men’s knickerbockers or baggy old men’s pants, camping along the beautiful Canesteo River. They held up massive bass they had hooked; they cooked rough in the woods. They rode in wonderful wooden boats and set up this delightfully inviting camp. (Don't be fooled by the dresses in the cooking picture. Others that are not posted show them dressed like female hunting guides and darned proud of it.)

When I saw the camp I wanted to just walk right into the picture. It said home like my own living room does.

Take a look at my mom’s blog, Tryon Books and More, and see my late great aunt Fanny. (That is her with the bass in the bottom picture. She is the one wearing knickers and close-cropped hair.) Fanny had a collie dog too!

How I wish I had known all my Grandpa Montgomery’s sisters-in-law and his mamma.

They were my kind of women. Or maybe I am theirs.

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There is a story behind this picture

*Thanks to my wonderful mom for allowing me to use it. Story to follow, later when it isn't time to go to work. While you are waiting look closely, and think about just walking right into the picture......

The running of the wools

Yeah, yeah, I know, in Spain it's the running of the bulls, but we do things differently here at Northview Dairy.

See, I used to keep a half dozen or so of assorted sheep to introduce border collie puppies to the wonders of herding. Sheep stay together better than cows, don't kick as hard and are much easier to herd. However, Nick, our youngest, is seven now, so there has been no need for sheep for years. Still, there are two elderly hangers on around the place, Freckles and BS, her ancient dam. (And, yes, BS stands for just what you think it does.)

They are rarely any bother at all and we are quite fond of them. They live, by choice in the cow barn yard and the tool shed. They could duck under the fences and go wherever they wish, but they seem to like their chosen domain. However, there is one cardinal rule on a dairy farm. No sheep (or pigs, or horses, or chickens) in the cow barn. It is not only sensible practice, it is the law, enforced by the dreaded milk inspector.

This morning those naughty old ladies, who heretofore seemed to know better, strutted right into the stable behind the cows, ran up into the manger and began to fight the cows for their food. It was plumb ugly.

The boss was NOT happy. Beck and I quickly haltered them and led them across the bridge to the heifer yard and locked the gate. (I am grateful that they are halter broken, as dragging a reluctant sheep is nearly impossible.)


They were so miserable. You have not seen forlorn until you have viewed an elderly sheep deprived of its chosen hunting ground. They paced back and forth and blatted sadly with drooping ears. However, sheep have been sent to the auction for getting in the habit of coming in the cow barn. (There are any number of other buildings where their presence is acceptable.) We let them stew all day until we were done putting cows in for night milking. Beck went over and opened the gate.

Then it happened, the running of the wools. It is a good thing Beck was quick to get out of the way. Those two old ewes raced across the bridge and up the hill to the yard in front of the tool shed. There they fluffed their wooly coats and settled down to chew their cuds as if they had been there all along. I wonder if they will try to come in the barn tomorrow.

Still another sunrise

Carl DiFranco Tribute

Since September 11, 2001, when one of the planes that flew into the World Trade Center turned south just east of here over Amsterdam, it is hard not to notice the rattle of the kitchen windows when a jet passes by. I still stop to listen every single time I hear a plane. In the first days after the attacks it was estimated that more than five thousand people died in the assault. As bodies were counted and some of the missing found, authorities finally decided that only 2996 people actually died.

Only.

As if any single one of the souls who were lost that day, heroes and homebodies, doctors and stockbrokers, firemen, policemen, cooks and secretaries, could be encompassed by a word like only.

They were not only.

They were not some incomprehensible count of the dead and missing.

They were our friends and neighbors. People loved them. People wake still wake up today missing them and mourning them and go to bed each night bereft because they are gone.

One of those 2996 friends, neighbors and loved ones was 27 year-old Carl DiFranco.


This is to honor Carl on the fifth anniversary of the nightmare that took him from his loved ones. Raised in Huguenot, NY and a lifelong resident, Carl was assistant vice president of Marsh & McLennan Cos. Inc., located in the World Trade Center. He graduated from Monsignor Farrell High School and cum laude from St. Johns University. He liked to bowl, play tennis and jog. Married a short time before the attacks he was widowed within months, when heart problems while awaiting a transplant took his longtime sweetheart, Loren Bosso.

Carl must have been a wonderful person. He supported his sister through the birth of his niece, then helped through the difficult weeks that followed. The day he died his mother’s car had a flat tire, so like the decent son he was, he offered her the use of his truck. This made him a little later than usual, but not late enough to be saved. He also took his mother on “dates” and surprise trips. He pitched in willingly to help her with projects around the house and yard. In a New York Times article she said, “I keep thinking I hear him coming in the door, that I'll have a chance to help him get through it," (referring to the loss of his beloved wife.)

From what I read in many tributes from people who knew him, his kindness and caring for his mom reflected the way he always was. Friends remember him as someone who was brave and confident, kind, generous and quick with a joke. There are many poignant references to him by the people who knew him to be found all over the Internet. They make hard reading, but they put a face on what our nation lost that terrible day.

I hope this small tribute will help to remind us of Carl and the many other special people who were taken from us on September 11. I will try to think of him and the good life he lived when I hear planes overhead, instead of reflecting on the terror of those days.

***I would like to thank everyone whose written tributes at the time of the tragedy provided me with a glimpse into Carl’s life. I couldn’t know him, but I admire him just the same.
***The picture appears many places on the Internet, so I don’t know to whom to attribute it.
***I will cross post this to my other blogs in hopes that it will reach just a little further.