Or so the weatherman says. We are not supposed to get much here but wind and small accumulations, but our friends and neighbors to the Northeast may really get nailed. (Deb has a new farm website here...it is pretty darned nice.)
Anyhow, those of us who did chores this morning got in extra bedding and got the first feeding done early and the boss sanded the driveway for the milk truck. (Our hill is wonderful in flood times, but we pay the price in winter when the ice comes. I am glad we have a good guy to bring in sand for sure.) The boss leaves a skid steer bucket load by the back steps for me and I dump on some salt and take care of my walkways over here by the house with it. This year some enterprising soul left a bag of feed grade salt on the porch so I am using that.
It has been so cold already this season that the guys have stapled plastic up over windows we never have covered before. It certainly helps with the indoor temperature.
Lately I have been brushing my old cow Beausoleil after milking. She is such a sweet old thing....if she had her way I would just stand in her stall and brush her maybe twenty hours a day. Alas I am only good for a few minutes worth, but she and I are pretty good friends just the same. There isn't a drug on the market better for stress than brushing a nice old cow. Stay warm!
*****If you get a chance today, go see Linda. She has some REAL cowboy poetry that will make you glad you are warm and cozy.
Good morning all, and Happy New Year. Not much to say yet, beyond those things..... I hope for all of you and for our nation and our struggling world that this just-born year with the neat name...twenty-ten, I like that...will be better, kinder, sweeter in the savoring, than this one just past was.
Good things happened last year though, in between the struggles and problems. Mom made it through chemo and is her wonderful self again...and maybe it is good that all of us learned to appreciate just how wonderful that self always has been. She is such an enthusiastic, upbeat, happy and loving person, always able to see and enjoy the bright side of every single thing in life. We have been so darned lucky to have her as our mom all those years, anchoring, negotiating peace and making really good soup. Nowadays, I at least, know just how grateful I need to be for that.
Brotherly peace and love found our family this year in so many ways...... I will be grateful for that forever I expect. I wish that my whole life I had appreciated the folks in my family. They sure were and are good folks.
Scrolling back through the photos here on Northview this past week in the course of writing my year end retrospective for the Farm Side, I got to see and remember just a little of the amazing beauty that was put on parade for us day in and day out. I hope this upcoming year I remember to stop and savor all that a little more, in between worrying about bills and breakdowns.
Thanks for visiting! Best wishes to every one of you from all of us at Northview Farm
Smiling up at the eastern moon A sky the color of butternut smoke Geese on the river Talking in tongues And the chores in the rear view mirror. Nothing more to say and nothing more to ask for....a good night....
Oh, wait, it was certainly a fancy moon, what with the way it was shining through those thin clouds of ice and snow and glowing brighter than the ball in Times Square, but who knew that it was a blue moon too? The boss's dear aunt, who is in her nineties but sharp as a tack and sweet as sugar, called to remind him. I was glad....sometimes you need to look at the moon.
Yep, it's winter. Not my favorite season. Barn has flooded three times this week because of sump pump failure.
Hope they got that fixed finally. I am sure the men hope so more than I do, as they are the ones who have to pump water out of one gutter and into the other...Alan got kicked pretty good working behind one cow named Baha. Don't know what has gotten into her lately but she sure has turned miserable. Liz got kicked too, in the knee just like Al.
What is up with these cows? Really I think they just don't like this kind of weather either. They are inside a fairly warm barn and have what they need to eat brought to them, but it is still probably not as comfortable as when it is say, fifty degrees, which our milk inspector says is a cow's favorite temperature (I lean towards 70 myself.)
Anyhow I am working at grinning and bearing it, as there are plenty of people who are experiencing much worse weather than we are....it is winter after all.
The cold sure does bring in the birds. I think I saw a red poll day before yesterday when I was on the phone with the milk inspector (discussing Liz's upcoming trip to Iowa). I didn't have my glasses on so I am not going to be betting on it yet....but I think so.
I won't lie. I am real nervous about that trip. It is an honor to be chosen to represent the entire Northeast region of the National Farmers Organization and I am excited for Liz. What an opportunity!
On the other hand, guess where she has to change planes. And January is winter there too, with all sorts of accompanying weather possibilities. I will be glad when it is done and she is home and regaling us with stories of all the goings on.
Well, time to milk the cows and then polish up my own year in review essay for this week's Farm Side. Stay warm if you can.
Our bird counting peregrinations take us past a pretty horse farm with neatly trimmed barns and long, white fences....and horses, beautiful, playful horses.
These Percherons were playing, leaping and rearing and spraying snow everywhere, like a beer commercial or some other exciting thing. Alas, this was the best I could do....
No "ooh-ah" birds this year, although I guess team Mayfield South counted the only horned larks. There was a neat little flock of them feeding in the up and down way they have near a horse pasture we passed.
157 Common crows 19 Dark-eyed juncos 14 House sparrows (Sassenachs)
4 Tree sparrows 137 Black-capped chickadees 55 Mourning doves
24 American Turkeys 25 horned larks And 97 Blue Jays
I doubt that 97 is the highest count we have had with jays, but it is certainly the most in a while. They were everywhere in flocks of as many as 25 at a time. Guess they have recovered from West Nile and are having a good year.
It was certainly a weird day. We have been counting MFS for a very long time, probably over twenty years. In that much time you learn where the birds are likely to be, droves of chickadees on Maloney Road, lots of everything good on Ashler Road if it is passable, etc. Yesterday, the good spots were virtually all bereft of birds. Instead we found them in weird places, like a large mixed feeding flock in the parking lot of a tractor trailer place where we have never seen a single bird before. Strange...also strange is not seeing a single Canada goose. There are still hundreds of them down here on the river just a few miles from our territory.
As always it is fun to get out with the family and count the birds. The brothers and I are the second generation to work this territory and we all three of us have kids that will probably keep up the tradition in the future. I for one am grateful for those sharp young eyes when they ride out with us.
The forecast is very mixed, with the potential for rain, freezing rain, flurries or sun... or even all of the above. Here's hoping it is halfway decent and that we see the great blue heron that was just down the road from the folks' house on Thursday.
Had Christmas with the family yesterday and had the best time. There is just nothing like folks...and your own folks are the bestest folks hands down.
Hope you all had a great Christmas...will report on the bird count later.
We thank you all for making our Christmas so much more and are all wishing you much love and joy ....... friends and family together in heart no matter how great the distance may be.
On my kitchen table. It looks sort of like a heavy, black, shower head, but is proving much more troublesome to add and subtract from a certain Dodge pick up truck.
Yesterday a friend of the kids' spent his whole day helping in the attempt to remove the old one so that this new one could be installed. So far with small success.(Until he is better paid, I fed him...cookies...sweet and sour maple venison as per the earlier recipe, homemade applesauce and a pile of potatoes....best I can do....we are in the process of inventing a cookie recipe these days. We started out with the three-ingredient peanut butter cookie recipe given to us by a dearly beloved, really nice family member, who is at least as sweet as his cookies, and added oatmeal one time...chocolate chips the next...and yesterday a handful of coconut.....not bad so far. I'm thinking raisins for the next experiment.)
Here's to a better day today.
PS to all you kindly commenters....any time, any time at all..we do food fairly well and there is certainly plenty of the other side of the equation as well.
I spoke to a friend at the local USDA office yesterday (she was kind enough to call me so I could put it in the Farm Side) and she said that they had processed these payments. They will be a welcome stocking stuffer (so to speak) for the nation's dairy farmers. The payments were calculated based on milk production between February and July of this year. This number will be doubled and paid at a rate of thirty-two cents per hundredweight.
Although there is no question that this is more than welcome, milk prices were $5.55 lower for that same hundredweight of milk than last year, meaning that hauling out of this hole will be a long process. (I heard estimates at a milk cooperative meeting I attended that said that it will take three years of twenty-dollar milk to even pull most farms even.) Prices have shown some slow up-ticking over the past two months, with class 3 hitting around $14.85 for December milk, which well above the low for the year. However, the all milk price for the year, according to Bob Cropp, will be.$12.75, still far below the cost of production.
Here's hoping the national and world economies recover enough over the next few months that folks can afford dairy products again....and that the big guys pay attention to the anti-trust investigations that are occurring and let some of their record profits trickle down to the folks who produce the products they peddle.
With the same theme as last week's Sunday Stills, which I missed...this is one of my favorite Christmas ornaments and one of only four on the tree...so far...this one stays downstairs on the China closet door year round as I can't bear to put it away.
Called brother and sister in law this AM to talk about some hay they are bringing us for bedding for the bossies. Something Lisa told me thenhas us all full of wonder and amazing joy (and kind of choked up also). Someone, we are not to know who....but someone that we have "met" here at Northview Diary...and in their home as well I'm sure.... somewhere away from here, but close in the way of hearts....bought us eleven more bales of haylage for the cows.
I am afraid that I don't know how to say thank you well enough. Actually, I barely know what to say at all....I am so overwhelmed by such an incredible kindness. The hay Matt and Lisa brought us during that terrible storm last week already got the cows up two hundred pounds of milk. a pick up (and we even haven't fed three bales yet) which sure is moving in the right direction. They love it and jump right up and start mooing as soon as we start to feed it. It means a lot to us that they cared to bring it to us....We are so lucky in the people around us and the people we have met here.
We have come to care for our blog friends as if they were family in a way...as if they lived next door, or down the street or across the river. We talk about their lives when we are working in the barn....their trials and joys...grand kids, horses, dogs and gardens...snow storms and sunshine, a world of wonderful folks at our fingertips. Politics and doctor visits. Snow storms and sunny Florida beaches....all enrich the fabric of our daily lives.
They...or perhaps I should say you...are an important part of our world. One of the best parts. I can never wait to get on the computer when I come in to see who has said what or what is going on.You are great folks and I am grateful for you.
This is more than we could ever have imagined though... To the person who bought us these bales, thank you, God bless you, we are more grateful than I know how to tell you...Your caring means the world to us this Christmas, here's hoping you and yours have a wonderful one as well.
***We made it home all right, but it was a trip from Hell. Becky is home to stay and I am more thankful than you could possible imagine that I never have to make that trip again...especially with a car that keeps catching on fire whenever you stop.
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