Got Bunnies

Beaucoup de bunny tracks

If anybody is missing their Easter bunny I think I found him...and him...and him...and quite a few hers too.

Daisy and I were out patrolling the lawn yesterday and found a veritable highway of bunny tracks under the old swing set. Could it be because we cleaned out the freezers and put elderberries and some old dried up apples out for the robins? I'll betcha.

They are Driving Miss Daisy.....plumb nuts.

Got Ice?

Never seen anything like it. We have had ice like this since November and it gets worse all the time. Actually almost all melted last week, but the new storm brought back plenty. It eats up sand and salt like quicksand.....It is slowly devouring the horse trailer....

Can You Stand It?

Yeah, we had pretty much the whole family under our roof for a while last night... Good thing that baby is too little to understand how to exploit being the center of attention.

Talked to mom yesterday too. She is working hard at rehab and proud of making progress at hopping. Only my mom could be in rehab for that awful ankle break and be gathering computers so she can do taxes and such. What a woman.

And I promise I won't drive you nuts with baby pictures......just this once, ok?

The Plague

Was that the flu? Hit me like a truck. Being sick and a dollar will get you a cup of coffee, but it won't get you time off from milking cows here. Or at least not when three people are doing everything. To be fair, Becky offered to do all my chores but she has  been sick too.

However today I woke up able to cogitate at somewhere near the normal level, which is welcome indeed. No fun being so far out you don't know or care about much of anything. The bird feeders got filled for the first time all week and I picked up some of the accumulated junk in the kitchen.

And there is a new baby...Scotty had a little heifer calf yesterday. I gave her to Becky for the way she has stepped up and done so much over the past few months. She works in town, milks every single milking, feeds all the calves, helps get the hay in, takes care of the ponies and chickens, and way too many other things for a young lady who should get to have some fun once in a while.

She named the calf Donna after a Doctor Who character. Hopefully she will stay out of trouble and live and thrive. Excuse the lousy photo...taken with a cell phone and a flashlight.

Now to kick this darned bug far enough out in the field to be able to go see Peggy and give her some serious spoiling and help Mom and Dad in some way. I am not much use but want to do what I can.

Thanks btw for all your kind thoughts and prayers. You can't imagine how much they mean to me. When I was at the hospital praying all alone for Liz to be able to have the baby and for both of them to be safe and well, I wished so hard that I could ask you good folks to help me with that task. Then I found via a phone call later that a dear friend had a feeling that prayer was needed and was pulling for them the whole time....

So Glad it's Only Rain

So far at least, although the snow is expected to follow. I cannot possibly thank you all enough for your kind words and prayers. Especially the prayers. They mean so much to us. I will thank you each and all individually as soon as things calm down.

Yesterday evening, little Miss Peggy was allowed home from the hospital to snuggle with her daddy and mommy. Of course we all have horrid colds down here, or I would be hoping she could come spend some serious cuddle time with grandma too.

And Ren is eating again. During the second hospitalization she refused to eat anything. Last night when Liz and the baby came home she gobbled everything in sight. Nothing like  a loyal doggy.

Mom has been moved to rehab where she will continue to need good thoughts and prayers from anyone who can spare them. I am one who tends to pray a lot,,,but lately I have been plumb wearing it out, I'll tell you.

Anyhow, thanks, hope you are all well and safe and out of the storm.

Don't Know What to Say

Our baby is back in the hospital with jaundice and my mom broke her ankle. Prayers please.....guess that's the important thing. Thanks

Orion Wore a Kilt of Clouds

She looks a lot like daddy
and a little bit like Great grandma Peggy,
which is pretty fitting I'm thinking

As seen from midnight stairs the umpteenth time....

Kind of fluffy for a guy like him, but  he looked good in it, step dancing out there, on the heifer barn roof.

When I came down again at dawn, droves of robins queued up to take a turn bathing in the big rut in the driveway.

Festooned with frosting, the trees were trailing veils of gauzy mist...the whole river was shrouded in it, the geese like mysterious strangers hiding from the unfurling sun.

I thought to take pictures of it all to save to show her what her first day looked like, someday when she is old enough to see them.

But I didn't, because I was too darned scared.

We were all scared and it was a long and worried day.......but worth every fearful second.

At the end the young family was increased by one, and the new parents knew a bond like no other.

And the new grandparents shed a couple of buckets of tears of pure, deep, elemental joy, that can only be engendered by the birth of one so loved.

Welcome to the world, Miss Peggy Ann Marie Schultz. We love you baby girl.

The Lights went Out Last Night

And dang! It was creepy for a minute there. We had just finished milking and I had run a short rinse through the pipeline before it got its main washing.

The boss and I were feeding out the round bales in the barn. Beck had gone to the house and Alan was off....with my flashlight....hunting rats in the heifer barn with his new air rifle. (Which by the way is one of the coolest guns I have ever shot. Ever. And I am here to tell you, as lame as I am these days, I hit the old cooler he was using for a target, dead center, first shot.)

A-a-a-and....the lights flickered and darkened. No moon. It was dark as a pocket in that barn and the boss had just stepped through the stanchion line with a great, big, core of a round bale for the pen heifers. I was kinda watching him, waiting to help fork it out.

Did I mention that it was dark? The barn is as familiar to us as any room in the house.
We spend a lot of time there after all. However, take away the light and it is an echoing alien canyon filled with big, rustling, beasts, into which you would rather not stumble.

Thankfully I had my trusty little phone, which gave a faint, but trusty little light. We clambered out to the milkhouse, and I texted our boy that I needed my flashlight. ASAP.

Then they flickered back on. We rushed to get back at our chores.

Out again.

Dagnabbit.

And then on again.

We spanked through the rest of the chores, and hurried inside to celebrate National Pancake Day. You have to pick your holidays you know....and picking that one...well, yeah, it was good.

Any Day Now

The next generation will arrive to sleep in this cradle my dad made when Liz was born.

We are nervous and excited and filled with loving anticipation.


We got the cradle out today and polished it and put it in the living room.....

Read the Research Day

You know you just can't wait to find out what's happening in Ag today.

The governor's new task force

USDA addds yogurt to WIC

Proposed rule on importing beef from Brazil

Go comment on the rule here  Seriously, read about this issue and then take the time to comment. I did. The USDA has extended the public comment period and this is a golden opportunity to make your feelings known on a potentially devastating decision. 

Brazil is an endemic Foot and Mouth disease country. Should we allow uncooked meat from that nation to be imported here, potential economic damage could be staggering and possibly permanent.

Just as a refresher, Foot and Mouth can spread on the wind, wild animals can carry it from farm to farm, as can tires, clothing, and it can even be carried in the nasal passages of people who travel from an infected farm. imagine if the animals in a petting zoo were infected. We don't need Brazil's beef bad enough to let this rule be finalized.

More on FMD

The Tea Party and Me

Another day, another Tea Party. No not the political party, although that is another story.

Nope, this is the cow tea party. Check out the photo above, of Broadway lunging into the manger after hay, rather than waiting three seconds while I fork it in to her.

 What do you see wrong with the photo....besides the whole feet in the manger thing that is?

Bingo, you nailed it! The water bowl she shares with Dalkeith is full of hay. Actually, that is just a tiny bit of hay. If I don't clean that thing out twice a day, with my cold, bare, hands, one or the other of them will pack it so full of little bits of hay that I don't know how they drink.

Becky thinks it's Dal, but we really never see them doing it. It isn't accidentally dropped there either. No it is soundly crushed into the bottom of the bowl, layer upon layer, until if I don't get at it quickly enough I drag out a football-sized lump of wet, soggy, stems and bits. I clean it either when I'm feeding them or when I'm milking them.

I don't know why they do it though.

Either the culprit likes to dunk their food, like a kid with milk and a doughnut.

 Or they want to rinse their food before they eat it....like a raccoon. 

Or they are just making tea. Either way, I can't wait until they go to pasture in the spring....

Sunday Stills.....Cows and Bulls

For more Sunday Stills.

Day of the Woodpecker

I took the camera out after a robin......

 But other creatures came 

And eventually, a robin

Hey March

In like an Icicle, out like a palm tree....right?

Links and Life at the Bottom of the River

First of all my dear sis-in-law shared some pics of where my brother and our son are working and have been the whole month of February. Nothing like life inside a cold coffer dam right in the teeth of the river wind. It's pretty nasty up here on the hill, but better them than me down in that ice sluice. 

Then this week's Farm Side research, or at least some of it. Some weeks I feel like a kid with a paper due, instead of an old fogey with a piece due for the paper. 

Dairy Farming Facts and Figures

2012 Census of Agriculture

3% of Dairies Produce 51% of Milk

Young Farmers Growing Fast in NY

Cuomo Announces NY Back in Third Place in Dairy

OSHA Withdraws Memo on Small Farm Inspections

Should I

Enroll in some form of health insurance to meet the Obamacare deadline? Or take the penalty? Everyone else in the family either already has insurance or is young enough to get away with not having it for another year.

I am the only holdout. We stopped buying our own insurance through the milk cooperative when Alan was still in school. Just couldn't afford it, when the premiums went up to over two grand a month. Nothing has happened that would change that....probably eligible for Medicaid from the state, but sure as heck can't crank an insurance payment out of the tiny milk check..

The sign-up for state coverage is insanely complicated. I know this because I did it when Alan was in school and not so healthy, although in the end we never used it. It is not geared toward people who are not on welfare. The people you talk to during enrollment have no idea about farming, how farm income is made and distributed, or anything but signing up people for government handouts who are already getting them.

So, take the penalty when tax time comes? Or go through the hellaciously horrid process of signing up for a government handout?

What would you do? What should I do?

Blend, Baby, Blend

White-throated sparrow doing what they do best....blending. Each photo is posted twice, once uncropped and once after a little editing. You can click to find the bird in the upper ones....

Luigi and Company

It is open hunting season on opossums here in NY. We should have dealt with Luigi when we had the chance. Or at least we should have been more thorough. 

I came in from chores the other night to find our Becky perched on the bank behind the house proclaiming, "I have named him Luigi, and I am not walking past him."

Once I got over wondering what the heck she was talking about and got closer to the house, I realized that the possum whose tracks we had seen off and on all winter was on the back porch.

I attempted to dispatch him with a shovel. This is almost impossible. The boss followed suit and when he seemed pretty dead we dumped him in the compost bin for morning disposal. (We do not shoot things on the porch-too much concrete.)

Before you label us cruel and inhumane, please understand that possums are death on poultry so we don't encourage their presence around the house and buildings. They can get through the tiniest openings....you wouldn't believe it...and they do not know fear. Something, probably a creature of Luigi's ilk, killed beautiful Mr. Peacock last fall. We still have the Missus and several hens and roosters, but his majesty is gone and much missed. 

Next morning Luigi was gone, leaving happy little tracks behind. The next night he brought his friend Mario. Alas they had moved along when the boss and I came in from the barn, so we could make no further efforts at their dispatch.

The next night quite late Alan came home from visiting his fiance, and lovely little Laura, our elderly, tiny, bantam Cochin was out in the yard, muddied and terrified. He caught her and put her in the hen house. Actually she is such a pet, as soon as she realized that he was not a possum she huddled at his feet to be picked up and carried to what is normally safety. Morning revealed the mangled and tattered corpse of one of the roos, scattered all around that edifice.

The kids put new latches on the door and boarded up the window, but I think a hunting expedition is in the offing. Danged varmints anyhow.

Decisions

Milk prices are high, but so are feed and fuel and tax and every other thing prices. And they have been for a very long time. 

Beef prices are also high, as are heifer prices.

It is hard to know which direction is right. We struggle with it every day.

Sunday Stills....Snacks

Or, maybe second breakfast

For more Sunday Stills.......