For Holstein Folks..with a little on the Jersey Side Too

Dreamroad Extreme Heather

Here's a good story on the history of Osborndale Ivanhoe, including a bit on the lethal recessive that he and his offspring spread throughout the breed, due to their tremendous influence on the genetic makeup of the modern Holstein.

Recessive defects in dairy cattle. More on that.

Alan got a bit of interesting news the other day. A few years ago....maybe three...Liz had a nice little bull calf out of her venerable show Jersey, Dreamroad Extreme Heather. 

At the time calves were bringing almost nothing at the auction and Jersey bulls even less.

We had no use for him, but to send him to the sale and end up with nothing but a bill for trucking seemed foolish. Plus there was the fact that Heather came from a leading Jersey breeder of fine show cattle and the calf's sire was Sunset Canyon Mecca a bull that had done well for us.

So we let him stay for a while so as to puzzle out a sensible fate for him. Turned out one of Alan's good college friend's family raised registered Jerseys. Initially Liz gave the little guy to them, but they didn't think that was fair and paid her a decent price for him.

They registered him, raised him, and used him on their heifers. They rented him out to other breeders when they weren't using him and he bred those heifers too. As of now there are a LOT of his daughters around their area and I guess the farmers out there like them quite a lot.

And here comes the serendipity. He got to be a real big boy, too big for the heifers he was breeding. Thus his owners sent him to the auction barn, where he was sold to yet another breeder to go on with his Jersey-making career....and believe it or not, he was sold on the very day that our herd went, at the very same auction.

I am pretty sure this is a picture of the bull in question at about a day old

Ralph saw him sell, but of course didn't recognize him, as he was three years older and over a thousand pounds heavier than when he left our place.

Nice to know that an animal bred and born here at Northview and carrying the Maqua-Kil prefix, which Liz took over from his parents, went on to do so well for someone. 

A Bad Day for Birding

The fog you know. Not one of those pretty little mists that sometimes grace the summer morning, lying gentle on the land, and drawing back their silver curtains as the sun brings on the heat. Instead a pervasive sogginess, prickling on the skin, and making the porch floor tacky under bare feet.

Spider webs droop like tattered curtains, weighted down by the dampness, drab and dim and dreary.

And the birds. The yard burgeons and bulges with them, seethes fairly, as they shuttle between the shelter trees and rose bushes and the mulberries and the wild honeysuckle bushes. There are so many. You should see those mulberry trees shake when the Robins and Starlings, and Goldfinches, and Cedar Waxwings and Catbirds, and Purple Finches are all tearing off berries at the same time!

Except that today you can't see them. Even with binoculars. Only the close up Catbirds and Robins can be picked out from the horde.

And the Cedar Waxwings. I swear, this time of year every single bird that makes you turn for a second look, or grab the binoculars and whirl the little focus thingumabob, is a Cedar Waxwing. They are gorgeous. They are everywhere.

Frustrating....ish.....

And then, since I can't see the birds, I lean back in my bright red chair and just listen.

Cardinal, tuning up right near the porch. Willow Flycatcher, obliging from his usual post. Robins, triggered by the low light, singing everywhere. Mystery birds, shuttling back and forth....

Sometimes it is good to just sit and be quiet and let the sound wash around you. The trucks and trains are muted by the moisture and the valley is awash in early morning peace.

It's a beautiful day for birding, Cardinal, camera, and coffee, what more could you ask?

Well....since you ask...I would like to know if that litter of fledglings hopping all over the dead box elder were Chickadees.....

Building

As the air slowly fills with moisture and the temperature falls with pending rain, I am pulled willy-nilly back to camp, to summer at the lake, the loveliest time of the year. 

The air feels there just like this when weather is brewing.....full of the scent of water and woodland. One thing about this cool, strange, summer, is that the air has been remarkably good here even in the valley, up until these past few humid days. 

That is not always the case, what with the thousands of tractor trailers, trains, and cars, that ply their way up and down the many thoroughfares that wind between the Noses. At the lake it is always that way.

Just a few weeks left now until we are gone...... 

I won't rush them away. Summer on a farm is a pretty good place to be. 

However, after months of not even letting myself think of mountain love and the clear, clean, lakes, and the fish, and the eagles, and the frogs, and songs of the secret woods....I am letting just a glimmer shine through to light the future.

There are several of you who visit some years....you are always invited if I have forgotten to ask. PM, call, text, or send a pigeon...we would like to see you and sit on the porch that hangs out over the water and talk between the rhythm of the waves, washing against the rocks.

Meanwhile...it is going to rain...again....

Colorado, California, we have your rain! To claim it, you need only identify it and provide transportation to your chosen location......


Soon would be nice.....

Rain Delay

Hay rake in Amish field just up the road from here
taken through the windshield

The past four days have been spent in frantic pursuit of hay...yes, even Sunday, a day normally reserved for just essential chores and Sunday chairs. AS is universal in farming, things broke and needed to be fixed, putting on the pressure to get it done quicker before the weather changed.

Which it did.


It rained last night and much more rain is predicted to really slam us tonight, so it will be a day of other activities. In fact I am not going to get mad if the boss sleeps in his chair all day. Oh, he can store the hay he put in the mow if he wants to, but no suggestions are going to come from my direction. He has been going at it pretty hard for an old dude.

Happy Birthday, Brother

Today is my next younger brother's birthday. Being Irish twins so to speak we will be the same age for the next few days. 

He enjoyed this way too much when we were kids. Thank goodness for our nation's birthday, when I get to jump ahead again. Whew.....oh, wait a minute...we are so old now, it isn't so hot being eleven months older.

Anyhow.....

Happy Birthday, Michael. Hope you have a wonderful day!

Boidies

Blue Cochin rooster. I love the way he crows.

The kids got a new rooster Sunday and a few new chicks, plus Laura has her little brood.

Thus the coops are pretty well populated.

  

And so, it's Summer

Magnificent sunrise, all golden and peach. Fitz Bew ringing from the fence along the long lawn, where the Willow Flycatcher hides his nest, while the Cardinal tunes up his whistle, and a sleepy Yellow Warbler sweetens the morning, sweet, sweet, sweeter sweet.

The air IS sweet, as pure and clean and cool as if this little farm was perched atop a mountain way up in the Dacks. Dew drips from the eaves of the sitting porch, each crystal droplet lit on fire by the glow of the rising sun.

Time to tidy up the ravages of yesterday and get some writing done. If breakdowns of both tractor and barn cleaner yesterday are anything to go by, time to produce and process the Farm Side may be in short supply this week.

Get busy, get busy.

The screen door swings and slaps the wall, whine, bam, slam, as the young men head off to their jobs. Our boy is back in the 518 for a couple of weeks, as his other job in DC shut down for a bit.

It is an unfamiliar but delightful thing to have him here, even for a little while...we don't see him enough for sure.

And check out this addition to my garden rock collection. It is a NYC cobblestone, possibly from as early as the 1700s, 

It certainly is at least very early, as it was found 7 feet down, under a waterfront street in Manhattan. I am excited to have it, and to learn that it was placed small-side-up, rather than laying flat as you might expect.

Just imagine the stories this chunk of granite could tell... What famous people might have walked over it, how many horses and wagons and barrels of beer may have rumbled over it and its neighbors? No one could know but.....

Thanks, Mappy...

Good morning to all, and back to the word processor......

The Wild Side

Poultry style. The kids are building hen coops in the heifer barn and gathering up laying birds so as to sell eggs...speaking of which, we are eating the eggs they raise and they sure are good.

Anyhow, they are off to the swap this morning with a mean hen and a superfluous and bad-tempered rooster, plus a some herb plants to sell or trade.

While they were up in the old hen coop, catching the rooster, they discovered that Laura, the little banty Cochin that Teri gave us, has chickies. They were running in and out of the peacock coop, not a safe locale for babies, so Becky is out catching them to cage them safely with their mama.

Laura is an old chicken and a good, smart mama. She used to have a paramour of her own ilk named George, but varmints got him.

Sunday Stills....Macro

Macro is my favorite challenge for Sunday Stills....except maybe birds.....

As You Can See Below

The younger two of our three offspring (Alan and Becky.....you know who you are) thought it would be fun to hack Northview last night, since I left the computer up on the kitchen table when I went into the living room.

After Liz and I canned 18 jars of strawberry jam yesterday. 

And froze four quarts of berries for shortcake next winter.

And cooked a turkey dinner.

And planted 18 hills of squash and helped move manure and mulch around the edges of the garden. And such.

And got a TICK!!!!! EEEEKKKKKK A TICK!!!!

  I am utterly phobic about ticks and it was a deer tick too.

Rotten ingrates. Alas, they know I have a certain strange sense of humor and wouldn't really get mad....just pseudo mad so to speak.

And I love them, and love having them around, so I put up with them.....but they had better watch out....just sayin'

Transition and Transformation

Out with the old

From a weed patch full of nettles and cow parsley to a squash garden in just a few steps.

This actually was a small garden bed where I grew beans and sometimes tomatoes and root crops. However, with the recent rainy years, it grew overgrown and was abandoned.

The boss fixed it for me yesterday while he still had the rock bucket on the skid steer.

He took out the weeds and all the roots and replaced them with well-rotted cow manure, which looks just like dark, rich, earth.


Planting it to squash first thing today.

The robins moved right in. 

The Supervisor

Gifts

Good things this week.

Our son took his lovely fiance hiking up Castle Rock last weekend. At the very top he picked me a pocket full of balsam fir tips. He knows how much I love the scent of firs.....
So I have them on the bookcase by the bed....the Adirondacks all night, every night.

And then there was his dad...you know what they say about apples and all....

He worked two long days for some friends, driving our skid steer while rock was picked. You would think it would have taken up all of his time just thinking about the work...anyone who has picked stone knows it's a job.

However, he found time to select one great, big, lovely rock and brought it home for me.

Gifts of the land..the very best kind. 

Wait for It

Hmmm, what looks good today?

Ants?

Keep an eye on the sky

Aren't I fancy?

WHAM! Catbird photo bomb.
Right in the back of the head.

Well That was Interesting

Corner of Lusso and Borden Roads in the wake of last week's storm

Another big storm. Haven't heard yet about any damage, but everything we had in the yard took a hike, including a heavy stainless steel milk house bucket and the big barrels we use to haul water to the barn.

Started out with warning tones from the National Weather Service interrupting the boss's TV. Didn't sound good atall, atall. "Continuous cloud-to-ground lightning.....seventy-mile-per-hour wind gusts."

When I paused on the stair landing there were still a few stars glimmering in the west but that continuous cloud-to-ground was already flickering against the gathering clouds. 

Not much later both bedroom doors blasted open despite being firmly latched closed. The whistling started and the whining and the lashing rain and booming and blasting of the thunder. I should have gotten out of bed and tried for that elusive lightning shot I have been chasing for so many years, but I was sleepy.....after a while it tapered off and sleep returned, but it was a hummer of a storm.

And now, this morning, we are looking for stuff. 

Last week's big one took down a box elder tree in the barnyard. To our great hilarity all three cows take some time every morning to eat the leaves. Must be something there they want or need because it is just about bare now.

Anyhow, these photos are of the end of the road that runs behind us, Lusso Road, and Borden Road. I don't know where the water came from, but it sure cut a heck of a channel. It is no wonder the roads were all closed in that area. 

Dunno about you, but I am ready for some warm, dry weather for making hay and drying laundry. That is all.

Catbird Lessons

Or, I should have figured this out a long time ago.

Although I make as much of our jam and jelly as I can, time and questionable crops often leave us buying some at the grocery store.

And it ALWAYS ends up getting tossed. We will enjoy some delicious toast or ice cream with some kind of exotic jelly, then forget it is in the fridge, and voila, mold.

Then last summer the boss bought me a gigantic jar of grape jelly for the catbirds and orioles.

So big that most of it was still left at the end of summer. I stuck it in the freezer for this year. When I started to feed it I discovered that it was easily spooned even when frozen, so I just left it in the freezer. When it was gone I bought a new jar and did the same.

Now everybody is using my catbird food on their toast! (We ran out of homemade strawberry.)

But, lesson learned. From now on when we buy jelly at the store it is going into the freezer so we will get to enjoy it much longer. 

I feel kind of foolish considering that I do about ten batches of strawberry freezer jam every year and eat that right out of the freezer sometimes...oh, well, live and learn.

Just Another

Day in Paradise. The soft chuckling of a sleepy hen. Strident peeping from not one, but two, cowbird chicks tormenting their song sparrow foster mom. 

The scent of something minty out on the lawn where Jade is mowing. Finally it is not raining so he can.

Deep, rich, black, garden earth, crumbling underfoot. Two rows of beans failed...old seed I guess...so there is replanting in the sweet, sweet sun, listening to singing from gold finches and the Carolina wren and the distant clamor of the crows. For the wrens a second nesting maybe...they have been on the porch, but they spend a lot of time over at the cow barn too.

The air is redolent, ripe, and drowsy with the heavy scent of wild, white roses. All the rest of the year they are a hated pest, spoken of in the same voice as skunks and slugs...but in June, ah, sweet, strawberry June, they are the most wonderful thing around.

The sun is up before we are and hangs just below the silvered horizon at bed time. It is tame as a kitten in June, warm, friendly, close enough for comfort.

Nights are open-window brisk, air as clean as mountain water, and as clear and sweetly savored.

 Not for nothing is June my favorite month, but rather for everything.