Family Farm, not Factory Farm

Bama Breeze

We drove past one of the biggest farms in the county last night.... a number of barns, dozens upon dozens of calf hutches in long white rows, lots of feed and bedding storage, hundreds of cows, some new construction projects, corn fields, ponds, and all.

I am sure that activists and those not in the know would have been horrified. OMG, it's big! It has barns! It must be bad!!!!

I was instead quite tickled. The calves were obviously contented...happy even...out in their little individual yards, schmoozing with each other or prancing around. They were fat and clean and healthy. Their coats were sleek and fluffy and nice.

The cows were having supper, heads reaching through their feeders to piles and piles of lovely total mixed ration, or TMR. They were clearly contented too, just doing what cows generally choose to do, eating and hanging around together.

Everything, and I do mean everything, was spotlessly clean, and neat, and tidy. That is saying something right there. Animals make a mess and cows are particularly messy as creatures go.

Yet this place was tidier than my living room.

And it smelled good! There was no odor of manure at all, despite the large number of cattle house there. All you could smell was the corn in the ration, which by the way smells tangy and delicious, and the warm bodies of the cows....which to me is a wonderful smell.

It is sad that people who have no idea what they are seeing perceive farms like these as less than ideal. Instead this is a business built by a farming family who care for their animals and their land and take care of things with state of the art equipment. Hats off to them.

Update, here is a link I save about how cows feel about pasture vs housing in summer. 

Do Apples Portend?

Or pears prognosticate?

Does it mean anything that I have heard from both Washington DC and Alaska over the past couple of days that the geese are already on the move?

Samaras anyone? No ash borers in this tree yet I guess

I don't know, but I was out on the sitting porch yesterday and SMELLED fall. The weedy, harsh scent of crushed goldenrod and dying leaves was blowing on the stiff, chilly breeze. The male honeylocust is turning golden already and you should hear the cottonwoods chattering their leaves.

I am in no way ready for this, but I don't think it cares out there. Early winter? Hard winter? El nino like the experts are saying?




 If only I could read the future in the fruit......

Harbinger?

And so

The rain is flouncing down, dampening everything including everyone's spirits. After the hefty weekend work everyone is kind of tired anyhow and the rain just makes us all want to sleep. 

Working on a Farm Side about retaliatory trade protections by Russia against the US and EU and some of the ramifications thereof.

Some folks are pretty creative in their reactions.

 I would love to take advantage of this sleepy day.....however.....have a good one. 

Hay There

The weekend was all about hay, all hay, all day, on all the screens of this wild rural cinema.

The clack and the rattle of the elevators was nearly constant, driven in their duty by electric motors and the sassy "new" Massy, which works the nuts as the guys say.

All was punctuated of course by the usual run of flat tires and wonky elevators jamming up and all that sort of stuff.

The mows are getting high, making it harder to unload each one, but for all the extra effort involved, that is nothing but a good thing. One more field of first cutting, then a short break to give the equipment a little shakedown, and back at it with second cutting.

Having our boy home moved it all at Caesar speed...if you read the old Mary Stewarts you'll remember that term. In fact on Saturday everybody got into the act, including Peggy and her whole family.

You should have seen her tromping back and forth to the barn in her little rubber chore boots. She was cute for sure, but mostly she was determined. Stomp, stomp, stomp, over to see Unca Alan and Pop Pop. Back to the house to check on Nana. Back to the barn. Back to the house. I think she wore her mama out. 

Me, I fed them. With my messed up thumbs I'm not much use in the haymow, but I can still cook. The good earth here generously provided beef, freshly dug potatoes, newly picked green beans, squash, onions, garlic, and the herbs with which to prepare them. I fed the hay crew sandwich steaks with peppers and onions (frozen a couple of weeks earlier from one of Alan's grill extravaganzas) on Saturday and beef stew on Sunday. 

A big thumbs up on the thumbs thing. They have hurt for years...since I started milking cows when I was twenty-something. I laid it to milking cows...who wouldn't? They take turns ouching and between that and decades of guitar playing I have become pretty much ambidextrous. In fact the left one is worst just now because I've been babying the right, and I miss it because the right one made me something of a lefty if you get what I mean.

 I was whining to my dear aunt who brought my dear uncle to visit one day last week....or maybe it was the other way around.....but they came anyhow and we had a great visit. She told me it was probably tendinitis, instead of the arthritis I'd been blaming it on for decades.

I read up on that, saw there was a brace for it, and Alan got me one on Saturday before the dew was off the hay so they could work. It worked. Stupid things still hurt but there is a lot of relief involved. Yay! And maybe it would help if I avoided pulling amaranth that is higher than my head and nearly as thick as my ankles....that was dumb and I knew it when I was doing it, but what the hey...the onions are all harvested.

On Sunday afternoon, when the elevator quit clacking and the sun began to sink over the heifer barn, our boy headed back to a different kind of wild...that of the dangerous, lurking swamp of a certain big city. Peggy pressed her nose against the screen door, waving bye bye and was sad. We all were......but  he was gone, leaving behind a trail of hay dust and good coffee.....

Pony training.....

Today, even though I covered the curing onions and brought some of them in, it isn't raining, so maybe the boss can get the last load, which they canvased last night, off the wagon. Then the last field....

Deer's Ears

In the driveway......as seen from the sitting porch.

Sunday Stills....Muscle Cars

The muscle car that lives in our driveway

And has taken us all over the East Coast

It runs away to Washington DC every week

'Cuse 4 life....that was typed by the owner and driver
I was just going to say that this is my least favorite view of it....
heading off for the big city.

For more Sunday Stills.......

Tiny Magic and a "New" Tractor

 This is Hummingbird feather stuck to the cord where the feeder hangs among some flowers. One of the females sits there all the time guarding the feeder from all the other ones. I was astonished to see this tiny thing, no bigger than the scale of a bass, stuck there flipping back and forth in the breeze. It only stayed for a few minutes and then was blown away on the wind, but how cool to see such an iridescent little thing.

And this is the "new" tractor. The guys went out last week to purchase a small power tool for Alan's job and/or maybe some suitcase weights for the big tractor, which came without any...not a great plan on these hills.

Instead of getting either Alan bought this tractor at an area dealership. They plan on running the hay elevator with it or and maybe raking hay. One less thing to hook up and unhook in the rush to finish first cutting. It sounds pretty good when they start it up.

Putting A Face on Agriculture

Ten years ago farm organizations were just beginning to encourage farmers to take to social media to tell the farming story. They wanted everyday farm people to talk to our neighbors and customers and put a face on farming.

Activists were certainly telling stories, half truths, untruths, and downright outrageous whoppers, trying to end modern agriculture as we know it. Folks figured that farmers had better get on board with that before they missed the whole darned train.

The Farm Side was seven years old by then, but its reach was and is mostly limited to local folks. This is a farming county so it probably tends toward preaching to the choir.

I thought I'd give blogging a try, maybe talk about farming with some new and different people and do my share to promote farming. 

The folks around this house are a pretty vociferous lot so it was also a chance to get a turn to talk.

That was ten years ago today. If you've been around for the whole ride, you have seen a small family dairy farm prosper, struggle, and fall.

Talk about a train wreck. Selling the cows sure felt like one.

You've seen it do a small scale phoenix act with the hay business and maybe even grab a little toehold on hope for a different but positive future.

I hope you have enjoyed it. I sure have.

It has been the most amazing trip that I could never have imagined, before I hopped on that agvocation train. I found friends from Colorado to California and from Canada to England. From Tennessee and Indiana and Florida and Texas. South Dakota, Minnesota, North Carolina and South, Oklahoma, Arizona and nearly every state you could name. East, West, North and South of here and places I had never heard of before this..

People whom I've never met and most likely never will are as close as talking over the back fence with a neighbor. They...you... have become very dear to my heart.

I've actually gotten to meet a couple of you and enjoyed that a great deal. I've lost a good friend and wondered how you mourn somebody you didn't really know, except that you did.

It's been great. Thanks for riding along. 

Today dozens of bright young farmers are doing a spectacular job of putting a face on farming and telling our story. I salute them for the connection they are making with people everywhere.

Meanwhile, I guess I'll keep on too, because, let's face it....this is fun.

Here is something I rarely share....the actual face that I have turned toward agriculture for the last few decades.

A little Throwback Thursday...
Guess I still look as stubborn as I did in Kindergarten 

And I still hate having my picture taken

A Great Visit

I love to talk gardening, flowers, plants, and birds and all. It's my kind of gossip and there are never enough opportunities for same.

Thus a late morning visit from a favorite aunt and uncle of mine was spectacular in every way and way, way too short.

 I am making refrigerator dills out of the cukes they brought us, and soon I will freeze the zucchini.....ours has been pretty sad this year.

I already potted up the lovely coleus...what amazing colors!!!!

Now to savor memories of all we talked about and to look forward to the next time we can get together. How sweet it is to have such family all around us.

Storm

Inside a rotten lemon

Last night just the three of us, Becky, the boss, and I, were home, enjoying a quiet supper. Home grown beef and stuff from the garden makes it all good.

Then the kids called from up west where they had attended a wedding and said, "Batten down the hatches; it's hailing here and power lines are lying right in the road."

Huh.

When we came inside the sun was shining and all was calm and peaceful. We abandoned our plates and hustled outside to find the darndest sky we had ever seen. It was like being inside a lemon.

A rotten lemon.

Complete with mid-storm rainbow

We barely had time to snatch the curing onions off the wagon, cardboard box them into the dining room, and drag the laundry upstairs, shutting windows all the way, before it hit. 

Wham! I don't think we got much damage, but the winds were wild and the rain torrential...

I spent nearly the whole storm, after the hatches were suitably battened, running around taking pictures of the crazy clouds. The colors were insane....colors none of us had ever seen in the sky before.

Eerie clouds just the color of cotton candy...the blue kind!

Pretty awesome in fact. 

It stormed off and on all night, with wild lightning waking us more than once.

Hope by now everyone up around Fort Plain has their power back on. They are predicting a replay for tonight.

 I find it interesting that I read just this week that the weather is going to get really, really bad by 2050 or 2060. Since this storm started out by being predicted to be a 20% chance of scattered showers it kinda makes me wonder.....just sayin'

Plus a turtle as the storm slowly moved away to make room for the next one

Making Hay while the Sun Shines

The boss is mowing some hay today, gambling that the thunderstorms that might pop up this afternoon will miss us.

I don't blame him a bit. It is getting late in the year; the days are getting shorter, which allows fewer hours of sunshine to dry the crop. The dew is heavy these days too, and often lies until after noon. 

As you can see above, Alan is pretty quick at getting bales off though, which is a tremendous help. They got three loads yesterday.

It was a picture perfect hay day. However, at one point a bale got stuck in the deflector and caused some problems.

It just happened that I was trying to get a video of bales coming off the elevator when it bound up, so no harm was done. 

I grabbed my shepherd's whistle and managed to get Alan's attention way up behind the barn before any chains were broken or motors burned out.

I do love that sheep dog training whistle, and even though I have no sheepdogs any more, I am never without one. 

I did get a few seconds of one bale falling, but it was so dark and dusty that it isn't much. Multiply it by several hundred though.....

Climbing up to fix stuff

This goes fast 

I love the sound of the paddles turning over on the big elevator that goes up to the window (you can hear it in the video). When it is clacking away like that you know that everything is working as it should and feed is getting put away right.

Got the Blues

Early morning walk yesterday just to have a look around. We seem to have the blues.

You have to look closely...maybe click and enlarge,
but there are three adult male Indigo Buntings hanging around the diskbine here

Two in this one

And one.....

I went over to the barnyard with the exact purpose of looking for Indigo Buntings. I knew there had been a pair there all summer. Yesterday morning though, the foxtails were full of them. I saw at least three adult males and another bunch of females and youngsters. I know these photos aren't the greatest. They are very shy and I had to sneak up behind the skid steer even to get them..... but if you look closely.....

Chicory provided bits of fallen sky. Nice accents among the Queen Ann's Lace.

And then there was that leftover Blue Moon. It got stuck for a while on the old lightning rod before it set behind the heifer barn.

Later in the day much hay was made....bears crocheted....machines repaired...oil changes enacted and dust produced on roads and in mows. Our boy had to climb out on the cross mow elevator to dislodge a sticky bale. That is never fun.

The morning though, was like a stained glass window in shades of blue and beauty...so calm and soft and serene. I sure enjoyed it.

Becky's Baby Bears

Which she taught herself to crochet via YouTube videos....are a big hit with the younger set. The yarn for this one was provided by a dear friend out in the middle of the country. Purple ones are growing even as Peggy enjoys Pinky here.