Cows are going to visit the Statue of Liberty

No lie

Read all about it at Moove to American.org

You can even sign a petition supporting American beef and enter a create a burger contest!

Hmmmmm.....

What IS this?

Mom's (bored) board




Alan is bored in a more elaborate fashion
(with a little help from Becky)

****These are for Steve

****We are supposed to use these barn blackboards for cow related info...thus you can see above the watermelon some of the intimate details of number 49 (AKA Veronica) 's affairs and above the assorted tractors and fishing tackle you can read about Lemmie's love life and see when we received grain deliveries....should you for some reason be interested in such esoterica. However you can also see how we spend our time while we wait for the first set of cows to finish being milked. Sometimes these drawings become amazingly elaborate and last for months and even evolve. Such as the Halloween pumpkin from last year that was drawn on the bigger board where the tractors are now. Over the winter it froze, was covered with snow (LOTS of snow at some points), thawed, rotted into mush, and a little pumpkin seedling grew up the side of the board and bloomed. And then one day it was erased to make room for something else....you see, when I say bored, I mean BORED.

Calf kills Wolf

Sarpy Sam alertly caught this amazing headline...if it hasn't been changed by the time you get there. I am wondering if the wolf choked on a bone, or if the calf packed more wallop than your average Angus or something, but I am thinking it is quite an event anyhow.

I was kind of tickled

About this

Break in at the school last night...

With strange things stolen, such as a teacher's favorite marker and all the completed chemistry lab papers, including Alan's. Nothing on the news yet, but I'll bet they will catch 'em and quickly.

Happy Birthday Liz!

21

Hogzilla II?

Really big pig shot by not so big kid!
May be world record!

Still more on food saftey and inspections

This morning I found the update below in one of my inboxes. It originated with the Meating Place, which offers an industry newsletter to which I subscribe.

"Only a week after taking the reins as FDA's food czar, and in the midst of a melamine outbreak, Dr. David Acheson has had plenty of explaining to do.
More of it came Wednesday, when Acheson found himself before the U.S. House Agriculture Committee, trying to assure its members that the U.S. food supply is safe despite widespread contamination of chicken, hog and fish feed.
However, some committee members contended that melamine is indicative of a bigger problem.

"The explanations from the USDA and FDA leave me with the uncomfortable feeling that maybe we just got lucky this time," said Rep. Collin Peterson (D-Minn.). "The next time tainted food or feed products slip through the very large crack in our import inspection system, we may be forced to confront a much more serious situation in terms of animal or human health."

Acheson conceded that FDA, which inspects just a small percentage of the $60 billion in food imported annually, is due for an overhaul. He says plans to request additional funding and manpower to fuel such efforts."

Um, yeah, I do believe that might be a plan.

More on the pet food recall

Here is a story that reveals all too clearly that some plumb shady practices have been going on in the pet food industry. Obviously no one has been very careful about what went into what dogs and cats eat, where it came from, or even honest ingredient labeling.
Sadly, there is nothing stopping contamination in the dog food dish from showing up at the dinner table too. Another story yesterday indicated that the contaminated rice and wheat gluten (that actually turned out to be wheat flour) was made into fish food in Canada and fed to fish in the USA, which were certainly eaten by unsuspecting Americans.

We were discussing the issue in the barn this morning (politics and national issues are topics that turn up there every bit as often as how many bales of hay to feed.) We decided that if the US inspected foreign foods and their suppliers anywhere near as thoroughly as we do American farms and factories, the likliehood of such adulteration would diminish immensely. Here at Northview we have an inspector from Producers Cooperative, where we sell our milk, who routinely checks our premises. From seeing that medicine for dry cows is on a different shelf than that for lactating cows, to making sure there are no holes in the milk house screens, no dirt where it shouldn't be, and even that the place is tidy, he keeps a close eye on us. Our milk is tested EVERY SINGLE TIME the tanker picks it up, that is every other day, for antibiotics, cleanliness, butterfat, protein, somatic cells and water content. If it is too high in any negative factor it is condemned and we pay for the entire truckload of milk that it was dumped into. We are also under the direct oversight of state and federal inspectors who check for the same things and very thoroughly too.We could be denied a place to ship our milk and fined if we get caught doing naughty things. Certainly if we dumped melamine into our tank to boost our protein price, we would get caught...real fast

Then we are under the observation of the Soil and Water Conservation folks, the EPA, state Ag and Markets, and have so many other government entities watching over how we do what we do that I literally can't bring them all to mind. Building inspectors, Dept of Environmental Conservation, nosy neighbors.... vets inspecting the beef that we ship....we are being watched, and carefully. However, it is pretty darned obvious that while the US government peers at its own navel by layering inspections on its internal food supply like someone dressing a kid for January in Alaska, it has its back turned toward millions of tons of material that is slipping in through the back door. What we need is for imported products to fall under the same scrutiny, and, (since not everybody outside this nation is our best buddy... most favored nation status to the contrary) they should actually fall under MORE scrutiny.

The whole affair makes Pete Hardin, of the Milkweed, look real smart. He has said for years that uninspected and unregulated imports of fractions of milk, such as milk protein concentrate, potentially permit milk from exotic species, such as water buffalo, and unclean locations, such as Chernobyl, to be included in our food. Hmmmmm, ya think?

It isn't always arm and hammer

Sometimes it's arm and chickadee

Town for sale

I love this story of a husband and wife who decided to build a town, did so, and ran it all their lives. Mrs. Hagglund is auctioning the place off this weekend if you are thinking of picking up a nice little lakeside town all your own.

"Everything Eddie and I did in life was successful, because we worked together," she said. The dream started one day in 1954 when the couple, who operated an implement dealership in the town of Sharon, spotted dozens of anglers on Lake Ashtabula during a drive to visit relatives. "I said to Eddie, 'Wouldn't this be a good place to have a hamburger stand?'" Hagglund said. "That's all it took." The couple bought a chunk of lakeshore prairie for a couple thousand dollars, planted trees and began putting up buildings. The first was the dance hall, which featured a large neon sign that said "Danceland" and hosted dances and roller-skating. They later added the cafe and other businesses. "We were just like homesteaders when we came out here," Hagglund said.n 1960, when the local township board denied their request for a liquor license, the Hagglunds incorporated the town and issued themselves a license. To meet the requirement of 100 residents, the couple "counted cats and dogs" and even coaxed some residents of nearby Luverne to sign a petition saying they lived in Sibley, Hagglund said."

I like that!

Still another meme

From Matthew. Posted over on 2007 Garden Records

Found by accident

I came across this site while trying to find some place within fifty miles of here where I can buy a couple of fan tailed gold fish for my garden pond. We went to Herkimer Sunday in said pursuit and found the fish store there out of business and replaced by a tax preparation store front operation.
I was already aware of puppy mills, before I stumbled on this site, having spent eight years working in a veterinarian's kennel and seeing plenty of sad stories. This is simply horrific though. I guess I won't be visiting the local branch of this chain to buy my fish. I can't justify spending money in such a place. So does anybody within a few zip codes of here know where I can buy a couple of healthy fish without bankrolling such enterprises?

**BTW check out the prices! I bought Mike and Gael from a reputable breeder of working quality border collies for $350 and $425 respectively. Both come from parents that had successfully competed in open level sheep dog trials. Gael's father ran in the Nationals. They were both healthy, well socialized, and capable of what I wanted them for. (Plus in my admittedly biased opinion, they are great dogs.) If you want a purebred dog, buy from a reputable breeder and do your homework. You wouldn't hire a nanny without a background check. Don't hire a dog without looking into its background too. You can also deal with a reputable rescue organization where someone will help you through the experience of starting with a new dog. But talk to dog people. Find out about your breed, the breeder, or whoever is providing you with your pet BEFORE you bring one home and fall in love. Oh, and stay away from border collies unless you have a job for them and plenty of patience. Some of them are fine anywhere, but a good many will herd kids, car tires, tractors, cats, each other and even running water if they don't have something constructive to keep them busy. I almost lost Gael that way when she was a pup and hadn't learned "come here" yet. She took off trying to head a little stream of water and was almost to the road before I thought to use my whistle....which luckily she heeded.

Cow magnets

Apples asked in the comments just what cow magnets do and why we use them. I thought it was a good enough question to answer in a post (plus I don't have much to say today and am grateful for any and all ideas.)

Cows eat all kinds of things in their pursuit of digestible greenery. Autopsies have revealed bicycle tires, shirts, entire feed bags and lots and lots of baling twine. Unfortunately cows often also ingest bits of sharp metal, which can pierce the stomach lining, causing infection and even affecting the heart.The resulting condition is called hardware disease. At the very least it causes the cow a lot of discomfort. In some cases it ends in death. At least some of the time, shooting a powerful magnet down the cow's throat with the same balling gun you use to give aspirin or stomach pills will fix it. Ideally the magnet will grab the offending nail or bit of steel and drag it to the bottom of the stomach where it can just sit there doing no harm.

Magnets don't always work, but sometimes the results are simply spectacular. We had an old cow, number 80, Adela, years ago, before we were married. She went off feed and began a slow decline. Our vet at the time didn't think she had hardware so he treated her symptomatically and went on his way. Days went by and she failed to improve. Finally I suggested to the boss that we give her a magnet just to see what happened. She was obviously dying, so what did we have to lose? By the very next morning she was gobbling hay as if she had never been sick.
Coincidence? Nah...

We had another cow drop dead from a standing position at the end of milking one day. One minute she was standing in her stall chewing her cud; the next she was sprawled on the floor stone dead. We were stunned and really puzzled so we had our veterinarian conduct an autopsy. Amazingly a bit of sharp metal stuck in her stomach wall had worked its way through the stomach lining to pierce her liver, she moved just right (or perhaps just wrong) and bled to death internally in seconds. The metal was a bit of steel off a wagon that a less-than-diligent hired man put through a forage blower into the silo. (Of course we didn't know about it until too late for old Danillla.) We didn't keep him too long after that.

Anyhow, we keep a couple magnets on the fridge among the Far Side cartoons, shot up targets, family photos and school schedules. Then we can always find one when some cow starts refusing dinner and acting odd.

Macabre

We tuned into Channel 9 at 6PM, just before we went out to do chores, to see if the standoff in Margaretville had ended yet. To our amazement the station was doing a live update, as the police had just sent smoke bombs into the house and a pall of smoke of staggering proportions was rising into the sky over the lovely old farm house that housed the alleged murderer. Within literally minutes the smoke turned black and the house burned down before our eyes. I cannot tell you how fast it went from a small flower of flame peeking out one door to a towering inferno that consumed the wooden structure like a red avalanche that moved up instead of down. It was so very, very fast and inexorable. We watched in horrified fascination until we simply had to get out to what one TV commentator called a "farmhouse". Up here in the northern part of the state we call such structures barns but everyone got the idea and the commentator at the station managed to set him straight after a while. This whole affair has been a macabre drama that makes no sense at all to a rational mind. Why did the alleged culprit do the bizarre and horrific things he did? We will probably never know, but I wish he had chosen a different path.

Statute of limitations

As the mother/person in charge of general household tidiness, (and as someone who is weary of cleaning around it), I hereby declare a statute of limitations on change, (var. "loose", "stray" and "spare", but not including "pocket".) This statutory period of time will be up to, but not exceeding, the period of time that it takes me to get tired of looking at it.

Thus change (i.e. quarters, nickels, dimes, pennies, centimes, pesos, decimos, lira, shillings, markas, francs etc.) that is left lying around on the sideboard, dining room table, kitchen table, floor, desk, chairs, or stuck to the ceiling with pieces of spaghetti will be confiscated and put here:



Folding money will not fall under this statute, but if it clinks, jingles or rolls when dropped, it is subject to sudden and unexpected confiscation. (The little pile of quarters and pennies on the sideboard that was buried under .6 inches of noxious dust is already gone.)

Thus if you wish your metallic hoard to not join the one I am collecting to pay for food for camp, keep it in your pocket, purse or bedroom.

Thank you,
The management

Matthew Strikes again

I am sure everyone has seen the thinking blog thing....Matthew D sent it to me...five thinking blogs, hmmm......

I am thinking that the blogs that most keep me thinking are.

1) Pure Florida...not just thinking, smiling, laughing, knee slapping, looking things up to learn more, sometimes crying, always satisfied by a good read

2) Thoughts from the Middle of Nowhere...everybody loves Sarpy Sam

3) Upstream...local, pertinent, I may not always agree, but I'm always interested.

4)BOOKS BuckinJunction....written by my kids. I think I always will at least think about reading them and think I like them.

5) Blogriculture...this is a great blog, written by folks who work for the Capital Press farm newspaper. Sometimes they are funny, often they are thought-provoking, always worth reading.

I am only allowed five by the rules I guess, but I read everybody over there in the blog roll as often as I can. Cathy, Joni, Rosemoon, HT, Carina, Laurie, Jeff, Swen, and Matthew, who sent me this are frequent reads. So are Cubby and Karen and Mrs. Mecomber. And Wil. And Jan. And Caroline. And everybody else on the list. I read some because their lives are fascinating, some for their politics, others because they feel like family, and some because they are talented photographers, or writers, or funny, or just nice enough to link to me way back when nobody else did. I like the folks I have "met" blogging here at Northview and I thank them for their friendliness.

Interesting quote

From a story in USA Today.

"The desire for a raw natural diet is leading to a new pattern of foodborne illness," said Douglas Powell, a professor of food safety at Kansas State University in Manhattan."

Coyote

Laurainnj, who writes the fascinating blog, Somewhere in NJ, recently posted the story of the coyote down there that tried to carry a toddler off, right out of the family back yard. Many people had very interesting comments on her post and I got to thinking about our experiences with the little brush wolves here at Northview.

About thirty years ago, though I had lived most of my life hiking the mountains and working outdoors, I had never seen or heard one. They just weren't out there. Then on a trip to the Boonville area (not so very far from Canada) we heard a pack howling as we slept in our camper one night. It was a wonderfully eerie, hair-standing-up-on-the-back-of-your-neck experience.

Soon we were hearing them here, some distance farther south and east. They didn't bother much of anything and were an interesting reminder of wilder places. We still didn't see them, but we knew they were out there.

Then at age 26 I took up milking cows. Soon I married my farmer and coyotes took on a whole 'nother aspect. First they contented themselves with taking our cats. They just LOVE cats! From a high of around forty clustered around the free milk dish (thanks to all the folks who do drive-by drop-offs) we now have seven. Any that don't stay in the buildings are lunch. Next they began to prey on weakened animals like twin calves born outdoors at night. The mother cow can protect one quite successfully, but two are hard to cover. Then they killed a cow that fell down an embankment and couldn't stand. We couldn't get her on her feet, but she looked like she was going to recover, so we were carrying food and water to her with the truck. One morning her hide was almost entirely ripped off, her throat was torn out and, of course, she was dead. So to those who wonder if they can take deer, the answer is a resounding yes, even though they are quite content with rats and rabbits when they can get them.


Later a pair of them drove the visiting nurse off the back porch when she stopped to care for my late mother-in-law who was receiving hospice care. The nursing service called us in high dudgeon to come get our dogs off the porch so the nurse could get in. No dogs though, just a pair of coyotes that were bolder than they needed to be.

I suspect the one that attacked the child was rabid, like the fisher that attacked a woman in her garage near here, or didn't realize that the child was a person. I have no fear of them bothering me personally, even though I have encountered them many times when walking in the fields. They are bolder than foxes, which bolt willy nilly, but not aggressive-seeming. They offer us dirt farmers a boon in that they kill woodchucks, which otherwise build great mounds of dirt around the holes they dig in hayfields. There is something about a hidden pile of dirt and stones that is rough on farm machinery! We don't miss the chucks as they just adapted to the predators and moved down to the house, where they dig holes under all the buildings.


However, to all the folks who claim that we are encroaching on coyote habitat and thus should be happy to have problems with them, sorry, this time we were here first. Unquestionably people drove wolves out of the northeast and opened a niche for the little wild dogs, but coyotes didn't show up here in upstate New York until LONG after I was born. The cities they are moving into were there many decades before they arrived to sort through the garbage and grab small dogs. I am sure they are here to stay though, so we get calves in off the hill as fast as we can, and are thankful for cows like Zinnia, who would protect a baby from a whole pack of real wolves if she had to.

In case you ever wonder...

....why I am this way. My parents, (abetted by my grandparents), used to sing this song to me. It was performed at different times by Bing Crosby and Dorothy Shay, who released it in 1947. I was born the same year as Vladimir Putin and am three days younger than Dan Akroyd, so I don't know why they chose me for this particular golden oldie. I was a nice kid, really I was. There were other female grandchildren in the family, but I was the only one to receive the signal honor of my own song. It is really not fair.

Here is the chorus:

Daughter, baby daughter,
Poisoned all the neighbors chickens.
Daughter hadn't oughter
Least 'till she could run like the dickens.
They hit her with a shovel!

They pronounced it "Dotter".
They still call me that.