Category Archives: farm - Page 2

Changes

Posted by on March 27, 2010 No comments
From March 2010

Walked up to the woods with my dad this afternoon. There were a few signs of spring poking through the leaf litter but not many yet. It turned into a tree identification hike. Our woods have been predominantly beech for as long as I can remember but there’s some fungus slowly taking them out. We were walking and wondering which species will take over after them.

There’s another tree species that my dad has possibly identified as ‘some kind of hickory’ that are covered with big galls. The farm has a lot of ash on it too. The Emerald Ash Borer isn’t here yet but I don’t doubt that it will arrive sooner than later. We have a few butternuts and I think I remember hearing that there’s some invasive that is taking them out too.

There seem to be a lot of sugar maples filling in the gaps left by the dying beech trees but it’s hard for me to imagine what it will look like here 20 years from now.

Weaners

Posted by on February 27, 2010 No comments
Cat Lady staring at me. I think she thinks I should fix this.
From February 2010

It was finally time for the first two calves to get weaned this weekend. I think they were born in May and June. My dad separated Cat-Lady and Betty-Ann from the herd, they’re probably both pregnant again & I believe weaning is necessary to allow them to recover before their next calves. The calves, Trillian and Thor, got to stay with the larger group so as not to traumatize them too much. Betty-Ann didn’t get too worked up about it all but Cat-Lady is not happy. She has been mooing almost non-stop for the past day and a half. She’s mellowed out a little bit today but she still gets going again every once in a while. And these cows generally don’t make a lot of noise. They do get mad when they get separated from the larger group though.

Let the #ihatenyseg Games BEGIN

Posted by on October 27, 2009 No comments

I didn’t get home until after it was dark so I haven’t seen the damage in person yet but NYSEG razed a rather large swath of our land today. They stop by periodically to do this. It’s a wonderful service they provide in exchange for us letting them have a gas pipeline across our property.

It’s just their way of showing their appreciation. In fact they’re so appreciative that every year they cut down more trees and widen their path of destruction. Maybe next time they’ll shoot our cows so they don’t walk over the pipeline.
Probably what really happens is they subcontract with someone who doesn’t give a crap–though doing that means they don’t give a crap either. They never let us know when they’re coming, we never have an opportunity to say, please don’t cut that tree down. You just run to the store to get some milk and come home and they’ve knocked down a bunch of your trees and bull dozed them over the path through the hedgerow.
Apparently their new slogan is “Go Paper Free and Save a Tree”. I never thought of this as a threat before.

Anyway, I guess we’ll try to get in touch with them sometime tomorrow and try to make some arguments for being good guests while they’re visiting our property. This tactic has been tried before without success so I will be documenting it here so I’ll be able to remember it all and dwell on it angrily for years to come.

Here’s a funny NYSEG spoof. http://www.planputnam.org/nyseg_esco.htm

Stampede

Posted by on August 2, 2009 No comments

Yes… more cows.

The latest cow/calf combination have not totally been getting the hang of their relationship. The mom, Ace, has forgotten she has a calf a couple of times and wandered off while the calf, T-bone, was sound asleep. They have needed some outside help to reunite a few times.
We were going for a walk after dinner one night last week and noticed that the cow and calf had ended up separated by a fence that sort of juts out in to the pasture. If they both walked south for 100 feet or so they could be together but that puzzle was too complicated for the two of them.

Brian called them which got the whole herd to run to that end of the fence together. It’s hard to get one cow to do something unless you can convince them all to do it. So they ran down the hill straight toward us and were reunited. Then they got in a mood to run back up the hill, which is when I started filming, and run down the hill and them back across the field.

Hey… cows get to have fun sometimes too.
I love the way their tails stick straight up in the air when they run.

Here’s the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ol6A1XsJxDY

New Bull Calf

Posted by on July 21, 2009 No comments

Born yesterday but he still doesn’t have a name.

A video of some of his early attempts at standing and walking.

More pics >>

Meanwhile Trillian (below) is getting much much bigger. She seems to like to hang out with her dad. He’s the dude with the ring in his nose.

Trillian again

Posted by on June 9, 2009 No comments

I should rename this blog “Bikes, Cows, & I wish I was on Vacation.”

I know… more cow pictures. But here is another picture of Trillian. ‘member back when she was just a few days old and running around? She has grown. She has a fancy ear tag now. It says she’s number 1.

Anyway, someone actually asked me to post this… so I am.

I think I got some really good pics/video of Tuck (the bull) kicking up dirt and mashing is face into the dirt. I have yet to pull them off the camera so you may or may not ever see them. I know you’re just waiting to see more cow picures.

Video of the New Calf (Trillian)

Posted by on May 16, 2009 2 comments

I think her name officially ended up being Trillian, a character from Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy (in case you didn’t know that already). I got some video of her running around and being kind of a spaz.

If you follow my on facebook or twitter you’ve probably already seen this. It’s crazy how agile she is at just 3 days old. It’s a good thing human babies can’t run like that at 3 days. The mom cow seems like she’s getting kind of worn out from following her around.

Solstice Party 2008

Posted by on December 21, 2008 1 comment

It was a cold night for the party this year. Wunderground.com says it was 16 degrees. Folks started arriving around 5:30. The first turkey was done by 6:30 and I think the second one came out around 8:30. I forgot to take any pictures of the turkeys. I was too busy eating them. The ice shot glasses worked pretty well though I seem to have made a few flawed ones. Brian had at least one shot of bourbon drizzle through and straight on to the ground.

 

We didn’t have a huge crowd, but there was plenty to eat and drink and plenty of stuff to burn. Paul and Ann brought their dried up Xmas tree from last year and lots of carpet tubes to supplement the carpet tubes and nailed together doors that my dad had collected. One of my co-workers came and brought a door to burn. We also burned my grandpa’s ‘giant ball of twine’ & a tiny paper sculpture of a Frank Lloyd Wright house.

There were a lot of folks with cameras at the party & I’ll post more photos as they become available.

Some Previous Solstice Parties

Photos

2007 | 2006 | 2005 | 2004

Blog Entries

2007 | 2006 | Background Info on Solstice Party

Thanks to everybody who came. Hope to see you again next year.

Snowstorm of Doom

Posted by on December 19, 2008 No comments

I couldn’t decide whether or not to go to work this morning. The news had been going on and on about this impending snowstorm that was going to destroy gotham city… and rochester. The weather guys flip out about everything though. I figured it would snow but the roads were completely clear. My boss never ever (I mean ever) misses work so I thought I’d look like an idiot if I called in and it was nothing.

It was snowing hard by 10. I decided I should head home around 10:30. I cleared it with boss-lady. Then the head of security called me to let me know that the school was closing at noon so I stuck around until I got the text and posted it on the site. I left work at 11a.m. It normally takes me 35 or 40 minutes to get home. I didn’t get home until 1:15. I was going about 20mph most of the way but didn’t mind much. I found a This American Life on my Ipod that I hadn’t listened to yet called Ties that Bind. That kept me from focusing on the high probablility of me ending up in a snowbank.

I finally made it home & Brian and I went for a snowshoe. It was tiring, but it was perfect.

Snow Covered Critters

Posted by on November 22, 2008 No comments

Sometimes the cows look at me accusingly, as though this whole snow thing was my idea. They don’t seem too cold but they are annoyed that the grass is covered up.