Tuesday, April 19, 2011
Typical Jersey behaviour
In honor of it being almost time to put the cows out on pasture, here is a picture from stock photo company shutterstock (that i found courtesy of awkwardstockphotos.com).
Friday, April 15, 2011
dairy farmers to the front! oi! oi! oi!
I would just like to send this update out to the punk rock licensure committee and let them know that although I have not been to a concert where anyone has vomited on the dance floor in several years, I am still doing my best to represent myself as a respectable member of the punk rock community and respectfully ask for my license to be renewed for the following reasons:
1) So, gentle readers, for those of you who didn't know me "back in the day" as the kids like to say, I will tell you that I used to have look that some might call eccentric. Indeed, I was stopped on one occasion by tourists in downtown San Francisco and asked to pose for a picture to show the folks back home in some town in Oklahoma where only teenagers whose parents didn't love them enough looked like I did. At the time I spiked my blue or pink or purple hair with a mixture of Elmer's glue and the cheapest hair gel they had at Walgreens. But since I need to save my money now to buy a reconditioned sickle bar mower, I don't have 30 dollars a month to spend on dying my hair. However, I have discovered a way to get it spiked just the same - let a cow lick the back of your head while you milk her. Punk as fuck and delightfully frugal.
2) Also, I stopped in the co-op this morning after I did morning chores for my co-worker since he was up half the night untwisting a poor cow's uterus by rolling her the length of the barn. While I was reading a story in the Hardwick Gazette that mentions me! without buying the newspaper (also a very punk thing to do) one of the people who works there said "what is that smell?" As I was sniffing, she looked at me and said "oh, my gosh, I am so sorry." And I totally realized the smell was cow shit. I spent a minute trying to decide whether feel embarrassed while she apologized profusely and said that the smell was really similar to something burning and not like manure at all. Finally I said that she shouldn't worry about it and concluded that many punks would consider it pretty damn awesome to have someone comment on your odor in public.
3) I am making randall lineback back patches.
1) So, gentle readers, for those of you who didn't know me "back in the day" as the kids like to say, I will tell you that I used to have look that some might call eccentric. Indeed, I was stopped on one occasion by tourists in downtown San Francisco and asked to pose for a picture to show the folks back home in some town in Oklahoma where only teenagers whose parents didn't love them enough looked like I did. At the time I spiked my blue or pink or purple hair with a mixture of Elmer's glue and the cheapest hair gel they had at Walgreens. But since I need to save my money now to buy a reconditioned sickle bar mower, I don't have 30 dollars a month to spend on dying my hair. However, I have discovered a way to get it spiked just the same - let a cow lick the back of your head while you milk her. Punk as fuck and delightfully frugal.
2) Also, I stopped in the co-op this morning after I did morning chores for my co-worker since he was up half the night untwisting a poor cow's uterus by rolling her the length of the barn. While I was reading a story in the Hardwick Gazette that mentions me! without buying the newspaper (also a very punk thing to do) one of the people who works there said "what is that smell?" As I was sniffing, she looked at me and said "oh, my gosh, I am so sorry." And I totally realized the smell was cow shit. I spent a minute trying to decide whether feel embarrassed while she apologized profusely and said that the smell was really similar to something burning and not like manure at all. Finally I said that she shouldn't worry about it and concluded that many punks would consider it pretty damn awesome to have someone comment on your odor in public.
3) I am making randall lineback back patches.
Tuesday, April 12, 2011
dreams i have had involving farming
1) I was working on a farm situated on a fairly busy road. I was always worried that the cows would break out of their fence and end up in the road and get hit by a car. I dreamed that I am in the middle of the busy road with a cow that will not go back in the pasture. Cars keep wizzing past us (because obviously that is Connecticut people's reaction to a cow on the road) and I am terrified that one of us will be hit by a car. I hear brakes screech I wake up. A cow never got in the road while I was there. We did have one get on the runway of the municipal airport though.
2) While I was constantly having overly emotional discussions with my (not anymore) husband about having kids I dreamed that my doctor discovered I was pregnant with a set of twin calves. I decided I would carry them to term, and then realized that Holstein calves weigh like 90 pounds when they are born, and I wake up. I'm sure this is some sort of metaphor for my non farming life at the time.
3) Last night I went to sleep thinking about all the stuff I have to do at the farm this week and I dreamed that I get to work and start doing things and totally forget to milk the cows until the vet shows up for the health check at 11:30 and I tell him "oh shit! I forgot to milk the cows! I feel worried that my boss will find out I forgot to milk the cows. Then I wake up. Spring is surely coming.
2) While I was constantly having overly emotional discussions with my (not anymore) husband about having kids I dreamed that my doctor discovered I was pregnant with a set of twin calves. I decided I would carry them to term, and then realized that Holstein calves weigh like 90 pounds when they are born, and I wake up. I'm sure this is some sort of metaphor for my non farming life at the time.
3) Last night I went to sleep thinking about all the stuff I have to do at the farm this week and I dreamed that I get to work and start doing things and totally forget to milk the cows until the vet shows up for the health check at 11:30 and I tell him "oh shit! I forgot to milk the cows! I feel worried that my boss will find out I forgot to milk the cows. Then I wake up. Spring is surely coming.
Saturday, April 2, 2011
Lucky in the news!
The Seven Days (VT's indie weekly) has a very nice but rather pedestrian story about raw dairy products. BUT! the story features the good folks at Tamarack Hollow Farm who adopted Lucky. And they even mention him in the article!
The next day, I visited Amanda Andrews at Tamarack Hollow Farm in Burlington. Here, along Route 127, she and her partner, Mike Betit, keep pigs, grow vegetables, and tend to four cows, an ox and a new calf. One cow was freshening, and another was at the end of her lactation; the outdoor farm refrigerator was filled with jugs of fresh, raw milk.
The next day, I visited Amanda Andrews at Tamarack Hollow Farm in Burlington. Here, along Route 127, she and her partner, Mike Betit, keep pigs, grow vegetables, and tend to four cows, an ox and a new calf. One cow was freshening, and another was at the end of her lactation; the outdoor farm refrigerator was filled with jugs of fresh, raw milk.
beware greeks bearing gifts ... and the iowa department of ag, apparently
I meant to blog about this last week, but I was busy dealing with the fact that I knocked the remaining side view mirror off my car (I knocked the first one off 2 months ago with the tractor) with a horse. In spite of my best MacGyver repair attempts, I just have to accept that getting them fixed means 160 dollars that won't be going into the farm fund. But at least I'm not these people:
There was a story on Marketplace last week about a project in Iowa called the "New Farm Family Project" which encouraged dairy farmers from other countries to come to America a try to make money where American farmers have been failing for a generation. The project required the new farmers to invest 500k in the farm (and subsequently the dairy economy) and create jobs (to benefit the rural economy). The farms would get (fee based) help from Iowa State and a Dutch company called Atlantic Business Development.
Guess how that worked out for them.
If you guessed that a quarter of the farmers and counting have returned home broke and broken, you win a packet of Roundup Ready corn seed.
Trust me, Iowa State, the problem is not that American farmers are too lazy to make a profit. It's that a generation of farm policies have favored chemical soaked production methods over natural ones and unsustainable economies of scale over farms that benefit the land instead of hurt it.
You can read or listen to the original story here http://marketplace.publicradio.org/display/web/2011/03/23/pm-program-to-lure-dutch-dairy-farmers-to-us-turns-sour/
And here's a 2006 story from Iowa Farmer Today about a Dutch family that moved to Iowa. http://iowafarmertoday.com/articles/2006/10/12/top_stories/13dutchdairy.txt The story mentions the horrors of the quota system and the strict environmental regulations in the Netherlands. I wonder how they're doing today.
There was a story on Marketplace last week about a project in Iowa called the "New Farm Family Project" which encouraged dairy farmers from other countries to come to America a try to make money where American farmers have been failing for a generation. The project required the new farmers to invest 500k in the farm (and subsequently the dairy economy) and create jobs (to benefit the rural economy). The farms would get (fee based) help from Iowa State and a Dutch company called Atlantic Business Development.
Guess how that worked out for them.
If you guessed that a quarter of the farmers and counting have returned home broke and broken, you win a packet of Roundup Ready corn seed.
Trust me, Iowa State, the problem is not that American farmers are too lazy to make a profit. It's that a generation of farm policies have favored chemical soaked production methods over natural ones and unsustainable economies of scale over farms that benefit the land instead of hurt it.
You can read or listen to the original story here http://marketplace.publicradio.org/display/web/2011/03/23/pm-program-to-lure-dutch-dairy-farmers-to-us-turns-sour/
And here's a 2006 story from Iowa Farmer Today about a Dutch family that moved to Iowa. http://iowafarmertoday.com/articles/2006/10/12/top_stories/13dutchdairy.txt The story mentions the horrors of the quota system and the strict environmental regulations in the Netherlands. I wonder how they're doing today.
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