Tuesday, August 14, 2007

Well, it's officially the beginning of the end. I've started packing, and I wish I'd written down what I packed in each bag and box. It's like trying to do a puzzle without looking at the box top. It's impossible not to think back on the summer as I fold my Carhartts and wonder where I'm going to pack the armload of books I have. Big things stand out, but it's the little things that round out any experience and make it real. Like my friend Chris says, it's the little things; there's nothing bigger. It is the little things that I hope I'll remember:

The sound of the milk truck braking to turn into the farm driveway.
The train whistle, and hearing it get closer and closer and then farther and farther.
Coming home smelling like hay after merging all day, but mostly from pulling armloads of it out of the merger when it clogged.
Seeing the Milky Way on a clear night.
The sweet smell of the corn when it tassled, hanging over the whole farm.
All the different ways manure can smell, from just the way a barn should smell, to eye-watering.
Listening to country music lyrics that describe our days: "...cruisin back and forth to the Tastee-Freez..." "...he gets up before the dawn..." "...take the tractor another round..." "...it ain't always pretty, but it's real..."
The chicory that is my exact favorite shade of blue growing the whole length of the cornfield.
Dressing in the dark and eating breakfast by the light in the microwave.
Getting up with and going to bed with the sun.
The way getting mail could make an already good day 100 times better.
Picking sweet corn and eating it less than an hour later.
Eating tomato-basil salad with tomatoes and basil that I grew.

Based on these photos Mom emailed me, it seems I was always destined to end up spending at least one summer with dairy cows...
A paper mache cow with a rubber glove for an udder that we made at home. I was 6.

A visit to the University of Illinois ag research farm one summer. I was 7.

Friday, August 10, 2007

I had a lot of time to think this week, sitting in the tractor, and spent most of it musing about farming. I even wrote some of it down:

Farming agrees with me. The combination of familiar routing and never quite knowing what each day will bring gives a comfortable stability and consistency that are never really boring. I’ve learned a lot about what it takes to run a farm, and in the process, learned a fair amount about myself. I like working outside. I love animals. I like working with people and the sense of accomplishment you get from cooperating to get a job done. I like the self-sufficiency of growing crops to feed our cows, and using our cows’ manure to feed our crops. I like how we strive everyday so our cows can do their job (making milk) better and easier. I like country music, especially now that I’ve experienced more of what the songs are about. These are experiences that are unique, yet I share them with countless people across the country and throughout the world, people who make it their business, their life’s work, to put food on the table for the rest of us. I like the way farming grows kids up and gives them a sense of purpose and direction. Never was I more sure of this than listening to two guys not any older than I am discussing how much fertilizer goes on their fields. I like the risk and the gamble of betting your life on Mother Nature’s whims. Maybe I am only fascinated by this aspect of farming because I’ve never experienced the loss it can produce, but farming wouldn’t be the same if, at the very bottom of it all, the ability to coax more corn out of the ground and more milk out of the cows didn’t matter.

As I enter my last week here, I am amazed by how fast the summer has gone by. Even with the corn as a very visual indicator of passing time, it doesn't seem possible that 3 whole months have passed. I am eager to get home and especially back to Chestertown, to my friends, professors, and eventually, my thesis, which I am proud to say has a topic that was inspired by my experiences here. Briefly, when our cows come down with mastitis, we have a range of antiobiotics available to treat them. Organic farms do not have this luxury, and thus concentrate their efforts on prevention. I want to compare the treatment and prevention of mastitis on conventional and organic dairy farms, and hopefully also compare which pathogens are present on the two different farms. Wanda invited me to conduct some of my research here at Miner, so I will be returning some time after Christmas to ride along with Dr. Henderson so I can interview some of his other clients.

It has certainly been a fabulous summer, and I am already looking forward to returning.

Thursday, August 9, 2007

All this week I have been sitting in the tractor, stirring the manure pit. I finished both Farmer Boy and Harry Potter by Tuesday, tried to read James Joyce on Wednesday, and settled on James Herriot's Yorkshire for the rest of the week. So basically, stirring the pit for many days in a row is pretty boring, but not boring enough to read James Joyce.

Tonight Anna and I went to the Franklin County, NY Fair in Malone. This is the same fair where the Wilder's would have shown their animals, crops, and needlework. The cattle show is so big there that they have to split it between the Holsteins and the other breeds. The Holstein show ended Wednesday so we didn't see any of them, which meant we also didn't see any of the families we made friends with at Clinton County Fair. However, it also meant that we saw more of the other breeds than I have ever seen in once place, even Milking Shorthorns. So now I have seen, in person, all the dairy breeds. The main attraction (outside of the dairy barn) was bull-riding and it was pretty fun. Unfortunately it was dark and I didn't get any good pictures.

Saturday and Sunday, August 4-5, 2007

Saturday I went out on the boat with Cory, his friend Keith, and Katy. It was a fabulous day, sunny, breezy, and clear. We put the boat in at Point Au Roche, about midway between Plattsburgh and Chazy, and then we took it to the Plattsburgh City Beach, anchored, and walked on the beach a little bit. Saturday night I went to Field Days again, this time with Anna, to see the tractor pulls. There was plenty to see other than tractors, too, like this corn that towered over my head. This little 4H heifer was named Mystery for the question mark on her face.
These were a team of Holstein steers named Teeny and Tiny. They were the biggest cattle I've ever seen! Each one weighs at least a ton and they aren't even finished growing yet. This picture really doesn't do justice to their size.
This tractor pull was much better than the one at Clinton County Fair, because the tractors were actual farm tractors, not souped up so much you couldn’t even tell they were tractors. Some of the tractors at Franklin County looked like they drove in straight from the fields.

Sunday I went to the Almanzo Wilder Homestead in Malone, NY. It was very cool to see the farm in real life, even though it had been years since I’d last read Farmer Boy, the story of Almanzo Wilder’s childhood. I bought a copy of the book at the gift shop and so far have enjoyed reading it with the images of the real farm in my head.

The Trout River where Almanzo fished and where sheep were washed.
Damselfly enjoying the beautiful weather.
Pumphouse. The
The original home of the Wilder's.
This tree is old enough to have been there when Almanzo was growing up.
The barns.

Tuesday, July 31, 2007

I was on equine today. In the morning we feed and much stalls. We finished pretty quickly so Christina and I took Sara driving.
I got to drive, too, which was really cool. Since you can’t use your legs to make the horse go faster, you have to use your voice (and the horse has to be trained to listen to you voice). Sara even knows the difference between “trot” and “trot UP” which means faster. In the afternoon I rode Reggie again.
This evening was Sean Stebbins’ farewell cookout, because he’s been working at Rover’s all summer but Wednesday is his last day there and then he goes home to VT. I made peach-blueberry cobbler again and everybody loved it!

Saturday-Monday, July 28-30, 2007

This morning I went with Roxanne to Cha-Liz farm, where they are conducting a study on the effect of diet during the dry period on health after calving. This involves taking blood samples from 20-25 cows every day. It’s actually very simple, because we draw blood from the tail vein. It’s harder to miss the vein than it is to find it, and the cows don’t need more restraint than just standing in the stall provides. When we got back to Miner, Anna said we had a cow that had suddenly gone blind. It turns out she has the cow version of pink eye. Part of the treatment included giving her a sulfanomide antibiotic in her vein, and I got to place the IV. The interesting thing about sulfanomide drugs is that they are secreted from the body in the tears, among other routes, so we know the drug will attack the infection in her eyes. I went up to the hutches to say hi to the calves and here is a picture of our C-section calf, who is making good progress.


Sunday morning, I did fresh check by myself. It was pretty straightforward. The most exciting part was when I listened to 1144. She’s been on glycol all week and was still not making very much milk. We had expected her to have a DA but she had good rumen movement. We’ve listened to her everyday, just in case. I was telling Ralph about her, and decided I better listen to her just in case. Well, sure enough she had a DA, finally!

I milked Monday morning, and then we had a meeting with Wanda about our management project. She went over how to score the hocks and then we printed a list from Dairy Comp of all the cows. We split up the dairy barn and also did far dry and close up. That took most of the morning.

Here is a tomato update:
Ripe!

Friday, July 27, 2007


The usual with Anna in the morning, then Ag Seminar at lunch. After lunch, Rick Grant met with the farm management students to go over the observational study we’re going to be conducting in our last three weeks. The goal is to come up with some recommendations about the freestalls. We will score the knees and hocks of the cows, and possibly score lameness for a few cows out of each pen. The scoring is based on the condition of the joins, whether they have rubs or sores from laying in the stalls or not. The lameness score is based on the ease or difficulty with which the cow moves. Then we will measure the amount of sawdust in the stalls at different distances from the fans at different times (e.g. immediately before new bedding is put in, immediately after new bedding is put in, and several hours after new bedding is put in). This is to determine the amount of sawdust blown away by the fans. Based on the condition of the hocks and the amount of bedding loss, we are supposed to recommend changes that will improve the condition of the hocks (we already know there are too many cows with sores or swelling).

Thursday, July 26, 2007

Today is dry off day, which means we stop milking the cows that are 60 days from calving so they can have a rest and get ready to calve. It also means Thursday is moving day, because the cows we dry off come from pen 5, the low-producing pen, so cows from the high producing pens move into pen 5 to replace the ones we dried off, and cows from the far dry pen (60-30 days from calving) move to the close-up dry pen (30-0 days from calving). The cows we put in far dry and close up all need to be weighed and get shots, so it makes for a pretty full morning at the very least.

In the afternoon, Wanda’s husband, Jerry, gave a talk on cow evaluation. He works for Select Sires, which is the company that provides semen to us. Part of their job is to evaluate and score cows and bulls on 17 traits so that cows can be inseminated with bulls whose traits will improve upon the traits of the cow. The 17 traits are stature, dairy character, strength, body depth, rump angle, legs-side view, foot angle, fore udder, front teat placement, front teat length, rear udder height, rear udder width, udder support, udder depth, pelvic width, legs-rear view, and rear teat placement. For some of the traits, a high score is desirable, such as for strength and dairy character, although these should be balanced. For other traits, like rump angle and fore udder, a moderate score is ideal. It was very interesting to see the power point Jerry had, with extremes and ideals of each trait, because after paying attention to all of it, I could really see the differences in cows once we went out in the barn. It’s just knowing what to look for. For instance, dairy character means the cow has sweeping, angled ribs, a long neck, and fine skin. I didn’t even notice that our cows ribs were angled (in comparison to beef cattle whose ribs are nearly perpendicular to the ground) until it was pointed out.

The image below is from the Canadian Holstein Association website and it is the closest thing I could find to the chart we looked at.

Wednesday, July 24, 2007

Wednesday is Dr. Henderson’s day to do pregnancy checks and check any other cows that need looked at by the vet. The big excitement of the morning came when he checked the heifer Anna bred last time I had herd health, and she was pregnant. Then we had vet discussion, and we talked about how cows that stay in the milking herd too long because they aren’t getting pregnant cost a lot of money. We figured this out by looking at the average days in milk. If the average is 210 and the goal is 180, it costs the farmer more than $170,000. This is because the longer a cow stays in milk, the less milk she tends to make, so the income from her milk probably doesn’t pay her bills at the farm.

In the afternoon, Ev took us on a driving tour of the Quebec mucklands. These are very flat, low-lying areas of soil that was deposited when the region was underwater. They are extremely fine, rich soils and they are used only for growing a handful of vegetables: onions, carrots, celery, and lettuce. It was very interesting to see those crops growing in big fields on the side of the road the same way you see corn and soybeans in most other rural areas (at least the ones
I’ve been in).

Baby lettuce.
Harvesting green onions.
Irrigation.
Lettuce field. If you look closely you'll see a lot of lettuces heads didn't make the cut to be sold in stores.
Carrots or celery, I forget which. They look pretty similar.

Monday, July 23, 2007

Yesterday Wanda let us pick what we wanted to do today because she hadn’t had time with the fair to make our schedules, so I picked herd health with Anna because I hadn’t had it since my second week. There wasn’t too much to do. One thing I did was spread predatory wasp eggs, as part of our fly control regimen. They are very small, about ¼ inch long, and do not pester people or animals. They lay their eggs in the same places pest flies do, and the predatory wasp larvae eat the pest fly larvae, stopping their development. They work extrememly well and are environmentally friendly. The company sends 2 quart size bags every Friday. We spread them in the places flies breed, which is anywhere moist, not just near manure. Also, we keep our manure liquefied in pits, and it is too wet for flies to breed there.

I stopped to visit Cricket on my way back and I think she's happy to have some friends.

Sunday, July 22, 2007

Today was the last day of the fair. We had an easy morning because we didn’t have to wash the animals as carefully since they weren’t going in the show ring. We had to use this stuff called Hocus Pocus to get the Prime Time adhesive out of their toplines. All for vanity! as Steve would say. I spent most of the morning reading my book, and most of the afternoon, too. I walked around with Anna and got fresh-squeezed lemonade, one of my requisite fair foods. Around 2 o’clock, Adrianna (Steve’s daughter) came to get us to take the animals to the trailer. They all seemed very happy to be heading home, and Cricket hopped right into the trailer as if she was born to do the county fair circuit. I held down the fort while Blake and Steven took them home and nearly finished my book. Blake and Katy and Kristy met Steve and I at the garage to unload all the show equipment, and then Blake and I went back to watch the demolition derby. Unfortunately, I forgot my camera, but it was pretty amusing. You could easily see how a bunch of guys were sitting around and one said, “Hey, let’s find some old cars and crash them into each other!”

Corn update: tassles!

Saturday, July 21, 2007

The day after the fair was a little like the day after Christmas. Certainly, the whole atmosphere of the barn was much more relaxed, but you do miss the energy and excitement of the day before. Blake and I were up early, as usual, to bring donuts to the fair. Since the show was over, there was very little to do. Everyone else in the barn was suddenly free to socialize. It's not that people were unfriendly before the show, just that nobody had any time to spare between getting their animals clipped and keeping them clean. Two people from other farms came over and chatted with Blake and I for a little while. They were Connie Gerow and Mel(vin) Irwin. I really enjoyed talking with them because it made me feel like a part of the community. I also spent some quality time with Cricket.I mentioned to Blake and Anna that mom and dad were going to Burlington and they both said I should go, so I did. We took the ferry from Port Kent, NY to Burlington. We went as foot passengers because we just wanted to walk around Burlington.

It was a beautiful day and there were boats all over the lake.
It was the day after the new Harry Potter book came out, and I saw at least 5 people reading it over the course of the day. Two girls on the ferry were sitting right next to each other reading it.
Burlington from the ferry.

This is the top of Church Street, which is the pedestrian-only street with all the shops. I assume this is the church after which the street is named.
This guy was riding a unicycle on a slack line. He was pretty funny. He got all the people clapping and then he kept saying louder, louder, but people just clapped faster until he said, Louder, not faster!
I showed them City Market, where Claire took us, and they got just as big a kick out of it as I did. Mom said it was very similar to a co-op they were members of in CT before I was born. There was a farmer’s market and this local artist, Dug Nap was there selling his prints and Mom got me one that has 2 cows and at the top it says “Girls not gone wild.” I got a T-shirt with Holsteins on it from Ben and Jerry’s, and a couple of post cards and a mug with cow art by the same artist (Woody Jackson).
Some nice Vermont scenery from the ferry on the way back to New York.


The Port Kent ferry terminal.
The Port Kent Amtrack Station. That's all there is to it.

Saturday night at the fair was the tractor pull. There is a huge range of “tractors.” There are regular old tractors, which are called farm stock, there are tractors that just have souped up engines, then there are tractors that look like drag race cars. I liked the farm stock tractors best.