Saturday, July 7, 2007

Roxanne and I went to Montreal today. We chose a few sights to see, bought the all-day tourist card for the metro, and had a great time. We ended up mostly looking at churches, St. Joseph’s Oratory in Mount Royal park and Mary Queen of the World Cathedral in downtown. Another church we tried to see, the Notre Dame Cathedral, was closed because someone was getting married there.
But both of the ones we saw were beautiful. St. Joseph's stands very impressively at the top of a huge hill. The interior was surprisingly modern.

MQW was modeled after St. Peter’s in the Vatican City.

I guess we were tired when we made it to the historic district because we didn’t walk around much there. I enjoyed figuring the whole trip out by myself and being able to read French and find our way around.

This was just a very fancy hotel that I thought looked cool.

Dairy in the News

Don't Cry over rBST Milk

This is a link to an editorial that ran in the New York Times June 29, 2007. I strongly encourage everyone to read it, because it gives a sparkling clear argument in favor of milk produced with rBST (recombinant bovine somatotropin), otherwise known as bovine growth hormone. Basically, farmers can produce more milk with fewer cows, and the author of the editorial, Henry Miller, lists a number of benefits that arise from that simple fact. What it comes down to is that fewer resources, whether they be food, water, or fuel, are used to produce the same amount of milk when rBST is used, and that makes rBST environmentally friendly. Milk that is rBST-free is indistinguishable from milk produced using rBST; when you purchase milk labeled "rBST-free" you place your trust in the farmer who produced that milk, because there is no test to tell if milk has been produced with rBST.

Coincidentally, our farm received a letter from Agri-Mark, the co-op that buys our milk, telling us that they are having a hard time marketing our milk to processors (the companies that turn raw milk into dairy products) because we use rBST.

Please do not get drawn into thinking that rBST-free milk is better because it is more expensive. Do not buy milk or dairy products labeled rBST-free. You will simply be supporting false advertising.

(Image from nytimes.com)

Don't Cry over rBST Milk

Wednesday, July 4, 2007

Happy 4th of July!Forget about "knee high by the 4th of July," we're waist high!
I milked with Neil on Saturday. He is hilarious. The cows were staring at the floor because it was buckling because of the heat, and I was saying to them, "Don't look at the floor, just walk." Neil said to Ralph, "You should see Tonie in the parlor! She says to the cows, that floor is none of your business, quit sniffing it and get your butt in the parlor so I can throw the milker on you!!" He made up all kinds of tall tales like that about our shift. He was telling Blake and Ralph all of them while we were having break and we were all dissolving in gales of laughter.

On Sunday, we drove up to Rouse's Point to see their parade and fireworks. This is the view across the lake (that's Vermont over there!). I hadn’t been to a parade in years so I was pretty excited. It was a good one, too. Not something you see in parades back home...
You can't have a 4th of July parade without local politicians.
There were three pipe and drum bands. This was the first one.
There were more tractors than I could count, old...
And new...Every firetruck from miles around...ever seen a blue firetruck before?

There were firetrucks from Vermont, and even one from Canada.
This is our very own Chazy, NY firetruck. Shriners are another parade staple. There was another group after this one, driving miniature racecars. What are Shriners anyway?
This was a jazz group that called themselves the Blues Brothers.
There were 2 marching bands, both from Canada, a high school band and a middle school band. Afterwards there were fireworks, which I always enjoy no matter what. This was a small town with a proportional display but I still loved it.

I'm feeding with Ralph this week. I like riding around with him, but boy is it early (I get there at 3:30 AM). It took 10 days of getting up at 3:30 but they finally made a coffee drinker out of me. On Monday we pulled 2 calves in quick succession, one upside down and one with its leg and head tucked back. Both were bulls, which is always sort of a disappointment. Another bull was born in the afternoon. I clipped my show heifer Monday afternoon. It’s a much bigger job than you expect, but she was very good and now she looks sparkling clean. A thunderstorm went through and there was a rainbow when I was heading back to the dorm. It went all the way across the sky and there was a second one starting.

More corn pictures...my old picture-taking spot does not show off the corn to its best advantage.

Here you can really see how tall it is.

Yesterday I watched a DA surgery after lunch. DA stands for displaced abomasum. The abomasum is the part of the cow's stomach that is on the bottom, and it can sort of float up and flip over the top of the stomach. It's uncomfortable for the cow and has to be corrected. Dr. Terry was the vet. I asked her about the finances of vet school and she said, if it’s what you want, don’t worry about it. You’ll make it work somehow, even if you have to live like a student for another 5 years.

Wednesday, June 27, 2007

GRAPHIC PHOTOS ALERT

Milking as usual but a very exciting morning afterwards! We had a cow that was down because she had a sore foot, and she started trying to get up yesterday and may have broken her leg. She was 3 weeks from calving and they wanted to try to save the calf, so Dr. Henderson did a C-section before they euthanized the mother. It was very cool. I got to help by cutting the uterus open and rubbing the calf’s head. Dr. Henderson said he heard somewhere that when the mother licks the calf’s head, it releases adrenalin in the calf’s body which helps get its heart and lungs going, so I had to rub its head very briskly to induce that adrenaline rush. Anna tickled its nose with a piece of straw to make it cough, and Dr. Henderson lifted its ribcage like a bellows to get air into its lungs. It sputtered and snorted and sniffled and blinked and was alive! And it was a heifer, which made all that effort very worthwhile.

Last Sunday we went to Isle La Motte again and this time I had my camera.
Samuel de Champlain.

We always laugh at this sign, which is on our way home. So far we have only chosen New York, but I hope we go to Canada soon.
We stopped at the grocery store and parked next to this very cool car.
And finally, the corn update. It's been hot; now we just need some rain.

Saturday, June 23, 2007

This post is unofficially sponosored by Carhartt, because today Anna and I drove an hour to St. Albans, VT, to go to Lenny's Apparel and Shoes, possibly the only store that carries women's Carhartts. Carhartt is the unofficial uniform of farmers. They even have their own color: Carhartt brown, and now they make a clothing line specifically for women. I bought two pairs of pants, which I will consider my first vet school expense, because my justification for buying two pairs was that, eventually, I will be a vet student and will wear them a lot then as well as this summer.

Anna and I also found a produce stand that had fresh strawberries. They are delicious! After I got home and had dinner, Christina, Claire, Roxanne, Eric, and I went to the Plattsburgh mall and hung out. We were going to see a movie but we didn't leave soon enough. I got a few other things on sale at Gap and Old Navy, and some bargain books from Borders. It's really nice to hang out with everyone, especially since none of us work together so it's not like we're bored with each other's company by the end of the day.

It turned out that by going to the mall, we missed one of the mares foaling. We drove to the barn to check on her, and her foal was mostly dry and standing up on VERY wobbly legs. It's a little chestnut filly and they are calling her Annie, because we all stopped at Auntie Anne's Pretzels before we left the mall. She has a very long face and is a little funny-looking, but we all think she will grow into herself. It was pretty cool to see such a new foal. Her tongue was bright red and she tried to suck on my fingers.

Friday, June 22, 2007

Tomatoes! I still stand by my prediction that we'll have ripe tomatoes by the end of June, especially at the rate these guys are growing!

I don’t have too much to say about Crops. I merged on Tuesday and Wednesday, and helped with the Ag-Bagger. We got the last of the first cut hay chopped and bagged on Thursday, and second cut starts Monday! It should not take 3 days to get 15 acres of hay chopped and bagged, but that’s what happens when it rains.
Front of the chopper.

Back of the chopper. It even says Miner Institute on the side but it's a little hard to see in this picture. We got most of it mowed and merged on Tuesday, but then it rained, so Wednesday was spent using the merger to flip over the stuff that was already on the ground so it could dry out again, and we didn’t finish chopping until Thursday afternoon.
Front of the merger.
Back of the merger, see where it says HayBuddy?
In the downtime, the guys worked on fixing the new merger, and I did odd jobs like greasing all the equipment with the grease gun, which is mildly fun, and sweeping the whole shop and washing all the tractor windows, which are not that fun. Today, I spent the whole morning sitting in the tractor attached to the manure agitator. Luckily there’s a radio or I would have been bored out of my mind.

At lunch, Steve Mooney talked about some research he’s presenting at a conference later this summer, and the only parts I understood were when he said, “The acid donates a hydrogen.” Thank you, Dr. Creegan.

The weather here continues to amaze me. The past 3 days have had highs in the 70s and it was cool enough this morning that I had hot chocolate at breakfast. It’s supposed to get down to the 40s tonight. I have milking at 4:30 am next week, which may make a coffee drinker out of me at last.

MoCo the mower.
The big, new, fancy tractor that no one likes because it doesn't shift smoothly. But I can drive it!
The tractor that used to have the merger hooked up to it but now it has the manure agitator.

Monday, June 18, 2007

Beautiful corn! Above, sun going down, looking southwest toward the horse barns. Compare the picture below to the one from last week! I promise they are only 7 days apart.
I started the Crops rotation today. We had 20 acres left of timothy-clover hay to mow, merge, chop, and bag. We don’t bale any of the hay here; it all gets turned into haylage. Instead of being preserved by drying, like baled hay, haylage is preserved by fermentation. It either gets packed into a bunk like the one I helped cover last week, or into an Ag-Bag, which is a huge long tube of plastic, probably 10 feet in diameter, and as long as you need it to be. I learned to mow and merge today. The mower is called MoCo and the merger is called HayBuddy. I mean, they actually have these names painted on them. They are the actual names of the equipment. We mowed all 20 acres before lunch, and merged them all after lunch. Merging is when one windrow (row of mowed hay) is picked up and piled onto the next one. It’s done so the chopper doesn’t have to make as many trips around the field. To mow, first you do 6 circles around the perimeter or the field, working your way in. Then you just go back and forth. You have to swing the mower from one side of the tractor to the other each time you switch directions, but you do that with a lever inside the air-conditioned cab of the tractor while you’re listening to the radio. :o) The merger follows directly behind the tractor (an older model, with a clutch!) You just drive straight down the center of a windrow; the merger picks it up and places it on a conveyor belt, which shoots it onto the windrow to your left. I got to do merging all by myself, which including stopping to unclog it every so often. You have to keep a constant watch to make sure it doesn’t get clogged, because if you catch it early, you don’t have to get out of the tractor. If you watch straight ahead and don’t check the merger for one second too long, it will have a huge clog that requires you to turn everything off and get out of the tractor and pull armloads of hay off the conveyor belt. The best thing about these jobs is how quickly time passes. I’m sure having the radio helps out a lot with that. Anyway, it was a very productive day and I feel very accomplished.

Also, I forgot to say last week that I mastered driving the old Massey-Ferguson tractor, and that I got my first bloody nose ever! The Massey is at least 30 years old and has a standard transmission. I can drive it anywhere now, and use the manure spreader. I got the bloody nose when we were weighing cows. There is a gate attached to the scale that forms a chute the cattle walk through to the scale. Well, there was a cow who didn’t want to go on the scale and she swung her hips into the gate, and I was standing right on the other side of it and the top rail hit me right in the nose, really hard. First time for everything, right?

Here is some of the wildlife I have seen so far:

A turtle Chad brought into the break room at the dairy barn.
A cedar waxwing that apparently flew into a window and was collecting itself on the ledge below the window. I had never seen a bird like this before but I showed my roommate the picture and she knew immediately. She said when they migrate south they stop in Burlington, eat all the berries on their campus, and leave.