It's hard to believe it's mid-December. Unless you look out the window. In the last week or so, we have had over 60 inches, that's five feet, of snow. Fortunately it was all lake effect. This is kind of our local phenomenon. When the wind blows from just the right angle over Lake Ontario, it picks up moisture and then drops it immediately as soon as it hits land. It is very light and fluffy. Snow storm snow has about one inch of precipitation per ten inches of snow. Lake effect about one inch per forty inches. As soon as the sun comes out, it settles considerably. You still have to shovel and plow it.

I've been a little late getting out this blog since I've been in my tractor plowing a lot. Like fourteen hours last week and about six so far this week. It's really only a great inconvenience but we can handle it. When it gets really bad the Weather Channel comes by and broadcasts from in front of the Cato Hardware. It has been a few years since they were here so maybe we're due.

We have the cattle all set int their winter groups. Now that they are on their winter feed, we are using 4 to 5 tons per week of baleage. We had a steer and the two pigs leave this week. They moved up further into the food chain.

Jim is on his way home by truck. He has a classmate who lives east of here and Jim is riding along. As I write this they are in Indiana just west of the Ohio line.They hope to be here by 2AM. The other fellow will spend the rest of the night here and continue on in the morning. Eileen is flying home Sunday afternoon. It will be nice to have everyone here.

I have been trying to figure out how to link Lake Breeze Farms to Facebook. I haven't had much luck. I think that will improve when the Facebook experts arrive home. Standby for further developments.

Thanksgiving is over. We had a great week with both Eileen and Jim home from school. As a real bonus, my daughter Maureen and her husband and two young sons came for a few days.

We are in the fall chores season. The cattle need to be fed and watered which is pretty easy. The pigs continue to grow. They are really quite large. They have their own porcine charm. I'd hate to fall into their pen but on the other hand they seem to like us. The goats are still quite amusing. One was in heat the other day and attracted the attention of a young Lowline bull . That was interesting.

Jim and I went on two major trips over the vacation. I picked him up at the airport at midnight on Wednesday the week before Thanksgiving. By 9 the following morning we were on the way to Indiana. We had purchased a combination corn and soybean planter. We took our fifth wheel trailer. It was a long but successful trip of 1218 miles. We were home Saturday afternoon around 4.

The following Tuesday we went with our friend Verne. He had purchased a 1953 Chevrolet pickup in Connecticut almost to Rhode Island. This trip also went well and we were home Wednesday morning at 1AM after 650 miles. That will be the last of our major outings for this year.

Eileen visited with old school friends and did a great deal of the preparation necessary for a successful Thanksgiving dinner. I had purchased a turkey from a neighboring farmer earlier this fall. I was surprised that it dressed at 23 pounds. You can really taste farm raised food. You don't need all the salt etc you put on non farm food. It just tastes healthy.

Mary and Jim entered a 5k race along with 2000 others on Thanksgiving Day. Jim ran with Mary as a pacer. Mary was delighted to be 2nd in her age group.

We broke in Maureen's boys on chores. They did very well for 4 and 7. They are sure quick learners and eager workers.

I took Jim to the airport Saturday morning for a 6AM flight and he was back in Iowa by 10AM. Eileen joined Maureen and her gang to see the Boston College- Syracuse football game. The whole group had their BC Eagles outfits and were pleased that BC won since Maureen is an alumna of Boston College.

We got Eileen to the airport for a 7:15 flight to Nashville and she was in her apartment before midnight.

So for myself and Mary, it's back to empty nest and her job and my farm chores. It won't last for long as Jim and Eileen will be back in three weeks. I can't wait.

We finished harvesting our beans. This year we tried a new variety and were very satisfied. Our overall yield was 45 bushels per acre. This is a very good yield for New York.

We have purchased back some belted Galloway's that we sold a few years ago to a local Mennonite farmer. He called a few days ago and said that he and his family were undertaking a mission to Guatemala and he was selling his farm and cattle. I bought back cows that I had sold as calves who now had calves of their own. A good customer of mine who has bought belties previously bought the three original mother cows. They are related to some of the cattle he had already purchased from me. We all wish the Mennonite farmer and his family best wishes for success in Guatemala.

I am going to be busy the next week or so delivering cattle. Before I left, I sold our herd bull Remote Control and a purebred cow calf to a gentleman from Massachusetts. So I have to get my new/old belties and deliver the mother cows as well and then go to Massachusetts.

I also have to go to Northern New York to pick up some trees I ordered. I want to plant them along Begley Boulevard between the road and the fence. I'd like to recreate the old time lane way look with maples. I also got two horse chestnut trees for Mary. She had them in her yard as a child.

We had a full blood bull calf born on Jim's 19th birthday. We number our calves in birth sequence and this one was number 19. I saw an omen there and gave Jim the calf for his birthday. He named it Cyclone for the Iowa State Cyclones.

Mary and I have just returned from Florida. While I was away our last calf of 2010 was born, a bull. We had originally planned that Mary and her mother would drive to Florida and I would fly down and meet them. They had a little car trouble in West Virginia. The easiest solution was for me to drive Mary's car to West Virginia then drive Mary's mother's car to Florida while she and her mother drove in Mary's car. We had an uneventful trip. Mary's mother enjoyed both Mexican and Bar-B-Que along the way.

We had dinner in Florida with my sons Brian and Mike and their wives and three sons. It was very pleasant. It reminds you how fortunate grandparents are who have their grandchildren nearby.

The next day, we continued on for lunch with my college roommate and his wife. They normally live next to us during the summer but couldn't make it north this summer due to his health. I was glad to see he is in go0d spirits and still has his Irish sense of humor.

Since we were in the neighborhood, so to speak, and had Mary's car, we decided to go home via Nashville so we could see Eileen. She took us to a wonderful restaurant and we had a pleasant evening. We all met for breakfast the next morning, then Mary and I headed for home. We made it a leisurely drive and made it back late Friday afternoon.

Saturday afternoon, we went to a Baby Shower for a friend. The idea was to get both men and women to go. It was a first for me.The theme was country redneck so I got out my black Stetson hat and Carhartt vest and Mary her farm equipment dealer cap. We had a fun afternoon visiting with friends.

Earlier in the afternoon, I watched two of my heifers sold via liveauction.tv in Minnesota. I had originally taken them to a friend's farm there last fall with two others. We selected two to go on to Denver and these two stayed in Minnesota. He had a large scale auction and included my cattle. I am happy with the price. It is sort of amazing to sit at home next to the lake watching some of your cattle sold on the Internet. We have certainly come a long way in technology.

As I write this, I have just finished chores. The pigs seemed to have grown a lot in my absence and the goats continue to sit on top of the round bale feeder surrounded by munching cows providing amusement for the remaining few summer residents.

The weather forecast is for snow showers. Some contrast to the 90's in Florida just a few days ago,. In a last minute update just before I post this, it is now sleeting.

Despite my best intentions to write more, its been a month since my last blog. We have been very busy but making lots of progress.

Half our soybeans have been harvested and shipped off to China. With any luck the rest will be done by Tuesday. We are near the Port of Oswego and we really deliver the beans to a ship bound for China.

We have had a few more fall calves and we have the last two cows waiting to freshen. Our new Belted Galloway bull has made himself at home with his herd. His name is Bucky.

The goats have decided that they are small cows. They travel with the Lowlines and try to imitate them.

Our forage radishes have had an almost unbelievable growth spurt. They look like one of those 1950's horror films like the Blob that Ate Brooklyn. I am talking about white radishes 3 inches in diameter and a foot long. They have an amazing amount of vegetation over a five acre field. Probably several million giant radishes..

We sold our grain drill and loaded it on a trailer for Canada yesterday. We have purchased a a combination soybean and corn planter in Indiana. Jim and I plan on driving out there over Thanksgiving to get it.

Mary and I are taking a short trip to Florida later this week. She is driving down with her mother and I am going to fly down and then we'll visit relatives and friends for a few days and fly back together.

Speaking of Mary, she did extraordinarily well in her first half marathon. 13.1 miles in a little over two hours is a Herculean feat by my standards.

Eileen is finishing up her senior year and contemplating what to do next year.

Jim is finding out about Iowa scale agriculture in his spare time. He is working on a farm that feeds 1000 steers and crops several thousand acres. His school work is going well and he is now getting into some really interesting courses.

Things are pretty quiet at the diner. There isn't much election interest. The consensus is that the present bunch will get voted out and replaced by a new bunch who will act just like the current bunch within two weeks of election.

One on my friends has been getting encouraging news about his health and we are all very hopeful.

We're back. It was an extremely busy summer and something had to give and it was the blog. There are days when you wonder how you will get through all that needs to be done but it always seems to work out.

We are now in full fall mode. Jim and Eileen are both back at college. I drove out to Iowa with Jim and flew back. We spent a few days touring equipment dealers looking for a combined corn and soybean planter. Iowa agriculture is certainly on a grander scale than New York.

Mary has really gotten into running. She and Jim did the 15K Boilermaker in Utica for the second year. They are with a group that promotes beef in the race and have pretty nifty beef running shirts. Mary has been training hard for a half marathon. She's pretty amazing.

We are finished haying and glad to be done. Mary mentioned that she saw more of Jim and I during haying this year than usual. I told her it was because the balers were actually working this year and we weren't messing around fixing them. We now have a New Holland square baler and a Kuhn round baler and I'd recommend them to anyone who would listen.We took three full cuttings and could do a fourth if we wanted. I feel it's better to let the plant rest and get its reserves in place for the winter. The hay was excellent and we have all that we need for the winter. We started feeding some baleage to supplement the pastures on September 10.


We have planted forage radishes again on our conservation area. This is ground that we are trying to restore to fertility after a previous owner sold he top soil. I inter seeded them with winter rye and clover. We'll take the rye for straw in the spring and see if we can plant something then with economic value.


The soybeans have grown very well and are now losing their leaves and drying down for harvest. We are hoping for an excellent harvest but lots can go wrong between now and when they are in the truck heading for the bin.

The cattle are also doing well. We delivered two steers last week to one of good customers. We also have several other steers coming along so that we should be able to keep up with meat orders.


We have added two Boer goats to the farm. They are presently living in the barn until I am satisfied that they think this is where they live. Then they will head out on the pasture to follow the cattle eating the leftover plants.


I went last Sunday with our Beef group to tour the Genex facility in Ithaca. They showed us the entire process of semen collection and preparation for distribution. They now have the ability to distribute the semen by sex. It was an amazing contrast of the virile bull and high technology.



Things have been pretty quiet in town. No major issues to be decided in the diner. The barber is still standing behind his work. Two of my friends have been battling some serious health issues. Our hopes and prayers are with them.

June 28th already. It has been a pretty soggy last few weeks. We are one of the very few that got our first cutting hay in and that's only because we have a bale wrapper. We now have lots of baleage for next winter but very little dry hay.

The cows are on pasture but even with the wet weather they are getting ahead of the pasture. I am going to build some more fence. I have a nice hayfield that I'm going to fence in. I will still take the first cutting off it and then let the cattle in for the rest of the year. That should stretch out my pasture time.We do strip grazing and that helps a lot.

We are now at the breeding time of year. We have just put a bull in with the belties and he seems to know why he's there. We will be putting a bull in with the lowlines soon. In the past we have just used artificial insemination. We are beginning to see our market change with a steady demand for grass fed animals rather than pedigree.

We are AI'ing our two red belties to a red lowline. I think that cross will make an excellent grassfed animal and a very attractive one at that.

Our soybeans have been sort of spindly and wimpy due to all the moisture. There is an old saying that a "wet year will scare you to death and a dry year will starve you to death." All in all I'll take wet.

It is almost time to begin second cutting hay and the forecast for the end of the week through early next week looks very promising.

Jim is away in Wisconsin this week at his company's headquarters. He is shadowing various engineers to get a feel for what they do. Eileen is with the BMW in St. Louis soon to head for Indianapolis. She always has good observations. Last night she texted that Monsanto, the maker of Roundup, was having a seminar at her hotel.

Things are pretty slow with the diner crowd. Unfortunately, others have targeted the diner. Last night they were burglarized. It is hard to believe that there are those sort of people right here in proximity. I hope they get caught soon.

My friend in Florida is still unable to get back here due to health issues. I wonder if we borrowed an RV if we could get him back.

Well here it is June 12 already. It's been a long time since I last blogged on May 2. During that time we have finished planting our field crops and first cutting hay. Now I have time to sit down and write. It is never a good idea to plan on doing much other than farming in May and early June.

Planting and haying are long hours in the tractor days. This year we switched a hay field to soybeans. The field is up in the village and it was just too time consuming to hay it by the time we moved the mower and baler and hay wagons etc. both ways.

We barely finished planting before the previously outstandingly good weather deteriorated into some pretty bleak days. There were a few consecutive good days which enabled us to take off some square bale hay for our horse hay customers before Memorial Day. We loaded the last of our 2009 hay on a truck for Florida the same day we baled our first 2010. That was cutting it too close.

We were able to put up 275 wrapped round baleage bales. We call this one day hay. You can cut it in the morning, let it wilt for a while then wrap and bale it. Dry hay takes usually three consecutive sunny and dry days.

The cows have been on easy street with good pasture. We bought two bred beltie heifers this Spring and one calved. It was a huge bull calf weighing 85 pounds. We had to help the mother by pulling the calf. She's a good mother but the calf was a little dense at first. He managed to get out of the fence and we found him sleeping among the round bales. He has now caught on to the fence and is growing fast.

Both Jim and Eileen have interesting summer jobs. Jim is working as an intern for a French company Kuhn. They are the world's largest manufacturer of farm equipment that is pulled by a tractor. They make everything but the tractor. His job is about an hour away but he gets to travel various farm shows out of state. He also gets to work in the Parts Department, go out to help setup equipment on farms and otherwise do whatever might be asked.

Eileen has a very unique job. She is driving a brand new deluxe edition BMW car throughout the Midwest for two months. She is part of an eight person team that has five BMW's; two Mercedes and an Audi. They go to BMW dealers and give test drives and point out the sales features. Then they stay in a nice hotel and continue the cycle. She is just completing two weeks in the Chicago area. Then it's off to Minneapolis followed by Kansas City and beyond.

I have written before about some of our recent cattle delivery sagas. Today was quite a bit different. Last year, we delivered two Belted Galloway heifers to a farm in the Southern Tier. The farmer was setting up an operation to feature strictly heritage animals.

Earlier this Spring he called to get some additional stock. We agreed to sell him a mature dun cow with heifer calf and a bred black and white cow and Lucky the half Lowline, half beltie bull. Jim and I and my other traveling buddy took them down today. It was quite a pleasure to release the cattle into a well fenced pasture with everything cattle look for in a pasture: grass; shade and water and lots of room.

He has also added Dorper sheep and Tamroc pigs; all of which are heritage breeds. When we went last year, he was just getting into Buckeye chickens. These are also heritage and renowned for being the survivalists of the chicken world. We had lots of room in our empty trailer so two Buckeyes joined us.

When we got home, they walked off the trailer and started surveying their new home. They went into the barn and checked out our straw bales. When we did evening chores, one was out picking and the other roosting on the drawbar of a hay wagon. It will be interesting to see how they get on.

Our next project is to make more fenced pasture. I haven't had much of an opportunity to go to the diner lately so I don't have much to report there.

I have been waiting for my college roommate to return from Florida.He has had some health issues which have delayed his return. We hope he gets them behind him soon and can join us on Cross Lake.

We sold our jet ski this week. As noted above, our two main jet skiers are otherwise occupied. A man came to look it over and we agreed to let him take a test cruise on the lake. We became a bit concerned when he hadn't returned in almost an hour. We had gassed the jet up so we knew that wasn't the problem. When he returned he told us he just enjoyed our lake and got interested in watching a big bird. He was surprised when we told him that it was probably our resident eagle. He liked the unit and bought it and we liked that.

It's hard to believe that today is May 2nd. The weather has continued dry. Yesterday and today were mid 80's which is rare for here this early.

We had a new lowline heifer calf this week. She has the same dam and sire as the one that won in Denver this year. We hope she has a great future.

We also have what appears to be the world's longest imminently freshening Belted Galloway. This cow was preg checked a month ago and the thought was soon. She's bagged up good and shows a big calf on her side. Talk about how a watched pot never boils. All this waiting hasn't hurt her appetite.

We have heard from the new owners of our last two cattle deliveries. They both report that the cattle are staying home and doing well. That is certainly good news.


I have started Spring tillage. I also bought a used chisel plow at an auction yesterday. It will double our speed in plowing. The auctioneer and the auction host are good friends of mine. They have had a spring equipment auction for five or six years. It's a great opportunity to visit with friends and see all kinds of farm equipment bought and sold. It is definitely part of Norman Rockwell's America. Nothing plastic or artificial here.


Mary got back safely from France and Spain and had a wonderful trip. She walked 102 miles in 7 days along the Camino del Santiago pilgrim's path. That's like walking from here to Binghamton in a week. Then she visited with Eileen in Aix en Provence for a few days and enjoyed the south of France.

Eileen flew off to Dublin for the weekend on Ryanair. As I have mentioned before, Europe is pretty small by jet plane. She toured Jameson's Irish whisky distillery which should have made a memorable 21st birthday. I went to Wanda's bar down the hill from college on foot when I was 18 which was the legal age then.

Jim has his exams this week and we'll meet up next Saturday in Omaha and head home.

I finally have the upper hand on my cold. I truly didn't think I was ever going to shake it. A lot of folks around town have had similar symptoms. None of us can remember such a severe or long lasting Spring cold.

Things are pretty quiet around town. We haven't had a chance to dissect the oil spill at the diner. It sounds like the government is working hard to solve this problem. I hope they know more about oil wells than most other problems that they tackle. The fire department has been quite busy. We were saddened today to hear of the death of a former across the street farm neighbor.

Today was pancake breakfast Sunday at the American Legion. They have really good food and real, not chemical, maple syrup. They have already attracted their first election candidate for the year. A woman running for national office stopped by. As I said, the food is really good which must be why these politicians come by. It can't be to meet the locals since they scrupulously avoid any contact of that type.

The closest we ever got to conversation with these folks was a few years ago. A fellow running for State Assembly sat next to us. All we ever got out of him was " pass the syrup" not even please pass the syrup. We notice he has gotten elected and gone on to greater thongs in Albany where he joined with the rest of his colleagues in being unable to agree on a budget.

It is really hard to understand how all these candidates are going to be champions of the people when they don't even talk to the people. It must just be that their handlers tell them there is good food at the Legion and show up but do not under any circumstances talk to the locals..

Time really flies. Here it is the 25th of April already. As usual, we've been busy and time has just slipped by.

The weather continues to be way ahead of schedule. It is quite dry and cool . We could be planting but I think the soil is still too cold.

We have delivered a few animals the last few weekends. I now have decided that I am not going to unload animals into people's pastures or any place other than a secure barn. We have had two opportunity to chase animals that went through unsecured areas at their new homes. Fortunately, in both cases we were able to get them back and caught for the new owners.

No new calves lately but we have two cows that we expect to freshen shortly. We are still feeding hay while we wait for the pastures to grow out. The dryness and cool temperatures are not making grass grow rapidly. Still, we are two or three weeks ahead of when we would normally return to pasture.

Mary left for France and Spain just before the volcano. While waiting to meet up with Eileen, she walked 102 miles across Spain. Eileen was in Morocco with her school group. Mary and Eileen met up yesterday and will have a chance to relax together for the next several days. Mary is due home Thursday, volcano willing.

Jim is off for his last two lacrosse games. He'll be headed home on May 8th. He has a summer internship with a French manufacturer of farming equipment. They are a several hundred year old company and the largest manufacturer of plowing and hay making equipment. They have their US distribution center about an hour east of us and that's where Jim will be working. His duties will include working in the warehouse, dealing with customers and going to outdoor farm equipment shows and setting up the displays. It all fits in perfectly with his Agricultural Engineering major.

The French connection is interesting. Mary and Eileen are both able to converse easily in French. The highlight of Jim's French to date is when he said excusez-moi to the waiter when he sneezed in a Paris restaurant at age 10.

I have had a bad Spring cold for the last several weeks. It is finally going away. I have stayed away from the diner so I don't have a report on news from the four corners. I did make it to Bull and Heifer Auction. I am also glad to report that I have finished my on-line Agronomy course. It was challenging to say the least. Now comes the wait to see what grade I got.

Our early Spring continues. Today was another record breaking day. A storm is brewing and the temperature dropped almost 30 degrees in an hour earlier this evening. The forecast for Saturday morning is cold with possible snow flurries.

We have had a busy week with the Lowlines. We've had three calves; two heifers and a bull. All were delivered without any assistance and are excellent calves. We are preparing to send some of our bulls to sales. This requires giving them a hair cut and getting them all spiffed up as much as possible.

We are continuing to move our equipment out of storage and get it prepared for planting. We sold a load of hay last weekend and this has freed up some space in the barn.

Things are pretty quiet at the diner. No earthshaking developments now that health care and basketball have been decided.

I have a bull calf to deliver out to the western part of the state. A farmer out there has a Beltie herd and wants to develop a new herd sire. Our calf has excellent genetics and is unrelated to his herd so that makes him a good fit.

Mary is getting ready to go off nexr=t week to visit Eileen. It should be a great trip. Jim is getting close to the end of the school year and will be home in less than a month. Time really flies. As you farm, you certainly realize that the whole year is a series of cycles; all of which revolve around the weather and people.

Monday night was a long night. One of the belties went into labor around supper time. Since she is an older cow we expected no difficulties. When she hadn't yet calved later in the evening, we thought it was time to intervene. After getting her where she couldn't move around, we did a pelvic exam and found she had a small upside down calf. We pulled the calf and it clearly had been dead for several days. Because it was quite small, we were concerned that there might be another. We probed as far as we could reach and found nothing else. She is a large cow and apparently we couldn't reach far enough. I went to check her later and she had delivered another dead calf. They were both bull calves and lacked any of the typical beltie hair that is present at birth. We believe that they had been deceased for quite some time before she aborted.

Everything else went well and we left for our visit with Jim on Thursday. We drove his new to him Dodge diesel. Due to some airline fare quirk, we found it would be $300 cheaper to fly back to Erie, Pennsylvania rather than Syracuse. Erie is about 4 hours along the way to Iowa. Mary found a hotel near the airport that had shuttle bus service. We stayed at the hotel and saved the parking which was considerable.

You can imagine our surprise when we pulled into the hotel and saw that the eating/ drinking establishment next door shared its name with my college roommate and lakeside neighbor. We went over and watched some NCAA basketball and got some photos for him.

We made it to Iowa in time to take Jim out for dinner. On both Saturday and Sunday, we watched him in his lacrosse games. Somewhere along the line, I came down with what must be strep throat or something similar. I am just getting over it now and Mary and Jim have it as well. Apparently lots of folks around home have it. I'm glad to be getting rid of it. Every time I go to Iowa, I am impressed with how industrious the college students are. It would take a lot to convince me that their farm background hasn't been a real positive force in their lives.

With Spring, we have had lots of people calling inquiring about cattle. We are lining up farm visits for prospective cattle buyers. I firmly believe that if you are interested in our cattle that it is well worth your while to drove here and see our animals. I don't want to sell animals to anonymous buyers. I feel that it is important to know that the buyers can care for the cattle.

It has been damp and 40ish since we returned. Starting tomorrow, it is supposed to be in the 70's and sunny though the weekend. I checked my peas today and saw nothing. Maybe the upcoming warm weather will get them out of the ground. I am also about ready to plant some onion sets.

I have also arranged to buy two feeder pigs. We have an ideal location to raise them and it will be interesting. I'll bring them home in a few weeks when we can depend on the weather.

It is also time to start preparing our planting and tillage equipment. It won't be long before we are out on the land. The cattle have access to a small winter pasture and they already are finding some new grazing. This is the beginning of our busy season. We also expect several of the lowlines to begin calving. We hope for eighteen more calves this year.

As part of her semester in France and tour of contiguous Europe, Eileen is off to Sardinia for Easter. It is amazing how places you can fly cheaply to around Europe on Ryanair which is an Irish absolutely no frills airline.

I spoke to her today and mentioned that I had read about an underwater volcano between Sardinia and Italy, Mount Marsili. It is apparently poised to have an underwater Mount St. Helen's type eruption. This could lead to a massive tsunami in that area. I recommended that she be alert. Sometimes, you can be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Hopefully the volcano will remain dormant and she'll have a great weekend.

We picked up Mary at the airport early Monday morning. She had a great ski trip to Utah. The combination of a two hour time change going east in conjunction with the arrival of Daylight Savings Time gave her some jet lag.

We have had an amazing weather week. Every day has been blue sky and warm always at least mid fifties and a couple approaching seventy. With Jim's help, we got a real head start on spring work. We were able to clear a hedgerow between two pastures giving us a great spot for the cattle to get shade. All we did was clear the low brush leaving the trees etc. We also found an old abandoned barbed wire fence. Obviously our pasture was pasture once before. It is important not to have an old fence where the cattle are since they could easily get tangled or cut.

No new calves this week. The ones we have are doing very well. The red belties have been moved in with some black belties. They certainly are eye catchers.

We planted some garden peas today. I had always heard that it will bring good luck to plant them on St. Patrick's Day. I thought it was a little wet then but the conditions appeared perfect today. I have a friend who planted some on St. Patrick's Day a few years ago. He says that they really did bring him luck. They didn't come up and he thought that it was lucky since he doesn't like peas.

Things are pretty quiet at the diner. The big topic at the moment is the NCAA basketball. The marina restaurant has made it through their first winter and it looks like they will have a busy spring.

The ice went bout on the lake this week. The paper says that we had the driest winter ever. So I guess that explains how a few warm days did in the mud season at least for the moment.

Tonight, Mary and I went to a neighboring Fire Department Awards Banquet. It is always a pleasure to share this dinners and recognize the good works of our neighbors.

Jim goes back to school tomorrow by plane. When he was about eight years old, he always spoke about getting a Dodge, diesel engine , extended cab pick up. This week he got one. A 2001 just exactly like he always wanted. Mary and I are going to drive it to Iowa at the end of this week. He has three lacrosse home games next weekend that we look forward to watching. Then we will fly home. He'll have the truck at school for a month or so and then he'll be home.

He is very excited to have made it into the second round of interviews for a internship this summer with a major farm equipment manufacturer. They have sent him technical questions such as what would you do if this part failed etc. He has to get them the answers and they use them in their final evaluation.

Eileen is continuing to do well in France when she is in France. She has also been to Spain and Italy. She will also get to Tunisia, Ireland and Greece before returning home. In my junior year of college, I did get to see an away basketball game in Canton, New York.

We had a busy week. On Tuesday, we went downstate to pick up two new belted galloway heifers. These are red with a white stripe. We plan on breeding them with red Lowline semen from a bull named Bluey. Hopefully, if the genetics work as expected, we will have red belted lowlines in a year or so.

Speaking of pregnant, the vet came Friday and confirmed that all of our Lowline brood cows are pregnant. We expect calves to start around April 1 and continue throughout the spring and summer. A lot of farms like to calve all at once. In our business, I think it is better to calve over several months to spread out the ages of the animals as they mature. We are still waiting for the last two beltie cows to calve.

Also, on Friday we tagged and tattooed the four beltie calves. The tattoo paste is green. Needless to say, no matter how you grab them, the calves wriggle and squirm. They wound up with pretty visible traces of green here and there. They are ready for St. Patrick's Day.

Jim,arrived on schedule and tonight we will pick up Mary at the airport. Yesterday and today are rainy, raw and windy. You may be familiar with the expression that it takes a good spring rain to dry things up. This seems counter intuitive., However, it really works. The force of the rain tends to tighten up the ground which has been loosened by freeezing. Once, it is tight and the sun and wind come, it will begin to dry up. The forecast for the coming week is sunny and dry with temperatures in the fifties. That would be ten or more degrees above average.

It doesn't seem possible but we are only five or six weeks from beginning field work.

We did have a reasonably "big snow." About eighteen inches total of a very heavy wet snow. I spent the better part of a day opening up the road and areas around the barn. It's a good thing that I started while it was still falling because I wouldn't have been able to move it all in one push. Even six inches at a time was plenty for the tractor.

The calf that wouldn't suck must have decided that she really would prefer mother's milk to calf replacer. One evening when I went to do chores so was there sucking away and hasn't stopped since.

We had another beltie calf late yesterday afternoon. The mother wasn't disposed to let us get close enough to determine the sex. The calf immediately bonded and was nursing normally.

I was up very early this morning to take Mary to the airport. She is going skiing along with some other friends from our area. Jim will be home late Friday night for a week. Eileen is still in France. Both hope to hear soon about summer internships.

The last few days have been ideal for maple syrup production. Clear blue skies with nights below freezing and days around 40.

As I write this, we are in the midst of an alleged big snow. So far we have had about four inches of a heavy , wet snow. They claim there are twelve more inches yet to come. We are at the time of year when daytime snow has little effect on the roads. They've been bare but wet all day. Apparently, the sun is out there somewhere adding enough light at its current angle to keep the snow off black pavement.

We have been very busy. We delivered the beltie bull. He impressed his new owner by breeding a cow within moments of walking off the trailer. I called a few days later and he had bred some other cows. Sounds like he will really fit in. His new cow friends could pass for twins of ours.

He got to see the first of his new offspring that were born last week before he headed off for his assignment. We had two heifers and a bull calf within two days. The bull is remarkable in that he is a smoke colored grey with a white belt. As soon as we get enough sunlight to take his picture, I'll put it on our website.

One of the heifers was having a hard time but is fine now. She refused to suck on the mother. The mother didn't reject her, in fact, she did all the motherly things but the calf just wouldn't suck. As a result she became dehydrated. We had the vet and she gave her an IV of dextrose which quickly fixed up the calf. We then started bottle feeding her milk replacer. First we gave her two bottles of colostrum to buttress her antibodies. The bottles are twice per day. She has now progressed to drinking or maybe I should say inhaling from a bucket. The milk disappears quite quickly.

The other two are fine and on their mother. We have three other belties ready to freshen. They are in the barn where we can keep an eye on them. The other cows and calves are just waiting for spring.

Mary has been off visiting her sister. Jim is getting ready for his Spring lacrosse. He has a game at Nebraska Friday, then games in Minnesota Saturday and Sunday. Eileen has returned to Aix-en-Provence from her semester holiday in Italy by bus along with five friends. They visited Florence, Rome and Venice among others. Their trip was delayed a day by heavy snow in the Alps. I guess global warming has taken a year off in Europe also,

I have been taking an on line class in Agronomy. I had my first test last week and the results were just posted. If you know the term a gentleman's C, you will know my grade. It has turned out to be much harder than I ever expected. It's a good thing I took Latin and Greek in school or it would have been a lot worse. The first lessons dealt with various plant parts and genus and species. The next section deals with soil and water. I have every expectation of doing better since that was the area in which I made my living. I also have high hopes that my lab score which was not yet posted will bump up my grade. The standards are quite high. The test was forwarded to our local library which proctored it and then mailed the test back to Iowa. It even featured the Number 2 pencil and putting your answer in a blacked out circle.

I went off to our Beef group meeting last Friday. It is still a very pleasant experience. Next month, we are going to deal with marketing.

I have been very busy in my fire department duties with meetings and a few weird fire calls. Progress is being made on a number of issues.

I also went to a meeting in our Town on Farmland Preservation. It's a little strange thinking about how the future might affect our right to farm.

I am in the midst of mid winter writers cramp. There isn't much going on so not much to write about.

I've updated the webpage to show our Denver award. We've gotten several calls as a result. We sold our Beltie bull yesterday. A farmer called from near Rochester. He has nine registered belties and was in need of a bull. Since we do AI, we really don't need a bull. Hopefully, by the end of the week Mc Leod will be in with his new herd.

It's quite amazing to see that Washington has had more snow this winter than Syracuse. We've only had nine inches so far this month. This in the snowiest major city in the US. We are also apparently the second cloudiest after Seattle and it doesn't look like we are in any danger of losing that distinction.

We are starting to get the cows sorted out so they can freshen in the barn pens. We hope to have twenty some calves.

Our trip to Denver was a great success. We had some extra time Tuesday morning so we took a side trip to Colorado Springs. We were able too see the Air Force Academy from a great vantage point along the highway. It has a great location spread out with the Rockies in the background. Colorado Springs is only about 45 minutes from Denver.

The National Lowline sale was on Tuesday afternoon and both of our heifers sold extremely well. In the evening, Jim and I attended the Lowline Association Annual Meeting. It was typical of most organization meetings. Election of officers and plans for a great future.

It was getting time for Jim to head back to school. We got an early start on Wednesday and headed for Grand Island, Nebraska. This is where Case-IH makes combines. Our local dealer had maned arrangements for us to tour the plant. Jim and I both agreed that it was an impressive plant with lots of hard working dedicated people.

After leaving the plant, we stopped for a Runza. This is a Nebraska and only Nebraska with one or two locations in adjacent Iowa fast food. It is basically like a large dough pouch filled with steamed beef and onions and a few secret spices. If you like a pirogi you like a Runza. otherwise it is definitely an acquired taste. Jim had a hamburger.

We then headed off on the last leg of Jim's trip to Ames and we got there around 9 after a very full day. Jim went off to his dorm and I headed to the hotel. I got up early Thursday and headed for home. Home turned out to be 1016 miles and 16 and a half hours away. I got in just after midnight. The trip in total was just under 4000 miles and my diesel truck averaged 18.4 mpg.



Friday, we had the vet coming for regular herd health checks. All is well except for a few cows that have had trouble getting pregnant. We took some blood samples to see if we could find a problem.

We had to leave Denver before the cattle show. The way it works is you sell the animal on Tuesday and show it on Wednesday. Even though it's no longer yours, you get bragging rights and any awards. My friend from Minnesota had agreed to show my two animals. So I called him to see how it went.

You might imagine that I was very pleased when he told me that our heifer, Mae, was Reserve Grand Champion for Lowline calves. The way this works is that the calves all compete against their peers in age. Then the winners of those groups compete again. The winner is Grand Champion and runner up is Reserve Grand Champion. Our other heifer did fairly well in her peer group but not well enough to move on.

Here is the picture of Mae getting her award:

I've gotten back into the rhythm here. It's been pretty easy weather wise since I got back. No storms and mostly milder days and not all that cold at night. It's pretty quiet at the diner. Several of our main contributors, conversation wise, are off to the not so sunny and mild South.

We are starting to get geared up for this year's calves. Our belted galloways were pasture bred so we don't have a precise way of knowing when they'll calve other than knowing when the bull was turned into their pasture. We don't expect any activity until March but it's a good time to get things ready.

Yesterday, Mary and I were part of a panel discussion at the NY Beef Producers Annual Meeting in Syracuse. Our group discussed how our Beef Group obtained a grant for DNA analysis of our herds and how we can use the information to better our herd.

Well, we made it to Denver. We got Eileen all situated in Detroit and headed off. She called the next day to say she was at home in the south of France. The airline had told her to expect to be delayed in France by a vigorous snowstorm. Sometimes you can't get away from the stuff.

Jim and I drove right into the snow. We have a diesel truck and were a little concerned about fuel gelling in the cold. So we decided to take the southern route to Denver. We dropped down to Dayton and headed west. The first night we made it to Highland, Illinois.

The weather became extremely cold but we got out of the snow as we crossed Kansas. We stayed in Manhattan the home of Kansas State, a Big 12 school like Iowa State. When we left the next morning it was negative 13.

As we continued across Kansas, the temperature gradually rose until it was just freezing as we got into Colorado. For the trivia fans, mile 381 on I70 in Colorado is at 5280 feet or one mile. It was an easy ride the rest of the way to Denver.

On Sunday, after church, we checked out the NWSS cattle show. It is certainly impressive. Our two cattle looked like a million bucks although I doubt they';ll bring that in the sale. The whole open area is like a giant beauty and barber shop for cattle. Everyone is blowing and clipping and trimming to show the cows to best advantage. Now we understand why our hometown barber reminisces about learning to cut hair with cattle clippers.

Then we drove up to Boulder about 45 minutes NW of Denver. We saw the University of Colorado. Jim says we are on a tour of Big 12 north division schools.,

Last night, there was a cattle sale in the hotel ballroom with about 20 animals. There was lots of plastic on the carpets and sharp eyed folks with manure scoops. The sale is somewhat controversial as it was put on by a splinter group of our Association. I think there will be lots of discussion about this sale at the Annual Meeting.

Monday, we did the grand tour. We are very impressed not only with the natural beauty of the area but the obvious prosperity. All without benefit of our Albany politicians.

Happy New Year from Lake Breeze Farms.

We have been very busy the last few weeks since our children came home from college. We have been to dinner, celebrated Christmas and Mary's and my 25th wedding anniversary.

When I was a kid, in the infancy of television, there was a show I believe called I Remember Mama. It was about a Norwegian family living in urban America. They always did a Christmas show reminiscing about life in the homeland. A big part of it was when the father went out to the barn to give his animals an extra treat for Christmas. This was long before I knew I had any agricultural genes. So every Christmas Eve, I too go to the barn and give the animals some extra feed and a few words of encouragement.

This year the cows gave me a little something back. In mid afternoon on Christmas day, Jim and I had gone somewhere with the truck. When we got back near the barnyard, we saw some of the Lowlines running rather exuberantly. It just didn't seem like a running sort of day. When we got to the barn, we saw why they were running. They had managed to open a gate and several were over on the other side of the farm visiting with some bulls across the fence while trying to put their heads through to eat the bulls hay. They were remarkably easy to catch and before long everyone was back where they belong. When you catch wayward cattle and put them back they almost seem relieved to have been caught. They are creatures of habit.

The weather until today has been quite mild with only nuisance amounts of snow. That changed today. As I write this it's 10 degrees with the wind blowing and close to a foot of lake effect snow. I have already plowed twice. The cattlee are doing fine and all the waterers are working.

Eileen is leaving Wednesday for France. Her flight is from, Detroit to Amsterdam then Marseilles. The Amsterdam leg is the Europe bound version of the flight that that lunatic tried to blow up on Christmas. Neither Eileen or us are concerned since we feel that that flight will be especially safe.

Jim and I had planned to drive her to Detroit to avoid problems with weather etc flying from Syracuse to Detroit. We got looking at a map and Denver is only 20 hours from Detroit. You might recall that I took some heifers to Minnesota in November to prepare for the Denver show and sale.

We have decided to go. Lots of people from Jim's college go to the show so we think it will be a good one. Ames is about 10 hours on the way back on the direct route from Denver home. So after we leave we'll head for Ames. Case-IH makes their combines in Grand Island, Nebraska which is also along the way. We have spoken to our local dealer and he has been kind enough to arrange a factory tour. We toured John Deere's Waterloo, Iowa factory a few years ago and thoroughly enjoyed. The combiner factory should be quite interesting to Jim as he continues his studies in Agricultural Engineering.

It has been a busy year for driving. Lots of our friends have now gone off to Florida. I have told them driving from Detroit to Denver is about the same as driving from here to Florida. It's just not South. The diner is pretty much deserted. Our friend up the lake had a wonderful Christmas Eve when his liquor license arrived. We are going to dinner tonight to his place and we hope the heat is working.