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.