cerveza

No, I'm not baking. Visit my web album link in the sidebar to satisfy your sweet tooth.

heirloom

Here's one of my Christmas Presents. It's a print that my great-grandfather had and a frame my father made out of birch. I think John was the sawyer on that day. Maybe Nate was cuttin' stickers. Skip was also there catching mice.

MRSA of Animal Origin in Humans

MRSA of Animal Origin in Humans | CDC EID

Toys fer Tots

The beginnings of my brother's fleet.

Relativity

Entire Blogosphere Stunned By Blogger's Special Weekend Post

Browing sweat

There's no two ways about it, making deerskins into buckskins is muy dificil. I'm looking forward to hunting season when I can get a new supply of deer hides. Having only done one, I think I've got all the bugs worked out, especially my naivety about how much work is involved. All I need is two or three more hides to make some sort of hunting jacket. Now the only thing left to do is smoke this hide, and wait for the others.

Hiding my Stretch

Oops

Sorry for the mix-up. Now everyone can comment on my blog.

Cash flow and Profitability

I finally found a good chart that details a cow's cash flow. Many farmers percieve this and instincly know that a first calf heifer has only just paid for her upbringing. Notice that breakeven doesn't occur until about 32 months of age(provided that she mirrors the lactation cycles of this chart). In any dairy herd the mature herdmates actually generate a profit, whereas younger animals only provide cash flow.

Drucker

I'm currently reading about Peter Drucker, and wanted to pass on a few thoughts of his. I mainly was interested in his views on management, but I stumbled on some other ideas too.

-Most of what we call management consists of making it difficult for people to get their jobs done.

-A company's primary responsibility is to serve its customers, to provide the goods or services which the company exists to produce. Profit is not the primary goal, but rather an essential condition for the company's continued existence. Other responsibilities, e.g., to employees and society, exist to support the company's continued ability to carry out its primary purpose.

-If...organizations struggled, he believed it was usually because of outdated ideas, a narrow conception of problems, or internal misunderstandings.

-Thirty years from now the big university campuses will be relics. Universities won't survive. It's as large a change as when we first got the printed book. Do you realize that the cost of higher education has risen as fast as the cost of health care? And for the middle-class family, college education for their children is as much of a necessity as is medical care—without it the kids have no future. Such totally uncontrollable expenditures, without any visible improvement in either the content or the quality of education, means that the system is rapidly becoming untenable. Higher education is in deep crisis.

And of course a Ross Perot quote to close it up.

-Inventories can be managed, but people must be led.

Plain ol' hamburger

...the Catholic faith seems to me to have little effect on my work as a judge. . . .

I haven't read the whole article. I couldn't stomach any more than that.

New tool to boost milk production

New tool to boost milk production: study - Yahoo! News

With rbST out, it's 0nly a matter of imagination what's next.

Better than the egg

Anselm compared the Trinity to the Nile. Water arises from a spring, travels as a river, and empties into the lake. As Dennis Ngien summarizes, "The spring is not the river nor is the lake; the lake is not the spring nor is the river. Yet the spring is the Nile; the river is the Nile; and the lake is the Nile."

Read more here.

Lead us not into temptation

Most anyone that's familiar with the modern dairy business is aware of the many opinions concerning cow comfort. Articles, research, and books have been written about how to keep a cow stress-free and happy. Most of which is common sense.

What hasn't been given a lot of attention is worker comfort. With all the tangible figures about stall size, feedbunk space, parlor throughput etc, nobody (to my knowledge) has given much thought to what makes a worker stress-free. Now I'm obviously talking about larger farms who employ non-family workers.

Modern free-stall dairy barns have mostly been constructed with exclusively the cow in mind. When building these mammoth barns, the only concern is construction that will generate a return via the cow. Naturally the owner has control over what the barn will look like.

And this brings me to my real point. The real trap of large scale dairy farming is not cull rate or if you use rbST or not, but it's the presumption of some owner that employees are dispensable at best and on the periphery at worst. Most large farm owners are more concerned with farm (meaning their) goals than they are with employee retention. Duh! The employees are the ones you enable to meet those goals. It's one thing to take advantage of an animal; it's quite another to take advantage of your neighbor.

Many well meaning people fall into traps. If you're a small farm and want to expand, ask yourself first 'how will this impact my neighbor?'.

Mere Humanity

Against the crude dogmatist of the Iconoclast, John of Damascus defined an image as "a mirror and a figurative type, appropriate to the dullness of our body." And he followed the Neoplatonists in treating images as a way of using the senses to rise above the senses, to the eternal world of divine essences. God's Incarnation in Christ was itself a recognition of the weakness of the flesh, of man's need of images. The Christian image of Christ, of Mary, or of the Saints was "a triumph, a manifestation, and a monument in commemoration of victory." When anyone viewed a sacred image, he participated in the victory of Christ over the demons. "I have often seen those with a sense of longing," John of Damascus recalled, "who, having caught sight of the garment of their beloved, embrace the garment as though it were the beloved person himself." Christian worship of icons showed similar affection for the image that was really addressed to Christ Himself. The Christian use of icons was not pagan but simply human.

Daniel Boorstin, The Creators, pgs 189-190

Oh We Go

October 2005 - After Hurricane Wilma rips off the church roof and drenches the sanctuary, Dr. Kennedy encourages the congregation, telling them this is "our finest hour."

Cider Basket

Blogger video takes too long so my videos are here.

Quality Craftsmanship

My kind of cartoon

This is just a test

Bring me your illegal

I'm not a constitutional lawyer, so help me understand the part where our most sacred document "guarantees [rights] to every person in the United States, whether legal resident or not."

The Cow Path

Unfortunately, this is what's on the horizon for larger dairies. I've lost the article, but I read a while ago how some employees in a CA dairy won a law suit against the farm for not providing breaks. btw, most, if not all of CA dairies are not using rbST. It appears that by next year this time bST will not be used in any herd selling fluid milk. I'm scared of what will fill the void.

Square is square

I've always thought that rectangular barns were inefficent by any standard. Too much walking, not enough doing. If I were a prophet though, I'd say round barns will have a comeback, especially in smaller dairy operations. Unfortunately modern economics don't allow for small farms to make a return on investment, so they'll have to continue using century old buildings that weren't really suited for dairying anyway. With today's technology you could turn an entire barn into a rotary parlor!

Loose hay

Headed to the Sawmill

My paternal grandfather going the the mill after morning chores.

Put away the fence pliers!

That is if you live in Australia.

Beauty beyond beauty

For such a simple look is this
a curling up of the lips.

Two eyes that sparkle in the sun,
that close tighly after work is done.

A mother who gives above her call
a wife who captures my heart.

Before makeover

This is the only marking on the whole thing. The number '3'.

A real Pennsylvania Press

Here's the pic of my cider press that I stole for $75. The guy I bought it off of lives approx 40 miles from here. He said this press was on the farm when his grandparents bought the place. The story is that this farm was given to one of William Penn's close friends in the early 1700s. At the time the whole valley (some 400acres) was all grapes. Apparently this was wine country before the Revolutionary War. So I don't know if this was originally used for pressing apples or grapes.

Of Brains and Tanning

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Brains...take 2

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Doing Laundry

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Biorefinery: great gains or great greed?

New technology is full of manure.

Excuses, excuses

Thank you Mr. Bruno. Would you like some cheese with that whine? I'm tired of everyone complaining and not contributing to a solution. If we all agree that throwing more money at a broken system won't get us any closer to a solution, then why do it?

Skidder Winch

Logical Fuzz

Farmers are a righteous bunch.

Using technology is wicked.

Therefore farmers are wicked.

Full Speed Ahead

Well here's the preliminary makings of my first ship in a bottle project. It's kinda small and exacting work, so we'll see how it turns out. The ship is a lot smaller than I had originally envisioned, but the precision of the masts, cannons, etc is quite amazing.

Sterile Worship

If you're a germaphobe and haven't been attending church because of the trillions of bacteria present on any given Sunday, be ye encouraged to know that you can purchase a PPPP. And when you go, buy little Jenny one of these to play with.

up and away

Started work at Luzerne Farm on 5.1.06. During my (busy) tenure I almost tripled the pregnancy rate.