The Riley Factor #108

The Riley Factor
Fort Plain, NY
September 20, 2011, Issue No. 108
(All the Rock Creek Farm news that's fit to print, along with unfit-to-print rumors, prognostications & bloviations.)

Riley -- Happy Birthday Riley ... who turned two years old on September 3.  Riley was born in South Dakota on September 3, 2009, and was acquired by CJ at a pet store in Braintree, MA, when Riley was 12 weeks old.  The rest is history.  On one recent morning, from another room where she was sweeping the floor, Susan shouted-out, "Riley, if you're out there in the other room shedding, I'm going to shave your ass."  I said back, "Well, you have two choices, he's either shedding or chewing."  Susan replied, "Riley, I'm going to have your teeth pulled too."

Tales from the Amish Auction -- We went to the annual fall consignment auction at the Mohawk Valley Produce Auction site, run to benefit Amish medical expenses.  The second item offered for sale was a white cardboard box about a foot square.  The auctioneer yelled to his helpers, "Open the box!", and out flew a large white chicken.  The next 10 minutes were spent watching 10 Amish boys run around trying to catch the world's fastest chicken.  Unfortunately, the Amish are not big fans of America's Funniest Videos, so no one was around to capture the hilarity on tape.  For those interested in Chicken Auctioning, there was a second chicken in the box, and the pair sold for $5.50.

Tales from the Amish Social Calendar -- Susan planned to attend an Amish bridal shower on September 8, for Annie Kanagy Jr., who is engaged to marry Aaron Miller (wedding planned for November 1), but the torrential rains and local flooding caused postponement of the shower.  Susan did not fully appreciate my humor when I said, "So, you and your Amish buds will have to delay partying like it's 1899".

Planting and Plowing -- Fall farming season is arriving.  We recently baled the straw that remained from the combining of the wheat and oats, for use as animal stall bedding.  And on the last official day of summer, we baled 213 bales of second cutting hay.  Now, we are debating whether to plant winter wheat and oats for harvesting next summer, or wait until spring to do the planting.  In any event, we will soon plow or rototill the fields.

And They're Off -- Apples, apples everywhere this year - huge difference from 2010, when a late spring hard frost killed-off about 80% of the apple crop in these parts.  Horses whinny and stomp around for apples every day now.  And the steer are not far behind.  All would eat apples non-stop, if allowed.  We limit them to a few apples each per day.  And this >>> Recently, one morning at about 8AM, there was a knock on the door.  A passer-by was reporting that Lady was wandering around the pasture with the hay feeder stuck on her head.  The hay feeder is a 40-pound wooden structure about four feet long, three feet high and two feet wide (think wooden bath tub on 12-inch legs), into which a bale or two of hay is placed daily for the animals to eat.  The horses and steer frequently knock it around or over when it is empty, but it has never drifted more than a few feet from its appointed location next to the barn until Lady decided to make a head-wear fashion statement.  At least this is better than the story I heard last week, where a cow stuck her 11-inch head into a 10-inch culvert pipe, and the owner had to spend a half hour's labor and three pounds of butter to free the animal.

The Herd of Three -- Moo, eat, moo, eat, drink, clamor for apples, poop, repeat.  The bovine life is a simple one.  Developing into connoisseurs, they love the McIntosh and red delicious apples, but routinely reject the yellow pear apples.  Not possessing any biting teeth, cows must be fed apples that are small enough to fit entirely in their mouths.

Mowings, Musings and the Woods -- Deer have been very scarce this summer.  We rarely see any.  Same for the wild turkeys.  Two nights in a row, however, we did hear a pack of coyotes running around the field across the street and in our pasture.  With our horses and steer spending nights outside the barn lately, the coyotes don't linger in the pasture for long - but they do love to howl and yip.

Fowl Weather -- The turkeys are growing like weeds, having moved-up from their July 12 hatchings to their current size, each roughly the size of a small chicken.  The chicken chicks, who were all hatched on or around July 1, are also growing well, each now about 2/3rds the size of a full-grown chicken.

Visitors -- Quiet times as fall approaches.  Those inseparable identical twins, Barbara and Betty, stopped-in for a little barbecue on Labor Day.  And fully recovered from his recent bout with mononucleosis, CJ spent most of a mid-September vacation week here at The Compound.  On his first day, we baled about 120 bales of straw, left in the fields from the recent wheat and oats combining.  A few of the bales were a bit damp and therefore heavy, some as much as 60-70 pounds vs. 30-40 pounds or so for the dry bales, and after they were all stacked in the barn, CJ exclaimed in an unguarded moment, "I'm beat.  Your retirement is harder than most people's work."

Blog -- The Riley Factor's official blog site is located at http://the-riley-factor.blogspot.com/.  It contains all issues to date.  (If you actually spend the time and search through our Internet site, you may need more help with your life than we are able offer....  But we digress.)

Quote of the Month --

      No day shall erase you from the memory of time. -- 9/11 Memorial

Facts of the Month --

 

     WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) -- The 46.2 million people in poverty in 2010 was the largest group for the 52 years that data has been published, the Census Bureau reported.  The number of people in poverty rose for the fourth consecutive year as the poverty rate climbed to 15.1% -- the highest since 1993 - up from 14.3% in 2009.  Meanwhile, real median household income in 2010 was $49,445, down 2.3% from the prior year.  Those with health insurance ticked higher to 256.2 million from 255.3 million in 2009.

Commentaries of the Month --

     The Democrats are the party of welfare, higher taxes, spending and debt.  A year from now, as the presidential election approaches, the Democrat Party will be on its way out. -- Stuart Varney, FOX Business Channel, September 2, 2011

     The Environmental Protection Agency has become the Environmental Punishment Agency.  It has scrapped its environmental role in order to push its own political agenda. -- Steve Forbes

     Polls? ... Naaah ... Polls are for strippers and cross country skiers. -- Sarah Palin

     Only the free market can create prosperity ... not government-backed loans or government subsidies. -- Andrew Napolitano

     No man is wealthy enough to buy back his past. -- Oscar Wilde

     'Community Organizer' is just today's politically correct term for 'Socialist'.

NFL --

     Opening day ... September 8 ... Green Bay Packers 42, New Orleans Saints 34
                             September 18 ... Packers 30, Carolina Panthers 23

     NFL's Most Valuable Franchises (Forbes Magazine):
          1.  Dallas Cowboys          $1.85 billion
          2.  Washington redskins   $1.55
          3.  New England Patriots  $1.40
          4.  New York Giants         $1.30
          5.  New York Jets            $1.22
          6,  Houston Texans          $1.20
          7.  Philadelphia Eagles     $1.16
          8.  Chicago Bears           $1.09
          9.  Green Bay Packers    $1.08
          10.Baltimore Ravens        $1.08

     All 32 NFL franchises are included on the list of the most valuable 50 sports franchises in the world.  The average value of an NFL team is $1.04 billion, and, on average, an NFL team currently has annual revenue of $265 million and makes an operating income profit of $30.6 million per year.

And Then There's This --

     Susan and I were out for dinner the other evening at the Sprout Brook Country Store, which includes a small restaurant - to get a mental picture, we call the place Hooterville (think Uncle Joe, Sam Drucker, Mr. Haney, Oliver and Lisa Douglas, Billy-Jo, Bobby-Jo and Betty-Jo; not Hooters).  On the wall was proudly hanging a sign that read,"The menu has two choices, Take It or Leave It."

The Riley Factor #107

The Riley Factor
Fort Plain, NY
September 1, 2011, Issue No. 107
(All the Rock Creek Farm news that's fit to print, along with unfit-to-print rumors, prognostications & bloviations.)

Riley -- One recent afternoon, at the beginning of one of his two-mile runs, the Golden One was tossed into the penalty box for felony assault of a French Guinea Fowl.  No idea what got into Riley, but he chased three, caught one, and dragged it around by the neck.  No harm, no fowl-foul, but nevertheless a guilty verdict.  As judge, jury and prime witness, I sentenced Riley to a few hours of no fun and no food.

Hurricane Irene -- After days and days of nonsensical television weather forecasting and warnings by governmental officials, the most recent 100-Year-Storm blew in and blew out in 12 hours.  It was a six-two storm here - a one-pumper - six inches of rain outside and two inches of water in the basement.  One pump in addition to our ever-present sump pump drained the cellar in a few hours.  Winds were 50 mph and less, so no real damage - just a few branches down.

In Memoriam -- On August 29, Isaac Miller was killed in a haying accident.  Ike was the 18-year-old son of our friends Melvin and Fanny Miller, and brother of our friends Elam, Aaron, Ruben and Lizzy Miller.  Ike was killed when mowing one of the fields across the road from the family home on Phillips Street in Fort Plain.  Ike loved to sing, and is no doubt now singing among the angels in heaven.  The Miller family runs various local businesses -- Melvin retired from farming and now operates Mohawk Valley Harness Shop, Elam has a barn supplies business, Aaron runs E&A Fence Co., Ruben runs the Miller family farm, and Lizzy is a teacher at one of the local Amish school houses.  Fanny found Ike in the morning, being dragged by one of the horses from the team that was pulling the mower, a gas-engine-powered discbine weighing a ton or so.  No one has been able to determine exactly what happened.  A very sad event.  Susan spent some time with the family on the afternoon of the accident, and we attended the Amish wake the next afternoon, with about a couple of hundred of the Millers' friends - a nice affair that presented a beautiful open-casket viewing of Ike.  He will be buried in the local Amish Cemetery, which coincidentally is on Miller land, right next to the field on which Ike had the accident.  Isaac Miller, 1993-2011, Rest in Peace.
Planting and Plowing -- Large, juicy apples are hanging on the four big, older McIntosh trees and one large hybrid apple tree in the orchard.  The two apple trees in the back yard are also full of fruit.  With a week to go in August, it is still early in the season, but we have eaten many, and all the horses and steer love them, so a new regimen has been added to the daily animal feeding routine.  Of course, it is advisable to enter the pasture well-armed with apples, because the horses and steers swarm you wanting more and more apples to eat.  A better approach is to stand on the other side of the pasture fence and feed the animals over the rail, or toss a few onto the nearby ground.  One evening, we fed the fivesome about a dozen apples each (some were small, but many were tennis-ball-sized).  The lone plum tree in the back yard has already produced about three dozen dark red plums.  Extremely sweet, the fruits rarely make it back into the house, at least when I see them first.  I did find that plums are one of the few foods that The Riley will not eat.

The Herd of Three -- Soon to become the Herd of Four, Susan talked with Bradley Chadwick and our Jersey dairy cow, Lily, will be arriving in a couple of weeks.  Since Bradley had heart surgery a month ago, he was unable to have Lily bred, so it will be up to us to get Lily artificially inseminated (known as 'AI').  We are supposed to watch the cattle, and when we see Eli, Michael and Raphael jumping-up on Lily, the theory is that we will know Lily is in heat, and we have to contact the AI Specialist to arrange a pregnancy.  (You will recall that the members of our Herd of Three are all steers, and alack and alas, are without the requisite equipment to actually breed, although reportedly they will attempt to do so).  (Many thoughts and lines come to mind here, but I will avoid them all in the interest of good taste).  Stay tuned for the play-by-play on this rural theater production.

And They're Off -- Down in front of the barn on the morning after Irene, we were unloading a few bags of bedding, when Lady took a bite out of the Silverado.  Yes, that's right, a bite out of the pick-up.  When did they start making vehicle trim out of plastic?  There is now a horse's-mouth-size bite missing from the rear passenger side of the pick-up.  And I know the horse that bit it, since I saw Lady and Rio licking and nibbling at the truck, and as I yelled at them to move along, I saw Lady take a bite and spit-out the made-in-Detroit plastic.  It is a good thing for her that there are no more glue factories in the U.S.

Mowings, Musings and the Woods -- Our great blue heron has been spending afternoons fishing in the edges of the lower pond, made easier as the fish get larger and naturally turn color from their camouflage-black to orange.  Every time we get near, the blue-gray flying behemoth takes-off and heads for either the watering hole in the pasture or towards the upper pond.  Once, we also inadvertently chased the big bird from the water's edge at the upper pond.

Fowl Weather -- One afternoon when I was out in the back barn working on the combine, I heard some honking and looked out the door to see a flock of about 25 geese circling the wheat field that we had just combined.  The Canadian fliers did one 360-degree circle around the field and landed right in the middle.  They were still there in the field a couple hours later when I surrendered and headed for dinner.   For several days afterward, late each afternoon, the geese returned to the same spot.

Visitors -- During my first three years at Noble Partners in Boston, 2005-2008, I worked closely with Robin Norton, our chief operating officer.  He and his son, Duncan, a sophomore at St. Paul's in New Hampshire, were scheduled to visited us here in Middle-of-Nowhere the last weekend in August, but both Hurricane Irene and CJ's bout with strep throat and mononucleosis created a postponement.

Blog -- The Riley Factor's official blog site is located at http://the-riley-factor.blogspot.com/.  It contains all issues to date.  (If you actually spend the time and search through our Internet site, you may need more help with your life than we are able offer....  But we digress.)

Quotes of the Month --

     When you win, you're not as good as you think you are, and when you lose, you're not as bad as you think you are. -- Bill Belichick, Head Coach, New England Patriots

     When your stock goes up, you're not as smart as you think you are, and when your stock goes down, you're not as dumb as you think you are. -- Gene McQuade, CFO, Fleet Financial Group

Facts of the Month --

     A cubic yard of water weighs 1,700 pounds.
Commentary of the Month --

     Obama has no new ideas.  All that the Democrats want is more money, your money, so they can give it to others who will vote for them and keep them in power. -- FOX Business Channel
        
     My three-point plan to fix the economy is simple.  (1)  Eliminate the minimum wage law.  (2)  Eliminate unemployment compensation.  (3)  Eliminate all legal and illegal immigration for people who are low-wage workers. -- Anne Coulter

And Then There's This --
    

President Obama walks into Bank of America to cash a check.

 

As he approaches the cashier he says "Good morning Ma'am, could you please cash this check for me?"  Cashier: "It would be my pleasure sir. Could you please show me your ID?"

 

Obama: "Truthfully, I did not bring my ID with me as I didn't think there was any need to. I am President Barrack Obama, the president of the United States of America !!!!"

 

Cashier: "Yes sir, I know who you are, but with all the regulations, monitoring, of the banks because of impostors and forgers, etc., I must insist on seeing ID."

 

Obama: "Just ask anyone here at the bank who I am and they will tell you. Everybody knows who I am."

 

Cashier: "I am sorry Mr. President but these are the bank rules and I must follow them."

 

Obama: "I am urging you please to cash this check."

 

Cashier: "Look Mr. President this is what we can do. One day Tiger Woods came into the bank without ID. To prove he was Tiger Woods he pulled out his putting iron and made a beautiful shot across the bank into a cup. With that shot we knew him to be Tiger Woods and cashed his check."

 

Another time, Andre Agassi came in without ID. He pulled out his tennis racquet and made a fabulous shot whereas the tennis ball landed in my cup. With that spectacular shot we cashed his check.  So, Mr. President, what can you do to prove that it is you, and only you, as the President of the United States ?"

 

Obama stood there thinking, and thinking and finally says: "Honestly, there is nothing that comes to my mind. I can't think of a single qualification I'm good at."

 

Cashier: "Will that be large or small bills, Mr. President?"