coming to Canton

Parallels in Life

Mckinley Monument -Canton Ohio

* Ohio Exhibitions Highlight Ferdinand Brader - NYTimes.com

      I just read an article in the New York Times about Ferdinand Brader, a 19 th. Century folk artist who traveled the Ohio and Pennsylvania hillsides, doing detailed pencil renderings of farmsteads to hang over the fireplace in five foot long pieces of heavy paper. Not that I see myself a life ever possessing the same character or zest for what they do , but instead find myself wondering if I lived in that time , is this the type of job I would seek if I was alone and had no responsibilities. The article talks of Ferdinand’s history and his legacy of over 900 drawings of which only 230 are known to still exist. Although not commanding a huge price in art markets but still in the ten thousand dollar and up range. I will include a link to the article as well to the McKinley museum in Canton, Ohio , a place I haven’t visited in quite a while but will surely make it soon to see their exhibit and view Brader’s original work on loan, and in exhibition at the museum. I think while I am there I am going to see if they still have the planetarium there.

       I can remember visiting the museum when we were going to school in what I would have to say is the fifth grade at Magnolia middle school at the time. It’s been awhile since I was there, some 48 years or better. I drive mom every once in a while, up to the back to the back of Mc Kinley monument when we drive through the park. Mainly we head back up there because they have a handicap access parking lot up there and it offers a great view of the rear of the monument. It’s always nice to see a different facet of the same old thing you have passed most of your life.

      Why it is the things practically in your backyard are often the least appreciated wonders of your life we take for granted. It has been awhile since I climbed the steps to Mc Kinley monument or walked inside the tomb itself. I drive through the parks all the time and have been a continued visitor over my life. In some ways it is timeless in its beauty, and predictable in its splendor from its landscaped tree plantings to the Easter lilies signaling a rebirth of summertime in the park. It changes over a season but not in anything dramatic, instead only in a natural way. The forever flame is always lit at the Canton Flower club, waterfalls at the cut stone overflow’s bubble their way to Nimisilla Creek in creek raceways. Geese and ducks abound at the ice skating pools. Very little of the landscaping has changed over the years, except the quality of the water from Nimisilla Creek has improved drastically from hitting all-time lows.

      Back to the parallels, as I seem to be wandering much like Mr. Brader did as he traveled the countryside taking lodging in the farmhouse of those who were his clients as part payment on work he was to do. I have done pencil sketches much like he has of architectural renderings and such of his. Using two point perspective and of course just my imagination, I would detail out drawings that would represent properties I would like to see in my life, houses I would like to build , and dreams I have yet to make reality of, that would be in line with the work he was doing at the time.

     No electric and maybe sometimes not the best accommodations were to be had by Mr. Brader, knowing full well farm families and their need to be thrifty. I could only imagine cramped quarters or embellishments to the drawing to make the farmstead appear nicer than what it was. After all you would have this hung over you mantle in your living room for the world to see if they stumbled on your door step. Mr. Brader’s task may not have been as easy as it seems. Still I kinda like the fact he was nomadic in nature pursuing a dream. In some ways I wish myself that I could be so carefree and do the same. Imagine the stories one farmer could tell and in that time Mr.Brader gave in return a great service as renderings were the photographs of the time. A permanent image capture of life, much like photographs and other forms of image capture including fine paintings of the time. It was a rare and personal glimpse of a family’s life to have his renderings over the mantle.

     Much of his work is done later in life and under a heavy load, not knowing where he was to sleep or eat daily in some cases. They say in the wintertime he would hole up in an infirmary. Now this is where I draw the line and I am sure our paths would split as I know I am not going to be too wanting of company with the likes of tuberculosis and yellow fever, and whatever maladies a man could get including all those of that time before antibiotics.

     Yesterday I wasn’t feeling the best, and just had a hard time pushing myself to get any task done. I have to push myself constantly and as well I should be doing 100 drawings per day, according to self-imposed standards of worthiness, this is in addition to what I write. Of course I always have unattainable goals and I am thoroughly disappointed with the meager tasks I do achieve, so that it kind of lulls me into depression regarding my artistic career. Forget the greenhouse and anything else that needs done. Having the constitution to stick with things I start, has been hard for me in the past. Now doing something I like is a different story. Writing isn’t so much of a chore when you enjoy doing it. As well I have the same feelings for my art work, in both the fine folksy end of my work, to the wood sculptures I produce. It is a labor of love.

    Still sometimes I have a problem doing what I love for money. To place a value on my time is something everyone can understand, like for instance 100 dollars for a carving. The cash value has nothing to do with the effort involved in making a sculpture or other piece of work happen. It will never pay you back for those items you gave away learning your craft, and no one besides the artist can fully appreciate what a particular piece is really worth in terms of memories lost or gained and what in reality that art piece truly reflects. How do you put a price on that? And in the end how desperately you need the money. I have sold beautiful bears with fish painted and looking great for 20 dollars. Why?  I needed the gas money. And if you have to do it day in day out to survive as Mr. Brader would have had to, at what point does it all become too laborious to love anymore. Your art becomes a job, and very little fun.

      I have seen sketches by Norman Rockwell and other famous artists and I am amazed at times in just one thing and that is technique. We all strive to do the same thing. To copy a beautiful image, seeing it in our eyes and translating it to paper , canvas etc., in a way that those unskilled in art will visualize and pick out the nuances unfamiliar to the naked eye, but easily seen in the rendering as a result of the artist’s focus. Technique is what separates amateurs from the professionals, as you can see in the freehanded lines; the confidence of knowing that line is where it is supposed to be. The reason because is that the artist has lived a life of judging sizes and shapes and it is part of his regimen daily as he practices his trade. This is the experience that gives him the confidence. This confidence then shows in his work.

      900 sketches in what I would call somewhat the same style as say a Grandma Moses painting would be, is a remarkable achievement. And to only achieve your success, and never be able to appreciate it because you died too soon. This is most often the artist’s legacy and that merit is hardly ever lived, instead reserved for future use. 

going in the hole to make a few bucks

Halliburton

You Have Got to be Fracking Crazy to Work There.

         Well if the phrase, “Don’t tell momma I work in the oilfields, she still think s I am a piano player in a whorehouse,” ever applied to anything it was working at Halliburton. Back in the mid to late 70’s after my farming career was beginning to look like I needed some agonizing reappraisal as to whether I should continue to work for nothing or find a better paying job, well the oil field was booming back then also. Living in Wooster at the time gave me a front row seat to new jobs, as Wooster was in the heart of the oil boom country with several different oil companies headquartered there.   I was quickly losing interest in farming and wanted something else that paid better and offered me a chance to see something new. Working at Halliburton offered all that and made sure that was my priority.

       In fact, I never had to worry about having fun or taking time off to spend my money, or in fact worry about having a girlfriend as that was all out of the question once they had their hooks in me. It was nonstop work 12 days on and 2 days off, if you were lucky enough to get the days off as there ere no guarantees on anything since there was no union. One day you would be in Marietta, Ohio and then the next you were headed to Youngstown, Ohio. I first started on the frack crew heading out to jobsites and helping lay heavy duty steel pipe they used in the high pressure fracking operations.

     It is basically a bunch of trucks water, and chemicals under intense pressure as they force this slurry mix down the drill pipe to almost a mile below your feet, and blast the rock strata apart, then they pump sand into those cracks formed by fracking to prop open channels in that same rock strata we just opened by fracking, to make pathways for the oil and gas to return to the surface through the drill pipe and later a pump head. Fracking is basically fracturing or breaking apart rock strata to create channels for easy removal of crude oil and natural gas. We were doing the same thing in 1977 as they are doing now, only in a lot more cruder fashion, on shallower wells.

      I started out on an acid truck hauling hydrofluoric acid, so corrosive it would eat the skin off your hand if you allowed it to have any contact. I used gloves and a respirator and still ended getting burned by that stuff. Eventually I was transitioned into one of their tear drop sand trucks and would haul the sand from Wooster to the job site wherever that may be. You would back your truck into a line at a well site and then we would hook the lines up, and you and a bunch of pumper trucks and a blender truck would mix the materials in water and begin pumping the mixture down the hole. The equipment did most of the work when set up, except opening bags of chemicals and stuff to be added to the mix. Sometimes before we started we would dump the hydrofluoric acid down the hole to let it sit and clean things up before we started.

     There were no MSDS Material Safety Data Sheets, alarming you or making you aware of what chemicals you were pumping down the hole into the earth, as at that time we didn’t care, or know enough to care. It was a whole different world back then in 1977 compared to now. And still the company Halliburton refuses to share trade secrets with their workers, or the general public, to allow them to know exactly what the harmful effects of what they do, are doing to the environment. It seems the oil and gas industry has enough power over Washington to withhold this information when other industries using toxic chemicals are forced to disclose this information.

    Fracking is a noisy dangerous job to say the least and if a high pressure line would burst while pumping this crap down the hole it could easily kill you or inject water into your skin, and cause you serious problems, or it may cause you harm if you are standing beside the pipe and shrapnel from an explosion of high pressure is produced. The noise is enough to drive you crazy as you have about 15 high revving trucks all going full tilt pumping as much of this slurry down the oil well as fast as they can. It is deafening to be in the area and listen to this roar of machinery. There was no ear protection then, as I say workers didn’t even think or know what the effects of being exposed to high decibels of noise could do to your hearing.  Somehow though when we had the well fracking operation started and you were not needed to be there to operate a truck you could walk away or in some cases catch a much needed nap, with that thunderous noise making operation going on around you if you could imagine as there was no escaping the noise. Your days would start at around 5 am, and you would be needed to be at the shop and check your truck out.  Then usually you would stop and eat somewhere along the way, to be on the well site around 8 and begin operations. So getting a little snooze on the back of a flatbed truck or in the cab of your own truck sitting in the seat, made the time go faster and helped you make up for what you lost by going to bed late and getting up early.

     Once you were on the job you couldn’t leave till they were done, and it required everyone to make sure everything was stowed away. I look at these well sites they are building today and see all the gravel and flat area around the well head and I am amazed at the expense they go to today as compared to back then. We couldn’t just drive to the well head as they do now, instead we would have dozers waiting for us on especially bad locations and they would hook a chain to us and drag us into wherever we were to set up. Then when we finished they would drag our trucks back out to the road.  There were several times as I sat helpless in the truck seat and  I could reach out and touch mud they had pushed up from the road they were dragging me in, or out on and still be pulled along in 3 foot deep mud.  It didn’t make any difference if your truck could move on its own. Once you were hooked, it was up to the dozer operator to get you where you needed to go. Sometimes by the time you were back to the hard road you would have your air lines ripped off from under the truck and would have to sit for a couple of hours and wait for a mechanic to show up and repair them before you could head home as you had no brakes till he did. This is just what you wanted to do after a day’s hard work, and that was sit and wait on someone else.

     It didn’t matter what the field conditions were, you went anyway. Rain, snow, wind, and mud, or a raging thunderstorm and lightning bouncing and cracking off the trees beside the well head, you stood out there and braved the conditions with freezing numbing hands. Or have your body so parched by the heat and no drinking water on the site that a mud puddle even looked like a cooling option to you to quench your thirst and cool your brow, until you could leave and roll down the windows of your truck and feel the breeze of wind flowing in through the windows finally offer you some relief from the heat. As a friend of mine summed it all up for me one time when an engineer was in a hurry pushing us to get moving to a job site, he said ‘relax man , that oil has been down there 60 million years , a few hours one way or another isn’t going to make much difference.’ He was right but then that isn’t how the oil field management looks at it, everything you do should have been done yesterday even if it wasn’t ready to do it.

     The trucks were junk compared to now, as they had no air conditioning or any amenities like even a radio to help you as drive along unless it was a company radio.  The only reason that it was in there was to make sure they could contact you anytime they wanted. Most likely you would rather have it off, but they insisted on you leaving it on. Sometimes we would do 2 frack jobs a day with the same crew, and this usually involved an all-day job resulting in you not getting back to the shop until about 6 in the evening. Then you would have to have your truck ready to go in the morning still. If that meant pressure washing the mud, adding oil to the engine, or anything to do with the maintenance, this was done by you the truck driver before you went home. Some days it was dark when you started work and it was dark when you quit working.

     Now you would think that a guy in his right mind would just go home and get ready for the next day. Well you could see easily if we were in our right mind I would have finished college and sought out a manager’s positon in a feed mill somewhere and would be doing something else besides the oilfield. I needed a break and alcohol and partying would be ours, as we would head out in our dirty clothes to the bar and proceeded to get shit faced as we liked to call it, and then head home to wake up in the morning feeling like crap to do it all over again.

     It was like the movie ‘Groundhog Day’ to us as day after day we would repeat the same routine and wonder why we were alive. It should have killed us, instead it strengthened our resolve to push harder in exposing our bodies to more torture on behalf of the oil companies, to increase their profit. They could care less what we felt like; we were a number to them. As long as we showed up for work and played their game, our bodies and soul were theirs. Screw up and lose your license, you were gone tomorrow. That was just the way it went.

    Everyone is making a big deal out of fracking now and my opinion is it should be rightly so. We need a lot less of any kind of that stuff going on in our environment. We have alternatives to this kind of environmental disaster we are inflicting on our environment. They are using different chemicals and higher pressures, as well a lot more fresh water. Almost 10 times more than we did, polluting a lot more now then back then. Whatever goes down the hole eventually gets pumped to the surface again and then lies in huge retention ponds till it evaporates back into the environment, or is reused on another well if possible, or leaches out of the pond and contaminates the fresh water supplies.  Solar and wind should take more of an active role as we move along , in some case it has already made the oil barons cringe in anticipation of the day the prices of crude drop from too much supply of cheap oil. We have not seen that day yet unfortunately. 

Mr. Nicholson's silo

reprint from 1-13-2013 I believe 

 original title was 

An Angel Must Be Following Me

  I have had the opportunity to work around silos from time to time when working on different farms. These can be quite deadly  also when it comes to farm accidents. Falling is probably one of the most common accidents , whether from inside or out side the silo,  Falls can be quite deadly. a ladder is usually installed on an inside chute of most concrete silos. these chutes usually house most of the door hardware necessary to unload the silo. and this closed passage serves as a chute for silage to be expelled from the silo. These doors are closed when filling the silo well above the level of silage to the top. A silo for those that don't know anything at all is like the large toilet paper cone next to the barn , and is used for fermenting of feed stuffs like corn and haylage, to be fed to the cows. 

     Numerous trips up and down the silo  are needed as the silo fills and over the course of the year as maintenance of the silos continue. Slips on the rungs of the doors can leave you hanging in the chute or allow you to fall to the bottom of the silo. Outside man ladders also have a protective cage that surrounds your back but vertical falling inside the caged area is still possible. a safety line is something that would allow you to have some level of safety if used properly. they usually allow you to drop only about 5-6 feet before stopping you . this should be used with a safety harness  and proper training on the importance of securing your fall line often as you ascend or descend the silo.Also ventilation of the silo is necessary before entering into area where the silage is stored. Silo gasses can be extremely harmful to you if inhaled .It is my understanding that they are  worse from the time of finishing filling the silo up to a month afterward , with the gas laying heavier close to the surface of the silage. a fan blowing air up he inside chute prior to entering should sufficiently stir the air and provide you with enough fresh air to prevent being overcome with gasses. 

      The  next biggest cause of accidents is being buried under an avalanche of silage. never enter a silo on your own without telling someone where you are , in fact you should have a team approach when you and someone else are both present as one always stays outside the silo in the event of being overcome with gasses. A life rope should be attached to a safety harness . in the event of the person in the silo needing help, first the outside person should try to extricate his partner with the safety rope, and if unable to do so, Immediately call 911 and get help on the way. never enter the silo to assist the victim who remains inside. The person helping may also succumb to gasses or possibly be buried also. One other possible means is electrocution . This happened to me when working on a 125 cow dairy farm in ohio during the winter of 1979.
       The farm owner's  name was Harold Nicholson and when I went to work for him I was getting 125 dollars per week and all the milk i could drink, As well, also furnished a 2 room little square house barren and desolate sitting on a corner lot. I had a  kit-bathroom and a living bedroom . just what a 6'4" inch ,240 pound man needed . no since wasting space.
      It was winter and in January with a cold spell in the zero's, silage began to freeze on the walls of the silo about 4-6 inches in in places and the automatic silo unloader would be moved in by at least 6 inches also as its wheels would run sideways in the silo and would run up onto the frozen silage.  being out of center was causing the unloader to stop its forward movement. also the temperatures had changed and now chunks of silage were beginning to fall and bury part of the unloader causing it to stop. what ever the reason it was important to have someone outside the silo and down on the ground , I was blessed with being inside pulling the frozen silage down. Now at this point i need to describe a silo unloader a little better.
      It is about 16 feet long and hangs from  a cable in the top of the silo. this cable is attached to a winch to raise and lower the unloader. Along the length is an auger which is directed to the center of the silo .this auger pushes silage into a blower which blows the silage down the main chute and falls 60 feet to another belt conveyor that moves the silage to the feed chute which automatically places it for the cattle in a long feed bunk. we could feed 80 -120 cows in a matter of minutes. Well many accidents are caused by this auger . Tales of farmers being chewed up in silos always haunt me every time i enter the silo.
     Well i had the silage  just about pulled down around the silo, level with the unloader . as it worked its way around the silo. If it would hang up on a big clod of frozen stuff I would lean my back against the cold silo wall and place my foot on the guard and push against the guard which when the loader is running would chew up the frozen hunk and spit it down the chute. The unloader was going great as it went almost completely around the silo with its wheel gripping the silo wall on its own and we were getting it operating the correct way, When it stopped by the door in its three and half minute trip around the silo. There is a stabilizing bar which hold this unloader in the center of the silo, and this stabilizing bar also serves as an umbilical cord for the motor supplying the electric power to run the electric motors which makes this whole thing work. Really neat concept when it works , when it doesn't it sucks as i was soon to find out.
      This stabilizer bar is attached to the door of the silo and need to be moved time and again as the silo is unloaded. The frame of each of these doors are set in concrete but extend to the base of the silo. so the doors are about 2 foot in height and it is about 3 feet between each door. So in a 30 foot  X 80 foot silo it will hold about 3000 tons of silage. Well as complicated as the unloader is it is a real labor saver. it can throw the equivalent of 40-25 pound bags of dog food down the silage chute and to the cows in about 2 minutes.
      Bear( actually intended to use bear instead of bare)with me folks as i am headed somewhere with this story as  I was in the silo by the door getting ready to help the unloader by grabbing the stabilizer bar as it was in my road and would give me better leverage, and i had my other hand on the door of the silo, kind of leaning back getting ready to give the unloader a push and i shoved hard with my  foot and then i felt an electric shot burn coursing  through  both arms , fingertip to fingertip feeling like it was pulling me into its grip more and i resisted so hard i exploded into a heap on the floor totally exhausted . My heart was beating out of my chest as I just laid there in a heap watching that same damn unloader that was trying to just kill me, Grind up that frozen silage and begin its three and half minute trip around the silo, just like it was supposed to run. Only problem was i was still laying like a heap on the silage staring at the auger opening side as it is now no longer being chased by me  but was chasing me and i wasn't moving.i was facing the death end of the unloader and it was running way to good.
       i tried to move but felt so sluggish. i tried to yell but couldn't be heard if i wanted to as the silage unloader makes a considerable amount of noise and my yells were being drowned out by the noise. i needed to get up and get by the door to be heard 60 feet below in the feed room by my boss Harold, who was oblivious to my peril.
       I needed to get up. Thoughts of being chewed and spit down the chute forced me to move and soon   I moved to an upright position, then stood up  and was able to lean into the chute and yell at Harold to shut it down. and of course he was hoping we had it in good shape but knew it had not lowered to its complete level , So he was apprehensive about shutting down. again i yelled louder and this time he shut it down and yelled angrily up the chute about not being placed right , and then i told him i was just shocked and was coming down and had no plans on going back up till he had a bill from the electrician in his hand.
       I had been shocked several times while working there, and Harold in an effort to save money  choose to do the wiring himself. Looking at one of his electrical junction box's is what what one would assume is a huge spider with legs in an electric line. I accidentally would come in contact with one now and then, while working, but nothing like the shock this one gave me.
      I was exhausted from the electric shock and also from him whining about how much it is going to cost him to get an electrician. Although the unloader was currently working it still needed fixed. So i got the hell out of the barn, before i said something i didn't want to. I headed for my  2 room house , and think about how I couldn't wait for my 25 dollar payday, couldn't say to much was good about the old days except being thankful I can sit here and tell you the story.
       After producing a bill when he couldn't find anything wrong and Harold had to still get the electrician. There was a short in the plug to the unloader and when I grabbed the stabilizing bar and then the door frame I grounded myself to the stray current to my shocking surprise. Lessons was learned . Farmers are too cheap for their own good and make poor electricians. there must have been an angel in that silo that day. I thought a couple times I was a goner.
   

    Sorry i tried to edit this original story and seem to run into problems as some things don't function right. rather than mess around, plow on through it. I still have plenty of good stories to write. in someways this is neat fitting this blog post to my job timeline. just like associate certain stories with songs the same could be said for jobs we had. just an interesting parallel of lifes many twists and turns , hills and valleys. seems like now when i am at my lowest i can still lift my head up and look around and see where i have been. and if there is a mountain in my road,it will show me where to go, all i have to do is climb some more and the path will be clear.

old mr. nicholson had a farm

Mr. Nicholson's Dairy Farm 

      I officially ran out of funds and couldn’t secure a loan to continue my education at ATI and was facing financial doom and decided to take a position as herdsman at a125 cow dairy outside of Wooster I will refer to as Nicholson farms. Mr. Nicholson was having a hard time keeping milkers at his dairy farm and after working there I could easily understand why. He just plain took a vacation and left you with everything to do that he didn’t want to bother with, and it was turning out to be an eighteen hour /day job with 2 days off once every two weeks depending on whether he had anything going on, in which case you needed to postpone accommodating his schedule.

       The wages were basically 125 / week salary and a house and utilities paid. The house was a single story four room 20x20 house, or approximately 400 sq. ft. by myself it wasn’t bad as I didn’t have any furniture except what the last milk man had. Basically a recliner and an old bed with mattress that had a hole or sagged just were your butt fit on it. Everything was clean and the owners wife came by before I moved in and cleaned for me, to help me get in there. It wasn’t much but I didn’t need much. They knew I was single so they would fix dinner and invite me over, or would send stuff home with me and I never wanted for food or milk to say the least. Also they knew I would be spending little time there, since Mr. Nicholson laid awake at night figuring how he could get the most out of me for his money.

      My main problem with working for Mr. Nicholson was I never was able to get any time off to take a break. Even on the Sundays I would milk, I was still expected to work the same amount of time as I did through the week. It was literally sun up to sun down and then I would turn on the lights in the garage and do a couple more hours of work. Most of the time I worked unsupervised except when we were working together for a project involving us both and then he would take the lead. He did this work all his life his and had built up a fairly good size operation involving milking Holstein dairy cows on a merry go round milking parlor. It was neat and top of the line in 1977. The parlor was all automated and set so that one guy could stand in the middle of the merry go round and place milkers on cows as it actually revolved around. They timed the average time it took to milk a cow dry and set the speed and the diameter of the milking parlor to those specifications so that the merry go round parlor would go slow enough, so you had time to place the milkers on a cow on one side of the parlor, and to check on other cows in the process of milking, wash a cow’s bag and teats after it went through a teat washing station to soften the manure on the bag. You would just get her bag cleaned up on one side of the parlor when another cow would become dry while milking. You could listen to the air sucking the through the valves on the milkers and tell if she was still milking to determine when to pull the milkers off. You would pull the milkers off and dip her teats in iodine solution to prevent mastitis, and by this time the door on her side of the merry go round would open and let her go, freshly milked. Thirteen cows fit on the merry go round and 10 would be milking at any one time. Cows would be crowded up to the milk house door by a crank with an electric fence wire attached goading them on.

    Most of the time we wouldn’t even have the electric on but the cows still would crowd in the barn as they hated to get shocked. We had a prep stall where the cows, when they passed an electric eye, a door would shut behind them and the stall was only long and wide enough for one cow. This is where we had pressure nozzles that sprayed water at their teats and softened the hair and crap from underneath the cow. After her teats were soaked and the merry go round was in positon then another door would open automatically based on the position of the merry go round. At this time an apportion of grain would automatically dump into a feed trough in front of the cow which was starting to get on the merry go round, this would encourage the cow to climb on as it was moving and take her positon as the door would close behind her. All the time the merry go round is moving at barely a slow walk. At the outside edges of the merry go round it could have been no more than 40 feet in diameter, but still that is a pretty large round milking parlor. After learning the sequence of how to milk the cows, and all the cows quirks I was capable of milking all 125 head alone in 2 hrs. Morning cleanup and evening cleanup were substantially longer in retrospect to the amount of cleaning that needed done. Usually morning cleaning was the most time consuming for a grade A dairy such as this.

      The milk was all pipelined to the milk house and you hardly ever touched the milk except when you were putting on the milkers or taking them off, or cleaning the filters in the milk line. We would rotate cleaning so one day you may clean two walls of the milk house and next it may be to wipe pipelines down. Cleaning and maintenance of the milking parlor was real significant to improving the quality of the milk overall. We would get reports back all the time about the quality of the milk and it would show amount of organic material and various bacteria’s, or smells or odors that may be a result of feeding hay with wild onions in it as this will odorize the milk to where someone experienced can smell the odor in the milk sample. A farmer depended very much on these reports to see if you had a high medication presence. This could in effect make the dairy that received your milk, discard all your milk or use it for something else except human consumption, in which case I guessed it would be fed to pigs somewhere. But the problem was that the farmer didn’t get paid for bad milk, just the good milk delivered to the dairy. Mr. Nicholson was always going over the milk report and then sharing with me his thoughts on how we could improve things. Our bacteria count was up, so we needed to cut down on the mastitis and also reduce the amount of manure making its way into the milk through dirty teats or improper handling of milking equipment.  Mastitis is an infection of the udder, or teat, or tit, as we know it.

      We started a massive cleanup effort involving cleaning manure week after week. After milking cows I would climb on a tractor and haul manure to the fields in the snow and spread great green gobs of gooey, slimy shit, all over the place. I lost count of how many loads I hauled that one Spring. In some places the cows were standing in shit four feet dip. They were lying in it also as it ended up spilling into the free stalls as they were called. Like Oxbow farms the cows never saw a pasture, instead they had a loafing pasture or open area where they would stand on concrete, or they had cattle stalls where they could lay down, also a feed room where they could have as much feed as they wanted as feeding cows well pays off in milk, and here like most farmers it paid to be nice to your cattle. The less stress the better they do. I was able to bring the organic content of the milk down to half of what it was when I started working there, just by cleaning things up. The owner was impressed and began making travel plans as this would be the first time in his life when he could leave the cows, and know they were in good hands in 13 years. At times I wouldn’t have known he was around there anyhow, so if a vacation is what he wanted. Who was I to neglect him, besides it may give me a well-deserved break?

     I would be up at 4:30 am before that damn rooster even thought about crowing, and by 5:00 am I was milking in the parlor, the first of the girls would start to fill up the rotary milking parlor.  At about 5:30 am, if I lifted the cow’s bag up right and looked through her dangling teats, I could see the sun coming up through the window of the milking parlor I always kept the window clean just for this momentous event every day. This only occurred at certain times of the year, so I learned to track the sun that way. By 7:30 I was finishing the cleanup on the milking parlor and usually somewhere in there the milk truck would arrive and take the milk away allowing me the chance to clean the bulk holding tank. Then it was out to haul manure, until around 9 was breakfast, and then we would work at other jobs till 3, and it was time to start milking again. Sometimes I would get some help milking in the evening, but there was no guarantee of that. Then around seven we would eat again and then I would be able to go home and rest for the next day. It was slave wages for all the work I had to do. I tried my best, but like other farmers, even if you do good work they couldn’t afford to pay you anymore.

       Day in, day out I struggled to keep up with the pace Mr. Nicholson had laid out for me. As soon as I would finish one job, another project he had been waiting ten years to finish appeared. At the same time I was milking about 125 head of cattle and beginning to remember each and every cow personally, as to which one had problems and so forth, as it was part of the process of milking and important to remember which teat you treated for mastitis, as you didn’t want that milk to get in the line to be sold to the dairy. To give you an idea of how hard it is to keep up with all that. You simply multiply 125 head x 4 teats per cow and that gives you 600 teats you have to remember in each milking, and 2 milkings a day equals over 1200 individual teats per day. I could immediately assess the old girls and identify them, based on their bag profile, as they were elevated on a platform and their bags were at eye level. Some cows I never had to see the tag as I knew them right off the by just looking at their teats alone as some were huge and some small and some were scarred and knobby, you learn them all after a while.

     Being the young man I was, and the lack of female companionship began to take its toll on me though , as soon I just wanted to have the freedom to take off and do as I pleased and just enjoy life . I was beginning to look at women’s breasts and also sizing them up for their milking potential and that is where I shook my head and decided it was time for something else. So I started looking for other work but I told myself I would wait till this man had a chance at his vacation as that was all he talked about. I hated breaking the word to him that I was leaving his employment before then. It was going to be just a short time, so I figured I could tough it out.

     Somewhere while I was working I had gashed my finger, and normally I am a quick healer but in this case and my hands always being in water at least 6 hrs. Per day, I was forever trying to get this cut to heal, and eventually it turned into an ugly lump on my finger and this caused me enough alarm that  I sought out a friend who quickly advised me to see a doctor and get it checked out, and so I did. Dr. Graves I am sure was his name, as I kinda kidded myself about being in grave condition, so I needed to see old Dr. Graves. Well Dr. Graves looked at it a second and noticed the red streaks running up my arm and asked what kind of work I did, and I told him I was a herdsman on a dairy farm and he asked if I was milking cows. Of course I replied, and he told me that he felt I had cow pox, and the next thing to gang green going on. He said the red streaks were blood poisoning and that I needed to keep my hands out of dirty water and to quit milking immediately.

     I explained to Dr. Graves that this was my job, and he replied with, those are your arms too. And if you don’t do as I say then I could be taking a little piece of skin off your cut as I am doing, or I could be taking your arm off at your shoulder. That is your choice.

      I appreciated his candor but it didn’t make the job of telling Mr. Nicholson that I would not be able to milk that night, or possibly for a month and his trip on his vacation started a week from the day I was to see the Dr.. To say the least Mr. Nicholson had a fit. I explained to him it was his cows that caused me to get cow pox. I wasn’t milking my own cows or the neighbors, I was cleaning his cows and immersing my hands in his crappy water and trying to take care of his cows. There was no way with my big hands that gloves were going to work and I still ended up getting my bandage soaked if I  tried to help out. He was positive that I had intentionally done this to get workmen’s compensation, and that I had full intent to ruin his vacation. He suggested I find other employment and that I needed to be moved out of the house in a month. He never paid my doctor’s bill and cut my pay short to that very day we talked. To say the least he was a real ass about it, but in some ways no different than a lot of farmers.

     I was glad to be gone from his employment and felt little remorse for that since he suggested it. It took a load off my mind to just be able to get back on my feet again and have a life. I surely had known my quality of life sucked while working for this task master. Instead of filing for workmen’s compensation I ended up finding a job within two days, and was moved out in a week leaving, Mr. Nicholson and his 1200 teats behind.

     Another incident happened while under his employ I will go into in more detail tomorrow. It almost killed me. 

there isn't enough money now

The Killing Fields

 the calf graveyards

    

  Sometimes we have jobs we all don’t want to do, and at times even though it goes against your better nature you have to bite your lip and go on. I came from an old school mentality and that even though you were going to college and should have a mind of your own; you were still dumber than a box of rocks according to them, and never free of your parents will to interfere in your life.  , still you needed a job. Some jobs and some days are never worth the money and this is one job and one day I could never do again, now that I am older and could care less.

      This story is a little more gruesome than some I have wrote and at times you may wince, when I say that what I am going to tell you, when it comes to the good, the bad and the ugly, I fully intend doing that as I go along, not for shock factor to invite you in to read what it is I am talking about, but instead more for therapy at times, as maybe if I tell the story enough times I can finally get it out of my head. At times it was particularly gruesome but at the same time, a common place method of dealing with this same situation on any farm.

     When they bred some of these cows they would buy whatever breed was available they could, as cheap as they could, being interested in heifers, and cows with beef breeding and some very limited dairy breeds that were better able to handle the task before them. When bred to the purebred Simmental bull they would sometimes encounter calving troubles. In fact, the reason I was on a midnight shift was to birth cows more than anything. Seems like they could breed them alright but getting them to calve on their own was a problem with some smaller breeds such as the Angus, and Hereford cattle requiring more of an assist with those breeds than ever. The Simmental cattle were huge in comparison like a Volkswagen Beetle trying to give birth to a Sherman tank. Sometimes you would have calves born dead inside their mothers, or having so much difficulty getting them to calve, that you lost both in the process. Also calves subjected to heavy pulling used in the process of getting them to calve sometimes suffered front leg problems, crippling them, or had a look to them as if they were actually squeezed through a small hole and were not so bright , kinda listless etc., off their feed slow gainers. We lost a lot of calves, and I would say 40 in one quarter of the year 1975, while I was there working which would make it around a 15-20 percent loss of life.

    Each calf when it hit the ground was worth 2000 dollars as a purebred calf in 1975, listed as a 1/2 purebred and one could get papers to that effect. The idea was to keep a cow a couple of years and sell her off and hopefully raise her daughter to replace her. Eventually working your herd up to what they called a totally purebred herd with 15/ 16 or better blood line to sell calves from. Heifers calves were worth more than bull calves till you reached purebred status, then the bulls could easily outpace the heifers in value with some full grown bulls such as the one we had in the bull pen which could easily make you millions of dollars. But it costs a lot of money to keep at least four hands available to take care of cattle like we were doing, and under the harsh conditions the cattle would be treated. Peta- People for the Ethical Control of Animals, would have had a field day with this place.

      On one occasion we had a cow having trouble birthing as the calf was still born when it presented itself for delivery or when the cow tried to abort it. With no help from the calf and its dead lifeless body stuck in the birth canal our manager Shorty, as he was called, yet who was nearly my stature in size and had lesser value in humanity, decided to not call the vet and help this cow. Insisting instead on his own, trying to pull the calf by whatever means, and it was an ugly scene to say the least with the mothers head tied to a post by means of a halter and pulling the calf out with a bobcat loader and chains. It came but left the cow paralyzed from her hips down. And of course the calf was dead.

        Calls were made and I was to dispose of the cow by taking her to the butcher shop, still alive and paralyzed, that the owner knew almost 25 miles away, one way. We were to have her ground into hamburger so that the owner Boyd Heminger could feed his 2 bull mastiffs with her. That wouldn’t be so much of a problem but she wasn’t dead and they didn’t put racks on the truck. Instead they loaded her up into the bucket of the Bob Cat loader since she couldn’t get on her feet, and then shoved her in the back of the pickup and threw a tarp over her, and told me where to go to deliver her. They should have never let me leave that place like that, as I was alright with her back there unknown to other motorists at stoplights beside me, till my worst fears were realized.  At one light on State Route 62 in Canton, where I come down to the intersection before Mahoning road and it was a busy intersection that was when at first I heard a bellow from the cow, and the truck lurched one direction then the next, and  I was sitting at the light and blocked in by traffic every way. Even on this cold snowy day I looked round at the back of the truck and here was this cow starting to get up on her front feet and it seemed as if every motorist at the light could hear her and see her too, then as she started to raise her front end up getting her feet under her and pushed  up the tarp over her head in a ghoulish fashion and all I could think about, was her suddenly jumping over the side of the truck and dragging her rear end down the road in front of everyone.

      Now there is no amount of money anyone could pay me to experience this situation again except in my mind as I am doing now. It was horrific and all I had was a hammer and a red light. I looked at the hammer and contemplated jumping out of the truck and smashing her skull in to keep her in the truck bed, and could only imagine in a split second what all the motorists’ reaction to this would be. Or I could hope for the street light and pop the clutch and jam the brakes to make sure she fell back down. I reached for the hammer as I saw her rise again just as the light turned green , everyone I could see around my truck was watching with mouths dropped open as at once it was my turn to go and I popped the clutch , and a little bark of the tires as it squealed against the pavement and then I hit my brakes not enough so the guy behind me would smack me or the cow would go flying in the back window but instead,  enough to make the cow fall back down into the bed of the truck and disappear again under the cover of the tarp. I was finally able to breathe again and all kinds of crappy scenarios played in my mind till I was at the butchers and so relieved to have that cow out of the back of that pickup. She never did get to her feet and they had to drag her in with a tractor. It was sad to say the least. No animal expects abuse like that in our domesticity of them, but at times that seems as if that is all we have to offer. My hands were tied, I needed a job and a passing grade and part of that had to deal with my learning to keep my mouth shut and opinions to myself. It was real hard at times and you can see by writing this, I never really did get over it.  

     Unfortunately with a lot of farmers the term cull cow isn’t something always thrown away, and it could be for a variety of reasons and whether or not the cow had been medicated or not, that the farmers, rather than see a loss would rather eat their mistakes, or feed it to the dogs at least. I have buried cows and calves, but with cows it takes a big hole and calves not so big but it still takes a good size hole. For cows, mostly we used to call a fertilizer or a rendererer who would come and pick the carcass up and use it for a variety of things.

      I still had to deal with the calf when I arrived back at the farm and after my last ordeal; I wasn’t too crazy about burying the calf but at same time had heard about the calf graveyard we kept. And it wasn’t pretty, but instead kind of eerie as I saw, after I had scooped up the calf and started heading for the area in question to finally see for myself what the other workers took for granted in such a hap hazard way, sometimes laughing and joking about the place in some sort of nervous frustration or an effort to cleanse one’s mind of the assault on your senses you experience when heading there to dispose of a calf. As I was heading down there though, my first encounter with the area as it looked in the quick drawing I did last night, it was legs poking from the snow and standing in the air from half buried calves, all around. For it seemed there were bones and pieces of flesh with leathery fur hanging on it. Then there was this fox that noticed me right off and advanced himself towards my running machine in an aggressive manner, and I would say he was frothing at the mouth and rabid if I ever saw an animal do that, but then I never let him get very close. Still it could have been the fox was just enjoying his dinner plate of calf legs and whatever and didn’t intend to share with me.

    Furthermore I could just dump the calf I had in the bucket, as I’m sure the fox felt i should, and forget the burying part as he didn’t really like having gravel stuck in his teeth. I tried to avoid the fox and head off in a different direction to a different area but the fox still chased me. Finally I had no choice, not knowing if he had rabies or what, that I should just dump the calf and head back to the barn and grab a rifle and see if I couldn’t shoot him as we didn’t want him biting the cattle as under these crowded conditions we could lose the whole herd in days, as rabies would go right through the herd.

     When I had returned the fox was gone. I again felt relieved because at times even after dropping the dead calf; the fox would position himself so that he appeared to want to just jump up in the seat with me. I would take the bucket and shoo him away making sure I never raised it too much to expose myself and finally I outran him with the machine, leaving him behind. Where he went or if he was rabid I am not sure, but doubt it, as rabies still isn’t a big deal in our area, but his aggressive nature caught me off guard and made me question why I quit hunting. At times I can see where a gun may come in handy, and this was one. You never know. By all rights they should have put a bullet in that cow’s head also since she was going to the butcher shop anyhow, to relieve her pain and suffering and to help put her out of her misery. Unfortunately state law insists that butchers only receive live animals.

     Now the killing fields as I called them was the calf crave yard and I named them undoubtedly that, after I saw pictures, and heard of the tragedies of the killing fields in Pnom Penh in Cambodia. Later as I read of the horrors of mass killings and then the bodies buried in fields I drew  upon my experience of burying calves and recalled how horrible and ghastly a sight that was to behold. Best intentions were made to bury the calves but due the volume, and the weather making it almost impossible to bury anything in the winter, loose soil settling, and holes were not as deep as they should be. The burial area was at a premium, as I guess there could have been easily a 1000 calves buried there. Legs were sticking out of the ground with in some cases white bleached bones weathered by time loosely being held together or swinging in the wind. Grim reminders of efforts failed and of little lives lost of once cute little calves in some cases were now suddenly decomposing in various stages right before your eyes. A fresh coat of snow would contrast these corpses creating eerie black shadows against a white landscape. Their little leathery legs rose up as if to scratch the sky. There are some things even the beauty of fresh snow cannot hide and this was one to me.

       Thankfully due to calf losses and other factors he eventually went out of business and I returned to college and realized that there was a bigger picture than our little farm. It was an experience working there and something I really didn’t want to see at times. I guess the main lesson I learned there, and have had to face at other times in my life is that I would never have been involved in something like that had it not been for my college and needing the credits. That some of the managements position towards cattle lives and their lack of concern for their welfare is just being ignorant, I knew not the person I was supposed to be instead I was the person who knew who they, management, didn’t want me to be, and that was much unlike them, as they were, uncaring unfeeling, and constantly limited, as to whether there is profit in what you do. But this is the new farming, unlike the days of old. 

nothing says, " hay baby", like a plastic straw.

When I say a lot of BS

 Miss my cows sometimes , others not so much but at least i did my best to treat them well as compared to some .

       I guess I need to qualify that statement or title as in the last blog as I referred to the bull instead of the blog story or stories as all are 100 per cent true to the best of my recollection and that is usually pretty good. This actually happened, as well today I want to go into another facet of artificial insemination for cows that I don’t think I covered, as well problems with trying to breed cattle and some of the things I have seen and observed while watching others perform artificial insemination, kind of a squeaky subject so to speak and if you are not completely comfortable with it, or wish to carry on and understand just what it takes to put food on your table then just quit reading. No big deal I appreciate you reading to this point.

    If you are still reading at this point then as I said I will cover artificial insemination of cows.

     First comes heat detection, and heat detection was one of my main jobs as I had on  the midnight calf watch meaning I worked the afternoon shift and early morning hours at the farm as it was a 24 hr. a day operation involving feeding the cattle, and in heat detection. The hours between 6 and 10 am are the main hours you will see a cow in heat during the days. We would sit out in the feedlot where we could look out over the whole herd of 250 cows on those 6 acres and we would watch for hours on end with a pair of binoculars for cows showing any signs of heat whatsoever. Then each cow is fitted with an ear tag and that number is recorded so that we know, and can check to see her breeding history at a glance. You could see if a cow was jumping another or if the bum steer was doing his job and had enough testosterone pumped into him and was feeling a little frisky, and then he would be jumping and leaving his paint marks on the back of the cow in heat. You don’t want the cow that is jumping but instead the cow standing there allowing another to jump. This could happen in any open cow meaning if she was unbred.

     In one pen, we segregate young heifers from the herd and determine their menstrual cycle and record it for future use. Once you know her cycle this will remain the same up until she is bred. So anytime you saw a cow in heat it was important to always tag that information in a breeding book.  The next pen was cows nursing calves and the same with third pen, etc., and all pens held 5- -100 head of cows depending on various factors in their gestation schedule or if they were being medically treated for sores etc.. The last pen was cows that should be pregnant but we were not sure, or may have been open due to loss of calf. The last pen of cows with calves’ pens are the ones we watched the most, if they were not bred by a certain time and the bukll couldn’t breed them they were culled or butchered. The heifers were still too young to breed so it was more just watching them for their cycle information.

     Day in ,day out ,grab a cup of coffee and a pair of binoculars and lean on a fence, or sit on a warm cow like Ofry, her number was 03 on her tag in her ear so I just made her name Ofry  as I called her. She was a brown Swiss mixed cow with Simmental and was a kind cow.( At this point I need to insert a joke as this one heavy set chick told me for whatever reason and I feel it may have been used on her and it went like this. She said. ‘I had a kind face’ And I said. ‘Oh yeah,’ now playing into her scheme she said. ‘Yeah the kind that looks like a cow’. I always wondered where she had heard that.)  Ofry would lie in the feedlot digesting and would let me come over and sit on her while I watched the other cows. She would once in a while look around but for the most part ignored me. I would sit there in the early morning around the break of day and begin to take a look and see what we needed to do next.  Every morning I would spend 3-4 hrs. a day just watching cows for anything, herd health was important as anything and especially so when they are under confinement. You need to clean manure and keep things clean as well you had to have special birthing areas and a way to handle cows so as not to upset them. Keeping a cow calm is important in the artificial insemination game as I call it. You try to align all your variables into breeding an excellent calf the first time. You have to keep the cow calm. You have to select the right sire or bull, and this is based on his progeny and characteristics of being ideal, you secure the semen ahead of time and when the cow is observed being in heat, you have to act quickly and efficiently to move the cow to a breeding chute just wide enough for the AI guy and you have to have a means of holding the cow’s head. Now holding her head and keeping her calm was my job as I would whisper sweet nothings in her ear while the AI guy did his magic.

      I would observe the cow in heat and then I would have to bring her and a 100 other cows into a feeding area with a series of gates that would allow us to thin the herd down quickly depending on their density at one spot. Most of the time you would do this by yourself opening and closing gates until you have maybe 5or ten cows in a group, then I would head then into a barn and crowd them in a chute maybe forty foot long. The cows kinda get used to being worked if you do it enough. But sometimes you get a crazy cow that just absolutely refuses to play the game. And that is where trouble starts, and this is a story for another time.

     Finally you get it down to the one cow you need to breed, and you run her into the head gate where you capture her head between bars and you put her in a rope harness you can tie to the side of the breeding chute. The head gate was a neat contraption as it had sides that would press in and hold a cow for say purpose of doing medical work like stitching her up , some are designed to lay on their side so a veterinarian could do just about anything you could imagine once she was immobilized by an injection . It would be impossible to handle this many cows and care for their health without this one necessary accessory to the farm. Otherwise people will get hurt and many have, trying to do without. Some large vets will take one with them to the farms that don’t have one just to be able to handle the large animals and not get hurt. Now a vet may be an artificial insemination technician or you can attend schooling for such and receive accreditation, and some herdsmen do their own artificial insemination without certification. But for the most part all your AI work should be accomplished by the A.I. guy or girl as the case may be. He or she is on call 7 days a week 24 hrs. / Day. This doesn’t mean you are always first on their list and depending on how many farms they visit and how many cows or bulls he or she has to do semen collection with, you may be waiting awhile.  For the most part this is a male dominated job, for some reason women have problems doing this type of work I guess the majority of the work is breeding and working on the female or cow and it is messy to say the least. It may be hard to disassociate oneself from the task. On the other side I have a problem dealing with the male requirements of collecting semen. I guess it depends on the job, but for the most part they require you to do both to be certified.

      Not getting the A.I. guy real quick allows you to catch the cow while she is in standing heat and you can breed her up to 24 hrs. later, and still she can get pregnant. Another facet to A.I. work is timing as the timing has to be right. To early and it is no good , after 24 hours it is no good , as the egg has already imbedded itself in the uterine walls and is rendered sterile. The uterine walls are starting to slough off cells and dissolve the egg. So a cow like a human has to be caught when the egg is produced from the ovary and as it starts to travel through the fallopian tubes to the womb. At this point the odds are stacked against you  if the cow is excited, then it is all for naught, as the cow will usually not catch or get pregnant ,so keeping her calm and  not scaring her to bad, and trying to be gentle as one can in the breeding procedure is important.

     Let’s just say for instance we are  lucky enough to weed her out of 250 other cows and she has been successfully haltered and then led into another breeding stall that is not to wide and can have one wall to press against here to keep her from turning around  or kicking as easily the A.I. guy and you have her halter tied to the stall to hold her head without hurting her then the A.I. guy shows up with his white suit( really never understood why they or the vet would ever wear white as it is inevitable, that sooner or later shit is going to happen and it usually hits the coveralls, the shirt inside and the fan in the other room every once in awhile . I would have thought green would be cheaper and more fitting, but who am i?) It is usually white coveralls and he is carrying his stainless steel vacuum tank that holds the semen stored in liquid nitrogen that takes the temperature down to minus 365 degrees or something like that. Any spill on your skin could freeze your entire finger solid in an instant and a smack could break it off.  He has all the stuff needs to breed the cow and tries to place it within reach. He reaches into his tool box and produces a long plastic glove that fits all the way up to his shoulder and he gets the lubricant and antiseptic out, washing the gloved arm and disinfecting, then applying a lubricant to the entire glove up past his elbow as you never know how far you have to go in. I would stand and talk to the cow and whisper her words of comfort like hold on their bossy, his hands aren’t that big, and the AI guy would begin to clean the anus out by scooping out the fecal matter by inserting his hand up her anus, and kind of dragging the crap out with it as he goes. This usually dropped over the vulva and when he could comfortably feel her cervical rings through manipulation of her intestinal walls as he would kind of cup them between his fingers and feel, then he was ready to insert the straw . None of this you can see and most is done by feel. At this time the cow has arched her back as Mr. big hands, has forcibly violated her insides and she is kinda having a fit, she thinks. I imagine it is an experience and I really don’t think if I was woman I would like it but then again I am not a woman and can’t judge. Butt for sure I think the real way would have been better, and still it goes on from here yet.

      He pulls a vial of semen out, or has it out already and has been warmed as the frozen semen is in a  plastic straw and the job of bringing the individual little guys back to life by unthawing them between your hands is usually done ahead of time until they are close to body temperature. Then a  sterile squeeze bulb is attached to the plastic straw with the semen inside and is placed so that when the A.I. technician has his arm positioned in her anus and has ahold of the cervical rings he can  insert the straw through her Vulva lips that have been cleaned of any fecal matter and is inserted through the cervical rings and his hand can feel the straw as it is inserted through those rings assuring he is in the womb, and that is why he needs to enter the anus and manipulate it in a way that way that the technician can assure that the semen is deposited properly, so the little guys can do their job and begin swimming. Now if the A.I. technician has trouble an inadvertently knocks the squeeze bulb off the straw and he has the straw placed as it should be, he can always blow on the straw. He just needs to make sure he doesn’t suck. Very important. But then that may bring up the question of oh forget it. I will drop that one as it is too nasty to think about. Anyhow once the semen has been deposited and once the halter is loosened the cow just kind of stands there and looks at you like is that all. And we tell her yes and head her back out to the feed bunk and get her fattened up and ready to birth.

     Now they do this same thing at feedlots full of crap and disease all over the America in an effort to provide the beef we eat on our table. Growth hormones are shot into culled young calves and testicles are removed as well as an estrogen blocking drugs which controls the fertility of culled heifers is added to the meat to keep the cow’s gaining at maximum grain to beef ratios to get that meat to the freezer case as cheaply as possible. Some feedlots have thousands of cattle on feed in similar conditions, cattle that have never been on grass before and spend their whole life in feedlots totally dependent on humans to feed them. Could you imagine 839000 head of cattle on feed? It says just that amount is in the largest feedlot in the world  in this one research paper. It is the JBS Three Rivers Holding Company in Greely Colorado. They say this is a one-time holding capacity of this one facility by itself.  I think when I was going to college at ATI in 1974 this one facility then had over 400000, head of cattle on feed.

     This one facility may only take care of one half the daily need for Mc Donalds alone , in what it needs in beef. This beef is fed where it craps and the crap builds up in the pens till they take a dozer or a loader and push it into a pile and load it out in dump trucks. Sometimes the owners will leave it in the pen and let the cows lay on it and play on it. The cows are raised in the open pens, sometimes with no shelter whatsoever and feed is usually placed in feed bunks where a truck drives down a lane and automatically ejects a quantity of fed designed to make them grow. Feed is never usually a problem with beef cows, and when fed good produces the pounds of meat that consumers like to see with the marbling of fat. Usually in feedlots like this there is little for a cow or steer to do besides eat and gain weight. The owners of the feedlot don’t want them doing too much as they want them to gain weight however they do it. It takes a lot of feed to take care of this many cattle and vast farms of nothing but corn a silage is produced. This and then also they bring in rail cars of grain with GMO corn and soybeans from the Midwest and grind it with a variety of other grains and create custom blends based on the development of the various groups of cattle. Young feeders may get one ration while a pen of young heifers may get another with an estrogen blocking drug added.

    Sick or slow gaining cattle may be put in one pen and medicated water, and feed added with antibiotics to help those ailing get better. Water may have nutrients added to make it better for the cattle. Salt is a staple in gaining cattle weight. As a cow eats salt, becomes thirsty and drinks water, and after drinking a gallon or two can easily add 8- 16 lbs. to the carcass when weighed, as that is the weight of the water. They may not retain that much but the salt will constantly make them take in water. Electrolytes are another thing to add to water as it helps boost their metabolism. On a place like this dry lot operation it would not be unusual to have all types of management staff and a general manager to handle all that is necessary in the day to day operations. It may not hurt to have a team of attorneys on call also to help stop shit before it gets started.

     Odor problems, and dealing with the waste and EPA regulations on water quality, and avoiding a major disease outbreak when cattle or anything is confined in a facility like this. Mad cow disease would wipe this place out in a day. A veterinarian is on staff undoubtedly, and has a major role in care of the cattle. As well I imagine your own personal financial representative aware of coming market problems. Say for instance a major change in the price of retail beef. You would need a number cruncher to put costs to product produced to determine if it is better to hold your cattle for 50 days till the price improves, or you may be locked by a contract and need to know your profitability before committing yourself to another contract. When to ship and when to hold are all questions the modern corporate farmer has to deal with. The size of the facility in Greely with over 800,000 head of cattle surely has its own meat packing facility and cold storage. This would help it maintain quality and allow some flexibility in marketing. This sure isn’t the mom and pop operation everyone thinks it is. These people are serious and have probably never had a pitchfork in their hand and never rode a horse but still wear the hat to help them fit in. It’s a crazy world we live in. this is what farming is going to be in the future if we are to feed an additional 2 billion people. 

well if this isn't a bunch of bull

More from Oxbow Farms

        Don’t think I added the links to my old stories from Oxbow Farms as I said I would in my last blog before the update. It took me awhile to find the right pic and to size it right for the blog and I completely forgot so will include them now:life moves on: split pelvis operation- life moves on: caeserian section- a click on either of these will easily give you some entertaining looks, and information into what cattle breeding and work on Oxbow Farms was all about. i didnt re-edit the old blogs as they were early blogs , and it shows some level of progress or retardation i might have gained and lost since then. 

     Anyhow today I plan on taking you with me as I again take a trip down memory lane and up to the bull barn as we called it back then. Inside was a huge bull  pen made out of 2 inch steel pipe welded at one and half foot intervals or close enough so a full size bull couldn’t stick his head through and it was probably 40 by 40 feet inside and the same outside , yet had a door in between we could close in bad weather. The sides of the pen went from the ground or a foot above the ground every one and half feet to the ceiling. Making the walls to where you could see the bull and interact with him but not so he could get to you.

      We were never supposed to go in the pen unless someone else was there to watch and do whatever if something went wrong, like he used you for a play toy or something. He weighed 2400 lbs. find of like one of those jacked up four wheel drives with mudder tires, only on four legs. He stood over 6 feet tall and I had to look up to see over his shoulders. He was a mammoth bull with a two and half foot wide head and I was entrusted to feed him.

     He was a big baby and we soon it came to the point that I actually thought he was glad to see me when I came to feed him. Some people do as they are told, and I myself look at an animal and feed an animal the best I can when feeding them, the same as I would do for myself and better. They wanted some more weight on him and so they wanted me alone to feed him as I could do a better job understanding quality of hay and feedstuffs needed. I would throw his hay into the chain rack in the corner of his pen from outside and the same with his grain. I fed daily for quite a time, while I worked there on an internship basis, and knew I would miss feeding him. He loved to have his head scratched, you had to be careful though as one bump of his head against the steel bars of the pen would break your arm if you allowed it to be pinched in there. He was so powerful a bull.

     His main purpose was to be used for semen collection and it was kind of sad to hear how they went about doing this. I could only imagine after never really experiencing, but only hearing tales of how it was accomplished. They would take a bull much like this identified by his progeny and statistics to be the ideal of what the purebred industry is looking for when selecting a bull. Mainly high birth weights, calves that lived at birth and how many made it to weaning, and then calving ease. Higher birth weights translate into more money per unit of weight. Steaks are bigger etc., this all equals more retail beef for sale.  If the calf weight is large at birth and if they, they being the mother cow may have more troubles at birth with complications involving caesarian and split pelvis operations to remove the calves resulting higher birth losses, then this isn’t good. You definitely want a big calf but easy to calve. Hard to find this right ratio, as calves are a result of two parents. Heredity and statistics plays an important part in selection of animals in any beef production farm, or dairy and pork as well. The same principles are applied across the board when it comes to livestock selection and genetics. It all depends on what you are looking for and that will be the ideal that most farmers shoot for. This bull also had twinning aspect to him. Too produce two calves off the same mother in beef production is like getting an animal for free and lower calf weights. This would be easier on cows calving, kind of a real win-win situation in selection characteristics, but twinning is not always heritable or so they say. But regardless, I delivered three sets of twin calves while I was there and he was a father to six in his progeny, and it was a statistic although not always used for selection did influence the top breeding bulls of his purebred status as a Simmental bull sire.  

    This was his niche or corner in the market of semen production. They wanted to store as much as they could in liquid nitrogen for future use. This is the way you pay for your bull. As a bull in artificial semen sire production is apt to breed thousands of cattle from the same bull, yet only about 1000 in his whole lifetime if left to natural processes. He was hardly used to breed any cattle naturally.  Instead they would lead a heifer or cow in heat up in front of a jumping stall as they name it and which I have seen. It is carpeted and is like a huge saw horse and the bull and the cow would be separated but close enough for him to smell her heat. I guess that would be the equivalent of pheromones causing excitability and an erection in the bull. Well the reason a bull has a nose ring is to control him while he is in this aroused state, as two rope leads with a pole attached to this ring with one pole being held by one guy and another pole being held by the other would control this bull by holding his head back and if a bull would turn his head any way they didn’t want him to, they would yank on the rope and pull on his ring forcing the bull to snort but yield his turn.

       Now we need to pause and reflect on why today’s teenagers want to wear a nose ring or rings as I have seen on some pretty girls who need nothing, but insist on portraying themselves in nose rings. Forget the health issue of keeping them clean but look at the true meaning of nose rings and see it as a form of submission to  slave oneself to the tireless effort of being cool. As well our generation knows, it is an elusive trip only rewarded after years of endearment to be the one, that you finally realize you don’t have to conform to be cool. It is all a state of mind based on values of society ever changing. Oh well they will find out soon enough.

       As I digress and reflect on society , and it’s correlation to fads without knowing the meaning or true intent, these handlers hold the bull and actually keep him on this huge sawhorse, while another artificial inseminator technician grabs ahold of the bulls now throbbing member unsheathed in his plastic gloved hands and shoves the about 3 foot long and up to an inch and half wide member  into an artificial vagina that is warmed and lubed to a cows temperature, usually made out of a rubber tire inner tube  that is folded together and  has a semen collection sack which is basically a clear plastic baggy to collect his semen taped to the bottom with duct tape, while the bull who is jerking and contorting on the stand finally deposits his healthy load. Now I need to insert my joke for the day.

      What is long and round and has seamen inside? A submarine of course. What did you think? Anyhow after a long day of semen collection an handling several bulls the artificial inseminator comes home to his wife and she asks.

     “How was your day dear?”

       And he looks at her and says. “Long and hard dear.”

      She says. “Oh well , make sure you wash up for dinner dear, and by the way we are having your favorite , mountain oyster creamed stew, it will be oh so-oooo good!

     That was the part of artificial insemination that kept me from getting a certification to be an artificial inseminator technician and part of the requirement of my field of specialty at ATI and eventually forced me to change or split my majors into crop production. Call me a homophobe or whatever but there was no way I was grabbing a bulls whatever, for any amount of money, let alone portioning and freezing his semen afterward.

      It seemed a shame that here was this great bull and at times I just wanted to turn him loose in one the pens of cattle and just watch him go to town on the old girls. But then again even with his prowess could he ever measure up to the arms of an artificial inseminator as he does his thing. Even this bull may be let down. Being a herdsman sometimes isn’t always a good thing and is the reason I think natural is best. You need more bulls but that is ok as it seems to work best and cows and they seem to enjoy themselves more.

     I would sometimes have to retrieve this big boy’s feed bowls from inside the pen. Usually as I have said before for safety reasons, we do this only when someone else was around. I called for other help and no one was going to be available till I left work, and then the next guy who replaced me would have to do it alone. I couldn’t let someone else do my job when we were shorthanded, and knew someone would be around soon, but still I couldn’t tell when that was.   So I went into the pen through the steel gate, always keeping my eye on the bull. I had to go all the way over to the other side of the pen. The bull would turn and face me but never offered to advance toward me. I had trouble reattaching the feed buckets with the new clips we had, as he had torn a ring out of the feed bucket. This kind of took my attention away from the bull for a second and I turned my back away from him and looked at what I was doing. This very act went against all I was ever told about bulls and that was never turn your back on them. Just that quick I felt something underneath my butt as I started going up into the air grabbing on to the pipes as I hand over hand was trying to hang on, all the way up to the ceiling and I was ducking my head as I was over five foot high off the ground, with my legs a dangling, sitting on this bulls head. I hooked my feet into the pipes on the wall of the pen and climbed higher stooping as I did trying to get away from this bull and I was in a corner while doing this making it easier to thankfully escape his massive head-butt he had just gave me.

     I was relieved I was safe but still not so much, as I was still in the pen, and what is hard for the bull to escape through, was also holding me in, so I had to do something quick and since I had no club to turn him away, and he was just standing there with his head in the air shaking it playfully. Kinda like common Big Boy it’s time to play. I did the only thing I could do, I planted a size 13 between his eyes as hard as I could I shoved my foot in his face and thumped him real hard, with kind of a hollow thud to it, and he shook his head and snorted but turned away and sulked outside like I had hurt his feelings. I felt almost sorry for him for about a second and then I was safely back out the door and gone. Only taking enough time to catch my breath and be thankful I wasn’t lying in a pile of BS stacked in the corner. Wadded up like a shitty ragdoll with some blood to accent it. A fitting tragic end to my early writing career it would be as no one knew I was in there and it could have been hours before they found me.

    I never reentered the pen but instead made some long poles with hooks on one end to either drag the feed buckets to the side of the pen or hook them with extra loop I installed on the buckets to prevent ever having to enter the pen again for that reason. So many times when you are alone, and in the process of farming you encounter moments like this when you could just as easily be dead, that you truly appreciate what some of these old farmers go through daily by themselves. Whether it is turning on a tractor PTO or power take off to doing whatever, or it could be something as simple as walking in a pasture and tripping and hurting your head on a rock to realize how dangerous this job can be. There are no magic bullets or safety equipment, but instead intuition and experience plays a role in their being able to make it another day.

       Really don’t know what message I may have left with you in retelling this story or anything it contains in this blog but sure covered a few areas that should make you appreciate a few things. Maybe you to would be glad as I am that farming and especially livestock farming may not be a good career choice for those with issues in controlled breeding such as me. It takes a special type of person to do that work and I know it isn’t me. My hats off to the Artificial Inseminator, and I would shake your hand but? 

tgio on tgif

Time to Update

Dundee Falls

       My pending legal troubles are over and have to say I came through things well and better informed . I have learned some things. I would like to share with you about law enforcement. Never carry anything illegal you can’t eat. Number two. Always insist on a search warrant. Don’t give police anything as evidence that they can use against you, eat it first. Have your fun at home, never carry in your car, and if all else goes wrong be prepared to do community service or whatever to plead your way down. It is much easier than going through the alternative. I have 120 in court costs reduced charges and no restrictions on my driving record. Plus, plus, plus, I am thankful and swore to do things differently and still implement the plan B I had in mind before all this started. Plan B is in effect as of now.

this hawk no doubt died but could have been saved if certain people were doing there job.seems a shame that they should be protecting the one resource that gives rise to their name and yet protecting wildlife could be the farthest thing from their mind. 

    And for your information I have plenty of other letters and don’t let me forget about the numbers I can go through if plan B fails. It’s always nice to have a plan. And by the way I have no intention of telling the full story of what happened and alluded to it earlier in my blog. Guess you will have to go searching to find out what exactly I was charged with and how it happened. I am just glad it is over. For years I managed to stay out of law enforcement's radar and to have this happen brought back some old fears I have had. Was glad to be able to get out of it unscathed and didn’t have to have any face time with the magistrate and for the best as I have little use for remembering him and sure as heck hope he never sees me again.

another view of same falls. look at the pics dont go there. 

    As far as the park where I was charged is concerned, if it belongs to the Division of Wildlife and they manage it, I suggest staying away from it unless you are squeaky clean. I have no use for anything connected to them. As well I did try and do my community service there and offered to clean up trash and whatever, from panties to needles I observed in their park and they couldn’t find the time or the personnel to even come supervise me while I cleaned up other peoples trash in the park they supervise. Now doesn’t that make you wonder what they are there for? If not to make things better than what? I guess increase fine revenue.

 one of the clean areas below the falls

     Also I was driving through East Sparta and noticed the five foot tall bear I carved had disappeared and there were tire tracks in front of it and the log cabin, and I thought someone had stolen the bear I carved several years ago. They call him Pikey and it is out of habit I always look for him and the log cabin. I contacted some people and they were able to tell me what happened to him, as he is going to be in the Christmas parade in East Sparta and is part of their float sponsored by the Pike Township Historical Society. It was great news that was his demise, and not something else. And to think someone is using him as part of their float brings a little bit of pride to me yet. I am glad they like it so well as that is what I meant for him.  

  

Pikey