21 Hours At Glory Farm

Somedays nothing happens here…

Other days it happens all at once.

We were having Mr. T and Z for a week.  

We were still waiting on Agnes to calve.  My Sorority Sister and her Husband were coming to the farm for an overnight.  It was hot and there were plenty of flies.  I warned her about the flies…

“Oh, what’s a few flies among friends!”  She said, and with that great attitude we managed to cram almost all the aspects of our life into 21 hours.

They were here for about a nano-second and the tractor driving lessons commenced.  My Sorority Sister had already passed Tractor Driving 101 on Jubal, when she was here with the Sisters.  She quickly showed great tractor driving skills on Blue during Tractor Driving 201 and was offered the best of all crash courses…ripping stuff out!

‘You’re doing great!  Do you want to rip something out?’

“YAY!“

We quickly said ‘goodbye’ to a bit more of the old orchard and for a minute, thought we would be saying ‘goodbye’ to some of the fence.  All fences remained intact, she understood my great love of tractor driving and we commenced drinking wine, eating ribs from Manny, Moe or Jack and playing croquet before it got dark.My Sorority Sister and Her Husband didn’t win at croquet, but they did score the straw hat point as well as the bringing cookies point, as they brought wine, plenty of it and it was the ‘good’ stuff!  I especially loved how they loved on our special kids, Mr. T and Z.

A farm style breakfast was planned…our eggs, our bacon and lots of our jam.

Agnes finally got in the act.

I woke up Z to come and watch Agnes, who was finally in labor.  Her Husband joined in….and it was exciting!  The full farm experience.Before we knew it, F-16 Ferdinand was born.It took him awhile to stand up, so I was a tad concerned, but he did eventually make it to his wobbly feet.  I was planning on keeping a very careful eye on Agnes that morning, as last year we might have been able to save the second triplet, if we had known it was coming.  We did figure, that we could at least go in and eat the breakfast My Loving Spouse had made.

We were not inside more than 15 minutes.  Her Husband had been packing their car for the off, when he said…”I think F-22 has landed.”  (Which is not actually the right farm numbering system, but you get the idea.)  We all raced outside to see, if in fact Agnes had calved again, which is not the norm, city people, cows usually have one calf.  Agnes had indeed calved again and the little one was up on its feet!With the white markings on the face, the parentage was clear…this calf’s father was one of the Hereford Bulls, while we believe the first calf’s father to be a Black Angus bull.  We’re not quite sure about the whole ovulation system of the cow, so we’ll leave it at that!

Number Two Son had been at work, so I had kept him apprised of the morning’s events via text.  Number Two (the original Harry Potter fan) had made me promise that, if Agnes had twins that we would name them Fred & George, as that would be the letters of the alphabet we were on, and of course it aligned perfectly with the beloved Weasley twins from Harry Potter.With friends, family, calves, croquet and even flies…

we are blessed.