New Life Old Farmers

Not all that long ago, if I heard the term ‘working cows’, I would probably have assumed that they were talking about cows that gave milk, hence ‘working cows’…as apposed to a ‘grazing cow’, which would obviously not be ‘working’.  I know now, that ‘working cows’ or ‘work the cows’ means that the people are going to work…give shots, brand, turn bulls into steers.  The calves who have been separated from their Mama Cows for the morning are not too happy about it.  They are stressed and want to do only one thing, which is to find their Mama.Our Friend the Farmer has 84 calves that need to be worked.  It is stressful for him as well.  He worries about having enough help to get the job done, without anyone getting hurt. I however, am not stressed at all.  I am delighted, when I hear he worries about getting enough help, because that means he really needs/wants my help, which equals a big ‘yippee’ for me!  It gets even better when I am given the job of giving all the tetanus to all the bulls.  We are using up all the odd vials of tetanus first and the dosages need to be figured out for each one.  Our Friend the Farmer wants his daughter or I to do this job, as he needs someone who can ‘think and count’.  As his daughter had a new baby to care for, she was happy to let me have a go.

The work got underway, with the ever-increasing back ground noise of separated mothers and babes who wanted nothing more than to be returned to each other.  Loud ‘mooing’ means cows are being worked.The age group ran from grandchildren to grandparents…which is the beauty and the fun of the day…as they all work together.  Some learning a new job for the first time…all careful to steer clear of the son with the branding iron.There is pride in the calf throwers, the girls want to throw their calves with other girls.  The littlest boys proudly worked together to throw the littlest calves as well.  They could have worked with a bigger brother, Uncle or cousin, but no..they were going to do it themselves as they sit on their calf and stretch their legs out to keep them still, although there is an ever ready pair of older hands to help anyone who needs it.  There is just one leg left to kick out and I learned that I could protect myself from getting a kick by keeping the calf’s leg tucked in with my boot as I administered my shot.  My Loving Spouse is working with Our Friend the Farmer as the bull calves are cut and then castrated.  It seems none of the younger men in the family are eager to learn to do this job!

As all the calves have been worked, I get a bonus and am happy to hold the youngest member of the family.The loud mooing will now get louder as the calves and Mama are reunited.  Some of the Moms make a bee line through the gate to find their calf while others…see some new hay and get side tracked…even in cows..not all mamas are the same.

…and then we eat…and even have a beer or two…and the older men talk about naps and the 10 year old boys wrestle on the lawn…and it was the greatest way to spend my birthday, who would have ever known…that life could change…and be so full…and I am blessed.

As a small boy, Number One Son had a certain compulsion whenever a saw came into his hands.  The compulsion: ‘let’s use this tool!’  Cutting down your own Christmas tree had much more to do with using the saw than with cutting down a decent tree.  We had to watch him with a saw as he’d also been known to use it on things we didn’t want sawn down, like the banister of our stairs.  This inclination with a saw has come in very, very handy for us here at Glory Farm, as we’ve had plenty of things to saw down.  All this to say, however, that he might have been given a ‘bad rap’…as it turns out, that he is not the only one who needs to be watched with a saw in their hand!

My Loving Spouse and I set out to trim the willow trees in the pasture.  These trees provide shade for the herd and climbing for small visitors, but they are also a huge mess.  The plan was to clean up the dead branches already on the ground, trim a few dead limbs and trim all the suckers sprouting from the base of the trees.

“This won’t take long at all…let me get the chain saw”…and I believed him.  I am sort of afraid of the chain saw.  It is loud, heavy and powerful, so I try not to use it.  It is always good, when working together to have clear communication.   We’re pretty good at this, if I do say so myself.

“Now tell me exactly what you want cut down, so I don’t get into trouble”, were his exact words.

‘I want all the suckers trimmed on all the trees’.  (‘Sucker’ verb to send out suckers or shoots, as a plant.)  

Except this is where I made my mistake, I turned my back on that man with the saw.  (Sucker – noun a person easily deceived).  I turned around to see him cutting down a tree… with a sort of mad gleam in his eye.  Yes, in his defense it was mostly dead, but it was not the plan according to ‘this won’t take long’.  We now have a tree down, no suckers trimmed or branches cleaned up…but My Loving Spouse had another plan…he’d use more ‘power’.  Driving our tractor Blue he drug all the branches, leaves and a fair amount of dirt (although he says it wasn’t dirt it was leaf debris…but it sure looked and acted like dirt) into huge piles.  Great!  Except huge piles cannot be picked up and put on the fire so it was not so great and the small job was getting bigger and bigger with each tool that was used.

I was mad at him every time he used another tool.  He was mad at me for not using any tools, but for just doing the job the old-fashioned way…picking up the branches with my hands and walking them over the field where the slash pile was burning.  In the end the field got cleaned up, we both stopped being mad.  I took a quiet bath……and the dead tree?  Yep, still out in the field!

They were only here for a couple of hours, but they filled their time with glee and a large amount of Farm ADHD…ricocheting from one thing to another like pin-balls set loose in a pin-ball machine.  After all we had baby chicks to hold.

Water tanks to fill, complete with hoses to haul and faucets to lift.

Cats and dogs to pet.

Even though they were never far from each other…there was no talking…just calling to one another…

‘Hey R…..did you see this?’

They’d been here before…

“Where are the pigs?”

‘We ate them.’

“What?”

‘We ate them…well, we really like bacon.’

…and she didn’t miss a beat…

“I like bacon…can we have some bacon…or a scrambled egg from the hens.”

‘You can have scrabbled egg or pop-corn or Cheetos’.

“Pop corn”…at least until it was popped…and then…’Can we have Cheetos?”

‘Sure’, I said because the day was for fun.  We took the snack to sit on the porch swing, which they sat on for about a 2 seconds…as they’d seen the croquet sets…so off they went to ‘play’ croquet and I ate the pop-corn.

…but then they saw trees…

‘We like to climb trees’

The trees were too big…so off we went to the pasture where the trees are just right…into the horrible old willows that are a mess…with dead branches all around.  We’d planned to trim them this weekend and clean up the mess already laying down.They thought we should start cleaning up the branches now and I was happy to not dissuade them.  Out came the tractor to do the job right…There was actually more tractor driving then branch clean up, which is no surprise.

Now the horrible old willows must be trimmed rather carefully…because I’ve seen them through the eyes of a child and some of those branches are just perfect for climbing…

and that is a very, very good thing.

We’ve had unexpected upheaval this week and yet we knew…there was only one choice to make…one road to follow.

For the last few months, My Loving Spouse has been selling used trucks.  It is a great fit for him, because he gets to talk to people (one of his strengths) about things with engines (one of his loves)…and we were hopeful that with this combination, we would be able to do things like finish restoring the house, feed the herd…feed us, who knew perhaps we’d even buy more cows.  He liked it. When in sales, if your heart is one of service to your client, you will be good at what you do and happy.

Little things started to not ‘add up’.   Attitudes where he worked…were not quite right…and most of the folks he worked with were not too happy.  Our antennas were raised.  Two nights ago it was clear…they were not honest.  They were unethical.  We did not sleep well, but we knew without any discussion that he would leave…right away.  One cannot sell ‘anything’ if you loose your integrity in the process…and it felt like being on the edge of a cliff and knowing that the only choice was to jump…and so he/we jumped…because we believe that being honest is not optional.

Do we know what the road ahead looks like…nope.

If you know the hymn ‘My Hope is Built on Nothing Less’…it has been going through my mind…a lot.

…and like the bulbs coming up in the garden…we have spring…a sign of hope.

It seems that most days we wake up and there is a question I have…usually about chickens or chicks as it were.

“What happens if the chicks fall out of the nest box?”

“Can they walk?”

“How will they get water?”

“How many chicks do you think we will have?”

…and because these questions come before My Loving Spouse is sufficiently caffeinated, usually the response is

‘What?’ or ‘I do not really know’….

The day where we could expect the first cheep from a chick came and went…but the next morning…we had our first little black chick…fairly ugly at hatching…but fluffy and pretty darn cute within hours…new life…new hope.Twenty four hours later and there were 3 fluffy balls of cheep, cheep, cheeping…My Loving Spouse devised a plan to move Crow, the chicks and the remaining eggs into a temporary safe single nest box in the tack room of the barn.  The plan was to move the family at dusk.  I was handed the three chicks…whoops, and then one more…along with an egg in mid hatch!  We settled the hatching egg and chicks in the box along with 4 more eggs.  We were a little nervous about whether Crow would gather her brood together…since she doesn’t exactly have a very good history of taking care of her eggs…and yet, it would seem that after 21 days of doing nothing much other than sitting on a pile of eggs, Crow has turned into a regular Mother Hen, with all manners of appropriate clucking and settling softly on her eggs and gathering her little chicks to her as they cheep, cheep, cheep.

The problem with the Damn Cat is probably related to her upbringing, either that or she is just a cat!  When she was found, she was about 10 days old and we agreed to take her…because she needed a home and because My Girl’s first words were practically…”I want a cat!” (and at 16 years old, I was ready to give in).  A 10 day old kitten needs to be bottle fed and rubbed (like a mother cat) to stimulate bodily functions…yep, peeing and pooping.  I fed the small Damn Cat (who was very cute) and then handed her off to My Loving Spouse for the second phase.  So…you’d think she’d be appreciative…kind…loving…considerate…

Nope…mostly she just gets into things…

Leaves cat hair everywhere…

Ruins perfectly good toilet paper…and has completely ruined a very nice couch…(don’t even get me started on this one).

My Girl says when she comes home from China, she’ll be ready to move out.  She said, she’s taking the cat with her and I said…”Oh, yes you ARE…and the ruined couch too!”

You’d think she’d be better…but then she is what she is…a cat!

Crow (our black hen) has dutifully been sitting on her nest of eggs.  Except…sometimes ‘others’ have gotten in her way…or messed up her mothering plan.  Our chickens have 4 nest boxes to lay their eggs, but they like one box best.  In fact they will often lay an egg on the ground instead of the other boxes, when another chicken is sitting in their favorite box.

Crow became broody and started sitting on 6 eggs in ‘the’ favorite box.  My Loving Spouse could see this might be a problem, so he cleaned up a box the hens never use and set her eggs there for her to sit on.  The only problem was that chickens are not the brightest bulb in the pack.  I soon (we hope) found Crow sitting on one egg back in the favorite box and the six…they’d been stranded.  I quickly moved the six eggs back under her in the favorite box…7 eggs total.

I never see Crow off the nest, so I started putting a handful of feed down in front of her each afternoon.  My Loving Spouse feds in the morning and says he’s seen her off occasionally and that there are 9 eggs in the nest…so obviously when she’s does get off for water etc, the other hens jump up and use their favorite box.

Yesterday, I found one of the Lucy’s sitting on the eggs..poorly and an unhappy Crow waiting nearby for her box.I bumped Lucy out of the box with much cackling to find…13 eggs in the nest!  Hatching?  If any of them have made it…could start this weekend, if poor old Crow is lucky.

It has been a while since I needed to find a sitter, and even longer since I was the sitter.  As a kid, I approached baby sitting with delight…two of my favorite things…kids and cash…it was all good.  Now I am the sitter again…life is coming full circle…and I am delighted to be with the kid without the cash.  I can only hope that it is a long, long, loooong time until I need a sitter.  Friday afternoon, I drove 3 hours to spend the night with THE Grandson, giving Grammy the chance to kiss his neck and give his parents the chance to go out to dinner.  It seemed like the very second that the little guy was out for the night (6pm) his parents left at warp speed.  I was told what to do if he awoke, how to work the remote and who to call if I needed them…and they were out the door!  I was so glad to give them a night out and to be the trusted one.

You might say it was a ‘two-fer’ sitting weekend.  Sunday afternoon, Our Friend the Farmer needed to do an errand which would take him out-of-town for the afternoon.  Could I keep an eye on the cows?  Could I?  Ah….you bet!  He was going to be gone about 3 hours, so I checked on the girls about 3 times.  Some could say that is over kill, but then again, ‘some’ where not upgraded to official cow sitter either.

No calves were lost on my watch.  No calves were actually born on my watch, but still, I was ready.

Our Friend the Farmer has mostly Black Angus (Black) with a bit of Hereford (Red cattle with white faces) thrown in.  He’s had two little red calves born this year to Black Mamas.   This is fairly unusual.  They are very cute and he is very proud of them.  While I was ‘sitting’ we got to drive through the herd and check out the recent additions.

Cows are very good Mamas.  (If they are bad Mamas, they get to be hamburger…sorry, but that is life.)  The little calves are let to wander a bit.  However, if someone new and different shows up (like me), the Mamas come and take up their spot near their calf….

We found one of the little red calves and Mama found us and made a quick move to join her calf.

Once she was near her all was okay, but she kept us in her sight.Because that is what good Mamas, Grammys and Sitters do…we keep those we are taking care of in our sight…even if we know that we just looked at the bred cows, we might go look at them again and even if we know that the baby was put to bed in his crib and he can’t actually crawl let alone walk or climb out of his crib, we might just maybe go and take a look at him anyway and make sure…all is fine on our watch.

I am addicted to caffeine, but it is not a problem.  It is only a problem, if I do not have it.  As long as Lola* gets her latte when she needs it, then everything is good.

*(Lola is my Starbucks name.  For years when I went to Starbucks they messed up my name, ‘Ellen’.  I became concerned that someday “Helen” was going to beat me up for drinking her coffee, so I took matters into my own hands and went under cover in Starbucks.  My Starbucks name is Lola…and it has been for years.  In California, some of the Starbucks workers thought it was my real name and would call out, ‘Hi Lola’…to which I would say ‘Hi’ back because that is polite.  I’d then giggle inside because it is not polite to laugh at someone, especially when they are making you your latte….besides it is only fun, if you can do it with a straight face).

Our return trip to Ellensburg (roughly 630 miles or so) was going to start early in the morning leaving Rexburg with decent (not awful) but nothing special hotel coffee in us.  The first stop (other than potty breaks… and while we are on the subject of potty breaks can I just tell you, that Idaho and Montana have some of the nicest rest stops ever!  Seriously, Washington and California…you need to step it up)…the first stop was going to be a Starbucks.  After driving 150 miles we found it.  Not only am I addicted to caffeine, but I have a gift…a built in Starbucks detector or sensor…I don’t know how it works, it just does.  My Loving Spouse The Driver knows that if I holler,

“GET OFF HERE!”

He needs to just exist the freeway and asks questions later.  This is how we found ourselves in Dillion, Montana home of the University of Montana Western, a charming campus that we drove by on our quest for Lola’s latte.  Once we were reasonably caffeinated, we drove around the town a bit, enjoying a plethora of charming buildings.

Hotel and saloon.The court-house since the late 1880’s.

Business…The saddlery……with plenty of historical pieces out for viewing…A fun colorful city that was a great place to fuel me up.  See what you might miss by not drinking coffee?

We’d chosen to drive home through Montana to see some different country…and although it took us out of our way just a tad we had a short stop in Spokane…for hugs and kisses….with our favorite window watcher.  Two days of driving for a round trip total of 1300 miles, one day spent with My Other Girl, a blink of an eye visit with THE Grandson, lots of country seen and time together…was it worth it…

you betcha!