New Life Old Farmers

There are really no ‘weekends’ on a farm, but some weekends are bigger than others, especially when one needs extra help.  Then planning the job around a weekend and including a lunch makes it a country occasion    Our Friend the Farmer was working his cattle this weekend.  It is a big deal and a large host of helpers were needed to get all the jobs done.  We were invited to come, but as I am a bit lower on the learning curve, my job was chiefly to watch, stay out the way, don’t get hurt and to eat lunch, mostly things I am pretty good at, especially the eating lunch part.  The invitation came with wardrobe advice “Don’t wear your carpet slippers” and a reality warning, “it is not for the faint of heart”.  Every member of the herd was getting vaccinated, the calves were getting branded and the little bulls were getting… well, turned into little non-bulls.  Don’t worry, there are no pictures of any of the ‘non-bulling’ the bulls, besides, the best pictures would have been the look on my face!

There were a lot of jobs, but the two most important the ‘non-bulling, de-balling, castrating’ and the branding were done by the most experienced.  Our Friend the Farmer was the ‘surgeon’ turning his little bulls into little steer.  I believe his oldest son was in charge of the electric branding iron, which was obviously very hot and got a test run on the nearby wood post.  He was very careful that with all the people apart of the organized chaos, to keep the hot iron only where it was supposed to go, which I am sure all the people who were in close proximity to him appreciated.

Six men went into the calve’s pen to grab the back leg and head of three calves, who were then brought out, put to the ground and sat on to keep them still and down.   Then the ‘medication shooters’ came, giving each calf their vaccinations.  The branding was done quickly and then, as necessary the whole ‘non-bulling’, which Our Friend the Farmer did with a special tool, a scalpel and what was clearly a practiced hand.  He showed ‘them’ to me and they were….interesting?  As far as the whole Rocky Mountain Oysters go.. I did not see anybody do that, as I don’t think they really do.  However, I was told that rolled in flour and butter and then baked that they are very good.  I don’t know, and I don’t really intend to find out.

On the other side of the pens were about 80 mother cows who were not at all happy about being separated from their calves, so there was a whole lot of anxious loud mooing going on.  Also nearby were the remaining bred cows, which I have become very familiar with.  I thought one looked like she was going into labor and later that night she had twins and I missed it, but so far she is doing fine feeding them both so I don’t have to break out my cow bottle any time soon.

When I went by to get a view of the little ones and to check on the remaining calving progress, I was amazed at how close they let me come to them… I guess they’ve just gotten use to me.  My family has been with me so many times to watch the cows, that they now have their favorites as well.

The Teen’s likes this creamy colored one…

My Loving Spouse has a soft spot for the Hereford which he pronounces (and we too) “Hair-a-ford”, the American country way to say it is “Herf-ferd”, which is different from heifer.  His Grandfather had these in England, so he is just keen on her, I think that she has shifty eyes and will probably be the last cow to calf.

When the calving is over…. what will I do?  Hmmm, maybe it will be time to plant pumpkins.

We have lived here for 11 months and for 10 months we’ve been trying to get rid of the moles.  Our efforts have only enticed them to invite their friends to move in and live here as well.  We mow their mounds and cover their holes.   We’ve set boxes and boxes of smoke bombs down their holes, ‘some offspring’ have even set the occasional fire cracker right into their holes.  We’ve tried digging them up and setting garden hoses directly into their runs, while sitting nearby with shot guns… nothing so far has worked.  You’d think, that if nothing else, we’d have at least irritated a few of them enough to leave.  We truly hate the little (British bad word)!!!

Now, it may sound awful or evil or cruel, but we are gleefully excited and sort of proud, the barn cats have figured them out!  Spring is here and the feline are on the prowl.  Just in case you are new to this site, let me clear up any misconceptions one might have, I am not a ‘cat person’.  In fact prior to this weekend, I would have probably said that the barn cats’ best features are that, they clean up their own poop.  If there is an order of affection for our 6 cats, I’d have to say Roo would be near the bottom… 5 or 6 for most of us.  She is small and fierce, not funny or cuddly, but her ranking to ‘valuable’ and ‘down right like-able’ was elevated Friday night, as she caught the first mole!  Roo mostly seemed to play with it to death, but honestly one less mole is one less mole!  We quickly alerted the media, that we had a cat that was worth something, okay well, maybe we didn’t do that but there was a flurry of texts to the ‘cat loving off-spring’ that Roo had done it!  Pooh followed up Saturday by pouncing on a mouse and as we left for church Sunday morning all 5 barn cats were staking out different mole hills around the pond.  When we came home, there on the pathway waiting for us was another deceased mole.  This one was sort of gross, so I did have to divert my eyes, as I don’t really like dead things or rodents and so this qualifies as a ‘twofer’, but still I was happy about it.  I just couldn’t look at it.  Go Cats, Go!

Hard to believe that anything this small could make such a mess of things or be so destructive and yes, it is dead and on its way to the trash can.

Out in our small orchard the mole hills out number the trees, so all I can say is “Here kitty, kitty”.

I have a boy friend.  His name is Bob.  He is 95 years old and yes, My Loving Spouse knows about him.  Bob and I sang in the choir together in our church in California.  Bob is very special.  If you don’t really pay attention to Bob, you’d think he was perhaps a crusty old guy, but you’d be wrong, because you would have missed the twinkle in his eye.

I don’t really know how it happened, a God thing I guess.  Years ago, just before choir practice for some reason, I went up to the bass section to give someone a hug for something and then gave a hug to Bob too.  (You see at this point, I didn’t really know how special he was, so gratefully he got steered into my path).  Bob thanked me for the hug and said, “You know, I wasn’t raised with hugging.  I didn’t start hugging people until I was about 82….  I think I’ve really missed something.”

For me, hugging friends my parents age was as close as I could come to hugging them again.  So I started hugging Bob twice a week.  One hug at choir practice and one on Sunday morning.  In the beginning, Bob was a little bit shy about the hugs, as if he expected them to stop, but the shyness went away.  As he got older, most of his hugs were delivered sitting down.  It was I that received the blessing, as we slowly began to love one another.  I don’t have the words to express the filling of my soul, when he would see me coming, he’d smile and throw his arms out wide for me.  Oh, I do miss that so….

The hardest person to tell we were moving was Bob.  I was nervous.  I told him I had something hard to tell him.  I explained why we were moving and I hugged him.  He said, “Oh, I will miss you so, but it sounds like you are going for the right reasons… ”  I felt as if he’d blessed our move.

I didn’t want to leave him ‘hug-less’ so asked my niece and a friend to start giving Bob hugs…I am sure that they do their best…  but still…. it is not me…  I write Bob letters from the farm, every few weeks or so, because he likes it and because the older I get the more I want to just treat people how I want to be treated (see Mom it finally stuck)… honestly,the letters are mostly the stories that you read here… but Bob is not of the computer age, so he is ‘impressed’ that the letters include pictures, which we know is not all that impressive and sometimes the color ink is not really working, but still, it is the thought that counts….and I imagine his pleasure at going to the mailbox to find a letter…  He says he saves them and reads them over and over.  He sent a few letters here, which I also treasure.  He had to get a new ribbon for his type-writer to send them, so I doubly appreciated the effort.  He is having trouble and his hands are not working well now, so I do not expect any more letters from him.

Bob has a girlfriend (besides me).  Myrtle lives in another state and they do the crossword puzzle together every night over the phone.  She came to help him celebrate his 95th birthday…. I think he looks pretty dapper.

I know one day, one of you will tell me that Bob has been ‘called home’.  I will be sad…  But for now… those of you who know Bob, let’s give him a TON of hugs and tell him, that they are from me!

And if and when, I go down south for a visit, you can bet, my getting a hug from Bob will be at the top of my list.

I surprised myself, and managed to finish my second quilt.  This one will go to a particular church senior upon his graduation.  I picked this boy, because he reminds me of my sons, even though he does not know who I am.  I hope he is a LOT like my sons and is high on appreciation and low on tidiness, as this quilt has its fair share of crooked seams and one or two other ‘mistakes’ in it.  I’d like to think it will be one that he wraps up in often and not just left neatly on his bed.  A fair amount of cutting, sewing, unsewing (ripping out), and a teeny tiny bit of swearing went into this quilt.  My bobbin thread only broke about 50 times and  convinced me, that if I am going to quilt, well then I, the non-sewer, needs a new machine.

I was just about finished with it 2 months ago.  I spread it out on the floor at quilting for the feedback of the more experienced quilters (which is everybody).  They looked at it, commented and praised my hard work and then said…it might not be big enough, so at that point I gritted my teeth and went back to cutting, sewing and swearing at my machine (which is not really even my machine, it is My Loving Spouse’s machine).  A new sewing machine for me is on ‘the list’, unfortunately for me it is somewhere under taxes, insurance and fixing the sinking pantry floor.

We are also excited about another quilt in our future here at Glory Farm, a barn quilt.  We’ve decided to be apart of the grass-roots art movement with the Barn Quilt Trail here in the Kitittas Valley.  Our ‘quilt’ will be 8×8 and made of wood.  The design will be a copy of a square of my grandmother’s first quilt….  The cost for this probably comes on ‘the list’ before the whole ‘I need a new sewing machine’ issue, which is fine.  I am quite excited for us to join in the first Barn Quilt Trail in Washington… so stay tuned.

Monday morning and the sunrise was beautiful, even if I only viewed it from my bedroom window.  It is spring break around here, so I know I’ll not get called in for substitute ‘teaching’/crowd control/listening ear to recess laments/assisting those kids that didn’t quite get ‘it’ the first time/gently ‘arguing’ with 5th graders about how the math is supposed to be done.  It is a job that is a bit like pushing jello, but I seem to like it.

It will be a lovely week on our farm, however I’m not sure what will get done as ‘we’ are nursing a few farm related injuries.

Jubal is still out of commission, awaiting his replacement part, which I need to have in order for him to run effectively.  Not having him running is certainly cramping my style.  The wind is not blowing, so perhaps I’ll burn up the slash pile, that is always a rewarding exercise.

Number One Son, The Bride and I managed to rip out the rest of the overgrown shrub trees.  However, when we were pulling the trees out of the truck bed for the burn/slash pile, they tended to tangle together.  Number One and I were pulling on them at the same time, when one came loose slamming the trunk into my nose, knocking me down.  (Yes, it hurt).  The Bride ran into the house for ice, a clean rag (as opposed to the work glove we were using to stop the blood) and my diet coke (yes, she knows me well).  As soon as, my son the EMT was sure I was fine, he started taking pictures of my bloody face to send to his step-father.  (Boys!)  (And no, there will not be a picture of that here).

Our next project was running a final string of barbed wire through a fence.  (A little humorous  that I was the ‘expert’ of the group!)  We did get the final string up and we were very proud of our work.  When I was down in the grass running the wire around the final post, I managed to stand up right into a barb in the top wire!  It hurt like a bad English word and if you’ve been wondering if I have a hole in my head, well now the official answer is…yes!

I did my best yesterday and things did not turn out well.

I managed to eliminate our current sprinkler system with one pass on Jubal, and I was being careful!  I was ripping out some large shrubs and the shrubs won.  I broke a bar on Jubal (although it didn’t actually work correctly, so if you look at it properly, I just gave us the opportunity to replace the non-functioning part).

I fed our calf, Chance.  Got lots of cow formula on me, tried to stand her up and teach her to walk.  We both fell over and she landed in my lap and went to sleep.  I stayed in the field holding my sleeping calf.

I did my best and things did not turn out ‘right’.  My ‘right’ was not working.

We’ll have a new sprinkler system in a better spot.

Jubal will actually work better.

But Chance did not make it and I went to bed in tears.

Loving is not always flowers and fancy gifts (although they are nice, especially if the flowers come in flats).  Loving can be doing the hard part, so on my birthday morning My Loving Spouse got up early to remove our little calf Chance that did not make it to cow.   

The farm is full with people and animals…

Tonight we have two extra puppies as the Grand-dogs are here.

One extra 20 year old, as The Bride’s younger brother is here.

(Who likes to bring his favorite barn cat, Pooh from outside…in.

One extra adult as my dear, sweet friend from California is here….

and a 5 day old calf……..  Normal life at Glory Farm……

The little calf I called One More Day, made it through 2 more days!  She is now officially named Chance, as in ‘giving it a chance‘  and has been moved to Glory Farm for me to care for.  Our Friend the Farmer needed someone to help him with her more times during the day than he had and the poor Mama Cow was so sad watching her little calf struggle and being milked (when she is not a milk cow), that it was time to make a change for all, but still give the little one a ‘Chance’.

None of us know, if she will make it, and as I prepared the pig sty with fresh straw for her new home, I honestly felt as if I was getting a calf hospice ready, but even if that is the case…it is okay…we will do our best.  Little Chance was dropped off and given her dinner bottle, which we were delighted she sucked and slurped up so well.  She still does little standing and no walking, but still looks a teeny-tiny bit better…sometimes…

Our cow Elsie-Gump is in the same pasture as the sty, so we were worried about how she would do with the new one, as Elsie has shown signs of being a sort of ‘loner’ cow.  Also, the pig sty had been her haven previously from the snow and all that fresh straw was so inviting.  Yet when we went out to check on our ‘cattle’ we found Elsie sleeping where she’d never slept before… outside the open sty door…near Chance.  We were touched and pleased for the littlest signs of things working well, at least for now.

I’m waiting up for the late bottle feeding and like all new mothers a bit aghast at the smell… mine…  my hands and clothes smell of calf milk, calf poop and calf slobber….and when I tucked the little calf in for the night, I realized that the only thing I am really afraid of in the dark, is running into a skunk.

We will see what tomorrow holds…

We are nearing the end of calving season.  Okay, not ‘we’ exactly, Our Friend the Farmer is nearing the end of calving season…well, not even him exactly, more like his cows are nearing the end of calving season.  It is the cows that actually do the work.  Our Friend the Farmer is just there to help when necessary, and then of course me to help when he is desperate.  I’ve been lucky enough to catch a few James Herriot moments, where Our Friend the Farmer has had to roll up his shirt sleeves and help Mother Nature along.  (Believe me, if you are going to put your arm into the back-end of a cow you need to roll up your shirt sleeves!)  The Farmer’s Top Man keeps the cow’s tail out-of-the-way and my job is to just stay out-of-the-way, grateful that I get to watch.  The cow goes into a special cow squeeze to try to keep her from kicking the farmer.  Even if the cow wants the farmer’s help getting that calf out, she is sometimes a bit ‘snorty‘ and unpredictable….pregnancy and a tough labor, usually combine to create an unhappy temperament in every species.

The farmer, now Cow Mid-wife, reaches in to check for hoofs/feet and make sure the calf is heading in the right direction and help turn it if needed.  Then he attaches a stainless steel chain around the hoofs with handles on his end to pull with.  He is very strong and I have had to see him pull really, really hard as the cow was not able to assist with pushing the calf out at all.  (I mean down on the ground, boots up on the back of the cow’s hind legs, leaning back with all his might kind of pulling.)  With a fair bit of noise from both ends of the cow, out the calf (usually a big one) comes.  It is pretty amazing to see him do it.  All the bovine are then given room to bond, rest and have some alone time, and Our Friend the Farmer goes to clean up.

Most of the calves are doing great, romping quickly the next day in the field not wandering too far away from their Moms and her portable snack station (warm milk at all times).  All the calves except one, who so far should be named One More Day.  One More Day had a bad birth or something…  Her Mother is worried and sweet and stands nearby always moo-ing and giving it a lick when able to encourage the baby along to catch up with the other calves.  One More Day was not sucking or standing or lifting her head.  She made it through the first night with Our Friend the Farmer putting her mother’s milk into her through a tube.  One of my cleaning rubber gloves was sacrificed to try and make a softer nipple for her suck from…but this did not work either..another day of tubing her came and went.  My Loving Spouse and I got to ‘help’ at the 11:00pm feeding last night after we’d spent an hour combing the shelves of the only store in town open… The Dollar Store…. looking for inspiration for the cow nipple sucking problem…. we came home with tubes and bottles and one embarrassed teenager as most of the tubes and bottles were for enema bags, hot water bottles, a douche kit and bubble bath solutions.  Let me tell you, farm supplies at night are hard to find…even in the country, but we were trying to help.

This morning One More Day did a bit better, taking a bottle with a big nipple from me and even beginning to suck and make headway on the whole eating process.  She will stand for a bit if she is ‘stood’ but cannot get there on her own.  Her Mama seems to know we are all there to help the little one and stands nearby moo-ing.  As Our Friend the Farmer says, “You don’t have to do very much to be a cow, but you do have to be able to move on your feet and eat”.

You have to be an optimist to be a farmer.  I am so grateful for all Our Friend the Farmer is willing to teach me and let me be ‘in on’.  I know it usually makes his work slower and longer and he seldom gets much out of it other than the occasional laugh.  I don’t think One More Day is going to make it… so much is not working…but, I want her to…  If she cannot get up on her own and walk, at some point, the bottle feeding will have to stop, but when she makes a little bit of progress, it is easy to think… well, just give it One More Day.

Today is weird….

It snowed all night and it is white out again and it hasn’t snowed since December I think.  Excuse me Mr. Ground hog????

Our cow Elsie Gump says it is not weird, quit taking pictures and just feed me.

One of the chickens (probably Lucile) laid an egg in the hen yard, not in the nesting boxes of which there are four, but the hens only use two of them.  (Talk about picky nesters…)  Then I figured out why (I think), one of the other hens (probably Lucy) laid an egg with no shell!  I’m told by our farm expert (My Loving Spouse) that this is not uncommon.  Okay, it may not be… but so far it is very uncommon to me and just a tad yucky….talk about ‘over easy’.