God provides!

If you read the last few blog entries, the topic of worry and concern lately has been "How will we buy enough hay to get the cows through the winter?"  It's been so dry, and any available hay is snapped up before I can even call the person advertising it, plus the exorbitant prices!  Here's the last paragraph or two from Sunday (and the rest or that entry is below today's e-mail), plus the little admonition to myself that I added at the end of Sunday's story: "After today's sermon (5 loaves and 2 fishes, coupled with the 23rd Psalm, and how God will provide all of our needs), I'm attempting to put my worries aside and trust that the cows won't go hungry, or that Lucy will be bought so that we can feed Bess and Ruby, or that a bounty of hay will suddenly and unexpectedly come available at a price we can afford. After all, if God knows every sparrow that falls to the ground, and every lily of the field, He is really the one who is going to provide for the cows' well-being.  My part of that is to be a good steward of them because God has placed them in my care, and follow every lead to buy the hay that might be available, and be a good shepherd who pays attention to their needs both now and for the long winter.  God will ultimately fulfill those needs....right?  Have faith, Laura!  Stop worrying!  ;)  It's all part of the learning process!" http://dykstrasfarm.blogspot.com That brings us to Sunday night and Monday morning:  I felt peace instead of worry, slept through the night instead of waking up and feeling panicky about not having feed for our animals, and woke up rested and....not worried!  A nice feeling on a Monday morning. Still no idea where the hay would come from, but the schedule of the day called for a trip into Wisconsin to get the 12 butchered ducks and roosters, so that's what I did.  Chatted a bit with the friendly guy who runs the butchering business out of his garage--it's a spotless operation, and he and his wife are fun to talk to, so I'm never in a hurry to leave. On the way back, I SORT OF needed to stop at the feed store in Harvard.  The couple who own it had put in a hay field last year, and another one this spring.  When I checked with Sue two weeks back, she said that they might be able to spare a bale or two of alfalfa for Bessie.  I decided to follow-up and see if they still had just one or two.  Nothing big, just a humble request to see if they had any extra after they put up all that they needed for their animals.  Sue called back to Bruce, who took me out to see the trailer full of clover-grass hay that he'd just harvested last week.  He estimated 60 bales, at $7.25 a piece!  OUCH!!!  But it was available, which was the key word. Then he also offered me a full wagon of all-grass hay at $2.25 a bale, because the top bales were bleached from the sun and because it was supposed to be for his daughter who had never come for it.  The low price of the lesser-quality hay offset the high price of the clover hay, so I said I'd take both.  After more than a month of trying to follow leads and coming up with no cow-feed at all, I couldn't pass up the chance at two wagon-fulls. And things started falling into place, with solutions coming quickly after each short-lived mental road-block: --The hay was on two different wagons.  Bruce offered to haul one wagon to our house.  That left a questionably-road-worthy field-wagon that needed to be either unloaded and reloaded into our small trailer (would have been several trips!) or needed to be hauled slowly by someone else. --Our friend Jonathan has been willing to help us in any we need, because he has a huge pick-up truck and is looking for ways to put it to good use.  He had even been following Craigslist leads to try to find hay for us.  I called him, he was at work, but he called me back and said that it was a really slow day, he was headed home, he would check in with his wife Patti and baby, and then would be at our house ready to go. --Bruce casually mentioned that he only accepts cash for hay, so I had to figure that out on the way home.  I ended up driving to Crystal Lake to the bank to get enough cash from my checking account (bringing it dangerously close to needing to close it altogether!)  Jeff had some money from Carrie that was repayment for college tuition, so that cash was on hand, too (unexpectedly!) --Michael had been planning to spend the day with his girlfriend, but was willing to wait and go to a movie later that night so that he could be home to help with the hay. By 3:30, Jonathan was at the house, I had the cash, and Michael and I hopped into the truck with Jonathan and we headed to the feed store in Harvard.  In true country fashion, Bruce spent quite a bit of time proudly showing off his new clear-sided bee-hive, which will be installed inside the store.  Then he showed off all the new bee-keeping supplies which are new this year at the store.  THEN we headed out to look at the field-wagon with semi-flat tires and rickety-looking boards. It took a bit to strap the hay down, make it as sturdy as possible, before Bruce kicked the tires and declared that he would haul that particular flat-bed wagon and Jonathan should haul the hay-wagon up by the store. It was a slow ride, with a huge wagon behind us blocking all views, and other drivers waiting for their chance to speed up and zip around us. Our driveway isn't really set up conveniently for livestock or hay deliveries, so it was a bit difficult to get the wagon in and up close to the barn.  Jonathan ended up driving in forward and pulling the truck off to the side so that we could unload the wagon.  We didn't know how far behind us Bruce would be, and tried to be done before he got there, but there were just too many bales.  Turns out that there were about 100 bales total of good quality, clover-grass hay.  We 3 (Jonathan, Michael and I) stacked the hay outside the barn, trying to work as quickly as possible.  Bruce arrived and parked across the street, then backed in when the first wagon was empty.  He had brought a helper, which made things a little easier.  The grass hay had been rained on at some point, probably last week.  We'll have to air it out in the hay-mow before stacking it for the winter.  The hay off of this wagon went into the barn right away, and a quarter of the first floor was stacked with hay in no time--floor to ceiling.  It turned out to be another 100 bales.  I was $100 short, but Bruce was OK with having me bring it by the store this morning. Jonathan and Bruce's helper were talking trucks and looking under the hood of Jonathan's truck, Bruce and I were chatting, Michael was texting Taylor.  I mentioned having a dairy heifer for sale, so Michael went out with ear corn to lure the cows up next to the fence.  Bruce's helper has a few friends with dairy cows, and said that he'd ask around to see if any of them would be interested.  Jonathan asked Bruce about any possible land to put a few beef cows on, and Bruce had a few leads.  I offered a few of the freshly butchered chickens to Jonathan, and offered some fresh milk to Bruce to take back home (Bruce has hundreds of chickens, so fresh chickens just wouldn't have been the thing to offer!).  After all that work, and having the hay available AND bringing it to us AND helping us unload it into the barn, Bruce still asked "How much do I owe you for that?"  :) A bit more chatting, no real hurry, and Jonathan headed off with one wagon while Bruce headed out with the other. 200 bales of hay, half of it inside the barn, the other half (the good half!) outside the barn, and a few drops of rain began to fall..... Michael and I moved as much as we could before our arms felt like jelly and we were dripping sweat everywhere.  Poor Jeff came home about that point and must have felt like we planned it to leave him to finish everything up as soon as he arrived home. It was a bit of a whirlwind day, but at the end of it all, we had 200 bales of hay in the barn, new contacts for selling a heifer or land to graze cows on (for Jonathan) or a field of alfalfa waiting to be cut by Bruce who can't use alfalfa for his own animals (for us, maybe in August). The prayers of the past few weeks have been:  Please Lord, provide the feed for these animals....and....Please provide a possible buyer for Lucy if we can't get enough hay. We still don't have enough hay for 2 full-grown cows for the full winter.  There is a slight chance that Lucy will find a home with a friend of our new acquaintance who came with Bruce.  A lady contacted me by e-mail this morning, too, asking about the ad I put out there for Lucy.  Despite the exhaustion last night, and the fact that my deal with Michael kept me out until midnight picking him up after the movie, I don't think that my smile could have been any wider, or my gratitude any deeper. Remember that line at the end of Sunday's e-mail?  "I'm attempting to put my worries aside and trust that the cows won't go hungry, or that Lucy will be bought so that we can feed Bess and Ruby, or that a bounty of hay will suddenly and unexpectedly come available at a price we can afford." Was this a bounty of hay that suddenly and unexpectedly came available?  Yes.  Was it a a price we could afford?  Well, if you average the high price with the low price, yes. Does God answer prayer?  Absolutely!

Bessie the Milk Machine

The Milk Machine is in business again. I've been milking Bess once a day since a couple of days BEFORE the calf was born.  The milk has gone from an icky rosy pink color  to a beautiful ivory white.  The rosy color:  broken blood vessels inside her udder as it swung against her back legs pre-delivery.  (It WAS pretty big, and looked uncomfortable to walk with) The white creamy color:  the best milk I've ever tasted! She had been giving a little at a time--one quart, then 2 quarts, then close to a gallon for the past 4 days or so.  Part of that (I think) is that she and I needed to work back into a routine, with Lucy outside, and with Bessie sure that little Ruby wouldn't be in danger if mama Bess concentrated on her bucket of grain for a half hour or so....  Today, if I'd had a second bucket, I think she would have given at least a gallon and a half if not 2.  I had to end at just over a gallon because the bucket was full, and there was lots more waiting to be milked out.  I haven't had to take Ruby (the calf) away from her in order to get milk for the family--she is giving enough for Ruby, for us, and then some.  So it's time to play with milk again, and to satisfy my craving for cream, and whole milk, and home-made stuff with Bessie's delicious milk.  I've made a batch of butter so far, and have a gallon of milk in the Crock Pot right now, making the easy ricotta cheese recipe (one gallon of whole milk, 1 tsp citric acid dissolved in 1/4 cup cool water, stir together in a Crock Pot, let cook on high until the curds separate and the whey is clear rather than "milky".  Then you drain it in cheesecloth and eat it fresh, or refrigerate it, or salt it.....my favorite is a small bowlful of cold ricotta with a scoop of home-made blueberry jam mixed in.)  Yum.....!) So my thought today is to milk all the extra that she is giving, because she is fully capable of feeding Ruby AND giving us 2 gallons a day if I work her up to that (that's probably a conservative estimate, if she can truly give 6 gallons a day at her peak milk output).  I can freeze the extra, or make cheese, or share it with friends who also love her milk.....I'll just have to be prepared to milk a little bit longer to relieve the pressure inside her udder and harvest all that rich raw milk.  ;) The pasture is greening up, and the clover that held on through a month of dry weather is putting out tiny little leaves and even a few flowers.  With rain forecast throughout the next week, we should be OK as far as pasture grass for the cows.  I've been keeping them off of it since the rain on Wednesday night, just to give the pasture plants time to grow the tiniest bit.  The chickens are still not happy to be kept from the "free-ranging" (although truthfully, they have WAY more area to freerange than any bird in a typical chicken farm!).  They'll adjust, and will be happy when they can pick through taller, more lush grass and not the short stubble that's out there now. The hay situation still looks bleak, but the fields that I pass are growing again.  I have ads for Lucy the heifer to be sold in two on-line sites, but no interest so far.  (That's Lucy in the photo above).  I don't really want to sell her, and I think she'd sell better if she was bred or if she'd already had a calf and was being trained as a family milk cow.  (When she's bred would take us until November or December if I can afford the artificial insemination and...ahem..."supplies" for both cows.   When she would have her first calf takes us to fall of 2013!)  We can't keep all 3 cows indefinitely, and the boys agree with me that Ruby the calf and Bessie are the 2 that we want to keep.  If we keep Lucy through the winter, then we need hay for 2 full-grown cows, plus a small amount for baby Ruby who is already starting to grind hay between her baby teeth to see what it tastes like.  For one cow, the guideline I've found is 1 ton to get through the winter.  Not sure how accurate that is, and our cows seem to waste a good part of each bale.  Both cows are going through a little more than one full bale a day (50 pounds or more average per bale, so 25/30+ pounds of hay per cow per day), plus Bess gets alfalfa hay and grain when she is milked.  I think we'd need 400 bales to get both cows through the winter with a little extra.  $5 a bale puts that amount of hay at $2000!!!  I think if money was no object, we'd get about double that in case next year is as dry as this year is, or at least to have more than 18 bales in the hay mow and depleting that supply fast!  Our "hay guy" had promised me 80 bales a couple of weeks ago, but his phone is not accepting new messages.  Hmmm..... Change of topic:  16 of the young roosters or young ducks met their "day of reckoning" yesterday.  A friend came out and took 4 of them, although his method of killing them was something I'll advise against if anyone else comes out to do the dirty deed on our property.  "Humane" was not the way I'd describe it, and it may have been quick, but I think we'll specify that a stump and a sharp axe will be used the next time he comes.  ;(  Plus, he took the headless birds back to his house, 45 minutes away.  I wonder if he had a difficult time getting their feathers pulled after that amount of time. The other 12 were driven to Walworth Wisconsin to the butcher there.  Jeff was gone to Michigan with the boys, and there were too many roosters for us to do even if we'd all been home.  I'm mentally and emotionally stuck at the point of being able to do everything to process birds except the actual act of killing them.  I think that since this was the first time we'd had ducks to butcher, it was a little harder for me than it might have been otherwise. The ducks are the ones which were born right before Easter.  They grew quickly, but never filled out to be very full-bodied.  We separated out the males, who were starting to cause problems and were very flighty and distracting, and the barn is so much quieter and calmer without those 6 ducks dashing all over and getting the other birds agitated whenever I walked in. Back to the hay topic:  Let me just put in a little plea for anyone who might have a friend or contact with extra hay that they'd be willing to sell:  I need to buy at least a ton of it, maybe not all at once because that's a lot of money.  Grass/alfalfa mix would be great, but at this point, grass hay would get the cow(s) through the winter with the minimum amount of nutrition needed.  One friend with a full-size pick-up truck is willing to pick it up and bring it to our farm.  Also:  If anyone knows a farmer or family member or friend who wants a dairy heifer for an eventual milk cow, Lucy is available.....I'd be willing to trade her to a good farm/home in exchange for hay at this point. After today's sermon (5 loaves and 2 fishes, coupled with the 23rd Psalm, and how God will provide all of our needs), I'm attempting to put my worries aside and trust that the cows won't go hungry, or that Lucy will be bought so that we can feed Bess and Ruby, or that a bounty of hay will suddenly and unexpectedly come available at a price we can afford. After all, if God knows every sparrow that falls to the ground, and every lily of the field, He is really the one who is going to provide for the cows' well-being.  My part of that is to be a good steward of them because God has placed them in my care, and follow every lead to buy the hay that might be available, and be a good shepherd who pays attention to their needs both now and for the long winter.  God will ultimately fulfill those needs....right?  Have faith, Laura!  Stop worrying!  ;)  It's all part of the learning process!

Finally....rain!

(Typed on Thursday, July 19) The rain was glorious....spectacular....refreshing.....an answer to LOTS of prayers! It started first Wednesday afternoon, with big fat drops, thunder, but half-sun and half really black clouds.  I pulled up a chair under the trees and didn't care if the rain dripped through the leaves and pine needles.  The raindrops were so big that they were visible as they fell across the 75 acres around our small 2 acres.....  Then it stopped, and I thought that was it.  Still, I was thanking God for an amount that thoroughly wetted the ground, at least for a while. By evening, a bank of very black clouds was on the horizon to the north, and the weather radio confirmed severe weather headed our way.  We've had "severe" weather pass us by numerous times in the last hot-hot-HOT month, so I was skeptical, but prayerful as well.  By the time we sat down to dinner, it was looking like dusk, more than an hour early.  By the time dinner was over, I was headed out to milk Bess and close in the birds for the night.  Getting caught in the barn while a thunder storm raged around it was a real possibility.  I didn't care, and would have been happy to hang out in the barn as wind and rain whipped all around.  The wind had picked up, the black clouds had completely rolled in, and I was back in the house filtering milk before the lighting show started.  It was....amazing....tremendous..... and spectacular, again!  We had settled in to watch a movie, and at one point Jeremy said "The lightning outside is even better than the movie!".  He was right. I made mental notes of where the extension cords were coiled and stored in the barn, did we have the generator ready to go if we needed it, was the small water pump and a hose in the basement in case water started backing up from the drain in the old floor.....and still felt thankful, not anxious. Falling asleep later, the rain was beating on the house.  My feeling was one of exhaustion, but nearly extreme gratefulness for the rain that we've been needing in the area. Once in the night, the power flickered.  There was a bright flash of lightning and the fan tried to give out before the thunder even sounded.  It quickly recovered, and the power stayed on for the rest of the night.  No water in the basement, to my knowledge..... The ground was totally soaked this morning---we had enough rain to wash all the dust and dry leaves down the slope of the driveway.....to flow at a high enough rate down the slope of the yard to expose bits of ancient glass from barn windows that had shattered at one time or another.....to wash the oil and dirt down the sides of the cows until they had orangey stripes at the bottom of their bellies (where the streams of water found their way, carrying all that summer-grossness off of the cows' backs)..... Any buckets or open containers under the overhang of the barn or house were full to overflowing.  Made me wish for some of those 50 gallon barrels to catch as much as possible (no gutters on any of the buildings, so a row of 50 gallon barrels under the drip-line would catch a LOT of water!).  The pasture was soaked enough that the tiniest leaves of clover and alfalfa were greening up and looking promising.  I decided that the chickens and cows would NOT have the run of the pasture until the grass gets a chance to start growing again.  The rush of chickens and geese in the morning was cut short by the poultry netting that I'd hurriedly set up before letting them out.  The frustrated chicken-noises and loud flapping of the geese's wings let me know just how irritated they were that, finally, when there was something worth nibbling at, their normal path to free-ranging was thwarted.  They quickly forgot, though, due to the small size of their brains......and fell to scratching at the newly saturated compost and sparse grass in their own smaller area. The cows don't mind one way or the other.  We gave a few old apples to Bess and Lucy, who had to find out what they were first by taking them and dropping them in the soggy manure, then couldn't get enough of them when we hand-fed them more (they would only eat the clean ones!).  That will have to take the place of munching dried-out grass in the field today, along with green corn husks from the local produce stand. The general feeling today is one of refreshment--I could see it in the faces of people I pass as I ran the errands---smiles instead of dragging heat exhaustion, chatty people instead of worn out and hot people.  Everyone seems to have been revived by the fresh rain and relatively cooler weather. It WAS interesting--just yesterday morning, I had talked to cousin Vonda and her husband Greg in Minnesota, and they had rain all of Wednesday morning.  I said something like "I sure hope that storm is heading our way."  We had rain by that afternoon.  Then, the next day, my brother Marc said that he'd heard that storms were raging all the way in New York.  No idea if the same storm system can sweep across the country that quickly, but it's interesting. The corn this morning (Thursday) didn't look dry and the leaves weren't curled as tightly as a needle:  it looked green, fresh, as if no lack of rain had affected it at all. Made me think of the verse in the Bible:  "Behold, I make all things new".  Everything looked renewed and rejuvenated.  Thanks to our God for providing what we needed the most! Laura.

The price of hay.....

Some thoughts and worries about hay and feeding the cows through the winter on what little is available..... With the lack of rain for almost a full month now, the price of grassy hay is higher even than last year ($4.50 so far this year), and I just paid $8 a bale for alfalfa. (Less than half an inch of rain the other morning.  It was wonderful to wake up to the sound of cars on the wet pavement, smell the wetness in the air, the big cracks in the lawn and pasture swelled shut for just a little while.....but it dried up so quickly and just got humid.  Things did green up just a tiny bit.) The price of alfalfa is what worries me.  For good milk production, Bessie needs alfalfa with each milking, and should probably have more.  At $8 a bale, I only got a dozen bales for almost $100!!!!  Yikes! The cows go through a bale of grassy hay between the two of them each day.  Grassy hay doesn't provide enough nutrition for Bessie, who needs alfalfa to produce the best milk.  A bale of hay is getting up towards $5 now, and that's from our "hay guy" Dan (who works on his own timetable....), who is potentially selling me his last 87 bales of grassy hay from the first cutting.  He's not usually sold out even by the end of the season, but this year I was lucky to be the one to buy the last of what he has.  If we don't get rain soon, what should be the third cutting will be in danger.  The second cutting didn't happen for a lot of hay/alfalfa fields around here.  Dan said that McHenry county is in danger of needing to truck hay in from other areas of the country, like Texas had to do last year.  So let's compute the necessary hay for the winter and next spring: I have 24 bales in the barn.  That takes us through possibly to mid-August.  The 87 grass bales will give less nutrition but will still be food, in case there is no third cutting and the prices sky-rocket some more for trucked-in hay.  Approximately 3 more months taken care of, if I figure in a flake or two of alfalfa for Bess to supplement her dried-grass intake.  That's only until mid-November.  Not nearly enough to get us through to next spring and the first cutting of hay (in May, I think).  Scary..... I could have the mill mix up a supplement with grain, alfalfa meal or pellets, and other stuff to compensate for the lack of nutritious hay, but I don't think it would be cost-effective in the long run. It puts a bit of reality in what we've decided to do here.  We know we don't have enough land to support even the grazing needs of even one cow, let alone the hay we'll need to supplement that very scant fresh grazing.  We knew it when we made the decision to try having a milk cow and a young heifer back in December.  We now have 2 adult cows (although the one-year old heifer still doesn't eat QUITE as much as Bessie the milk-machine) plus a baby who will be eating hay soon.  We said from the beginning that 2 cows would be the maximum number that we would keep.  The general consensus is that, if we can't afford the hay or can't buy enough, Lucy (the heifer) will need to be listed on Craigslist or BestFarmBuys.  It's a hard call in some ways, easy in others.  Bessie is the older cow, and at 8 is still producing milk but certainly doesn't have the years ahead of her that Lucy does.   Bess is a proven milk-producer, and now she's proved that she can easily have a calf and care for it, plus providing almost a gallon a day for the family in addition to what Ruby is drinking.  She'll give more as Ruby needs less, and as I continue to milk her regularly, up to 5 or 6 gallons a day (if I want to do that much milking, which I don't)  If we want to try for the Dutch Belted "breeding up" program, (where with each new calf's breeding at the age of 1 1/2 or 2 the percentage of Dutch Belt genetics get closer to 99% and can be registered as such) Bess is the one to keep.  She has official papers that document that she is 75% Dutch Belt.  But the idea would be we keep her until her next calf is able to have an even higher percent DB calf, and then Bessie is sold and we keep the calf.  (Ruby is half Holstein, so that concept doesn't work quite so well for keeping her). Lucy is younger but is almost ready to be bred.  She is still untamed to a certain extent but certainly is accustomed to being around people.  She just doesn't like to be handled unless it involves brushing.  She is trying to establish dominance now.  Nothing major, but I don't like Bessie the boss cow being challenged by Lucy the young upstart.  Lucy is not bred yet, and not producing milk.  She's not tried-and-true....yet.  Lucy's value is OK now (I think!), but could possibly be better if we could advertise her as a "bred heifer" in a few months, maybe even better if she could be sold as a family milk cow a year from now, but we might not have the time to wait for her to get to that point.  (These are all based on my inexperienced guesses.) Lucy would come with the advice to a potential new owner "You'll have to work with her if you want her to become a good family cow" (I'd have to do a lot of research and ask a lot of questions so that we could get her to that point, too).  And Lucy is half Dutch Belt, but doesn't have any papers or registration, so in the breeding up program, she would be considered the same as any non-Dutch-Belt cow--starting at square one. Ruby might sell more quickly, because she's so young, and she could be bought for less (better value for a farmer, maybe?).  A bottle-fed 2 week old heifer calf was just listed on Craigslist for $200.  No telling if that's what it will really sell for. Someone might be interested in buying Ruby for a 4-H project, or to raise as a dairy cow, or to even try to put on their own milk-cow to be raised by another cow-mom.  Maybe she's already too old for that last one.  A lot of these are guesses on my part, too, having never been through needing to sell one of our cows. We all agree that out of the three, Bess is the most important to us right now, because our milk source is with her.  Lucy has more value than Ruby at this point, because of how much closer she is to being bred, and having a calf, and possibly being a milking cow or even a family cow.  Being bred and being fed until she has a calf involve more hay and more money than we have to work with at the moment. Ruby, though, is the cutest by far, gets along with Bessie, is eating far less food than Lucy, and has the potential of being trained by us to be the kind of cow we would like to have eventually (or the kind of cow we'd be happy to eventually pass on to another family).  Ruby's pedigree is less-than-stellar if we're looking for good Dutch Belted genetics, though.  Bess the mom is 75%, but the bull father was Holstein (I'm pretty sure), so Ruby is less than half Dutch Belt.  Not a problem if she becomes a wonderful milk-cow in 2 years or so, but we really like the idea of breeding towards that higher and higher percentage as we go.  Keeping Ruby for that purpose puts us back at square 1 instead of working with Bessie's genetics of 75%. One other twist:  We bought Lucy and Bessie together, because, if we were needing to A.I. (artificially inseminate) in the future and not bring the cows to a bull, cows would indicate quite obviously when each other is in heat.  So if we sell Lucy too soon, then it will be more difficult to determine when to have the vet come out for Bessie's pregnancy deposit. Sigh....too much to think about.  The price of hay may decide it.  If friends or family still want the extra milk, the donations from what they pick up here on the farm may help the costs a bit and give us more money to put towards hay (again, assuming that there is hay to buy!).  It's a bunch of kind of random thoughts to try to figure out what to do and how to go about it.  Sorry if it's confusing--it's kind of confusing to keep it all straight in my own head, too! Reality seems to be what we knew from the start--we simply can't afford or support more than 2 cows, and that's really stretching it as it is.  We don't have the grazing land for even one.  We will always have to buy hay and grain unless the land around us comes available at a time when God provides the money we would need to rent or purchase more acres. It will be hard to say goodbye to any of the 3 ladies, no matter when or how.  Maybe we list Lucy on Craigslist, go ahead with A.I. breeding plans when we have the money and when it's time, and keep listing her until a buyer steps forward......We'll see how things fall into place, I guess! Sad, but necessary, and out of the 3 cows back behind the barn right now, Lucy is the best candidate to move on to another farm so that we can feed the remaining 2, unless I'm missing something. Sigh!   Reality.....!  And I guess on a real farm, the inevitable turnover of types of crops and of animals and everything else is just part of life as you deal with successful years and not-so-successful growing periods.

Helicopter mom

Bess instantly became a "helicopter mom" when Ruby was born last week.  I thought it might ease up a bit as the calf got past the hours-old stage, but Bess is still surprising me with her over-attentiveness.  Any time little Ruby kicks up her heels, Bess is instantly on the alert, mooing, trotting over, and basically, well......"hovering".  If the dogs are outside the electric cow-pen fence, Bess moos to Ruby and trots over to stand guard.  If the chickens make a commotion while I'm milking Bess, she swings her big head around, realizes that she can't see her precious baby, and lumbers backward out of the stanchion while milk continues to stream out of her full udder. I was telling Jeff that it's like some moms at playgrounds who can't let their child just play.  "Careful, Ruby, that chicken might GET you",  "Careful, Ruby, there's a step there--don't trip", "Careful Ruby, you don't want to get your pretty fur dirty now, do you?", "Careful Ruby, that fence might SHOCK you!", "Careful Ruby, if you run I might not be able to keep track of you, and we all know how bad THAT would be."  Bess is just doing what ages of mother cows had to do to keep their children alive, but it's funny to see (and hear!) the watchfulness that is part of Bessie's mothering. Ruby IS like a kid on a playground.  Think of all the kids on playgrounds everywhere who can't walk, they have to run.  It's like a switch is turned on and they're either going full-speed or sleeping.  That's Ruby.  She doesn't trot serenely like Bess and Lucy, Ruby has to RUN!  You'd be surprised how fast a week-old calf can be! The manure pile is her favorite spot.  If there was a dirt pile on a playground, the kids wouldn't have any choice but to scamper to the top of it.  Ruby HAS to be on top of the manure pile.  Bess moos, Ruby frolics, Lucy looks on with great interest, Ruby trots around for another run at the pile.  She's King of the Hill, but there's no other calf to vie for that position or try to butt her off. Just this afternoon, Bessie came out of the cow pen and into the pasture for the first time since Ruby was born.  Ruby was zooming around the pasture like a speeding comet!  Bess was trying hard to enjoy her grazing, but finally she gave one tired "Moo", rounded Ruby up, and all 3 cows trudged back into the safety of the cow-pen.  (At least the depth of the manure is dwindling out there, as we rake up all the dry and scratched-fine bits of cow-pie and hay and use it to fill the holes that the dogs have dug in the pasture.) Ruby has tried to dash at or romp with chickens, and it just doesn't work.  The chicken gets all frantic and dashes off with a lot of aggravated clucking and flapping of its wings.  No playmate for little Ruby.....  Rocky likes to "play" with Lucy, who responds with running and bucking in a playful way.  Maybe Rocky will be the closest thing to a playmate to little Ruby when she gets bigger.  Bessie hasn't let the dogs get anywhere near her baby, which is probably a good thing until Ruby weighs about double what the dogs weigh. I don't know yet how the artificial insemination will work with Bessie and Lucy this fall.  I had thought that we might only want one of them pregnant at one time.  Makes sense--one calf at a time, one cow to milk at a time, one pregnant cow to stress over instead of two.......and I'm not trying to kid myself.  I'll be every bit as anxious about Lucy's first calf as I was about Bessie's delivery of Ruby. We might not be able to afford having even ONE of them impregnated--it's a sizable extra cost on top of the hay that we need to buy for their daily needs.  It might take the eventual sale of Ruby to pay for the articifial insemination costs which would result in the next calf/calves.  I'm thinking again about only letting one at a time have a calf, though. Not that a calf NEEDS to have a playmate, but it would be so amazingly cute to see two little black-and-white comets streaking around in the pasture.  Plus, Lucy tried so hard to adopt Ruby (lack of milk was a contributing factor to Ruby sticking with her real mom, thank goodness!).  Lucy actually exhibited signs of WANTING to act in a maternal way.  If either Bessie or Lucy is serviced by the vet (for lack of a more sensitive word), we'll have to start with Lucy anyway, because it doesn't make sense to keep feeding a 1 1/2 year old heifer without the goal of a calf and the milk that comes along with it.  Not sure how it would be to have double helicopter-moms out there a year from now, though.  It might be too much stressful bovine mothering for our little cow-pen and one-acre pasture to hold in!

Random bits of info

Just some updates and items of interest: Bats:  Out in the pasture last night so the dogs could run, one little bat kept fluttering above the open area.  I had just seen a yard where a telephone pole stood with no lines running to it, only a bat house at the top of it.  We have an empty telephone pole by the chicken coop--probably for when they intended to run electricity from the house to the coop.  I'm going to have Michael help me with getting our bat house installed up there. Geese:  The geese are old enough that their little gosling noises have given way to ear-splitting honks.  The noisy ducks were annoying before, but that pales in comparison to when a goose just lets loose with a resounding "HONK!"  Almost sounds prehistoric! Bessie:  Poor Bess is having trouble with the back quarter of her udder (one udder, 4 quarters, each quarter has a "teat").  It was always tricky to milk, but now I see that baby Ruby is having trouble getting milk from that one, too.  Bess wouldn't let me milk it at all yesterday, and I saw her flinching away as Ruby tried to get milk from that one. Ruby:  Speaking of getting milk, Michael and I watched in horrified amazement as Ruby nursed yesterday.  She head-butts Bessie's udder so hard that Bess's whole body rocks.  And poor Bess with that hard and inflamed quarter--no WONDER she flinched when Ruby jammed her nose hard into a sore spot.  ;( Halters:  We are determined to halter-break Ruby.  It's become even more of a problem that Bess and Lucy aren't halter-broken.  Milking is a dance of which-cow-goes-where, when-do-I-try-to-milk-Bess, how-do-I-keep-her-where-I-want-her, where-can-I-isolate-Lucy-so-she-doesn't-interrupt-the-milking-session..... Michael and I made rope halters, with varying lengths of "lead" (the rope between the halter and the loop that we hold).  Ruby definitely inherited every speck of Bessie's stubbornness.  The first time the halter was on her, she refused to get off the ground but just went limp.  The second time, she planted all fours, pulled with all of her 85+ pounds, and Michael pulled back with all of his teenage-boy strength.  Not evenly matched, but soon will be!  Ruby needs to walk nicely on a lead and let us tie her where we want her, or it will be crazy trying to use any of these 3 cow ladies as milkers.  I'm working with Bessie, too, and it's not as bad as I thought it would be (meaning I haven't gotten kicked yet, or butted backwards into a pile of manure).  Bessie and Ruby wore their rope halters all day yesterday, and at least Ruby's is still on her this morning.  Kind of cute last night--Ruby knew that I wanted to grab the end of that lead, and she did her little calf-gallop to keep just far enough away so that I couldn't reach her.  When I gave up in exasperation, she trotted right over to sniff my hand. Fly-eating-chickens:  The chickens are loving the cow pies this time of year.  What a great combination--the cows leave enormous droppings, the flies try to lay their eggs, and the chickens scratch a cow-pie into tiny little bits in no time.  (The cow-pies left earlier in the spring are still smothering the grass under themselves).  The whole flock rushes into the cow pen as soon as they're let out of the barn each morning, and make quick work of scattering any big ploppers into tiny little shreds.  Gross, but they're getting bits of grain AND flies.  That's half their diet right there! Cow-bird chickens:  Two of the younger chicks have decided that they will hang out with the cows and pick flies right off their bodies.  They run to the cows first thing in the morning and don't leave until it's time to roost at night.  One little white chick hasn't quite gotten the hang of it yet, and the flies get away before his little beak reaches where they were.  He's determined, though, and must be getting enough to stay around, because he doesn't leave his post all day. Garden:  Sad, sad, sad.  What's growing is fine.  Strawberries are putting out runners, green beans have given us a few handfuls of beans, corn is actually growing despite the dry weather.  There are blossoms on the squash and cucumber plants.  This accounts for about half of what was planted.  Some was just dried up as soon as it sprouted, some never sprouted because I was using up my old seeds.  Jeremy saw the beans and was excited until he found out that they aren't peas.  The garden needs much more work next spring to be something that will provide us with a larger portion of the food our family eats. Corn:  Bessie's new favorite treat is fresh corn.  I got some nice corn from a farm stand for not too much money.  Bess eats the husks, then as a bonus she gets to munch the juicy corn.  That's how I'll break her to the halter--by bribing her with fresh corn! Well, time to get the shovel out and move a few wheelbarrows-full of manure.  Joy! Laura.

Bessie speaks

Pre-calf, Bessie did maybe one "moo", and I can't even remember for definite that she did.  Lucy sometimes lets a moo escape, and one time I even shrieked, because it was so unexpected.  The cows simply aren't that noisy for a large animal.  (The geese and ducks on the other hand.....they could be sent packing for all the noise they make, if I didn't like them so much!) Good mom that Bessie is turning out to be, she is carrying a running conversation with the calf.  All sorts of "moos", from anxious and urgent (when the calf slipped through the turned-off electric wires around the cow pen) to soothing and reassuring (when the newborn calf tripped and landed in the dirt), to warning (when the dogs try to peer in through the triple-strand electric wire fence and get too close to Bessie's baby). I have to say, both dogs are terrified to get too close, so there must be some underlying tone in that moo-ing that says to a predator "I'll get nasty with you if I need to, don't even think about tempting me or I'll take you out!" Michael has named the calf "Ruby", which is a really cute name for her.  "Sparkle" or "Sparkie" were my ideas, but Michael is supposed to be taking care of this calf.  The eventual idea is that when we eventually sell her, Michael can use some of that money to pay for teenage-boy driver's insurance.  So "Ruby" it is. Milking Bess was a joy last night.  It made me remember the first few times that I tried to milk her, unwilling as she was back in January.  This time, the reason was different, but my frustration was the same.  Her sweet little Ruby was curled up and sound asleep on a pile of dry manure, and no amount of prodding or rattling grain in the bucket would persuade Bess to actually walk away from her baby.  I had to hoist Ruby up off the ground, guide her into the milking room, get Bess to follow, and then close the door after all 3 of us were inside.  Bess immediately went into the stanchion to munch her grain, and Ruby curled up to take another baby-nap.  Bess mooed a few times to make sure Ruby was nearby.  ;) I truly love watching farm mamas with their babies.  The hens with their little chicks, the duck with her ducklings, and now Bessie with Ruby.  Even if the mothering techniques aren't all the same, there is an obvious God-given maternal instinct that makes me smile every time. Ruby should be the last baby for a while.  No hens on nests, no dogs or cats capable of having babies, no ducks trying to set up housekeeping this late in the summer.  It's OK, and I have to admit that the anxiety that I sometimes feel is greater when there are farm animal babies to keep track of.  I think that the absence of farm babies all winter will make it that much sweeter when the babies start making their appearance next spring. Welcome, little Ruby, and thanks to God for a healthy calf, an uneventful delivery, and a wonderfully attentive Bessie! Laura.