Tons of chicken feed

I've been ordering and picking up feed from a mill in Union, about 25 minutes southwest of here (also where the train museum and Wild West museum are).  Not much else there (in the words of Eddie at the mill, "There are 3 or 4 bars and not much else"). Feed is mixed by the mill, at the mill, and is less expensive than regular feed store bags (50 pounds, brand-name:  Kent, Prince, Nutrena) with less preservatives.  The ingredients?  Cracked corn, oats, alfalfa meal, soy meal, bone meal (for protein), vitamins and minerals for a laying hen's diet, and oyster shell.  The chickens love it.  I like saving $4 a bag.  It's nice to know how to pronounce all of the ingredients in the mix.....  I buy 500 pounds at a time, equaling 10 bags weighing roughly 50 pounds each.  We tend to go through a bag a day, but I know that some of that is powder that gets lost in the bedding, too.  The downside:  I don't like having to drive that far, although it's not really THAT much farther than going to Harvard, just seems like it.  And the chickens are laying about a dozen LESS eggs a day on the mill-mix, which means that the difference in feed price is not making that much difference in the long run (because if the egg-laying was still at 3 dozen a day, we'd be more than breaking even, but as it is, 24 eggs a day is breaking even despite the lower-price of the feed!) One week I showed up earlier than I'd told them, and we had to kill an hour while they mixed our feed (hence the comment about the bars and "not much else".) Last week was the first real glitch.  I'd called like usual to put in my order 2 days earlier.  I showed up as agreed on to pick up the order.  I walked in the door, and Eddie looked at me and said "Laura!".  I knew something was not quite right.  He went on to explain that the auger inside the mixer (not sure of terms, here) was broken or jammed.  He had other orders that hadn't gotten mixed.  He mentioned to the other customer in the store that so-and-so from someplace-familiar would need to bring his crane to get it fixed.  The other customer seemed to know the code that Eddie was speaking in..... I asked "Don't you have my cell phone number?" Eddie replied "I could have looked it up in caller ID, sure.  I didn't think of it in the commotion of the morning.  I should have called you."  The other guy in the store was pointedly watching both of us to see what the reactions would be. Grrr......  I'd been in the car doing other errands all of that morning, and had driven out of the way to pick up the feed before heading back the OTHER direction to get Jeremy from school.  A wasted trip, probably over an hour of time that could have been spent doing something productive. Anyway, Eddie sold me 5 bags of Kent feed (good stuff, normally $15 a bag) for the price of the mill's laying-hen mix.  A fair suggestion......and the least he could do.....and it might convince me to give the hens half-Kent and half-mill feed, to boost egg production.  Money lost on his part, in the long run, because I'd buy Kent feed from the Harvard store and not from the mill. I asked Eddie as I left if he was sure the mix would be done by noon today if I drive back out there.  He suggested calling first.  I haven't done that yet.  I should have bought 10 bags of Kent feed at the lower price and not bothered with adding another trip to the mill to what I have to do this week. This week I'll need to pick up pasture seed in Harvard, and pick Jeremy up daily at 2:10, and slog through manure to spread it on the field before seeding the field (it's not that hard, because the chickens have nicely scratched it into little dry peat-moss style pieces), and work on the cow-pen's new shelter, and whatever else presents itself as the "task at hand" (maybe getting caught up with laundry or giving a bathroom a thorough cleaning--a novel idea!!!).....and it's Jeff's birthday today, although we're celebrating on Sunday because that's when the older kids can be here. Well, better call Eddie and see what the story is for today.  Shouldn't be a problem if they have it mixed and I DON'T get out there until tomorrow....considering that they have the room to store it AND that other, bigger orders will be filled before mine anyway.  Surprisingly, the chickens have gone through much less feed than when I give them the mill mix, so I might not be saving ANY money in the long run.  Sigh.... There's mozzarella curdling on the stove (I think the correct word is "coagulating"), butter waiting to be made, a kitchen to finish cleaning (the weekend mess was a mess-on-top-of-a-mess, despite my best efforts), and laundry to tame.....and it will all get done, at some point or another, if I just remind myself not to allow that "overwhelmed" feeling to get me down!  Laura http://dykstrasfarm.blogspot.com/

Chicky characters

(Photos:  Chicks from the preschool hatch in May--as new arrivals at the farm and half-way through the summer.  "Chump" is one of the smaller brown ones in the last photo.) It's funny.  I'm not writing about leaves changing color, or cooler weather, but about the sound of little chicken feet running on and eagerly scratching in dry leaves on the ground.  For the past few years, that's been a new feature of autumn.....for me anyway.  In Palatine, I would have the patio door open and could hear the little "scritch, scritch, scritch" of chicken claws digging through the dry leaves.  Here I have the French doors open to bring some of the delightful cooler air into the house, and it caught me by surprise---the same chicken-scratching noise that I had forgotten.  The ones I'm hearing now are from Marlene's preschool hatch in May.  They are 4 months old or so, about half-way grown, and still small enough to hop through the livestock fence and run wild through the acre surrounding our house and garage (and it's truly a WILD area--overgrown where I haven't gotten to ripping weeds out or taming wild blackberry thickets.  They have plenty of places to forage, and plenty of places to hide in the case of a hawk flying overhead).  Sometimes guests will pull into the driveway and announce "Do you know that your chickens are right next to the road?!!!"  Usually that means that the younger group is in the ditch, scratching for whatever yummy stuff they can find there.  I don't panic anymore when I hear how close to the traffic they are...... Back to the story:  It's one thing to hear them scratching in wood chips or on dry ground or gravel when they aren't supposed to be out, but it is totally endearing to hear them in the dry leaves, scratching here and there for little bugs or bits of food.  Doesn't really make sense, does it? One other little guy is fun to watch each morning.  He's a Rhode Island White or maybe a White Plymouth Rock (they came in the same batch of eggs from E-bay, and hatched together in late May/early June).  Every morning when I go out to milk Bessie, he is right there ready to eat all the sleepy flies that aren't moving quickly yet.  He hops up to where Bess is munching her grain and steals bits of oats or corn, picks flies off of Ruby's stall with no effort at all, or stands on tiptoe to peck a fly off of Bessie's leg while I'm milking her.  Today he even pecked a few times at my jeans, and I knew that there must have been a fly or two that landed on me (hopefully he got them!)  Bess doesn't pay any attention to him, but little Ruby gets a bit frisky and tries to play.  A big calf playing with a little white chicken isn't a fair match, and the little guy usually gives a baby-style squawk and hurries out of Ruby's stall.  The cows accept this little one, but Bess snorts in annoyance if any other chicken tries to steal her feed at milking time.  It's too bad that the "he" is not a "she", because the fate of all the boy chicks is pretty much sealed, no matter how cute or endearing they may be..... One boy chick that we may make an exception for (although all the existing chickens on the farm have a short life-span expectancy because of the respiratory sickness they all seem to be carrying) is called "Chump".  He is from Marlene's hatch and runs with the laugh-in-the-face-of-traffic-danger crowd.  Chump is always very brave and comes right up for either a bit of sandwich or whatever else we were eating, or to peck at my toenail polish or at a red mosquito bite on anyone's leg....he made a real pest of himself when a church group was here last Saturday and he was overly bold in demanding people-food.  Sometimes it's obvious which chicks were hatched in a classroom and handled a lot!  Chump was hopping on one foot at the end of summer, and we caught him to find out why.  One leg was grossly swollen and purple, and he couldn't put any weight on his foot.  His leg-joint was completely swollen and bruised.  That was enough for us to make a pet out of him.  Jeremy was able to scoop him up easily for about a week after that, and we would set him on the picnic table or on a hay bale and feed him the choice bits of grain or bread, while the other chickens had to scratch in the straw or grass for theirs.  Jeremy would make nests of hay for him, and he'd snuggle down and sleep in comfort while he was recovering.  I called him "Hop-a-long", but the name "Chump" stuck instead. Gradually the swelling went down, but his leg still seemed to bend at an odd angle for a few weeks more if he stepped on it wrong.  No idea how he was injured, but now his leg seems to be healed.  He is still bold, and comes up to beg with urgent little cheeps when I'm scooping cow feed.  I'm soft-hearted enough to toss some grain out to the other chickens and then furtively give him a little pile where the others can't see, and he's tame enough to wait for that special ration and gobble it up before the others know what is happening. Again, he's a male.....Jeremy has asked if we could keep him....we'll see how long that lasts.  It's just too bad that the young hens aren't the ones that we get attached to! Laura http://dykstrasfarm.blogspot.com/

House(s) and farm update

Photos:  The progress in painting the farmhouse, and--the latest window to be removed from the barn The house in Palatine did not sell.  I must have forgotten to post anything about that.  The inspection resulted in the buyer backing out because of something he didn't like about the windows.  The windows in the house are fine....the buyer was seeming flakier and flakier as time went on.  We were starting to wonder if it would fall through. His mail was already being addressed to our Palatine address, before he even signed the contract.  Jeff took the mail and left it on the kitchen counter, where the prospective buyer would need to have his real estate agent unlock the door for him in order to get it.  Potentially, with our mail still being delivered to OUR address, this buyer would have been going through our mail in our own mailbox to retrieve whatever he thought he needed to have sent there.  I went so far as to have the mail held for us at the post office, but the contract was unraveling by then anyway. When the contract was canceled, we found out that he had only put $1000 down as his deposit.  We wouldn't have agreed to that if our real estate agent had told us the amount.  Doesn't seem like an amount that someone who is serious about buying a house would bother with--if you truly plan to buy the house, you'll be prepared to pay the expected down-payment and not mess around, right? Next, we hired a rental agent, and had 3 contracts to look over by the end of the next weekend.  We went with one family who the agent suggested, and they were going to move in by Sept 15.  Nope....the dad will be in Korea (I think!) for quite a while, unexpectedly....so they don't want to move in after all.  We then found out that they had never signed the contract!  At least they offered (through the rental agent) to pay half of the security deposit that they would have needed to pay, but still.....the other 2 contracts were for families who would have moved in by Sept 1st. So now there are a few more interested renters, according to the rental agent.  He has the incentive to get people in there, because he doesn't get paid unless there are actually renters in the house.  We'll see.... I am SO glad that we didn't decide to try to find and manage renters on our own!!! Farmhouse:  Jeff has been hard at work painting the trim and adding a cheery yellow over the old weathered house-color.  You can see in one of the photos where the new paint contrasts with the old faded paint. Michael has been helping by power-washing the green mildew off of the siding, and blasting the accumulated dirt off of the white trim.  We discovered that at some point, interior paint must have been brushed over the original yellow paint, and it just peels off in sheets, or blasts into paint-splinters under the power-washer's pressure.  It's a much-needed facelift, and just in time to protect the cedar siding from the wetness of winter. Barn:  Jeff shored-up the rat-gnawed supports that I uncovered in the barn wall, and the first sheet of siding is in place.  Then the most incredible storm blew in, and we were very glad that the open side of the barn was covered in tarps for the night.  Jeff is out of town for a few days, so the barn work will be whatever we are able to do while he's away. My parents have some windows that they are bringing this weekend, and, if they are close to the right size, that old window-opening (and others on the front of the barn) will soon have a used but new-to-the-barn window to fill the void. Hay:  Michael and now Jeremy have been hard-at-work moving bales of hay from the first floor to the hay-loft upstairs.  Chris and Michael rigged up a pulley system that hoists a 50+ pound bale of hay up through the hay chute and to the second floor.  It still takes a bit of time, but (with 2 people), it's much faster than heaving bale after bale up the rickety stairs and around the corner to the hay loft! Progress! Laura http://dykstrasfarm.blogspot.com/

Rat damage over 100 years

We need to make a 3 sided shelter for the cows.  It will be on the most weathered side of the barn--the southwest corner, near the silo. With the milking stanchion and Ruby's stall in the barn add-on on the north side of the silo, there's a real need to keep the cows out of there during the day and even during the night.  Each morning before I can milk Bessie, the cows need to be shooed out and I scrape out the manure from the night.  Because the cows are outside and the barn door is shut, the manure and soggy straw goes in a pile next to the door.  That manure pile, in turn, needs to be shoveled into the wheelbarrow later in the morning and moved out onto the manure pile in the pen.  I COULD bring the wheelbarrow into the barn to put the manure in at first, but then I run the risk of an overly eager-to-be-milked Bessie overturning the steaming mess as she heads into the barn and to the stanchion where her grain waits.  Either way, I'm shoveling it twice. On nice days, they don't go in there very much unless I leave hay inside for them.  Wherever they stand to munch on their hay ration, there will be piles of waste.  Some days, they choose to hang out in there ALL DAY, leaving a soggy stinking fly-infested mess on the floor that again has to be shoveled out before they would sleep on their own manure all night.  (Another reason to shovel again before night-time--Bessie has such a fondness for resting her udder in fresh manure.  If I can eliminate just a small amount of that, the udder-cleaning is SO MUCH EASIER the next day!) So, the idea is.....their barn space is on the north side of the silo.  Their pen extends to the southwest corner of the barn, on the other side of the silo.  The distance from the silo walk-way (which is built in as part of the barn) to the south corner is over 20 feet.  The shelter will extend from the wall of the silo walk-way to 14 feet along the side of the barn.  Seven or 8 feet out from the side of the barn, 14 feet long along the side of the barn, with rough-cut boards from the 3rd floor of the barn making up the partial siding under the 6 foot high outside edge. The shelter will have a roof coming out from the barn at about 8 feet up, sloping down to 6 feet or so at the outside edge.  There will be an entrance to the south side.    Then, because there are no gutters on any of our buildings, the roof of this shelter will act as a down-spout of sorts, so that the rain running down from the barn roof hits the roof of the shelter and is deposited neatly into a row of rain barrels, which will be strategically placed under the drip-line of the shelter's roof. The purposes of the shelter?  To give the cows some protection from the weather, to keep them out of the stanchion and milking area until I need to let them in, to allow them to bed down on straw which is on dirt rather than concrete (the urine and liquid wastes should soak into the dirt underneath the straw to a certain degree, instead of pooling and soaking all of the bedding on top of concrete) and to give me some space to work and set up the milking items without pushy cows trying to get a mouthful of yummy grain or alfalfa hay while I'm trying to squeeze past them (a recipe for disaster and injury!)  With the straw bedding in the shelter being built up gradually all winter (thanks to Russ for this idea that I filed away to consider later!), the bedding will be back-breakingly shoveled out in the spring, but not every single day or even twice a day. Back to what I was starting to describe with the rats.  We think our barn was built in the 1920's, based on some history I've found and the type of structure and amount of cows it could have handled a hundred years ago.  It was a dairy barn, originally set up for milking a herd of cows, whose milk would be sent to the creamery in Greenwood to be made into butter. The woodworker who lived here 15 or 20 years ago almost certainly re-made quite a bit of the barn, including siding.  He made it into his workshop, complete with dry-walled interior walls, a huge furnace, and a large room on the second floor of what used to be a full-sized hay loft.  He sprayed expanding-foam insulation into the wall spaces of the first floor, between the outside siding and the inside dry-wall (makes sense, if he was going to run a furnace to heat the place). Fast-forward to 15-20 years later, and we are taking out the old barn-siding because of weather damage and replacing it with "reverse board and batten plywood siding" (just the section that the cows' shelter will be next to--the rest will be either traditional board-and-batten or the ship-lap boards like it is now) .  We KNOW that there are rats in the insulation, because I found one in a different barn room last fall and instinctively chopped at it with a shovel before it squeaked and escaped.  (For every rat you see, you should expect that there are at least 20 more---I read that somewhere).  And today, I uncovered a LOT of rat tunnels.  And a LOT of rat damage to the vertical supports in the wall AND the sill boards at the base of the wall.  I have to admit, I don't really know which supports are the most important, like which ones are load-bearing and which ones aren't quite as necessary to keep the whole barn standing.  But when I uncover what used to be a tunnel for a huge rat in the foam insulation (starting at the bottom of the wall and winding up through the expanse of that section), and then find that the tunnel leads up and THROUGH the rotted board at the top of the wall and INTO the floor supporting-boards for the second floor, I'm a little worried.  Some of these rat-sized tunnels are thicker than my arm.  I think the only reason we haven't had the weasels coming in to kill the chickens is that the drywall is still whole and intact inside! In some places, the double or triple sill boards are rotted away to the point that a regular sized brick can just be slid right in, on top of the concrete foundation and under the boards that didn't rot quite so badly.  The rats took full advantage of that soft wood and at one time had quite the colony there, I'm sure.  Luckily, I didn't find any nests or tunnels that had been inhabited lately! Jeff will have to look at things tonight, and we'll need to prioritize which supports or sill boards need to be replaced and which will have to wait until we rip out the dry wall on the inside of the same wall.  When the vet was out on Saturday for Lucy to be bred and dehorning little Ruby, we had a conversation about how things on a farm are a "lesson in constant crisis management".  Well, the newest crisis (100 year old rat damage!) is waiting to be addressed before we can proceed with the planned cow shelter....... Laura http://dykstrasfarm.blogspot.com/ You are invited to view Laura's photo album: 2012-09-04 Rat damage, Sept 2012 2012-09-04 Rat damage, Sept 2012 Sep 3, 2012 by Laura View Album Play slideshow If you are having problems viewing this email, copy and paste the following into your browser: https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/sredir?uname=dykstrazoo1&target=ALBUM&id=5784382124951626481&authkey=Gv1sRgCIizuYGj-u_M9AE&feat=email To share your photos or receive notification when your friends share photos, get your own free Picasa Web Albums account.

Lucy's jail time

Photos:  The round metal "feeder" Lucy got herself in a bit of a tight spot this morning. I noticed when I went in to milk Bessie that both cows were eating at the round metal feeder, meant for the large round bales of hay.  I toss their hay in there, because it's SUPPOSED to keep their hay in one spot and not waste so much of the expensive stuff.  Like typical cows, they have their own ideas and usually push the whole feeder around inside the pen so that they can get their mouths on the tiny alfalfa leaves (before they deign to munch on stems or grassy bits). This morning, Lucy must have been feeling a bit more ambitious, because her front legs were INSIDE the feeder and she was contentedly munching with half of her body inside the ring. No problem, whatever, she got in, she could get back out.  I went about preparing for milking Bessie.  Bessie was called, Lucy was still munching, and Ruby was waiting expectantly in the stall.  Bessie trotted right in with the usual 2 purposes in mind--FOOD and RELIEF.  I settled in to cleaning her filthy udder (somehow she always seems to sleep with her udder in fresh manure) and then to milking. Things were going smoothly--little Ruby was munching her corn-on-the-cob in the stall, and licking the air in the direction of Bessie.  (She had not outsmarted me this morning, and all of Bessie's milk was where it's supposed to be at that point of day:  still in Bessie's udder.  Sometimes Bess and Ruby must conspire against me, and one or more quarter will be deflated before I milk Bess.  Then little Ruby is not quite so anxious to drink from Bessie--meaning--Bessie stood close to the side of the stall, and Ruby stretched her neck out of the stall far enough to nurse BEFORE we got our morning milk.)  Like I said, things were going smoothly.... I was almost done when I heard the loud sound of something heavy banging on metal.  Bessie looked up and then went back to her munching.  Again, and louder.  I realized that Lucy was caught inside the ring out in the pen, but I couldn't just stop milking, so I continued. Suddenly, crash, clang, thunk, as if the whole feeder was being rolled down a rocky hill.  Bessie looked up in alarm, Ruby kicked the side of the stall, and I scooted the milk pail out of harm's way.  Even closer, CLUNK as if it was right outside the door.  Bessie took a few steps back and moo'd a warning to Ruby, who moo'd a baby moo back.  Lucy did her usual freaked-out mooOOOOO right outside the door--temper tantrum or panic?  Hard to tell. I imagined that she was trapped in the ring, touching the electric fence and getting a continuous shock that she couldn't get away from.  Still, the door was shut to the milking area, and Bessie was still in the stanchion.  I wasn't free to leave just yet.  The "emergency" with Lucy would have to be taken care of after the job-at-hand was completed.  (She wouldn't have been electrocuted, just shocked a bit if she touched the metal). One more bump-crash-bang, and all 3 cows moo-ed at the same time, at high volume.  I rescued the milk pail and shut it inside the door to the main barn.  (No panic on my part, just "Well, another cow thing to deal with", kind of ho-hum, shrug the shoulders and see what we have to deal with.)  Opened the sliding door to the outside.  Bessie was ready to charge out the door with baby Ruby in tow, so I had to watch her big bulk to make sure I wouldn't be squashed. There was Lucy, tail tucked, bawling like a little calf, and surrounded by the metal ring-feeder right outside the door.  The feeder is usually in the opposite corner of the pen, slightly uphill from where she was now.  Lucy had probably bucked, kicked, and then ran with the feeder clunking all around her as she panicked. Tried to lure her out with feed---nope, she wouldn't jump the side, just pushed against it so that the ring moved with her (I can see why cattle were used for draft animals.  They are stronger than they look!). I had wanted to move the ring under the tree for the winter anyway, and it's too heavy for me to lift.  Now it was close to where I had wanted it.  Plus, if Lucy wouldn't get out on her own, I'd need to have her in the shade until Jeff and the boys could help to life one side so she could escape.  I slid it one way and then the other until it was under the spruce tree, with Lucy balking at each slide.  Finally, under the tree, she got brave and gave one leap to freedom.  Luckily, she jumped on the OTHER side of the ring from where I was standing.  I have no problem smacking Lucy on the rump or thunking her between the eyes if she's not minding her manners (probably feels like a fly nip to her), but if she'd jumped directly at me, I would have been making a flying sideways leap into one of many piles of wet morning manure! As if nothing had happened, as if she had not just spent the past 15 minutes making a racket and dragging a heavy feeder around, she trotted right in to where Bessie had been eating her grain and proceeded to finish up the bits that had been left behind. The adventures continue.....Lucy (a heifer who will not tolerate being tied up and who is not even technically "ours" at this point) is supposed to be "bred" (artificially inseminated by the vet) tomorrow or Friday.  That in itself could prove to be the best adventure yet--assuming that no-one gets hurt!

Lyrics of a song

This song came out a few years ago, and I think it was playing on Christian radio while I was driving back and forth to Woodstock to care for our chickens (who, fortunate souls, were living on the farm for a year before we could move from Palatine and be in Woodstock full-time).  It always seemed like a song that could be "mine", even more so because the group is called Laura's Story (or Laura Story, a person's name?).  I always heard it as "Laura's Story".  It made me think of my own life and how I view things, and of how skewed that "view" might really be in light of what God has in store for me.  We pray for blessings We pray for peace Comfort for family, protection while we sleep We pray for healing, for prosperity We pray for Your mighty hand to ease our suffering We pray for the easy way through life here in America, where we consider ourselves "blessed" beyond all measure but don't remember how getting things the easy way can stunt our spiritual growth.  Our prayers are "Please bless so-and-so", and "bless us as we do this", and "keep us safe as we attempt to do this for You" or "So-and-so is so sick, won't you please heal him/her". What if the trials of this life are just Your mercies in disguise? We forget (or choose to ignore) that sometimes God uses the most difficult times in our lives or the lives around us to build our character and to grow our faith.  We pray for wisdom Your voice to hear And we cry in anger when we cannot feel You near We doubt Your goodness, we doubt Your love As if every promise from Your Word is not enough All the while, You hear each desperate plea And long that we have faith to believe He is in control, He is still constant, He knows the deepest fears and cries of our hearts and when we finally NEED to turn to Him because all of our depression or emotional thrashing around has gotten us nowhere, that's when we finally turn away from the "I can do it by myself" toddler attitude.  It came to mind while I was out gardening, thinking about Lucy and Spartan, and all the other critters who might live long and prosper....and might have a  very short life because of so many "farm" reasons.  Or who might move on after just a short time with us, and become a blessing in someone else's life.  What if a thousand sleepless nights Are what it takes to know You're near I worry at night if the gate is latched all the way or if the front door to the barn will blow open, or if a raccoon is breaking into the barn to destroy the birds I care too much about, or if the hay in the hayloft is truly dry enough to not spontaneously combust and burn the whole barn down, animals and all.....crazy thoughts in the middle of the night!  Why I can't just trust that God is in control of all of that, and if I just do my job (taking care of them, doing my best) then He'll be free to bring me through the circumstances that I'm praying so hard to avoid. God must be shaking His head at that silliness. God is showering His blessings on us, even if it's in what seems like the hardest time and even if it seems like it's NOT a blessing (in our limited capacity to see how He needs to shape us)....   What if my greatest disappointments Or the aching of this life Is the revealing of a greater thirst this world can't satisfy And Spartan being sick, or Lucy going to a new home seem like something that I can handle, and that won't break me, but will potentially direct my attention to God and remind me to not hold on so tightly to what I THOUGHT was the perfect farm set-up.  These are minor things compared to God's all-encompassing plan. Laura Story - "Blessings" Lyrics We pray for blessings We pray for peace Comfort for family, protection while we sleep We pray for healing, for prosperity We pray for Your mighty hand to ease our suffering All the while, You hear each spoken need Yet love us way too much to give us lesser things 'Cause what if Your blessings come through raindrops What if Your healing comes through tears What if a thousand sleepless nights Are what it takes to know You're near What if trials of this life are Your mercies in disguise We pray for wisdom Your voice to hear And we cry in anger when we cannot feel You near We doubt Your goodness, we doubt Your love As if every promise from Your Word is not enough All the while, You hear each desperate plea And long that we have faith to believe 'Cause what if Your blessings come through raindrops What if Your healing comes through tears What if a thousand sleepless nights Are what it takes to know You're near And what if trials of this life are Your mercies in disguise When friends betray us When darkness seems to win We know that pain reminds this heart That this is not, this is not our home It's not our home 'Cause what if Your blessings come through raindrops What if Your healing comes through tears And what if a thousand sleepless nights Are what it takes to know You're near What if my greatest disappointments Or the aching of this life Is the revealing of a greater thirst this world can't satisfy And what if trials of this life The rain, the storms, the hardest nights Are Your mercies in disguise

Blessings in disguise

Spartan the kitty is doing OK.  He made it through yesterday and seems to be "eliminating" more in the litter box as each day goes on.  We'll always have to be watching for this to re-occur, and if it does, we won't spend money for the vet to treat it the next time.  He'll either need a new home where they can spend the time and money to keep him healthy, or we'd need to have him put to sleep.  Difficult decision #1 stalled, at least for now.  The blessing might be that Spartan gets to stay with us a little longer.  Or it might be that we worked through the situation, and came to the point where we could say goodbye if we needed to.  A positive experience is in there somewhere, God's way of preparing us for something in the future where we can draw on something that happened in this case (whether we are aware that we're doing that or not!). And decision #2 is a blessing in disguise, I think.  Two full-grown cows are really too much for our little acre, and for the barn space that they use.  When one is in heat, there is head-butting (imagine the resounding CRACK of mountain goat skulls as they fight each other and mentally muffle that crack just a little....)  There is the huge amount of feed and hay that two full grown cows eat (and the money that needs to be spent on it!).  There would be 2 calves to tame every year, and to corral every night, and to raise or sell.  There would be 2 cows giving milk, which I'd need to hand-milk.....potential carpal tunnel syndrome in my wrists raising it's ugly head again.  Milking one cow, once a day is do-able. I priced Lucy high enough in the ads that someone looking for a cheap meat cow wouldn't jump at the chance to buy her.  The thought of beautiful Lucy ending up at the slaughter house was a bit much for me to be OK with.  When Andrew from Ohio contacted me, I told him that I wouldn't come down in price at all.  Then I looked up his farm name on-line, and he's listed with Local Harvest.  The description of their farm sounded promising, and he will not be looking to slaughter her but to give her the kind of setting and care that we would have done here.  In talking with Andrew numerous times now, I'm impressed at how excited he and his wife are to be adding a milk cow to their small farm.  Instead of never owning a cow before, buying a pregnant cow AND a heifer and not knowing if the pregnant cow would let you hand-milk her (hmm....sounds familiar!), they are doing what we should have done:  Practicing patience and buying a young heifer who will become familiar with the new family and farm before needing to be hand-milked.  They will have Lucy as a first-time mom and first-time milker, who they can devote as much time to as possible before it's time to attempt to hand-milk a terrified cow who might just rip the stanchion off of the barn wall because she has never been hand-milked before.  (Again...sounds familiar!)  I think, in the long run, Lucy will have an easier time of it (learning the hand-milking routine) than poor Bessie did. I do hate to see her go.  It's kind of like breaking up a little family.  The three cows were relaxing under a big spruce tree yesterday, and I felt a twinge of sadness.  But, thinking of chickens as an example....every time the newest batch of chicks reaches 5 or 6 months of age, the "family" has to be broken up so that we aren't overrun with fighting and bloodied roosters.  Puppies and kittens are almost always taken away from their family group at 8 weeks old, and they adjust and come to love their new families.  If we have too many of any kind of animal, the extras need to go to another home, and that breaks up the "family".  Lucy and Bessie were "taken" from their herd in Port Byron and brought here, but now, you'd never know that THIS little clan of cows at our farm hasn't always existed.  Animals are probably more adaptable than we imagine them to be and it doesn't help to imagine that they have the same range of emotions as people do.  I'm sure they sense change, or feel some range of "something's not the same", but not nearly as acutely as a human being would be aware of. Bessie and Ruby will be fine.  I don't think that they can remember another cow very long, and they'll adjust to it being just the 2 of them.  I can imagine that Ruby will miss kicking up her heels with Lucy, or dashing full speed across the pasture and under the pine trees with her "fun" aunty.  I don't imagine that Bessie will miss Lucy's barging in to try to eat the grain right out from under Bessie's nose.  Things will be calmer.  Lucy will adjust and be just as comfortable with Andrew and his family as she is here, probably better because she'll be the ONLY cow and will get that much more attention.  I truly think that if Lucy was our only cow, she would be just as calm and accepting of my attention and of being handled as Bessie has become.  Andrew can give that time and attention to Lucy, but we would not be able to. Selling Lucy to a new owner who will care for her as much as we have and more is a blessing.  It's sad to know that someone will be coming here with a trailer and Lucy will be moving on with them, but it's not the end of the world.  And Spartan seems to be making enough of a come-back that he can play outside with Charlie by the end of the week and be the happy barn cat that he's accustomed to being.  The changes here could feel like a punch in the gut (every day, all the time, it seems!), but.....it's a constant change and it's all for a purpose, even if that purpose isn't clear at the time.  If I can just remember that, and remember that God's hand is in all of it, then it's manageable!