THIS IS HOW MY DAY WENT TODAY

I have worked so hard these last few weeks weeding, digging and shaking clumps of grass in my flowerbeds and I managed to tidy up 5 large flowerbbeds. I am happy but tired.

I didn't sleep well last night and kept waking up with hot flashes. It happens at every change of seasons.

I was late for work this morning and felt  like sleeping in. Today being a wet day I worked inside and cleaned the veggie crisper in the fridge. My celery was getting disgusting and I salvaged what I could  and made a big pot of beef, vegetable and barley soup.  My husband, the hired hand and myself ate our fill at lunch time and I put the rest in my soup tureen to cool. My husband invited my son to come to get some hot soup  and my son arrived famished and took home a full container of soup  and there was only a small container left. There was nothing wrong with the soup, as a matter of fact, it was very delicious.

I made my spoon cheese and garlic biscuits and they are usually so light and yummy but today my mind was a little off. I didn't had buttermilk so as usual I use some vinegar to add to the milk as a substitute.
When it came time to add the oil, I grabbed the container of vinegar instead of the oil jug and poured the 1/3 cup into my milk. The milk curdled right away, ha,ha,ha. I poured out some of the milk out and added some more fresh milk, just guessing approximately and added my oil, mixed the soft dough and spooned it on the pan and into the hot oven. All this time thinking how good they were gonna be with the soup. I set the timer  on. After a few minutes I looked and they are puffing up, oh goodie.... and went to the garage to put something in the recycle bin. I got sidetracked on my way back to the kitchen, ha,ha,ha, and looked at a sales flyer that was on the freezer.

I was multitasking of course and doing laundry and folding clothes and there are buzzers on all sorts of appliances these days. I heard the buzzer go off on the dryer and it has a wrinkle free feature and will buzz every now and then until you tend to it. I never heard the oven timer go off so I didn't knew that it had gone off . Then all of a sudden, it dawned on me that my biscuits should be about ready to come out of the oven.  They are supposed to look like the ones you get at Red Lobster but these were overcooked.  The boys saids that they were still good but I was really disappointed with myself for not hearing the timer.

                              They were way overcooked but not burned so they were edible.

I had been looking at the sale flyer because I was planning to go back to the Co-op after lunch to buy some butter on sale for $2.97 and some Barilla spaghetti that I can eat,

The 100 paver bricks I bought yesterday for my flowerbed before going to work at the farm needed to be unloaded out of my van first. Those things are too heavy to carry around everywhere.

I grabbed a light black pair of clean socks and a grey pair of work socks from the laundry basket and went and sat on the garage step to put them on when I noticed that one of my black sock was missing. Darn it, I know I had two of each colors. So I took one boot off and and went back in the house and picked another clean black sock and went back in the garage and when I sat down, I noticed that I had put on two black sock on my left foot.

 I managed to get it right  this time and put my boots and my raincoat on to unload the bricks but decided that something  was telling me that I better not get on the road with my brain on reverse so I decided to work inside the house instead  and forget about the sale. It might save me some money in the long run.

After  finishing up in the calf area, I swept the floor and cleaned my broom  by tapping it gently on the floor and broke the handle off at the base. Come to think of it, my day wasn't all that bad, the soup was good. I got an email from Christine and photos of Daniel.

He's  10.5 weeks old, over 2 feet long, nearing 14 pounds and filling his six months cloths.  He still wakes up to eat 2 to 3 times a night, and smiles off camera.
So how was your day?

HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY to all the Moms.

Thanks for visiting and I hope that you are having a good day. Please leave a comment.
JB

ALL CREATURES GREAT AND SMALL LIVES IN OUR BARN

I've been getting behind in my blogging so I thought that I may as well give you a cow adventure before I completely forget. I can't remember the exact date but I have it in my records at the farm. Sometime around the end of April.

One sign that a cow is ready to give birth is that she will usually stop eating a day before. She may eat very little hay and get restless and may have mucus discharge, tail up. I had noticed this in a heifer who was overdue. She had been put in the calving pen before  her due date but didn't calved so the pen was used for another cow for some reason or another.

Her udder was swelled up and I noticed that she barely ate so she was put in the calving pen again for observation. After work  I checked up on her and she was laying her butts against the gate so I got her up and I noticed  that she had a big balloon of embryonic fluid  and it busted when she got up and then I saw two hooves sticking out. I stayed around and it wasn't progressing. I came home to supper and told my husband to go check up on her as her water had broken earlier. He called back that he needed my help to pull the calf out as the delivery had not progressed at all.

Routine stuff, disinfect the  small chain with iodine in warm water to attach around the calf feet, get the ratchet winch ready with chain and a pail of disinfectant in water. Turn on the halogen lamp on for better light.The heifer is lured into putting her head in the headlock gate with grain, as soon as her head is far enough, a lever is pulled and voila, she is your prisoner.  So far so good, just routine for this kind of delivery.

My husband gets me to hold the tail while he attached the chain carefully around the calf feet and tried to get the heifer to move closer to the back gate so the winch can be attached to the pull chain. Notting doing, she bucks and won't budge. It's not easy moving a 1300 pound animal .We try to pull her back to reach the  extra inch of chain needed but she pulls her head out of the lock while I'm holding the chain attached to the feet.

The pen gate was wide open and she bolted out of the pen with me holding on and she took off for the alley way. I'm in the back in hot pursuit and had to let go of the chain to save my wrists and fingers, ha,ha,ha. My husband still is trying to get the spare piece of chain from the gate. I'm bringing the cow back to the pen but she saw that the other gate was opened as well and she took off for the area where no cow should go in the small calf area. She made it into the double calf pen that was opened where the cat was bedding her kittens, missing stepping on a kitten by an inch. I quickly grabbed the kitten and threw it in an empty calf pail.

This was from a previous photo of the two cats babysitting the kittens while the mother was taking a break from nursing.


Now my husband was trying to get her to back up in a very tight space not made for a cow. I worried about the mother cat and the 5 kittens.  We got her back to the calving pen, again I enticed her with grain and locked her head in a the other head gate this time. Sometimes a cow has a bigger head and the make adjustment to the width of the head gate lock.

Time is of essence if we want to save the calf and the heifer is not helpful in the least.

The calf was a hard pull out , I got my husband to stop pulling while the calf is hanging half way out so I can clear the mucus from the nostrils and mouth so he can breath. It's much easier to clear the mucus out with the calf upside down as opposed to lifting the calf with his head down. I use paper towels to wipe as much mucus off as I can.

I'm frantically trying to get him to breath and it always feel so good when he takes that first breath and bawls.  The disinfectant is poured on the cow's bottom and the calf umbilical cord is dipped in a stronger solution of iodine to help it dry up and keep it from getting infected.   There was no way the heifer could have delivered the calf on her own. It was a  dry birth.

I vaccinated the calf and gave him some warm colestrum milk from the cow that calved earlier.

After all the commotion was done with, I went to turn the light off and i counted only four kittens in the pen. I told my husband that a small baby kitten is missing. He said, "you  threw it in the calf pail" Sure enough, he was still there safe and sound in the pail. With all this ruckus, the mother cat never moved an inch.

We went home, showered and went to bed.
The end.

Thanks for coming by. I appreciate you comments so much.
Stay safe,
JB