First Day of School

Yesterday was Merrill's very first day of preschool.

She has a new job as a preschool aide.  She mixed up paint, matched colored circles, pasted, cut shapes and doled out "snack".

She reminded me that most mommies take a picture when the kiddoes head out for their first day of school, so I did.

Merrill loves preschool.

Workin' the Farm, Part 2

Here's Looking at You, Kid

Workin' the Farm

What do farmers do in winter?

Sometimes they work cattle.

This little guy, along with thirty of his buddies and thirty mama cows,

has to go down a long alleyway into the squeeze chute. The vet pulls the lever to tighten the sides of the chute, so that the immobilized animal can't hurt himself or anyone else.

Then Merrill and the vet and the vet tech pour on lice protection, administer vaccinations, and check to see which cows are pregnant and which aren't.

Merrill writes it all down,

while Shane keeps the cattle moving to and through the alleyway.

John hauls the treated cattle back to the field.  Alice tries to look helpful and important, but is really there because she wants to take pictures.

Winter Driving Conditions

This girl needed to get to work. 

She works at a nursing home.  Even if it's Christmas, and even if there's a blizzard raging, some folks still can't hold their own forks, or pull themselves out of their wheelchairs and into bed, or cope with other necessary daily matters that you and I don't think twice about.

The blizzard meant that lots of other employees-----people who don't own tractors and four-wheel drive trucks----couldn't get to work without spending time in a ditch first.  That made Erica's presence and skill set even more valuable.

We wouldn't have made it without John blading a path in front of us.  Sometimes it's really nice to be married to a farmer.

Cinderella

Thank you to the princess who did my sweeping for me.

Tall Grass Prairie

Kyle and Natalie's dad works on our farm.

Kyle is a chip off the ol' block.......

Natalie is a spitfire.

They're both good help for moving cattle.

Look at that grass behind Kyle. The platter is just about licked clean. Because our pastures are small and bovine appetites large, our cattle leapfrog around the county all summer, following the grass like ancient nomads. Only these nomads periodically have to thumb a ride with a friendly trucker.

Here they have been herded into a portable corral to await the arrival of their limo.

Cattle are naturally claustrophobic. The gaping mouth of a dark stock trailer, just to the right of this photo, isn't too appealing. Merrill's job is to tap that red calf on the noggin and redirect his thinking.

Erica's job is to count cows and calves as they offload into fresh grass. Then Kyle's job is to stand in the gate opening until we return with the next load.

Natalie's job is to be a spitfire. Lookin' good, Natalie.

Natalie's other job is to keep from getting lost in the tall grass.

I think she may be better at the spitfire job.

Homemade Pita Pockets

If you read my post from a couple of days ago, you know that Audrey the Birthday Chef made homemade pitas as part of her celebratory meal. She found the recipe at Tammy's Recipes: http://www.tammysrecipes.com/ That links is to Tammy's main page. If you want to cut to the pita recipe, try: http://www.tammysrecipes.com/homemade_pita_pocket_bread.

Audrey's note: she cut back the cooking time to 3 minutes, from Tammy's 4-5 minutes, in order to keep the pitas pliable.

Rachel said in her blog that she had substituted whole wheat flour for half of the white that is called for, and apparently they turned out just fine.

Bon appetit!

The Last Pass

We moved cows today. It took eight and a half hours. After that, there was still hay to cut and beans to irrigate, a cow tank to fill, an O-ring to replace, trailers to unhitch, electric fence to set up.

Erica is making the day's last pass over the alfalfa. These bones are tired.

Pipe Down

Merrill is looking for critters. Critters, especially night critters, like to curl up for an afternoon snooze in the midst of a pile of irrigation pipe.

We will pick up these pipes, one by one, and load them onto a pipe trailer. Then we drive to the field and unload, stringing the pipe down the field edge, where it will carry a drink to thirsty soybeans.

As we load pipe, the girls do a critter check. Some critters don't matter much when you're irrigating--this one will just scamper away.

Possums don't matter a whole lot, either. The girls found a possom in one pipe; they just set the pipe aside and continued to load.

The next pipe with a possum sleeping inside got loaded onto the trailer....."We'll shake him out before we put the pipe together."

One person drives, pulling the pipe trailer ahead twelve rows at a time. Then she stops while the other two heft a pipe off the trailer, lock it into the lengthening metal snake, walk the span of the fresh-laid pipe, and repeat.

Time came to deal with the possum pipe. I climbed up on the trailer, to hoist the top of the 30-foot length of pipe into the air. Erica stood below, stabilizing the down end. The higher we tilted, the more tightly the critter pressed against the inside of his hideout, holding his position as we angled the pipe into the sky. At length, with the pipe nearly vertical, gravity overcame static friction, and we heard his sharp little claws sliding and screeching their way down the inside of the pipe.

What looks a lot like possum silhouetted in a dark pipe can sometimes turn into skunk when it drops out at your feet. I started shouting; Erica started running. The pipe, without its south-end stabilizer, careened wildly and cratered into the soybeans, missing the retreating skunk.

Even with the inherent risks, evicting Pepe Le Pew is the best choice. You can either chase him out before you hook the row of pipe together, as we did, or wait and let the water flush him down to the end cap the first time you turn on the juice. He will turn on his juice as he drowns, caught in the long tunnel, and you will have to deal with his putrid carcass when you pick up pipe two hot summer months down the road.

Isn't he odorable?

Saving Clampett

Lots of times, a hard winter can mean more calving difficulty come spring. This year is no exception.

The twin to this calf was born deformed and dead. This sister was small, weak, and unable to pick herself up out of her cold birthday mud. By the time we found her at six in the morning, she was listless and barely able to move. Her temperature, normally 101 F for a calf, had dropped to 95 degrees. She was headed for dead.

We rushed her to the hospital on the back of a four wheeler. The hospital in this case is our lunchroom, where John held her icicle legs and gave her an invigorating rubdown, drying her off and encouraging her heart to pump. A normal calf, even a newborn, would be vigorously trying to kick him away, but this little gal was too cold to care.

The dog bed turned into a calf bed, and we piled on the heat: hot water bottles, blankets, radiators, and a heating pad under the rugs, all ministering warmth and life while we prayed and waited.

Since the calf couldn't stand, we knew she hadn't had a first meal. Audrey is offering her some electrolytes and colostrum, but the calf is too far gone to suck from the bottle. Not too far gone, however, to clamp her little calf teeth shut. Hence her nickname: Clampett.

If you can't suck from a bottle, you get the tube. Audrey has slid the long rubber piping down the calf's esophagus, and is squeezing warm, nutritious liquids into Clampett's stomach.

I don't usually go for cattle in the house, but, in this case, it worked. After a few hours of being cocooned in the warmth, Clampett's temp is normal, her head up, and her eyes perky.

If she could stand up to nurse from her mother, she could leave off being a dog and return to the bovine world. But, like her deformed twin sister, her legs aren't quite right. She will need help getting her mama's milk---a story for another day.

Audrey's Great Job

Last week found Audrey face to face with this critter as he peered up at her out of a cardboard box.




A hush fell over the vet clinic as the box was opened. For just a moment, time froze, stilled by the majesty of God's creation.




Then it was time for vet business.
Someone had shot the bald eagle, leaving him to die. Someone else found him and took pity.


Before he could undergo the orthopedic surgery needed to put him back together, he had to breathe a little sleeping gas. "Just relax, and count slowly backward from ten," the vet is coaching.








This is Dr. Steph, one of Audrey's bosses. She's feeling the bones in the shoulder and wing, some of which have been shattered by the gunshot.


Audrey's standing by, ready to do whatever Dr. Steph asks. That's her bare hand at the bottom of the photo. Does this girl have a great job, or what!!!???

(Of course, some days she does clean cat cages.)









Dr. Steph has put four pins through the bones, to hold them together. The next step is to cut these pins off short, then affix an external stabilizer through all four of them, to hold them in place.

The bird will live with Raptor Recovery people for a few weeks while his bones heal. Then he'll be back to the vet, to have his hardware removed.

I hope Audrey is working on the day of his return visit.

Everyone needs a little awe now and then.

I wish I'd been there to take these photos, but I wasn't.

Stories from the Vet

Audrey can hardly wait to get to work this morning.

---Clean the cat cages. Check.
---Wash a dog. Check.
---Give medications. Check.
---Take the turtle out of the freezer. Check.

Yep. Audrey gets to tube feed a turtle today. This little cupcake didn't see the minimum speed sign on the highway, and got in the wrong lane. A passerby repaired her shell with vet-approved SuperGlue, but she's turning up her stubby turtle nose at the delectable mealworm and tomato salad they serve in Turtle Hospital. So she has to be tube fed. Not a big fan of having a feeding tube run down her throat, she pouts and clamps her jaws, swipes her prissy little toenails against the vet's tender hands, pulls her head back into her shell and slams the door.

Audrey wanted to feed her last night, but the supervising vet had to leave for a birthday party. She promised Aud this morning's feeding. "If she doesn't cooperate," the vet said, "we'll just stick her in the freezer until she slows down."

Might be good to set a little timer or something.

An ornate box turtle photo from the Web. Box turtles, unlike other turtles, have a hinge in the plastron, the plate that makes up the bottom of their shell. This allows them to shut themselves away from prying paws, claws, and veterinary assistants.

Vet Work

Our cows graze aimlessly through the summer on several small bits of pasture, none of which lasts very long. Consequently, we must periodically gather the entire bovine population and move them to fresh grass. Sometimes the pastures are close enough that we herd them with horses and four-wheelers and shouting children; other times we pack them into a trailer and haul them. Trailer days may also include a run through the vet's barn, as did Tuesday's adventure. At the vet's, each animal is temporarily immobilized in a squeeze chute, where we deworm, immunize, and poke an insect-repellent flytag in each ear. Flies carry pinkeye, so flytags minimize our chances of dealing with that disease later in the summer.

Baby calves get flytags, too. Audrey and Kendall, the vet tech, are coming at this one with their sixguns loaded.

Sometimes a calf won't stand just right, so Jake serves as a human squeeze chute.

After the baby calves all have their tags, Erica and Merrill run the big mamas, a few at a time, down the alleyways and into the vet barn. The barn is on the small side, and the cows are on the big side, so the girls move only four or five cows at a time. Cows are herding animals--safety in numbers and all that. Peeling off just a few can be a job.

They would sure rather be lolling in the sunshine than going in for a chat with the doc, so Merrill gives them a little encouragement. Get the move on, old girl!