Dairy Daze...and Now Beyond

What to post? Ellen is going to help me post today, so .an.ything add7itional, like numbers or typos are from her to you. I hope you can figure out what we are talking abo ut./ It's a rather nasty day out there. It has been snowing all day, no6thing is sticking, excep t on the porch, since the ground is too warm yet, but it's snow, nonetheless. This hasn't been an exciting ;'November for bl///////////////////////////ogging as far as dairy doings are concerned. What has gone on is too depressing to talk about really; I don't want this blog to turn into a sob fest. I haven't had the time to visit other folks blogs am much as I'd have liked to. I am going to try and do December, too, though; blog, I mean. The theme is THANKS, so surely I can think of something to be thankful for every day for a month. Well, I have a fussy kid to take care of. Blog at you later. R

It's pretty late right now, for me to be blogging anyway. It's actually only about 7:35 PM, but bedtime is less than 1 1/2 hours away and there is a baby to take care of...bedtime rituals and all that, you know. When you get up at 3:45 AM, it makes for short evenings. At the moment hubby is playing with the baby; they are stacking blocks and books to make towers so that she can knock them down. He is having great fun. Let's see...oh, yes. Today I went in to Bolivar and picked up my new glasses. They gave me a headache, new glasses always do. So I have the old ones on for now. I will have to break my eyes in to the new specs slowly. Well, only one more day left. I hope I can manage to get a blog in tomorrow. I will feel my November has not been wasted if I can complete my blogging for this month. Tah for now.

For the past couple of weeks I have been watching the complete second season of The Waltons on DVD. Last year I watched the complete first season. I remember when I was a kid I LOVED this program and watched it religiously. Hubby watched it often as well when he was younger, and he can remember what happens in certain episodes. Some of the stuff is hilarious; like when the new preacher and Grandpa pay a visit to the Baldwin sisters and get roaring drunk on "The Recipe." Though I still think it's quite a stretch that those old ladies didn't know they were making whiskey in that still. But it's one of the funnier things I remember about the show. In thinking back I am surprised my father ever even let me watch a show that included a "recipe," but I guess he overlooked it. He was VERY anti-alcohol. Anyway, watching this show makes me think back to my own growing up and how idyllic it was, though I didn't realize it at the time. I had a pretty tr...

To one and all. Not much to post today. I guess I ate too much turkey and my thinking cap is asleep. It is a lovely holiday here in the Ozarks. A good day to be thankful on. Let's see...I am thankful for all the usual things; family, friends, a healthy baby, life, Salvation, fun, health, country... It's good to be alive and well.

If I do not post on Friday, remember the above date. That is what is listed as the "Best By" date on the can of the pumpkin pie mix, the contents of which are now baking in the oven, combined with 2 large eggs and 2/3 cup of evaporated milk, all snuggled comfortably inside a homemade piecrust. We are going to eat it tomorrow, along with the year old turkey that sis-in-law got from her work last Thanksgiving. The turkey has been in the freezer. The can of pumpkin pie mix has been on the shelf for dunno how long. It smells pretty good though. Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Not too much. It's my only time without the kid here, so I can type much faster, but there's not too much time for thinking. At the moment I am having a dessert crisis. Hubby ate the last piece of cake on Sunday and I haven't had time to fix him anything else since. Yesterday what I was going to fix kind of fizzled, so he had syrup on homemade bread and ice cream. A bizarre combination, but he ate it. Today I took Ellen in to her Parents As Teachers meeting with the teacher so I didn't have time to fix anything. But I remembered that I had a tub of that cookie dough I bought off of one of the kids from church. I thawed it out, smooshed some of it into a pan and am making brownies out of it. Maybe I can come up with something more interesting tomorrow to blog about.

Here is another sample of things you ought not to do on the farm. None of these were from my experience, mind you, but they are good to remember. Never assume your blind date won't notice that you still smell like hogs. Don't bend over in front of a Ram! He will use you as batting practice. Never assume you got all of the chicken poop off your head before you go to the store. Do not ever run across a sun-dried manure pit thinking "light" thoughts ... you are not that light! Do not ever leave the goat pen gate open "just for a second"...even if the goats appear to be at the farthest point away from gate. They are able to run faster than a person pushing a full wheelbarrow up a hill, and can jump OVER said wheelbarrow. PS...do not forget the grainbucket when luring goats back to their pen. PPS...put REAL grain in the bucket too...they can TELL if you just put a handful of gravel in instead. PPPS...dont do any of these things on days when it is icy. Never let ...

Hubby put a loop of rope around one of those huge hooves and told me: "Here, grab hold." The cow just continued to lay there, and would look around at us occasionally, but she was too busy at the moment to really worry about us. Hubby and I dug in our heels and pulled, except that our hands started to slip on the rope. So hubby told me to keep up a steady pull while he went and got a stick. He put the stick in the loop on our end and we both caught hold of that and pulled. We could see the nose just barely sticking out and the tongue would flicker occasionally so we knew we had caught a live one, but it was like pulling on a boulder. Progress was measured by centimeters at first. Then that nose came out and the bottom half of the face was visible. The forehead is the biggest part and once that is out you are home free. But this one didn't seem to be budging at all. Every time the cow would heave we would pull extra hard, but it didn't seem like we were getti...

Finally. Yesterday something happened to blog about. Hubby was going by the bull heifer pasture on the way home from town yesterday afternoon and saw something. He came in at about 2:15 PM and said there was a heifer up there calving, but she didn't seem to be making any progress. (Ellen, do you mind terribly, darling? It's difficult to type when you keep pushing in the keyboard.) This wasn't good news to receive at such a late hour (I start supper at 3:00 pm), but what can you do? They rarely ever do things for the farmer's convenience. So in about 15 minutes I rigged up for cold weather (it hovered at and below freezing all day) and went back up there to check on her while hubby took Ellen up to her grandma's place. Nope, no progress, just a massive pair of hooves sticking out. So I called hubby on the walkie-talkie (very useful things on the dairy, those.) and told him. I waited there while he got the other 4-wheeler so we could round her up into the corr...

This morning when hubby went to fire up the computer the monitor kept clicking itself off; wouldn't stay on. We tried another of his old monitors; it didn't work either. So, took computer in to have the pros look at it. They plugged it in, yep, actual computer was OK, said we needed a new monitor. Brought it back home. Hooked it all up. Monitor came on, all's well again. What gives? Dunno. We will see if I can finish this NaBloPoMo thing or not. Ha.

On this day I find myself with writer's block. It doesn't help that I only have about 10 minutes left before I need to shut down and cook supper. What kind of block do they call it when you can't think of what to cook for supper? Cooking block? Food block? I'm-fed-up-with-cooking block? When one has to cook 3 meals a day, 7 days a week, 365 days per year, the issue "What to cook for supper?" becomes tedious. So what is the deal with this Stephenie Meyer vampire series stuff? I guess the first book has been made into a movie which has just been released. Is this the Harry Potter replacement? They say the books are written for the pre-teen/teen set of girls but everyone else is going ga-ga over them too. I am going to read them and see for myself.

is Christmas play program rehearsal night. This is always a hoot. For one thing, when you get a group of young'uns together doing something fun, you inevitably get a whing-ding. The girls group together and yak and the boys do their best to annoy the girls. But most of them have their lines memorized and know when they come in and exit. Now we have to get them to be able to deliver their lines without giggling or snickering. The Indignant Man has trouble with this issue. He has his lines downpat, but gets the giggles about halfway through. It doesn't help that everyone else is laughing too. We also have to work on the carolers scene. They are supposed to "swamp" Wally, not mob him. Also, they are carolers, but they don't know any Christmas carols. We will have to work on that one.

For want of anything interesting to post today here is yet another picture of Ellen. Not the greatest, but she's always cute. We have a new activity that she loves to do; smell the spices in the cupboard. She recognizes garlic and cumin, and calls them by name. This morning she also recognized the cinnamon. She gets out a fair immitation of the names, she started calling cinnamon "cake," which kind of surprised me. Maybe her aunt or grandma had some kind of cinnamon cake they gave her, I don't know, I certainly have never made any kind of cinnamon cake that I can think of, or in any way instructed her on their association. She loves to use "pay-peer" and a "peen" to write with. But she has been banned from using pens unless she is stuck in her highchair. She has already written in one of her books. *sigh* That's all for today.

As the holidays approach the mail order companies go nuts and send out multitudes of catalogs. I was going to keep track of how many I received in the mail from Nov 1st until Christmas, but I didn’t know where to store them all. So I kept track for the past 6 mail delivery days. Here is my collection. I think most all of them have websites, so if you see one you’d like to order from just let me know and I will post the site address. Ha. A Week’s Worth of Catalogs Monday, November 10, 2008 through Saturday, November 15, 2008 Monday: Movies Unlimited-2008 Holiday DVD Gift Guide! Signals-Gifts that Inform, Enlighten & Entertain Ginny’s Holiday 2008 Gift Book Victorian Trading Company- Holiday 2008 Metrostyle Traditions Wind & Weather Plow & Hearth-Holiday 2008 World Vision Gift Catalog Tuesday: Veteran’s Day Holiday….no mail delivery Wednesday: National Geographic-Holiday 2008 Catalog Eddie Bauer-The Gift Book Thursday: Abbey Press presents Holidays Collections etc. Miles...

This is from a forward that has gone around this fall, complete with a warning to be careful when raking fall leaves. Kind of creepy. There is a copperhead snake in the picture below. Look very, very carefully; remember that they are poisonous. As a parody of the copperhead pic, I took the following of Matilda. Can you spot the puddy? Ha! She likes to come with me on my walks sometimes, and she loves to play in the leaves. Ah ha! Below is the copperhead. Would you have been bitten? I would have; but then again, I didn't have the patience to stop and really scan the picture for it. Hubby says usually they are coiled up, not stretched out. If they are moving I believe they are easier to spot. But I don't know. In the 4 years I have been in Missouri I haven't seen a live copperhead; no, I take that back. The only live copperhead I have seen in MO was a rather pitiful looking one at the zoo. Then hubby showed me a dead one. They get run over in the road quite frequently in s...

This has gone much quicker this year for me, seems like. But, oh la la, what to post for today? Just a quick observation; it's very hard to type legibly with a 20 month old in your lap. She likes to help. The mini calf we got a couple of weeks ago is doing well. She's grown a bit, but she is still kind of mentally slow, or at least that is my opinion. She still doesn't quite get how to efficiently drink her bottle; she has a big puddle of milk on the ground after she is done. I never have the patience to stand and watch her for too long, all I know is that she slurps on it, then pulls off of it, then re-attaches and repeats. Today we went in to Lebanon. I went into a couple of the thrift shops down there and bought some things for Ellen. I have to stop myself from buying up all of the cute little dressy dresses that they have. At only $8-$10 per dress it's hard to pass up. I have to get them a couple of sizes too large as she is so tall. She isn't that big ...

In looking for something to post; a poem perhaps, since I am running out of posting ideas, I ran across this one by Oliver Goldsmith (1728-1774). Now that I am the mother of a daughter, such views of women's lives make me shiver. Thankfully things are much different now than back then. However, it is still kind of sobering to think that this is how many teenaged girls STILL feel. I believe I heard of one recently commiting suicide, in FL wasn't it, because of being jilted. I hope and pray that I can instill in my daughter the firm belief that she has great value as an individual and does not need a boyfriend to make her SOMEBODY or to give her life meaning. And if she does get jilted that it is NOT the end of the world, the Lord has better plans for her someday. Woman When lovely woman stoops to folly, And finds too late that men betray, What charm can soothe her melancholy? What art can wash her tears away? The only art her guilt to cover, To hide her shame from ev'...

In over a year of blogging I don't think I have actually dedicated a post wholly to the subject of poo. I give it a glancing mention occasionally, but haven't gone too deep into the subject. Well, here we go. Poo on the dairy. It's everywhere, seems like. And even where it isn't, the smell of it is, depending on the direction the wind is blowing. Hubby has several piles of it around; there is one fresh one here just in view of the house; it has grass and weeds covering most of it. Then hubby transports quite a bit of it into piles way up the road. After it has sat there for a couple of years it turns into lovely black dirt that is great for the garden. Except there are a TON of weed seeds in it. We give quite a bit of it away in the spring; neighbors or friends come load up their trucks. Hey, it's free. Here's where it gets really gross. The wildlife loves the poo, in all it's various forms. Birds, especially the turkeys, and raccoons eat the corn out o...

This is a collation of various posts I have made including different sayings that hubby has told me. I was going to make it a little better, but I got tired of messing with it. I am going to post it over to the side under Amusing Posts from the Past and update it from there as hubby thinks of more. Colorful Sayings * He's going to fly high and light low. (To be said of someone who's on a spending spree-he's flying high with his money now, but he'll light low eventually when it's gone.) * He's got the wrong sow by the ear. (To have made a mistake, as in: we got a call yesterday from someone who was wanting to know why hubby hadn't shown up with his skid-loader to help her out...well, she had called the wrong number.) * He's got to lick that calf over. (To have done a poor job at something and have to do it over again.) Then there are the "poor" sayings. Here in the Ozarks to be "poor" also means to be thin, or skinny. Th...

Spiders have always fascinated me. Not that I like having them actually touch me or anything. I just like to observe them and their habits. Here on the dairy we specialize in spider food; namely flies. So one of the perks of living here is having so many different types of spiders to observe. They love to hang out in the milk barn. I wish I were up on which species they were, but I do not know all of them. There is one type that weave little tunnels back in little cracks in the wall; especially around the windows. They stay put and wait for flies to come along. Then there are the wolf spiders that just wander around and catch what they can on the fly, so to speak: Then there is another type that lurks underneath things; she doesn't build a real web, but attaches multiple tendrils of silk to the floor and waits for something to wander into a thread, get stuck and start to struggle. More than I have seen a wolf spider get into this other spider's threads. Yes...and be eaten. It w...

It doesn't happen very often. My unfortunate husband learned that early on in our marriage. I iron his shirts; yes. As infrequently as I can get away with. He has a closet FULL of shirts and only wears them occasionally; like on Sundays, or on those rare occasions when he goes in to town. So I just wash them and let them pile up until the my I-Haven't-Ironed-in-a-LOOOOOOOONG-Time guilt trip gets the better of me and I hunt up the ironing board and iron. As far as I am concerned there really isn't any need of doing that actually because his closet is so jam-packed with shirts that as soon as I hang them up they get wrinkled. Yes, I have tried taking some out that he never wears and putting them on a shelf, but he found them and hung them back up. I don't bother any more. Also. He actually expected me to iron his good jeans for church. Ha. I did that for like the first month or so of our marriage. Then, my opinion being that if you are going to be so casual as t...

Well, folks, I don't know about a video of my singing performance. I wouldn't even know how to post it. But I think we will do "Silent Night" and I will do one verse in Spanish. Gotta work that college degree into my life somehow...hahahahaha Today as we were coming home from visiting hubby's granddad we went by the renter's place. The son was out front with his girlfriend's arm draped around his neck; smoking no doubt. Hubby's comment: "Well, she's driving her ducks to a poor market, isn't she?" Signifying that she's made a bad choice as far as boyfriends are concerned. I think I am going to collate all these sayings into one post and put it as a sticky over on the right. That way I can just add to it as hubby, or anyone else, gives me new ones. Oh, I keep meaning to email my sis in law about this but I forget. Ellen loves to "read" that book; "My First 100 Words in Spanish" you sent her. I think it...

It has been one of those cold, dreary days in which my cognitive skills have frozen and the creativity is not flowing. Looking out the window a line from a popular song from the past comes to mind; "All the trees are brown and the sky is gray..." I think that new, tiny heifer is going to peg out on me. She isn't drinking much of her bottle, even when I try and feed her by hand most of it goes all over the ground or all over me. We think she didn't get any colostrum from the cow and she got some kind of infection or bug. I am putting medicine in her milk, but since she doesn't drink it much, she isn't gettting too much benefit. That's all for today folks. Thanks for dropping in.

Back in March the sheriff came by for a visit because he wanted permission to put up signs on our property along the highway. This past Tuesday he was re-elected by a pretty wide margin, I believe. So today he came by and dropped off a thank you note for our support and sign space before he collected his signs. Hubby said no one else had done such before. On Ellen: She is getting more and more articulate and it is interesting how her language skills are developing; how she pronounces certain words and makes up words to suit her. She likes to end words in -er. She refers to the bales of hay as "hay-er" She refers to babies as "bay-er." She can't quite get her tongue wrapped around "grandma" either so she calls her "G-er," it sounds like she's saying "jeer." One of the ladies at church gave her a furry pink purse for Halloween and she loves to carry it around, she won't let us put anything in it, she prefers it to be e...

It's day 6 of NaBloPoMo. I am running out of things to write about already. So here is a few more things that ought NOT be attempted on a farm. This is from a list off of the Homesteading Today forum. Some of them might be repeats, but they are worth reading again. What not to do on the farm: *Don't tell your kid to write a report, complete with pictures, for their "Life Experience" project on Butchering. Some people might not find it as special as you do. *Do not tell your little sister that white gobs of old chicken poo taste like mom's Russian tea cookies ... Mom was NOT happy *Do not pee on an electric fence; not ever, for ANY reason! *When gathering eggs do not give a two-year-old an egg for each hand. They can not resist smacking them together. Then you have omelet all over the toddler and they are crying because their eggs vanished! *Don't put your cell phone in the same jacket pocket with the eggs you forgot you gathered or you will have pocket om...

In September our church had a quarterly "singing" instead of the regular Sunday night service. Afterward they served snacks...etc. I was rash enough to get up and sing a song. Now everyone has been hounding me to sing one during the Sunday AM service. Hmmmm... Well... Last Wed one of my Wed night students-forever after referred to as TW in this post-offered to play her guitar for me. TW is quite the whizbang on the guitar and is quite the singer as well. So I will get out of the boat and walk on water, as it were, and sing a song or two for them. We are going to work on a Christmas song and on a Mother's Day song. Thank you TW for holding my hand as I set out to walk on the Sunday morning musical waters.

It's off to vote we go. The road outside is nearly on fire from the amount of people driving back and forth to the polls this morning, keeping it hot. As a general rule I avoid talking politics here. I am just not of a political bent, unlike my brother and husband. However, there was a opinion column in the newspaper this past week that I wanted to comment on. He said that no matter what your opinion of the candidates you'd better ought to get out and vote. People shed blood and died for your right to vote; if you don't think there is anyone to vote FOR, get out and vote AGAINST someone. That's what I am doing. Plus, if you are a woman you'd better show your appreciation to those women who got out and fought for your right to vote. It wasn't too terribly long ago that you as a woman weren't considered intelligent enough to be able to have a valid opinion to vote. Husband is off to haul a cow up to the dry lot and then we are going to go off to do our c...

This is the quick version of a Boston Cream Cake (or pie, however you want to say it). Slice a pound cake into 3 layers; fill with custard, top with chocolate glaze and voila! I made all this from scratch, but you can use a pudding mix...I think the orig recipe called for adding 1-1/2 cups cream instead of milk to the mix for the filling, but I forget exactly how much. It got hubby's approval. I am trying to decide what to take for the church holiday potluck next month; I know I have a month, but I want to decide now. I already have some of my Christmas gifts wrapped and have started on a few cards to send out. I still have a few more gifts to get yet, but I am working on that one as well. Ellen had another "First" last night; she pooped while in the bathtub. I could have done without that "First," but I guess it's just the beginning of many incidents like that.

Last night I went with the in-laws to see "FireProof." Of course we took Ellen with us. She did really well, surprisingly enough. She sat there and helpfully pointed out and identified certain objects she was familiar with; "flag, flag," "car, car, car," "water, water." Fortunately she was sitting on her aunt's lap, not mine. But she wasn't too loud about it. Fireproof was a really good, family-values focused movie, much funnier than I'd expected it to be, though the dialogue was a bit stilted in places. But it was worth the trip. At least I guess it was worth it. Ellen went to sleep partway through and that made for a cranky, wide-awake kid when we got home. We had to have a lesson in going to sleep without mommy holding her, it took about 20 minutes of squalling before she finally settled down. I forgot to tell about Ellen's Halloween. I didn't take her trick-or-treating or dress her up or anything. We went to her Play Day e...

It's hard to believe it's been a whole year already. (You know there is a NaNoWriMo too; National Novel Writing Month. You have the whole month of November to write a 50,000 word novel which you write with your own software and then somehow submit it privately. I would someday like to try that. I checked it out last year and it sounded like fun. My trouble would be deciding on WHAT to write about.) Well, I don't have any idea of what to blog about. I think Solomon, the Grateful Guy, asked if I had planned out what to blog about. No, I prefer to blog by the seat of my pants. It's more challenging that way. Ha. Sorry. I am not doing a very good job of writing this post; I keep getting distracted because I am reading the blogs on this month's NaBloPoMo Blogroll . I like to just choose one at random and read it. If it's worth commenting on, I comment, otherwise I just lurk and move on. This blog is supposed to be about dairy doings, but it often strays....