Dairy Daze...and Now Beyond

OK. So it really isn't exactly "sky high", but it is pretty tall. These calves are standing on the scrapings from the holding lot by the barn. Hubby has scraped every last smidgen of this mountain of poo. It is, quite obviously, frozen solid, or else they wouldn't be able to stand on it. We got about 5 inches of snow on Tues, I think it was, so this pie actually looks pretty. Just wait until it thaws though. Ha. Yesterday I went for a long walk down to the creek bottoms. I took a few pictures, but haven't put them on the computer yet. I will try to do that soon. For now I will sign off.

OK. This blogger dealy is driving me nuts. It lost my profile photo, which was OK, I needed to change it anyway. But now when I look at my profile it says my age is 1940. I don't even have 1940 checked as my year of birth. My age is 40, NOT 1940! Well, at least it gave me a good laugh for the morning.

It started yesterday afternoon. We haven't got but just enough to slick down the roads and porch, but that's all it takes to be really annoying. It sleeted on me all the while I was doing chores. Thank goodness for insulated chore clothes. I think I am starting to get cabin fever though. Last night something happened to make me giggle almost uncontrollably; even though it wasn't THAT funny. We were in the final preparations to finish chores last night and were draining the milk vat into this little bucket that hubby pours into the bulk tank. Ellen, being her little 2 yr old self, was having a minor fit because there were no toys in the bottom of the stroller. She did what she normally does in these situations; she wails, "Dah-wee, Dah-wee" and gives her doll a fling onto the floor. Then she usually wails to get it back. This time she was strangely quiet after it landed, but I was busy at the time and didn't look for it. Then 30 seconds later when I ...

We have about 1/2 inch of snow on the ground with temps 22 degrees below freezing. The sun is really bright though. We have one of these fellows, a redheaded woodpecker, as a regular at our feeder this winter. He sure is pretty, he likes the suet. I am not getting far with this post. Ellen keeps wanting me to draw things. Believe it or not, the first thing on her list for me to draw for her is a vacuum cleaner. Then she wants a pic of a cat, her dad, her aunt, and then her grandpa. Go figure. Oh, and she wants me to spell her name for her. She cracks me up. Last night she was wanting to watch Barney yet again and I told her we were going to watch "something else." So I put in "Facing the Giants." (An excellent movie by the way.) After about 30 minutes of watching it she says; "done with 'something else.' Watch Barney." I just laughed and laughed. It's fun to watch as her vocabulary grows how she is able to make her own wants, wishes ...

Last Friday was not my husband’s day. Poor feller. For one thing the temps were near zero, and doing chores in that kind of weather is a real drag. Then it started to snow on him while he was out choring, which makes it that much more annoying. He had to take bales of hay to all three pastures up the road, I believe. When he was in the bull pasture, which is about ¾ of a mile up the road, the dreaded thing happened; the tractor ran out of gas. Now, mind you, he HAD checked it and thought he had enough. But the only way to check is to stand up at the seat, lean over the steering wheel and peer into the tank. Doing this while snow is blowing around you and you are swaddled in several layers of clothing with the wind whipping your scarf around is no small feat. So he miscalculated. Well, the bull pasture is right in front of his granddad’s place, so he made tracks over there to borrow some gas (this itself turned into an ordeal, but we will skip that part) and by the time he got back with...

A question that is frequently asked by visitors on dairies. We had a case in point happen last week. We moved a cow from the dry cow pasture to the milking herd because we weren't sure what she was up to; if she had already miscarried a calf and was going dry, or if she was yet to calve. Hubby was going to get her in the barn and examine her. That very evening though she had a calf. By the morning one of the other cows had claimed it. And that is where you run into trouble. In every herd there is always a cow, or two, or three... that tries to claim other calves. They chase the mother cow off and nurse the cow themselves. This isn't a bad trait when you need a nurse cow for bottle calves. But in this case we are afraid she prevented the calf from getting any colostrum, or first milk, from the mother cow. This can be a very critical thing because the colostrum has antibodies and such that the calf needs to prevent health problems on down the line. When hubby milked the c...

OK, this pic was from a forward. It's from a series of pictures taken in Switzerland. Just looking at it makes me feel cold. It reminds me of what we went through here 2 years ago during the ice storms. That will forever be engrained in my memory. The temps have been really erratic here, but at least it has been dry. Tonight it's supposed to get below zero. I don't do my 4-wheeler runs up the road when it dips below 15 degrees or so; too cold. Hubby takes grain up there when he takes the hay. But it's cold for him on the tractor, too.

Yet another saying to add: "As wide between the eyes as a gnat." This is in reference to someone's intelligence; or lack thereof. Hubby gave that to me this weekend. Then, here's a saying my mother frequently quoted at meal times: "Done or raw, it'll chaw." Though hubby says his mom finished it by saying: "...it'll do to chaw." Dairy news: We have had an influx of calves this past week or so. Three heifers and one little bull. Takes me a bit more time to get them all fed now, having to train 4 to the bottle all at once is kind of time consuming, though the little bull caught on straight off. But still, he's like the rest, slurp and then sling their heads around while the milk dribbles away before he figures out how to latch back on. Hubby is keeping busy hauling hay for all the girls. They sure snarf it up fast. Hubby has also busy with his other businesses. Yesterday he went over and fixed a guy's well pump; it'd been ...

Why and how did that ever become an exclamation? Anyway. Last Sunday for dinner after church I put a smallish pork roast in the slow cooker and seasoned it with onion soup mix out of a little yellow pouch; you know, just sprinkled it over the meat and veggies. Then later that evening I used more of that same package of the onion soup mix with sour cream to make some dip. The pork roast was good, but lacking in some way. So was the dip. It wasn't until Tuesday that I actually LOOKED at the envelope of left-over onion soup mix and saw that it WASN'T onion soup mix. It was a gravy mix. They both come in the same color package. *sigh* I didn't tell hubby. What you don't know, you can't laugh about to other members of the family.

Here's a pic of Ellen with a couple of her Christmas presents; crayons and a color book. She loves to color, and if you look really close you can see that she is already a lefty; she holds the crayons correctly too. I have seen her try to use her right hand once or twice maybe. Most people tell me that kids use both hands off and on until they are 4-6 years old, but so far she has been a lefty from her first month to 6 weeks. No wishy-washy back and forth for her.

Yesterday I didn't have the time to write about our Sat night experience. Here's the whole story. Last weekend one of the neighbors called and wanted to buy some milk off of us because he had a family reunion for his wife's clan going on for New Year's Eve...all week in fact. He wanted fresh milk for them. So he came over and got some. All week as we drove by we could see all the cars and trucks out there. His wife is one of 11 (eleven) siblings and they said there were about 40 people there altogether. They have a big house, but still they said you wouldn't want to be a sleepwalker, as folks were spread out all over the floors. This Saturday evening he called again and said they needed more milk. So hubby said come on. Neighbor said, " WE 'll be right over." Hubby told me; "I hope he's not bringing a whole crew." (heh heh heh) Neighbor shows up and brings about 4 additional adults in with him. I took one gal out with me to b...

Yesterday was a lovely day in the Ozarks; sunny and around 73 degrees. We celebrated by packing up and heading off to the Lebanon Livestock Market (auction) just to see what was going on there. Mostly hubby was intensely curious as we are looking to exchange our heifers to get new bloodlines going. They were super late in getting started and they always start with the smaller animals; goats, sheep and pigs...or hogs as they call them, though they did have quite a few little pigs there. After the pigs came the calves, but hubby wasn't impressed with them; said they looked like other folks' culls, kind of like what we would bring to an auction to get rid of. A guy in front of us had brought a little 10 week old bull (a red something or other, not red holstein, I forget what it was) that he wanted to sell for breeding purposes, but it only brought $85. His wife wasn't happy with him. We left after about an hour; hubby not impressed with the offerings or with how the place...