Dairy Daze...and Now Beyond

 Ah ha!  About a week ago, Anne Shirley finally had her calf.  Now she is in the milking herd.  Her udder isn't much punk, as Gary would say, but maybe she will come on and do better next time. Unfortunately her calf was a bull, so he is already gone on down the road.  He was, as you can see, black and white...a full Holstein.  I was hoping he would be a half beef heifer; but no luck. 

 Today, as our after Thanksgiving activity tradition, Ellen and I went Christmas tree hunting. We were unsuccessful in finding one that we needed.  To avoid allergy issues we try to find a female cedar tree; one that has the berries on it.  The males tend to give off pollen.  You might say I am crazy to believe this; but every year...EVERY FREAKING Y EAR prior to two years ago we have had just any tree and Ellen had had extreme allergy issues in the month of December.   Two years ago we managed to choose a tree that had berries on it and; wonder of wonders, she didn't have severe winter allergies.  So we found another berry laden bush last year and the same lack of allergies happened. This year we went looking for the same and were unsuccessful.  So we decided to try our fake tree this year.  I told Ellen that if we did the fake one we could set it up earlier, in early December instead of waiting until in the 20s of December to put up a real ...