Friday, June 22, 2012

Ups & Downs

Experience is a harder teacher because she gives the tests first, the lesson afterward.

It's been a while since I posted about the farm and I thought "the girls" deserved their turn in the spotlight too.  I mean afterall, I spend roughly 63 hours a week (on a good week) with them and they have become part of my family really.

This past week at the farm has been a little rough.  No, my boss hasn't been giving me a hard time or anything, but as with everything in life, we've had some unexpected things occur there that have left us feeling a bit down.

Sunday morning, during milking, one of our more experienced cows (I talked about her in a previous post), when into labor early and the vet was called in to take a look at her.  It ended up that she was pregnant with twins, and the vet delivered them both alive (two little girls), but because they were so early and weighed only roughly 20 pounds a piece or thereabouts, their little lungs weren't developed good enough and they both died within 30 minutes or so.  I don't like to see that kind of stuff.  I know they are just cows to most people, but I never like to see stuff like that happen, I think you all know why.

Mama cow who had the baby twins :(
So that was the first bad thing this week.

Then we found out Tuesday night, via Facebook, that the high school kid who had been working for us for about a year, has decided "he wants to get out of farming".  I love how he worded that..."get out of farming", makes it sound like he ran the place and was going to make it his future.  So once again, we are short of help at the farm.  Only good thing is, we do have somebody else in the works, so hopefully that turns into something.

About this time, the whole attitude we have is bummed a tad, and then we get to the farm on Wednesday morning, only to find that our bull calf that we have been raising for about 9 to 10 months (Bernie) hung/choked himself to death during the night by getting his head caught in a headlock and he must've panicked and fell once it was stuck.  My heart sank when I found him.

Seriously, he wasn't a baby calf really anymore.  I went with Jeff to pick him up when we bought him from this other farm back in September.  A red and white Holstein bull that we were raising for breeding purposes with a very good bloodline.  He weighed roughly 700 pounds now and he would always let you pet him on the nose, Zach did this almost every time he was at the farm and adored him.  Talk about a kick to the head.  All that work and time we had put into him and something like that happens?

This is a picture of Bernie I had from a few months back when he was much smaller.  Poor guy :(
What lessons I have learned this week around the farm.  The circle of life just keeps turning.  As rewarding as the job can be, at the same time, it can get depressing, as can life.

BUT!!!

That is when I kick myself in the ass, not always but most of the time, and remind myself of the good things and the other blessings I am a part of.  So onto more daily images from around the farm to cheer myself and hopefully you up as I've been a little bit of a Debbie Downer so far.

Here are some of the other babies I have around the farm that call me "Mama".  I swear, sometimes when they moo just the right way when they are hungry it sounds like they are calling me that.  Maybe I'm just losing it completely, but it does to me.

Some of the bigger girl babies I am feeding every day.  They are so sweet.

A familiar scene in the barn anytime food is given to the animals.  I see a lot of animal behinds!!!

One of my new bottle babies.  I love how spotted she is.
Another bottle baby.
Another bottle baby.  I love her nose and eyes.
I have a bunch more I could show you but I'm pretty sure you'd get sick of seeing all of those little calves.

So onto the big mamas and experiences I take part in every day.


This young lady apparently wants to be a cheerleader or something and has a problem with "doing the splits" in the cowyard.  Doing the splits for a cow is not an easy thing to get out of so it's not necessarily something to be proud of.  So...to avoid her doing them too much she has special accomodations in our loose housing area between milkings to avoid showing off in front of her friends.  The soft, fluffy straw housing in there helps to avoid her doing them :)


This is a familiar scene at roughly 4:00 pm every day.  The girls are waiting to come into the barn to be milked.  And yes, most of the cows will come up on their own at that given time as they "know the routine".


Some of the girls getting their last bite of "grub" before heading into the barn for milking time.  I think they are giving me the evil eye or something?


Everytime this cow comes down the aisle I crack up.  Her marking on the top of her forehead looks like a bow to me so I can always spot her as it looks like she is wearing a bow in her hair.

And next is the cow I affectionately call the "Grandma" cow when talking to the kids.  She is one of the oldest cows in the barn and doesn't get around the best.  She also has special accomodations in the loose housing barn most of the time or the other younger cows push her around out in the cowyard (big bullies!).  I found out her real name is Mandy.  Pretty name for such a docile and easy going cow, heh?



And the last girl I'm going to introduce you to is one of our "newbies".  She just started being milked about 1 1/2 months ago and I took to her right away because of her face.  Another farmer I know, when I made the comment that she had such a precious face, said they "all look the same", and I disagreed right away.  I think they all look a lot different.  The combination of their markings and personality and the sensitivity you can detect in their eyes makes each one of them different.  This particular one stands out to me because of how black her face is and then you get the white in her chest for the contrast.  Like I said, I think she is pretty darn sweet and distinct looking.


So yeah.  I hope the next week is better at the farm and we aren't hit with anymore surprises like this week.  Seriously though, I still wouldn't trade it.

I visited briefly with some co-workers at my old job earlier this week.  I would've liked to visit longer but I had Luke along and he was tearing up the joint.  But I can tell you, although I love and miss a lot of the people I met there, I didn't walk out of those doors wishing I could go back.  I think I made a good move.

God Bless!!!

Tuesday, June 12, 2012

Small Town Living

The nice thing about living in a small town is that when you don't know what you're doing, someone else does.  Anonymous

Truthfully that has got to be one of my favorite quotes ever and I think it's because it is both funny and has a lot of truth to it.

I have lived in a small town with an actual water tower for many years now and grew up out in the country near some almost nonexisistent little towns as a child and there is no doubt that everybody knows everybody and what comes along with that is that everybody "thinks" they know everything about everyone.  I smiled and giggled just thinking about how the rumor mills fly in our small town and how some people would literally have nothing to do and wouldn't know which way to turn if they didn't have their local gossip to spread about.  Sad really.

Gosh, I don't think I can count on both of my hands how many times over the years that I have likely been the subject of one of these stories, and I often think it would be real fun to be a fly on the wall when people are talking about me so I can hear everything and see how falsified the story really is.  I'm not quite sure why certain people get off on this kind of bullshit really.  And why they have to be so childish when they are grown adults and dish out information to others that isn't even true 80% of the time (percentage is just a guess of course), but I choose not to be a part of it.  Another reason why I left the corporate world, where rumors are as common as changing your underwear, and have recently turned into somewhat of a hermit.  I just don't need that kind of stuff in my life and don't see a reason to hurt somebody else by talking about them.  I'm better than that.

This by far is one of the biggest downfalls to living in a small town BUT at the same time there are a lot of advantages to living in a small town as well and the boys and I took time today to experience small town living.

Samantha has left us all for the week to travel to Washington DC and Virginia through a school trip opportunity and it's been just me and the boys.  Yesterday was spent grocery shopping and running to the White House of Music to pick up an Alto Saxophone rental (not cheap by the way) for Zachary as he has decided he wants to take band in summer school and next school year and try this out.  We'll see how that goes?  Wish me luck. 

Well today, after getting some things accomplished around the house the boys and I and Lucy the dog took a walk to our local drugstore, Burmeschs, to get a Slushie (or Hushie as Luke would call it), a glass bottle of Coke for Zach and an ice cream cone for Mom.

Zach and Luke on the way to Burmeschs for our "goodies".

Lucy watching the window at Burmeschs to see where her boys went?

The boys enjoying their purchases.


Oh the trip back had it's moments as the boys kept competing for first place on the ride home and Luke kept getting ticked off that Zach was passing him up and "winning".  Meanwhile I am carrying my ice cream cone, Luke's Slushie and trying to walk the dog who keeps stopping to smell things while monitoring the situation ahead of me.  I wanted to drink heavily by the time we got home.

But once again, it was at that moment when I decided that once again I was blessed.  I felt lucky to live in a small town where I can go for these crazy walks with my boys on a daily basis if I want and not have to worry about crime and being safe.

Blessed that I wasn't in the office at my old job all day while my kids were on summer vacation and that I could spend this extra time with them when they are home now.

Blessed that although I live in a town where everybody knows everybody's business it is a small enough town that I also know who to keep my kids away from and chances are for the most part I know all of the parents of the kids my children are going to school with.

I don't wish to live in some big Metropolis.  If I choose, I can visit Milwaukee anytime I want and enjoy the "big city life" at that time.

You take the good with the bad in pretty much everything you do in life and you learn to accept them both.

The boys are getting along now (I won't say that out loud).  Once again, that is also a blessing :)



Monday, June 4, 2012

Oh Can Boys Keep You Hopping!!!

Mothers of little boys work from son up till son down!
-- Author Unknown

Oh Boy!!!  It has been one heck of a week.  So frantic and crazy at times that I'm not quite sure where to start?

I do know that I am one tired Mommy and you can thank my two crazy boys for a lot of this.



My week has been filled with one trip to the Emergency Room, way too many stressful situations trying to control my 3 1/2 year old son, baseball practices, games and a tournament and many interesting conversations about puberty with my 10 year old son.  Nice!

I'll start with the scare we had early last week.  Luke almost always comes along with us to the farm every afternoon.  Sometimes the other two kids end up there as well after school and they keep an eye on him and hang out with him to keep him out of places he shouldn't be while Jeff and I do our chores.  On this particular day however they both had activities after school and couldn't be there so he was hanging out with us.  He was with Jeff at the time and Jeff had just turned on the roller mill to roll some corn for the cowies.  Jeff had just told Luke to stay away and he had moved back a bit, but he apparenlty was acting goofy and lost his balance/footing and when he fell he fell towards the belt/pully area portion of the roller mill sending his right hand into the belt and over the pully, all the way around and back out again, landing him with a bigh thump on the ground and a lot of screaming.  Jeff came flying into the barn with him in his arms and within minutes I was on my way to the ER.  Thankfully there wasn't any major cuts or anything but there was immediate swelling of his entire hand which eventually led to Xrays and thankfully negative results.







It was scary.  I dislike trips to the ER with my children.  I think the most painful thing any Mother can endure (or Father as Jeff was worse than I was) is to see their child in pain and feel as if you didn't do your job to protect them.
Luke was a toughy though and had actually stopped crying shortly after we left the farm to head to the hospital.  He smiled at the hospital and even told me he wasn't going to do this ever again on the drive there.
I stopped and counted my blessings many times over since then.  It could've been a lot worse and I won't even go into details about it.  Let's just say we are lucky, very lucky.  It took a few days for him to start using that hand again, but all is back to normal now for the most part.
One would think that an injury like this would make this little guy slow down a tad but apparently it doesn't.  Luke was still full of piss and vinegar and pushing all of my buttons on a daily basis.

An example of one of the things Luke likes to do to Mom at least once a week.

Most of the time throughout the week I am home alone with him.  And I get home from the farm and one of the things I have to do almost immediately is take a shower as I am quite smelly.  Well, he thinks it is really funny to unlock the door and take rides on his bike, 4 wheeler or whatever down the sidewalk and almost to the corner intersection while I am in the shower.  So I get done with my shower, peek around the corner to check on him and then he isn't there.  So, I quick throw some clothes on and look out the window and lately I have been chasing him down with my Ford Explorer so I can catch up to the little shit.  Seriously!!!  He's quick!!!

It's always an adventure with boys.  Which leads me to my next story.

So Zach, our 10 year old, has been learning about puberty in school all week.  The girls are taught in a separate room from the boys and by a female teacher and the boys have a male teacher. 

The first day he came home and decided to talk about it and the first thing out of his mouth went something like this, "So yeah Mom, guess what I got to learn about today in puberty class?"  Said with a little sarcasm of course.

To which I replied (a little nervously of course but curious at the same time), "What?"

"All the parts of the penis, oh yeah," he stated with a smirk on his face.

At this point all I really did was raise my eyebrows a bit with a quizzical look on my face and said, "Okay.  That's interesting."

"Sure is," he said and he walked away.  Apparently that was my clue that the conversation was now over.  It cracked me up.  I know Samantha had these same classes a few years earlier but she never came home and really mentioned much about them to me.

The next day comes, Zach gets home from school and I am done with work and that leisurely time of the night comes and Zach says to me.

"Soooo, guess what we learned about today." 

"Hmmm?" I say, "No clue."  Playing dumb.

"Sperm and eggs and how they come together to make babies!"  More sarcasm of course.

My eyes lit up at this I'll admit so I responded with, "Did your teacher tell you that these sperm and eggs can't come together to make babies until AFTER you're married?"

"No!" he says.  "Our teacher said that this can happen after you have gone through puberty?"

To which I corrected him by saying, "Oh no, he was wrong.  You have to go through puberty AND be married for this to happen.  It's a rule.  Your teacher must've forgot the married part."  Ha ha.

He then left the room with a puzzled look on his face.  Oh brother!  This will get more interesting in the next few years I'm sure.  He already had a magnifying glass out (not really but close) looking for signs of the "changes" he will be going through. 

Truthfully there is never a dull moment in my life.  Not anywhere close to dull.  I can't imagine the last time it was.  But with that said, I wouldn't have it any other way.  I adore my boys and they keep me young.



I hope all of you have a great week and never have any dull moments either.