Spring Tree

Last weekend I was able to complete my 4-seasons series of my favorite tree. No matter what the season, this tree puts on a show. Here's the other three:

Summer


Fall


Winter

The Baby Parade Continues

Thomas, calf #3. This is as close as I could get to him. He's the one out in front with his tail curled up in the air. Every time I see him, he's got his tail curled up in the air. Pretty full of himself, I think.


The first heifer of the year - Dolley. A mini-me of her mother. Hard to see her under there!


And the second heifer of the year - Elizabeth. Such a sweet little thing.

That's 5 calves on the ground, 2 to go!

I love the piglets at this age. Big enough to explore away from mom, small enough to fit through the fence and free range about the farm. They always move together as a swarm. So much fun to come out of the house and see these guys milling about.

Take 2

Madeline decided she was ready to try the puppy thing again. So Saturday afternoon we went down and she had her pick of the litter. The puppies were only 4 1/2 weeks old, so it will be a few more weeks before we go back to get her.

This is Ava :)

Easter Calf

Updated: I was getting ahead of myself with the names!

Internet, meet John Q "Just John" aka "JJ".

John Q "JJ", meet the Internet.

Sunday when we left for Easter dinner at my grandma's, Matt remarked that it was a "perfect" day for calving. Cold and wet. Yes, he was being sarcastic.

Sure enough, when we pulled in the driveway later in the afternoon, I did a doubletake. A black calf standing out there, but even from a distance I could tell he wasn't George. "Hmm, I think he's new."

George and JJ getting acquainted.

Chix Oh Six

On our way back from Iowa City this afternoon we swung by Rudd to pick up our chicks from the hatchery. And we had a nice surprise waiting for us. We got started chicks! Instead of being day-olds, they were 4-day-olds. It definitely makes a difference in the brooder - these guys already know what food is!

As for Olivia's outcome...more surgery. I think the 4th doctor that looked at her summed it up nicely. As soon as he looked in her ear he exclaimed, "Whoa! Yeah, that's gonna need to be fixed." So in May she'll have reconstructive surgery on her ear drum and ear canal. I feel so sorry for her, and I hope this will finally do the trick.

Spring

Finally, temperatures in the 70's this week. To me, this is jeans and t-shirts weather. My children, however, could not strip off their clothes fast enough after school today. They jumped on the trampoline in their swimsuits, spraying ice cold water from the hose.

I slept with the window open for the first time last night. Love hearing the frog songs coming from the creek at night. Makes for a good night's sleep.

Matt's got a carpenter coming tomorrow to look at our corn crib. We want to re-do it into a farrowing/finishing building. We talked about putting up a hoophouse, but we just don't have a place for one here.

Renovating the corn crib would entail taking out the cribbing, pouring cement on three sides around the outside of the building, adding a lean-to on one or both long sides of the building, and running a water line out there. Buy some bred Chester White gilts, a new Large Black boar, and we're in business.

Also tomorrow Olivia and I are off bright and early to Iowa City. She had tubes put in her ears when she was 14 months old. They never helped her, she still had constant ear infections. (Whereas Rafe had them at the same age and hasn't had an ear infection since.) At some point her body started rejecting the tubes, causing inflammation in the ear canal.

She underwent surgery in August to remove them, and to plug the holes in her eardrums. One ear healed perfectly, but the other still shows a perforation in the ear drum and a lot of scar tissue in the ear canal. The AEA has been testing her hearing periodically at school, and we keep getting letters from them about the hearing loss she is experiencing.

She saw her ENT doctor a few weeks ago, and his recommendation was to just wait to do anything until she is 10 or 12 years old. Best case, her ear would heal itself. More probable case, in his opinion, she would need surgery at either Iowa City or Rochester (Mayo Clinic) to replace her ear drum.

The poor thing was in the room during this conversation. When we walked out of the clinic she solemnly asked, "Does this mean I'm going to be deaf?" I quickly assured her that's not the case!

On the one hand, I was glad he didn't want to do surgery right away again. A couple of months ago that's what he was talking about doing. On the other hand, I don't want to wait 2 to 4 years to do anything. Our family physician agreed and recommended we go to either Iowa City or Rochester for a second opinion. Rochester is only an hour away, as opposed to 3 hours to Iowa City, but our doctor favors Iowa City and I've heard similar opinions from others that have doctored there. So I'm anxious to hear what they have to say tomorrow!

Take Me to the River

Rafe has discovered Sugar Creek, or "the river" as he calls it. Which terrifies me, because he's such an independent little guy I'm afraid he'll venture down there by himself. So far, though, he asks Matt, me, or one of the girls to "take me to the river so I can throw this rock."

Someday, when he's older, I hope he'll spend many lazy summer days there with a fishing pole.

Spread a Little Sunshine

Our old John Deere manure spreader. And I do mean old. It's got a wooden box, and the paint is so faded it's almost hard to tell it's a Deere anymore.

It's seen quite a bit of action this last week or so, and a few breakdowns as well. Nothing a little welding and a new used PTO knuckle wouldn't fix, apparently. I don't know much about it, only what I hear Matt telling people on the phone. People that know.

Being able to spread right here on our neighbor's field helps speed up the process, as opposed to hauling it several miles down the road to my dad's fields. Matt would really like a second tractor, so he doesn't have to be hitching and unhitching all the time. Unfortunately that's not in the budget.

George

Meet George, the first calf of 2006! And his mother, Missus Hamilton.


Missus Hamilton is our oldest cow at 10 years old, and a very good mother. George was born around 9:15 this morning. The kids and I were almost late for church because I had to call them back out of the pasture!

The proud papa

New Litter

The day we were flying home from Hollywood, Sara was busy with a homecoming surprise for us. A new litter of pigs! And a nice litter, it is. 9 live (6 boys, 3 girls) and 2 dead.



This is the best picture I could get of them, in their creep in the little wooden shed on skids that we use for broiler chickens in the summer. Matt said they were out of the shed yesterday, but I haven't managed to catch them out and about yet.

Notice all of the "red" color in the bottom one. Winston is a purebred Large Black, so it doesn't come from him. Sara is a white pig, but must have some Duroc crossed in there somewhere. Usually you can't see the red in the piglets unless the light is hitting them just right.

My brother came over Saturday to castrate and administer tetanus vaccines. One of these days Matt has got to learn how to do all that. Notice I said Matt. I can possibly see myself learning to do it, someday, in the future, but it would take quite a while for me to work up to that!

Go read it

The Center for Rural Affairs blog is on a roll this week. Especially this and this.

62

About a year ago it was time for my yearly physical. I wasn't feeling sick, but I wasn't feeling exactly well either. So I asked my doctor to run routine bloodwork. The only thing that came back out of the ordinary was my cholesterol.

It was high. Really high. 253 high.

And people that know me in person are really shocked by that, because I'm somewhat of a stick girl. Weight has never been an issue for me, luckily, although I had put on 10 or 15 pounds since I went back to work full-time. But my good cholesterol was really good, so he wasn't quite ready to prescribe medication. He told me to make some changes in my diet and retest in a year.

And here we are, livestock farmers. I was feeling like a bit of a bad advertisement for our products.

But I just knew it wasn't the meat causing the problem. I felt it was junk foods, and processed foods in general.

So I eliminated my near-daily bag of microwave popcorn habit. I've always been pretty good about cooking from scratch, but I tried to get even further away from pre-processed foods. (I wish they'd come out with organic Velveeta. Would that be an oxymoron?) I did not change my meat consumption at all.

I started buying some organic foods, mainly dairy products. And butter. I switched from margarine to organic butter, which would seem counterintuitive to lowering cholesterol but it felt right to me. I also started eating eggs most mornings, with my daily bowl of oatmeal. Another counterintuitive measure that just seemed right to me.

And I've been making exercise more of a priority in my week.

I had my retest a couple of weeks ago and...drum roll, please...191!

62 points.

I feel like some sort of high point shooter. MVP of the cholesterol bowl.