Merry Christmas from Northview. We wish you all a joyous day and gentle things for the year to come. A strange, cold fog blankets the three big windows this morning. Usually they show me the glittering lights of the village and a few frosty stars this early on a winter day. Today they look as if they were covered with a cottony blanket. I could barely see the light on the milkhouse porch when I stood on the stair landing by the window there.

It is supposed to be pretty warm this weekend and that is not unwelcome after all the early cold. Sure saves on the firewood.

A few of our farm related worries were lifted yesterday on Christmas Eve. I for one am grateful. Mango had birthed her calf when I went to the barn for the early morning check yesterday. It is oddly marked, mostly white with a weird little black triangle on its forehead, the reverse of a normal black head with a white triangle. Sadly, it is a bull, but we have had a plethora of heifers this year and have no right at all to complain. At least there will be no Christmas morning emergency delivery as we had feared all week.

Then, when Liz went over to set some beet pulp http://www.ag.ndsu.nodak.edu/coping/forageli.htm to water up for her show calves, she found a surprise awaiting her. The barn had an extra occupant. Egrec, the wild heifer, had come inside of her own accord. http://northviewdiary.blogspot.com/2005/12/well-egrec-is-still-out-on-hill-all-by.html

After a summer of wildness, she had headed for the hills when we brought the other heifers in. Then over the past week she took to jumping over the gate of the heifer pasture and then jumping in and out of the cow barn yard so she could hang out with the sheep and commune over the fence with the show heifers in the sawdust shed. She even jumped in with them one day…and then right back out again.

When the guys got a stall ready we drove the big white yearling into it and locked her up. I swear she heaved a big sigh of relief. As soon as she was in the barn she acted as quiet as any yearling. It was plumb strange.

We think she may be blind in one eye and maybe that has been causing her extreme spookiness. Certainly, when she hears our familiar voices she settles right down. Outside she had even jumped a five-bar gate, uphill, rather than let us lock her in the barnyard.

It is a huge relief to have her properly confined. Had she ever gotten down on the Interstate someone could have been killed. All she had to do is jump one more gate or wander through when it was open for the milk truck and we would have had big problems. We even discussed the possible necessity of shooting her if she headed that way. Now she is safe in the barn, although we will probably have to sell her because of her disrespect for fences.

Anyhow, we can hopefully spend the day in the house, napping, reading or watching the football game like regular folks. (If nothing major breaks down that is).

I hope you all get to do the same or whatever other thing it is that will make your Christmas special.