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Sunday, January 07, 2007

Trust

We spent almost the whole day trying to get a couple of different Wal*Mart stores to honor a perfectly legal, state sanctified and certified, nicely printed and filled in correctly farmer sales tax exemption form.
Because we had to get a computer.
Because the one I do the books and cow records on (which runs Windows 98) is croaking. (Latest thing is the display has turned all pink and funky around the edges and the windows are cut off on the edge. It already won't start without a lot of messing around because it can't find all its files.)
It was time.

The folks at the first store looked at us as if we had just landed our spaceship in the parking lot among the carts. "Farmer? Tax exempt? Never seen one of these before. We can't honor this! No, no, way..." This after we had stood in line and waited for people to ask other people how to handle the usually uncomplicated transaction for somewhere in the neighborhood of two and a half hours. (I LOVE to shop.)

So the boss called a different Wal*Mart in another county where there are more farms and they said, "Sure, as long as you have a certificate we will honor it, c'mon down."

So we went. It still took a while, but we finally got the darned thing. I am too tired to even take it out of the box.

The big thing is, while we were gone the whole herd of milk cows had to be fed. So Alan fed them.
A cow named River had a heifer calf while we were away too. (When we left she wasn't giving a single sign of what she was up to. An hour later there was a baby.) It needed to be cleaned off, put in a calf coat, fed colostrum and made warm and dry. Its mother needed a bottle of calcium and to be hand milked so the baby could have the bottle.
Liz did the cleaning, milking, medicine delivery, navel dipping and all the other stuff that attends birthing, while Becky gophered and Alan helped as needed.

It was good to come home to most of the chores done and the calf and cow cared for as they needed.

It is even better to be able to trust the kids to handle all that stuff and not even think about it.
Thanks guys, guess we'll keep you after all.

**Update, while we were milking that night Alan moved the older computers to their new homes, set the new one up and got it running, and cleaned up all the dust that gathers around such electronic devices. It was nice to come in and have all that bull work done and everything ready to start setting up software and moving programs. I sort of conned him into it when he asked if he could do it for me, by telling him it was too complicated and he would lose stuff and all....of course he rose to the challenge.

11 comments:

Rebecca Mecomber said...

You have some really swell kids there. :)

Deanna said...

Wow, great kids!

dmmgmfm said...

You've raised them well.

threecollie said...

Thanks, mrs. m. of course there are many times when we are not so pleased with them, but since I had completely forgotten about the cow calving and the boss didn't think she was coming in we were pretty glad the kids were watching out for her.

thanks cubby

And thank you laurie, we always hope...

Anonymous said...

Kids do seem to come through when they are really needed. I have envied people on farms because they have chores and responsibilities for young people that we don't have in a city setting.

Sorry about the Wal Mart experience, but they seem to delight in frustrating customers at times.

Anonymous said...

Rainwater, River, Riptide. River is quieter than Rainy wonder how calm the 'Tide will be.

threecollie said...

Hi Jan, our kids don't agree of course, but we see it that way too. The responsibilities they have make better people of them.

Love those names beeze, just love 'em

R.Powers said...

What a blessing to have raised some responsible kids.
Good job kids!
Good job parents!!

threecollie said...

Thanks FC

Anonymous said...

you conned me uncool. but it still works.

threecollie said...

It does indeed. lol