Starting the New Year Off

Pretty much normally.

5:45 AM Get up to a cold house.
Really cold.
6 degrees outside and the stove wood bridged.
No fire.
No heat.
Thank God for the oil furnace (and the boss who put some oil in the tank the other day). Fire 'er up.
Old dogs out.
Old dogs in.
Nick out.
Nick in.


Get everybody out of bed early and chase them out to stove and barn.
First coffee, no time to drink it...take it to the barn.
The two springers we have been wanting to get inside are right at the door.
Tanker day, we have to milk early.
But they are right there at the door.
Move Email to a new stall so we can use hers for a heifer. Move my brand spanking new Citation R Maple baby down to the stall next to England. (My incredibly generous son knew how bad I wanted an R Maple heifer so when his heifer, Bonneville, had one yesterday he gave her to me. What a kid.) Find a collar for Broadway as all that is open for use is one stanchion (now that Email is moved) and one tie stall.

Liz, the cow whisperer, tolls the new ones in and we put them in stalls. Thank God she has that magical way with cows. Neither of these two have had a hand on them since last spring, but they follow her gentle cajoling and the grain scoop right to their stalls. Broadway even stands while she buckles the collar on. I feel better now that they are in.




Start milking. Bed cows while milking. They were bedded up good last night, but it is extra cold so they get extra straw. The new stall is way too cold for the new R Maple baby. The guys nail up plastic over the cracks around the heifer pen window and then build her a little house out of insulation board. Better now. After her bottle she curls up to sleep in about a foot and a half of straw that her overindulgent new "mama" put down.

Voldemar, the second springing heifer, can't stay where we put her. She is a moosely behemoth and is stepping all over Pecan who is a nice little cow who deserves better. We have to get a new stall ready. Alan goes out to the stove some more and cuts up some pallets to get it going. (Handy that we just took them out of the stalls the calves were in so we have them right there for him.)

The girls get down more straw while I finish milking the regular string. Calves are getting hot bottles of milk whenever anyone has a minute between cows. We build a wall of straw next to some other new calves and put insulation board in a couple of drafty windows so they will be warmer. Even with calf coats it is horribly cold. It is such a tight rope act keeping an old barn comfortable in this ridiculous sixty one day and ten below the next weather. The cows need ventilation when it is warm, but the babies need warmth when the temperature drops. Geez!

Spruce is off feed when Liz grains the cows after we milk the two bucket cows, a new heifer (Bonneville) and old Beausoleil. Liz takes her temp. Lowish. Give her a bottle of calcium and put her on antibiotics because it looks as if she has an uterine infection. I won't go into details about how we know....trust me.

Set up the pipeline cleaner while the boss works on a stall. Milk truck comes, "Hi, Mark, Happy New Year, cold enough for you?":
Continue chores around talking to Mark and letting him measure the milk and pump it off. He is a really nice kid and we are lucky to have him as our new driver.

Move Voldemar to a new stall. Fun, fun, fun. She now knows that if she puts her head in the stanchion she can't get it back out. The boss is smart enough to halter her and run the rope through the two stalls so she at least has no choice but to go where we want her.
If she goes anywhere at all. She would prefer not to and throws her head at me, flinging the grain scoop ceilingward and jumping back into the gutter.
Alan hauls her by main strength into the new stall, where once there she falls to eating as if nothing had even happened. Alan takes hay over for the pony and sheep and puts more pallets in the stove.

By then it is after ten AM. We chase Alan in to get some food for himself (for some reason having to do I guess with being a very hard working teenaged boy person he needs to eat promply and well and he is starving by now.) He wolfs five eggs and some toast and goes back to work. (I think Governor Paterson should have to follow Alan around for just one day. Just one. Maybe he would shut up about fat taxes and such.)

It is almost 11 AM now. The men are feeding cows. The girls and I are having breakfast. The poor boss has been out since six and hasn't eaten yet. Normally the cows get their main feeding after breakfast (they get fed grain and corn meal first thing) but what with the cold and the boss wanting to sit down for a few hours today they are feeding early. Sort of. Because with all the extra stuff this morning it is actually late.

Anyhow, Happy New Year. Thanks for being friends all through 2008! I am hoping you will all hang around through 2009 too and that I can visit all your blogs and read about your lives as well. Have a good one!

This is blurry because of frost on the window