Near Death Experience

I'm going to have a T-shirt made...."I survived the great snow slide of 2011"

It started out like any other day...my walk on the treadmill, breakfast, a short visit to facebook via the computer and then outside to tour the baby calf pen...

What made today special was that sometime during the wee hours of the morning a Chinook blew in and things warmed up...water was dripping off the eaves troughs during breakfast...the sun was shining and it looked to be a grand day...  thus my walk up to the barn...now for those of you who have never been here...our barn is a 40 foot by 60 foot building and at it's peak it stands 24ft off the ground...and the tin roof is expansive...and holds a lot of snow...ahhhh I see you have guessed where this is going....hahahah   well you would be right.  

In the past couple of days of our nicer weather some snow had slid off the roof of the house already and just this morning off one side of the garage...making it necessary to shovel the bloody heavy stuff out of the way to be able to remove our vehicles from said garage... But the barn, well the barn just didn't want to let go of its snow just yet...and there was tons of it...with the wind and blizzards we have had the usual layer of snow was tripled in some places due to the drifting wind....

As I approached the barn I could hear and see that water was dripping off the eaves trough...a small of amount of snow was hanging over the eaves trough and melting in the warm air...( +2)  I kept going and was nearly to the small door that enters the barn via the office when I heard a creaking sound and then whooooooosh....the force of the first wave of snow hit me in the shoulder and knocked me forward...I fell to my knees on the cement stoop and was knocked down flat, the snow buried my legs and covered up to my waist in more snow and it just kept coming... I was close enough to bang with my fist on the door and luckily for me, Robert was just inside...he ran back into the barn and fetched the scoop shovel...then proceeded to dig me out... I have to admit that the snow was horribly heavy and I was very lucky that it hadn't let loose when I was directly under it... when it all slid off, the pile was taller than I was and stretched the whole 60 foot length of the barn... a close call....and I am sure Robert was thinking " Damn missed again...." hahahaha   

Our neighbour who just recently came home from southern Alberta is now on his third day of snow removal from his yard....

Here are some pics I took while I was outside today...

And The Hell Continues

 I know it must seem to you all that I spend a lot of my blogging time trashing my husband, but honestly, if he wasn't such a complete dipshit sometimes I wouldn't have to write about him.  I love  him  to pieces but have fallen into this rut where I teeter totter in and out of LIKE with him.  Does anyone else have that problem ?  

I have just realized recently that my skills are horribly under-appreciated...  I went up to the barn the other day to clean the office and make it cozier for Robert to spend his nights in...now, he tends to do everything short of standing on his head to keep me from going to the barn, not because he is concerned for my health but because it is always a frigging pig sty and he doesn't want to get yelled at....  anyway this time was no different....I get there and OMG... there are empty cat/dog food bags laying everywhere, dead flies on every flat surface...still there from the summer... every piece of paper that ever entered the office is still there  but just laying all over, the bulletin board where important things like the list of cows to calf on what day...is so full of tractor parts tacked to it and god damned labels from bags of salt he fed during the summer that the list of cows to calf is just laying on the shelf...with two big coffee cup ring stains on it already and he only took it up there two days ago... there are empty wiener packages laying on the counter...from months ago...empty cans, empty oil containers, nails, crap crap crap...and more crap...so I roll up my sleeves and start by clearing the garbage off the counter...I had hoped to vacuum the dead flies and straw off of everything..but Robert came in started taking things out of my hands...and generally whining so finally I just used my arm to sweep all the crap onto the floor...(overly dramatic I know)  set out the tags...and calving book and proceeded to tag the new baby calves...when I was done...I pissily, put my coat back on, grabbed my gloves and said, "fine, live like a pig ...but just so you know...this is how hoarders get started"....and walked to the house....so the barn is still a sty and it drives me insane every time I go up there but it has now become a point of contention between us...and I refuse to waste even one more breath complaining about the mess....(I never said I would quit blogging about it though)  hahaha   I have considered putting up a sign, a disclaimer, stating that I have nothing to do with the state of those premises.....It is just typical of his entire life I have come to think... he is so scattered and unorganized that everything around here is half ass done...  I can't help but feel though, that it is partly my fault...because it really became more evident since I got sick... without my pair of hands out there to help he is floundering...badly...he wastes time doing stupid shit that could wait..and the important things don't get done or he just jimmy rigs them...

We lost another calf today, that makes three now...and unlike the first two where there was a legitimate reason for them dying this one is solely to blame on work not getting done... so, even though I feel like crap and am having a horrible winter, I have decided to drag my sorry ass outside tomorrow and try to help with the work...I think I will get him to fire up the CAT for me and push some snow...God knows there is so much of it that even the cows don't want to walk in it.  The cow that calved today layed on her new baby...because it was the only spot that the snow was trampled down...it has been years since we have had a cow lay on her calf...and it really pisses me off.  No excuse for it other than the snow needs to be moved...so the cows have more room to lay around.... See, we keep them up in a corral near the barn at night...but during the day while Robert is putting fresh straw out for bedding and putting feed in the feeders he lets the cows out into a pen in front of the house...but since we had all this bloody snow....the only place the snow is packed down is where he has spread a bale of greenfeed.  (baled oats) otherwise they have to wade through four feet of snow. 

So snow removal is my plan for the morrow.   Now Robert has decided to take a twin calf that another cow had last night and transplant it on to the cow that killed her calf...hopefully it won't be too big a battle to convince her to take someone else's calf.  some will take one no problemo and others fight till the bitter end and Robert loses patience with them and puts the hobbles on...so they can't kick... I feel bad for the little calf...one minute he has a loving mommy and sibling and the next he's put in a pen with a bitter, depressed bitch that wants to plaster him to the wall...but in all the years we have been doing this (33 yrs now) we have only ever had to pail feed one calf, that the calfless cow just refused to take...needless to say she didn't get to stay here...we kept the calf and pail fed it and shipped the stubborn cow.  When all else fails we pull out the OLD SPICE aftershave....hahaha   a couple of drops of that on the cows nose and the calf and within a couple of days they are a pair...it's all the cow can smell so she can't tell if the calf in the pen with her is hers or some one Else's.   The only draw back to that plan is that we have to smell it right along with her....yuk...but even at that there is a silver lining...it covers up the smell of cat urine, from the TOM cat spraying in the barn...

On another note:  for those of you who have been to my house...you might recall the dead skeletal remains of a once lovely Ficus tree that I have standing on my deck just outside of our dining room window...the one with the lovely little bird nests in it...Well, I am sad to say that I will be looking for a new crafty display for that area of the deck due to the damned kitten who lives on our deck (question is for how much longer) He takes extreme pleasure in climbing my brittle branched ficus tree and has destroyed the robin's nest already, and in the past few days has broken all the lower branches completely off the tree...and just this morning his mother.....the retarded cat...leapt into her second childhood by climbing the damned thing too and totally stripped the remaining branches from it...the two culprits together then proceeded to shred the two little chickadee nests that were still in the tree....beyond recognition... I might add. So I have had thrust home to me, rather abruptly, once again, why I dislike cats hanging around the house...especially kittens...I had forgotten just how destructive they are..but now I remember.  I have enlisted Robert in helping me lure these cats up to the barn where all the other cats reside.  They get milk and food there so they won't suffer...in fact they will be far better off up there, because if they wreck even one more thing here at the house I am going to pull out the pellet gun... I'll be sure and keep you posted ...on how we make out with that project.

Fundamentally Wrong

Is it just me or is there something fundamentally wrong with with the way our police people are doing their job.  I am outraged at the "SHOOT FIRST ASK QUESTIONS LATER" mentality that has been exhibited the past few years. 

Oh, don't get me wrong...I appreciate the job they are doing, putting their life on the line everyday to keep peace in the country but when I turn on the TV or read the paper, all I seem to see is COP SHOOTS 56 YR OLD MAN, Cops tazer someone, cops beat woman in custody... It makes me think that the RCMP and city police departments have trained a bunch of weak kneed, cowardly little pussies, who are so afraid of getting hurt that they would rather get the slap on the hand from higher up and shoot first... for instances that come to mind are:  Robert Chikanski.. and the countless others who were over tazered. The two recent people held in an Ontario jail that were beaten up while in custody, and the 54 yr old man just east of Edmonton that was shot to death by RCMP officers.

What ever happened to shooting in the arm or leg, no this man in Edm. was shot in the chest and head...they meant to kill him and he never fired his gun...he waved it around in a threatening manner but never shot....and they killed him...
So for the past three days we have had to listen to people's outrage at the killing of a Toronto police officer when he was run over by a stolen snow plow.   And it is sad...I agree...but dozens of people die on the job everyday and they don't get five days on National news..with 13,000 people attending their funeral... it just seems a bit ludicrous to me...

There would have been a time when the police in that stand off situation east of Edm. would have called in a negotiator...spent some time finding out about the mans situation...but not anymore...if it's gonna take any more than a half hour they'll just shoot you, so they can all clock off on time and take the wife out for supper. If they had taken the time to look into this mans life they would have perhaps spoken to his daughter who would have told them that he has been terribly depressed and that she suspects that her father waved his gun around on purpose so that the police WOULD shoot him, suicide...oh well,

I am not the only one who sees a terrible trend... and it frightens me...

I know for a fact that the police make a lot of mistakes, the inquiry into the Roszcko shooting of 4 RCMP officers is underway in Edm. right now and I am livid at some of the shit they are trying to shove down our throat...things that we know for a fact did not happen...on a day last week when the father of Peter Sheeman was allowed to ask questions of the commanding officer Martin of the Mayerthorpe detachment. He asked if there was any one thing, that had it been done differently, would have changed the outcome of that fateful day...and Martin replied, Yes, a phone call or tip, telling them that Roszcko had returned to the farm, would have changed the way he approached the situation...
It was made very clear by whom he had wanted that phone call from...since the RCMP have been trying to make Dennis Cheeseman and Shawn Hennessy the scape goats for years now...They are still in jail...but may get out on early parole in two years...their lives are ruined...their families left destitute after trying to pay for lawyers...and they only thing they are guilty of really is selling Roszcko's pot to the high school kids in Barrhead...and selling him an old hunting rifle three years before the shootings...for quick cash...

They did transport him from Shawn Hennessey's house back to his farm...but he showed up at Hennessey's house waving a hand gun at Shawn and his wife with his two young children in the next room...what would you have done... refused?.... I wouldn't have...he did try to get out of it...but Roszcko threatened to hurt his wife and kids so he along with his (slightly simple) brother in law drove Roszcko back to his farm...just a two miles from our house...they drove past on the highway, and once they were adjacent to his land, in a dip in the highway he made them stop and got out...he waved the gun in their face and told them not to tell anyone about this...they drove a bit farther down the road then turned the vehicle around and returned home... They had no idea that there were RCMP officers camped out in Roszcko's yard... perhaps if they had they would have made that call...all they knew was that some sheriff had shown up that afternoon to repossess Roszcko's truck, that he had fled the farm and gone to his aunts to hide the truck...now he wanted them to take him home... so they did....Shawn Hennessey and his brother in law spent the remainder of that night consoling Shawns wife...who was very upset from that man showing up waving a gun around....t he children were put to bed and they watched a movie and did not know about the shootings until late the next day.. so they had no idea that a call from them could have changed anything...they didn't even know it was happening. until it was over...

So I have to ask this...just because some asshole shows up at your door waving a gun and making threats and wants you to drive him home, does that make you an accomplice to murders that hadn't even taken place at the time you drove him home....and if so, does that mean that if you were sitting in your car out side a bank...waiting for you husband to join you ...and inside the bank, a man has been shot during an armed robbery...the thief... runs out,gets in your car,  holds a gun to your head and says drive.... does that make you an accomplice to murder and theft...?????

I think if they had known there were officers staked out at his home, and that he returned there with the evil intent of killing them, they would have called the police...but they didn't know what was taking place there, they dropped him off on the highway not his yard...why didn't his mother call the police...he stopped at her house before crossing the field to his own yard... she didn't know there were policemen there waiting....and they weren't really waiting for him to return...they were waiting for the green team and chop team to arrive from edm....so if they had waited at the end of his driveway (which is quite long) they may not have been shot...but they waited  grouped together at one end of his shop.Waited for search warrants, which they did not have when they first arrived there..

Any way... It just seems to me that police across the country have embraced the whole shoot first ask questions later policy and then blame their hair trigger attitude on the victims..." well if he hadn't been standing on his porch waving his gun in the air, we wouldn't have felt threatened and shot him in the heart..."  it just seems alittle extreme...what ever happened to shooting him in the leg to demobilize him and then rush him while he is distracted with the pain...nope...must have run out of room in the jails....let's just shoot him...and find out later that there were no bullets in his gun....

When will it end ?

Help !  It won't stop snowing and we are running out of milk...
One of us may have to harness up the dogs and sled into town for supplies...

Who knew, when this winter started that we would experience one of the snowiest winters we've had for years.   2005 we had five feet of snow...and that was bad but this is far worse....It snows everyday, it's frigging frigid out side with day time highs of -20....and there's a wind...it blows nearly everyday... Robert is trudging around out there up to his ass in snow...literally...he has to just walk where he has been with the tractor, he barely has time to keep everyone bedded with straw never mind move snow... the road maintainer has been by once in the past two weeks so there is nearly two feet of snow on the road again...and the only traffic we have going by is the school bus...when it finally gets too bad for them to go the maintainer will be back... We slipped and slid our way into town yesterday, we were out of milk, cheques needed to be deposited and calving supplies picked up ...but it was bad, bad, bad.... really bad... I am so glad that Robert insisted on driving in, rather than my going myself..even though he did make us go in the smaller farm truck and once we had picked up the parcel with the Angus tags (a 14" x 14" box) two 4L of milk some onions, lettuce and broccoli, three doz eggs and two bags of puffed wheat cereal...I had to get into the truck first then he basically piled the groceries on top of me...since the truck only is a single cab with no back seat... and stuff would have either flown out of the back of the truck box or froze on the way home...he then met a friend in the grocery store who asked us to come to her place for tea and he agreed which meant I had to get out and then back into the truck all over again...when we got to her place in town...he came around to my side to remove the bags of produce from my lap while I tried to get my right foot on the ground...then lift my left leg, which was numb by this time, and clear the two 4L jugs of milk on the floor between my feet...I cleared the jugs but my foot got caught in the loop handle of the plastic grocery bag and tripped me up, throwing me off balance on the slippery sidewalk lost my footing with my right foot...Roberts hands were full of the bags of produce and he was waiting for me to get out so he could put them on the seat...and down I went...nearly face first right there on the sidewalk where all the neighbours could see...I had to pick myself up and brush off tons of snow...I was covered from head to toe...hahaha  cussing the whole time of course...and then we ended up taking the produce inside with us so it wouldn't freeze....  what a time...

This friend is the one whose daughter is in a bad situation with an ex husband who is fanatically religious and swears god speaks to him...he wants the two kids to visit him every two weeks and she is afraid to let them...anyway, on new years day...her 13 yr old daughter ran away from home, rather than go and stay over night with her brother at the fathers place...she explained it all in the note she left...so they had all been pretty stressed out and we sat and listened to her story...about her granddaughters running away.. I think she needed to tell someone, so we were glad to lend a shoulder.

When we got home and were carrying in the bags of groceries...Robert (who had shovelled the sidewalk that morning and didn't clean the steps off) misjudged where the edge of the step was, went to step up to the door and fell flat on his face on the deck, arms and legs sprawled out and groceries scattered everywhere....as a matter of fact he brought in the two jars of stewed prunes this morning, he'd found them in the snow bank outside...frozen of course. I asked him, when he fell if he was alright...and he said...yes..nothing damaged but my dignity...I laughed and said join the crowd...




my Xmas light trees stand six feet tall but all we can see is the top two feet.



and it just kept snowing...all evening, all night and still today...and not lightly but great big giant flakes so heavy we can't see the trees across the field... It is a complete white out out there....

The other morning Robert came in for breakfast and said "hey, since your in such a good mood this morning I have a funny story to tell you"  and I said "oh"   then he proceeded to tell me how he had done his tractor feeding the day before and forgot to close a gate ...Now, we keep our cows up near the barn when they are this close to calving and so they browse on a bit of green feed during the day and he fills the feeders with hay but keeps them out of that pen until about 11 pm...when he checks them then lets them into the feed...so they eat most of the night and usually don't calf until early morning.. it really does make a difference in the number of calves born during the night. any way the gate he forgot to close was the one that he enters to put the feed into the feeders...so that night when he let the cows into the pen where the feeders are through another gate...he didn't notice that the gate on the far side of the pen was wide open...but the cows did.. so sometime between 11pm and 2 am...the whole herd of cows all 107 of them left the pen walked out the far driveway onto the road...up the road a bit towards our other quarters of land, thought better of it, turned around and came down the road, passing the drive way they had exited from and coming towards the house driveway...where they decided they had had enough adventure for one night and came into the yard...up the driveway past the barn and back into the pen where the feed was....so when Robert went out at 2 am and slowly walked around the feed pen looking at the back ends of the cows to spot anyone who might be calving, got to the far side of the pen, noticed the open gate with all the tracks heading out of it along with the odd spot of manure he closed the gate and followed the tracks, and discovered that the cows had been out on the road.... NOW, you might be thinking man that R is one lucky S, O.B. and he is....very lucky... if someone had been driving along and hit one of those cows with their vehicle we could have gotten our asses sued...and lost everything... this kind of thing is nothing new for him .... he forgets to close gates all the time...bulls get out and broke all the branches off my favorite spruce tree here in the yard a couple of years ago..because he had left the gate open, forgot about it being open and let the bulls into that pen while he bedded their corral...and an open gate is like a magnet for cows.... you can drive onto a quarter of land and leave the gate open thinking it is safe...there isn't a cow in sight for as far as the eye can see....and by the time you come back to the gate the bags are out on the road...they have radar...I think...anyway, Robert is always getting caught being lazy... but just last summer he wasn't so lucky...he had gone to town for parts and I was mowing the lawn...I had just finished and gone into the house for a cold drink to enjoy while sitting on the deck...when I stepped outside with my ice filled glass...there were three cows with calves about 10 ft away from the house...the cows were pawing in the pile of peat Robert had dumped there a few days before for our landscaping project that was in process...before I could get my work shoes back on those C's (bad word) had completely levelled a six foot  high pile of soil. it was scattered everywhere....and they had rubbed on the tiny little crab apple tree we had planted there until it was pulled out of the hole and layed on the driveway with it's roots exposed...I called the dogs (who were sound asleep on  the other side of the deck) and the three of us chased the cows back into the barn yard and I closed the gate that transitions from my yard to the barn yard...and then walked through the barn yard looking for how the cows got out in the first place...and I found it...another gate left open...so, I am not so surprised anymore when animals get out ... but I do still get mad...hahahaha poor Robert....let's hope this was the only one he leaves open this winter. They might have gotten into the neighbours feed yard and eaten his 100. per bale, hay...that would have hurt..

We heard some shocking news two days ago...Robert had managed to drive down to the mail box and while he was there he stopped and chatted to our neighbour who was grinding grain nearby...and he told Robert that our other neighbour's wife was in the University hospital in a comma. On new years day she and her husband and two daughters (ages 11/9) had been out for a horse back ride. Now they are very horse enthusiastic...he won Canadian team roping a few years ago and is a  silver smith whose buckles and western style jewellery is sold around the world, she grew up on horse and the two girls are junior barrel racers...they host junior rodeo's at their farm a couple of times a year, so she knows what she is doing on a horse...anyway, they had ridden back into the yard after their ride (it was not bad  here that day -8 but windy) and as she was dismounting the horse spooked she was thrown under the horse and it reared when it was coming down with its front feet she was hit on the left side of the head...her face was split open and there was tons of blood apparently...he sent the kids for towels and blankets...while he called 911 but we don't get very good cell phone reception here and he had to go to the house to call .... the ambulance took her to our local hospital where they stabilized her and wanted to fly her to the city by STARS...air ambulance but it was too windy...so they had to transport her by ambulance into the city...the wind was blowing snow around and the traffic was crazy being new years day..shopping and all in the city...so she is still in a comma, not medically induced...but she does respond to pain stimulation...hot and cold sensation...so the family has been advised about possible brain damage...she has extensive swelling of the brain but they have already done surgery to replace her horribly shattered skull with metal plates...and say it is just a matter of time...to wait and see if she is going to wake up...

 On another note....we had our first live baby born last night...a second calver...had a little tiny black heifer...Robert had stayed in the house a bit longer to watch the news , so she was a bit chilled and the tips of her ears were frozen...but he warmed her up and dried her ears...got her to suck mommies teat and she's good to go...we'll pop a tag in her ear tomorrow before she gets kicked outside into the cruel cold snowy world...but I am sure Robert will spoil the crap out of the calves again this year by closing the calf shelters in with plastic and putting heat lamps in there...they get so toasty they don't want to come out during the cold nights to nurse and their moms stand in front of the sheds and bellow all night...so Robert doesn't get any sleep...ahahahaha it used to be me that happened to so I figure it is just great that he has to now live with the consequences of his spoiling them....instead of me.  TaDa.

Well I should finish this and get back to doing the year end books...ugh...I have been working on them for the past two days...and finally had to read Robert the riot act about not bringing me all the receipts....he is notorious for leaving them in the truck, in the barn, in his bathroom or in the bags....hahahah I know it sounds like he is my cross to bear but his good attributes  more than make up for the less than stellar bits...

Mother Nature must be a man

After making a quick trip into our local town for calving supplies, a burger and spinal adjustment we made our way home in a winter wonderland of hoar frost, fog and a ground covering of over three f'ing feet of snow.  Who ever said " NATURE" was a mother...was right...she is a mother $#%#&%&^ !!!!! and certainly is not a woman...Mother Nature has to be a man...no woman would subject us to such winter weather hell.... she plies her wares (mostly snow and cold temps) like a man on the couch...with the remote...and 700 channels of sports...sports and more sports...it just keeps coming, until you are ready to climb the walls.

One of the tools in my arsenal, to counter MOTHER NATURE's  nasty habits is the good old colour seed catalogue...I bring it out every year about this time and peruse its pages slowly, imagining all the lovely flowers and veggies growing in my postage stamp sized garden... sighhhhhh   the flowers look so beautiful and lush... this years pictures seem particularly crisp and lovely

So I sit here as the last bits of light dwindle from our winter sky, deciding which seeds to place in my order..for a garden that is five months away from being planted...hahaha  boy we humans optimistic.  Robert and I have decided to erect the old elk fencing that fish and game guys left here a few years ago.  Hopefully it will cover all the bases, keeping out the dogs, who dug up some of my potato hills to make just the right sized nest hole in the cool damp earth on a hot summers day, the white tail deer who were coming in the quiet of the night to nibble on my beet tops, corn stalks and peas, the barn cats from using the summer fallow side of the garden as a public toilet and the fox/coyote that dug up all the last of the carrots that I had so lovingly thinned and nurtured all summer and either broke them or chewed them and ate them.... why couldn't they have eaten some of the gazillion tomato plants that we had in the garden...and spent the last three months of 2010 trying to fob off on neighbours...Oh noooooo we can't have that...that might have actually been helpful...Little so and so's... so I will fix them...I will erect an  eight foot tall tightly woven net fence all around the garden.  it will of course be a pain in the ass for me when I need to go over and work in the garden...and hopefully it won't keep the bees from pollinating...although it isn't that finely woven...the openings are about 3"x3", so upon reflection it might not be able to deter the cats or the squirrels but certainly anything bigger than that...I am excited actually, because I lose a lot of produce to wildlife....I won't have to plant so much in 2012 if it works the way I hope it will.  hahaha...

 My garden spot is my mother in laws old yard...it is a nice spot, protected from the howling winds we get here and hot as hades...in the summer...but because it is in the other yard...animals roam freely through it... even the dogs...although they know better than to set foot on tilled earth while I am around..... when the Cat's away the mice will play....and they are no exception ...the foot prints left behind are evidence enough...but what can you do.... at least these dogs don't go into the garden and eat the veggies...like the house dog I had years ago...(in another life time) "Toby"  used to go into the garden and pull the peas off the vine and eat them...I know I should have never fed him some because he was that smart that he watched me pick them, split the pod and feed him the peas...so after awhile he just did it himself...he also used to pick raspberries...It started with me picking the berries and he came with me...would lay at my feet and soon began eating any that fell on the ground...pretty soon he would be on the other side of the row....yanking on the berries...even from the house you could look out into the garden (this was on a different farm) and see the pea wire shaking like crazy... I even had a cat who would come to the garden and eat the cucumbers...so you would be picking them and find a few that had been half eaten...bloody cat...she was weird...she loved sauerkraut...too...

oh well, I have managed to cheer myself up now...so I will complete my seed order and send it away... but on this -32 day, gardening is a long way off.

No MOre SNOW pleassssssseeee

For Gods sake enough with the bloody snow already.... since Friday afternoon we have had a foot and a half of snow... besides that we were in the middle of a blizzard and the drifts are over six feet in places...it is incredible...that just three days ago it was 0 degrees and near melting...sunny and all...now it is getting colder and the deep freeze is about to set in for who knows how long...whaaaaaaaaaaaa  

One of our cows is acting like she wants to calf...so after a couple of hours Robert had to reach inside and feel what was happening...he hasn't come down to the house yet so I don't know for sure...but I am thinking it isn't good news, she is about two weeks early....and it is her first calf ever so...lots could go wrong...if the poor little bliter isn't dead already and that is why she is expelling it too early... but hey, Shit happens all the time on the farm.

and like simpletons we just grin and bear it... next year will be better... I have always thought that being a farmer is very much like being a mother giving birth...going through pain stress and more pain during the birthing....but the mind blocks that all from memory so that you will pro-create again and again...I mean really, if you remembered every agonizing sensation of pushing something the size of a foot ball out of your body, you'd remember it and never ever ever ever do it again...so farming is like that....no matter what kind of shit and disaster hits...over the winter we forget and actually feel eager for a new year to start.... or if you didn't like that analogy....here's another

a stupid little battery controled soldier toy...that runs up against the wall and just keeps backing up and hitting that same wall again and again and again......hahahahah until the batteries run dead and then that's it...that's what farming is like...try again and again and again to make it work....until you die....

Never made it to the MRI on saturday...the roads were treacherous and we chose to cancel and stay home... now I have to go to the bottom of the list again and it will be april before I get an appointment.  and my Rheumatologist dropped a bomb shell on me on thursday...she is closing her practice and moving to NY to be with her surgeon husband...who works there... now I have to start all over with another doc.....that frustrates the hell out of me...

Ho Hum

Enjoying the warm up we are having right now...makes it a bit nicer for R, who is outside readying things for the start of calving.... I do notice as he gets older that he is less and less enthusiastic about it...hahahah  I on the other hand am officially DONE.   I help tag the little beasties, tattoo and process them after birth but other than that...I am forbidden...and it is all because of the accident a couple of years ago...while calving... It was storming out and R had gone to town..for necessities to do with the cattle and I was on watch...he had let the cows come into the pen in front of the house...so I could watch from the house...which worked fine until a cow's calf slid out still enclosed in the sack...I had to throw some outside clothes on and run like hell to get there in time to break the membrane....when I did the cow spooked and ran away and I had to grab the slimy, stinky calf and give mouth to mouth...Now as hard as that is on a human, try doing to an animal that weighs a hundred pounds and is as long as you are tall....you have to clamp the mouth shut after removing fluid and gunk and making sure the tongue is not back in the throat...then cover one nostril while blowing into the other to expand the lungs...yuk... if that doesn't work you have to grab it by the back feet and lift it so the fluid that it swallowed when taking it's first breath in the fluid instead of clean crisp air, drains from it's throat or lungs...but I am not really tall enough and it was in the open field with nothing in sight to use to hang the calf over...so I ended up just flopping the calf around and the massaging its upper rib cage to get the heart beating....then tried mouth to mouth again and just as it seemed to respond by fluttering its lashes and twitching and I was about to renew my efforts..i got knocked ass over tea kettle by the cow...who had regained her senses and witnessed my resuscitation of her calf (to her it probably looked like I was abusing it)  she charged back towards us and hit me...and in the process, trampled right over her calf to get to me and push me, while I'm on my back trying to get up, across the pen fifty feet or so....luckily for me, I have been a hood ornament on the head of a cow many times before and have perfected a self preservation trick...I hit her in the eye and then grabbed  her nostril (their noses are very sensitive) and yanked for all I was worth...she bellowed and jumped away from me and that is all I needed, I was up and running, all be it, a bit slowly...miraculously the calf was standing already and tripping through the snow...so she spun on her heels and joined her calf...I limped to the house and wasn't sure why my leg was so sore but when I stripped to jump in the shower and wash the amniotic fluid from the calf off me I was shocked to see a huge lump on my leg where the cow had stepped on me...but I didn't feel a thing at the time from the adrenaline rush...but boy did it hurt afterwards....so by the time R got home, we had two new calves and I could barely move.... I had a huge bump on my thigh for a month the size of a football. I am not kidding...and the skin is still purplish blue colour there nearly two years later....that is a side effect of my disease...the bruising...R is worried there is a blood clot but ultrasound of the leg did not reveal one... but as a result of all that I am forbidden to go into the pen with the cows during calving...

But necessity has had me back in the cow pen since then he just doesn't know about it.  the part about calving I like the best is the end of it....when R gets to spend time back in the house and things get back to normal...I did the night shift for 31 years...man that seems like a lifetime...and it is amazing to me how I never missed it, last winter was the first time I never went out at night to check cows....and R used to always get exasperated with me because I chose to get dressed at midnight and just stay out in the barn all night, doing crossword puzzles and reading...I even used to draw a bit out there...the dogs are in the office to keep me company and I wouldn't have to get dressed every hour to go outside and check, just throw my coat on and waltz out to have a quick look through...if there was a calf born then I would get the sled and pull it into the big part of the barn and close it and it's mom inside...until morning when R would come and help tag them. so it worked for me for 30 years...I even studied for my diploma exams at the age of 30, while in the barn checking cows...and aced all the exams I wrote in the gymnasium with the 17 yr old...

But Robert, last winter, doing his first night shift since we were married, soon came to realize...the benefits of just staying out in the barn...he tried at first to come to the house and sleep and just wake up every two hours, get dressed, walk up to the barn, pull a calf inside, then come back to the house, undress, wash and get back into bed and try to fall asleep only to wake up again in two hours...do that several times during the night and you feel like shit...so he tried it my way and found it to work much better.   He still sleeps in the barn, for since he took over he has bought a cot with a new mattress that he crashes on for a couple of hours at a time, but he doesn't have to undress each time...so it makes it a bit easier...although he did have a problem with a few frozen calves, and that is him sleeping in after the alarm goes off....I never had a frozen calf on my watch...but I didn't sleep, we only had a rocking chair out there then...hahahaha so I did doze off a bit now and again but never for very long.... I slept during the day a bit...and I did try to keep doing the night watch after I was diagnosed with LUPUS...but it was horrendous..and I ended up getting very sick..and run down...and the doc....forbade me to do it...so....... R does it now...and he doesn't like it...

I have a Rheumatologist appointment tomorrow and an MRI on saturday...and then it looks to be clear sailing for the rest of January...Woooo Hoooo

nothing else too exciting ...took the xmas tree down the other evening and am glad to have my space back... haven't been toboganning again yet but haven't given up hope that we will..  my friend is back working since school is back in and her time off is limited...so we will try to work a day in some where...