Morning calls

Kris got a call at 5:30am that the vacuum pump wasn’t working. Unfortunately, since he has a new phone, he couldn’t answer it immediately in his sleep and had to listen to the message. (Ha! By the time he’s able to do that it’ll be time for a phone upgrade.)

He got up and went straight to the barn. After he left, I tried to turn off his alarm clock several times. I got him a really cool one that has an alarm that goes off even when the power goes out. So it went off EVEN though I unplugged it. I hate that alarm clock.

The electrical plug for the vacuum pump was burned out. The plug was ruined, so they wired the pump directly to the control box. The entire milking system runs off the vacuum pump – it’s what sucks the milk, it’s how the automatic milkers come off the cows, and it’s how the milk system is cleaned.

It had apparently stopped working last night, so they had to run the wash and sanitation cycle before they started the morning milking. It takes about 45 minutes. Another employee joined the employee already milking (he usually milks alone) so the morning milking finished about the same time as usual.

Kris is going to buy a plug with higher capacity.

And I’m going to buy him a cheaper alarm clock.