Family, 4-H, farm

This past week the irrigation broke, but the company was able to fix it in just a few days!  Kris is currently working on a different issue with the irrigation right now - at 10:00 p.m.  I'm sure he'd rather be doing this: 

 

 

Yep, that's my sister Tracy and her family - plus my kids - checking out the freestall mattresses for themselves in the unfinished half of the barn.  (We have more visitors, yay!)  They all agreed that they were very comfortable.  They all had dirty shirts when they stood up.

 

We also checked this out: 

 

 

 

The lagoon is almost ready for manure to be poured into it.  The cement around it is done too.  Tracy said she was so tempted to run down the incline into the bottom because she'd never have the chance to do it again.  She resisted. 

We went to the 4-H Fair today.  It was wonderful - we all got to see animals we rarely see.  Even though we live on a dairy we don't see pigs, rabbits, turkeys, chickens, goats ... I even held a tarantula.  (Even though all of my self-preservation instincts were telling me it was a bad idea.)

When we were seeing the sheep, Tracy pointed out something else ...

This sheep and I have the same hair.  Color, style, and cut. 

Isn't it great having a sister around to question whether or not you're part sheep?

March scenes

 

It smells like spring, but it still looks like winter. 

 

They delivered a lot of sand to the barn pad. 

It is so, so muddy here.  

 

 

I love it!  Everything is about to happen.  In the meantime, Kris is getting ready.  Endless paperwork for the bank and the cattle.  (Today I even got life insurance!  The bank apparently still wants you to be able to pay a loan if you kick off!)  Trips to everywhere to talk to people.  Work on the barn.  Planning, organizing, and more ... paperwork. 

And mud.  Now our sledding hill ends in mud.  Spring must be around the muddy corner ...

Preemie calf

A cow birthed the smallest calf I've ever seen.  The little heifer is healthy and fine, but she must be premature.  It's hard to show just how small she is.  She's half the size of the other calves.  She's as tiny as a goat.

                           

Impossible to tell her size, right?  So to give some perspective, here's her head next to my phone. Oddly, this picture also serves to make my phone look giant.     

The boys got even more ready than usual to work with Kris today - i.e. they were wearing both boots and hats.  They rarely have either.  (Not just boots, but shoes at all.) 

  

Kris asked them to empty the calf buckets and they scurried off to do it.  Not only do they enjoy hanging out with Kris, but they actually seem to enjoy doing the work. 

Yeah.  That seems like a lot of buckets.

Every year, the work will be the same, but the boys will be different.  The barn helps give perspective. 

New barn

The calves are in the barn! The calves are in the barn!

It's not done, but it's complete enough on one side to start moving over the calves. This also works as a sort of trial to see if we need to change anything before the builders are finished.

We moved over the youngest nine calves. It seemed so nice with the breeze, the bright building, and the open atmosphere. I walked there again at night to check on them. They seemed happy. Who doesn't love the first night in a new house?

Take your child to work day

As soon as my sons wake up in the morning, they ask if they can go help their dad work. They plead with me to call him. If they see his truck pass by, they ask if they can go get in it. One of my favorite sights from last summer was to see him drive up and the boys would scramble into his truck - up the door and through the window. Barefoot, like tiny mountain goats.

One of the reasons Kris wanted to farm is so that his kids would know what his job was. Here they do! He takes them with him as much as possible. Tonight they helped my dad and Kris do chores, which consisted of feeding the calves, riding in the calf cart to get milk, and looking in the pasture for calves.

The boys will drop anything they're doing to go and 'help dad.' Sometimes getting them to put on their shoes and coats takes forever - but not when they're going with him!

It's a nice bonus of farm life that every day is take your child to work day.

Some other sights of the day:



I love waking up to see the cattle across the road. It only happens every few weeks since they're grazing on a rotation. I always hope they'll be there when we have guests visiting.



Kris and the boys feeding the calves in our 100 year old barn



The cement feed alley in the new barn - poured today!

Checklist

On this rainy day, Kris is embracing the part of the job where you do ... all types of different work.

He went to a distant town to get supplies to turn his golf cart into a calf cart. He was on the phone trying to get more quotes about the calf panels (the panels in between the calves) so he can order them. He talked to the builder, the excavation company, and the well drillers about the frost laws coming off – possibly Monday. He worked in the office paying bills, switching his email address from his decade-old Hotmail address that has inexplicably stopped consistently working. (Mine too! Anyone else?)

And of course, just the regular twice-a-day feeding. In his free time, he's working on adding on to our swingset.

We're really excited about getting started on the barn! It's more interesting than office work, of course. It's even more exciting than the swingset addition. That's if you ask me, though - not our kids.