Pink eye

When I was in college I thought I might have pink eye - I'd never had it before, but I was familiar with the symptoms. I was pretty sure it'd go away on its own.

I talked to my dad on the phone and he said I might want to go to the doctor, because if pink eye is left untreated in cattle, they can sometimes go blind.

(Of course I went to the doctor after that. Viral conjunctivitis does heal on its own. They can give you antibiotic eyedrops if you have bacterial conjunctivitis. The eyedrops felt like I was pouring lemon juice in my eyes. But hey, I could see!)

But for cattle, pink eye is a lot more serious. It also looks bad, poor things. As a result, we vaccinate our cattle for it.

Today we gave the dairy cows their pink eye vaccination shots. When cattle are outside there are flies in the grass, and they can spread it between cattle. (It can spread anyway, but the flies don't help matters.) We also vaccinated the heifers for it right before they went out to pasture.

If it were a choice between getting a shot and putting those drops in my eyes, I'd pick the injection every time.

Sweet

“Look,” Cole said, first thing this morning. “Look at this naughty thing someone did. I didn’t do it.” He pointed at two small pools of liquid on our wooden windowsill.

Puzzled, I got a dishtowel to wipe them up. They were sticky. I looked up and saw the window top was dripping. Sap? I looked harder. The ceiling was also dripping. Then I knew what it was – honey.

We’ve been hosting a bee colony in a tree in our yard for the last couple of years. I’ve really enjoyed when they’ve swarmed. Here they are two years ago, hanging out before they found a place for their new hive:



This past year I didn’t see a swarm, but I did see some had taken up residence in our house wall. I didn’t do anything about it for a few days until my baby’s room got bees in it. Then Kris climbed out on the roof and sealed the hole they were going into. I didn’t feel good about it, but we never saw any more bees.

Fast forward to now - I have four bowls collecting the honey. I called a beekeeper. He said even if the hive is inactive, I need to have it removed because the honey’s going to attract other insects, like ants. That means we’ll have to cut open the wall, have them take the honeycomb out, seal it, and plaster or drywall the wall and ceiling back together.

Kris said that it’s just what you deal with when you live in an old house.

After this discovery, we went to the grocery store. On the end of an aisle was a display of honey bears. Ty said, "We don't get our honey at the store. We get it from our ceiling!"

When we got home, they raced to the bowls to see how much we'd collected. “This one has so much in it!” Cole said. Ty said, “This is so cool! I love this!”

Living on a farm and getting meat from our own cattle, growing fresh fruits and vegetables in our garden . . . that’s one thing. Harvesting honey from our walls is taking this to a ridiculous level. Aside from that - biscuits with honey for everyone!

Dry

This morning it turned dark - like it really wanted to storm. I did with my kids what I always did with my mom ... sat on the front porch and hoped for rain.

While we were doing this, my mom called from a nearby town to ask, "Is it raining? It's POURING here!" No, I told her. No rain here. It looked like it was going to pass us by - but wait! A few drops!

It did rain. A tenth of an inch.

No doubt sitting on the front porch does no good. But when those few drops start, and you can see the rain moving toward you, and you can smell it wetting the dirt - it's a wonderful feeling of both relief and joy.

I'm reading the boys Laura Ingalls Wilder's Farmer Boy. We just read the chapter where it froze on July 3 and they had to go out in the middle of the night and pour water on all the corn plants before the sun rose, since the sun on the frozen corn plants would kill them. They poured water on three acres of corn, and lost a quarter of an acre.

I liked this book when I was little, but I find it far more interesting now. We buy crop insurance every year, so if we have a bad corn crop, we're not going to be completely devastated.

The days before crop insurance must have been especially terrifying. I'm sure you'd do anything to keep them alive - maybe we'd be out there manually giving each plant a drink. Definitely, I'd be far too anxious to sit still on a porch swing.

Sneaky

The cattle are now grazing behind our house in the creek flats. Yesterday I was delighted to see that one of them was having a calf in perfect, full view of our yard!

This is how close she was:



I watched her for over an hour, even though my kids lost interest after two seconds. I made Kris come and look at her, because she was taking so long. Kris said that she was a heifer, and it's a long process, and it looked like everything was going well. He had other work to do but said he'd come back later and check on her.

I waited and waited and waited. She kept looking at me as she pushed, and I'd cheer her on. She sometimes got up and acted like she was going to walk away, but then she'd lie down and push some more. There seemed to be zero progress.

I went inside - baby in tow - to quickly go the bathroom. Big mistake. I came outside to see this:



A calf! I totally missed it!

I was mad at everyone - her, me for going inside, even the newborn calf. I tried to console myself by thinking I live on a dairy farm and I'll have years to see calves being born.

However ... like a lot of animals, when cows have calves they go off to give birth alone. She apparently saved the big pushes until I left.

It looks like if I'm going to see more births around here, I'm going to have to help with the pulling. That's probably going to be awhile - when I have fewer kids hanging on me and develop super strength.

Points

-- The second chopping is done! Chopped, piled, covered in plastic and tires, all before it rained.

-- We drove around and looked at the corn fields. Wow, it really looks like we need some rain! Were we just happy there wasn't any one paragraph ago?

-- We went over to change the irrigation. (You can change the direction, the rate of flow, etc. I'd be more technical about this, but Kris is already asleep.) While we were there we got to partake in one of my most favorite part of Michigan summers ... blackberries! Some people call them other names, but this is what I'm talking about:



Eat these, not poisonous ones.

They grow wild all over around here. We ate every single ripe one we could find. With five of us, it didn't take long.

-- We paid a company to fertilize our pasture today. Do you ever see these on the road?



He spent a long time fertilizing our pastures. Kris said it took longer because he had to go around all the fences. He also had to stop and get more fertilizer in his tank.

Everyone's been working long hours and having the second cutting done is a relief.
Now it's time to kick back and stop working. Just kidding! But there does seem to be a little more time to stop and smell the roses ... or really, gorge ourselves on blackberries.

Broken

Last night as Kris was finishing chopping, the chopper started making a noise.

(Cue the scary music.)

This meant that this morning he had the dealer come out and see what was wrong with it - and whether or not we could use it to chop. The short answer? No.

Kris rode back with the dealer to St Louis, which is about 30 miles away. We rented a chopper, which Kris had to drive back home.

This took an hour and a half, where Kris learned to dislike many drivers, especially you, honker! As well as learn how to operate a new chopper, which was really different than the old chopper, even though it looked just the same to me.

Also, the tractor we were using to rake the hay had a tire go flat overnight. So they had to use a different tractor.

Okay. So far, broken chopper, rental chopper. Flat tire, different tractor.

After the morning's frustrations, including Kris ripping off a fuel cap lock with his bare hands, everything went pretty well. The chopping goes twice as fast with this new one. They have only about 40 acres left to do tomorrow.

A few people emailed me to tell me they didn't know the saying, 'make hay when the sun shines.' But today's events bring another saying to mind. Do you know the saying, 'Nothing parties like a rental?'

Make hay while the sun shines

And just like that ... it's July. And time to cut the alfalfa again! After a wonderful holiday weekend, Kris and Josh started on the fields on July 4th. Josh cut it and Kris chopped 'the headlands'. That means he cut around the edges, because it's harder to go around the edges. Once those are done, you can go in straight lines in the field. Today they chopped all day.

So the saying, 'Make hay while the sun shines,' really means that you need to do the work when the conditions are favorable. You can't 'make hay' when it's raining, because then it gets all wet. It looks like it's going to be a sunshiny week, too. Hopefully we can get the second cutting done before it rains again.

It seems like all the farmers are chopping today. I saw two choppers going down the road at 7:00am. I know farmers like to have a day off. But when the sun is shining, it's hard to stay out of the fields. That saying is popular for a reason!