Is this unending winter getting to me? Am I daunted? Sagging? Squashed flat? Should I assume a literary posture and lay low like my daffodils until sunshine returns?
"Hell no!", I bluster. "Today calls for thinking positively, seizing the moment, stiffening your spine, using the day productively—painting, baking, reading, blogging—and not succumbing to worry."
We've done what we can to prepare for and cope with this latest blast of cold, violent wind, horizontal snow, and drifting. With the weather forecast in mind, we boosted and branded calves and boosted, docked, and castrated lambs mid-week, allowing all of them several days of gentle weather in which to recuperate and regain their sauce and sass. All but one of the calves, that is, a steer that suffered what, for us, was a first-ever glitch at branding. We use a calf table to head-catch, squeeze, and tilt calves onto their side for branding. After we finished with this particular calf and hoisted him back into standing position, the "claw" tips of his left front foot wedged in the gap between the floor and the vertical front panel of the calf table. In pulling his foot free, he left the outer horn of one "toe" behind as he leaped out of the head catch on three legs spurting blood. Each day since then has brought improvement, but he remains too sore to move about with the rest of the group.
Late yesterday afternoon, visualizing that calf as an isolated, drifted-over lump in the maw of our predicted blizzard, we moved him and his mother into a corral, the driest one that we had. I re-bedded the old barn, yet again. Surely it must have two feet of accumulated bedding, fresh, then soiled, then added to, then soiled, then refreshed, then. . . (Ultimately, the mucking-out of these layers could be a qualifying test for a world-class weight lifting competition.) At dark, I pushed ewes and lambs into a corral with access to that barn.
This morning, I gave quiet thanks to the Fleming family for the extensive shelter belt of cottonwoods, willows, and even apple trees that they nurtured through homestead years. Now mature, those Fleming trees provide much protection for our barns, corrals, and small nearby pastures, allowing ewes and lambs to be fed outside their corral and cows and calves to be fed in a sheltered area. I added an electric floor heater to the greenhouse to augment the heat lamps that have, thus far, maintained survivable temperatures for our tender tomato and pepper seedlings. Today, I'm testing our fuses during daylight hours, nudging the temperature setting on the heater ever-warmer, hoping to use a high setting to push back against the 18 degrees that NOAH is predicting for the night.
In a further effort to think positively and be productive, I'm thawing frozen grated zucchini from summer 2018 in readiness for transformation into zucchini bread loaded with chopped pecans and the candied citrus peel that I make at my sister's annual December Bake-Off festivity. Likewise, a painting is calling to me, a graduation present commissioned by a former teaching colleague for her daughter, who is one of my former students. Of course, I have a pile of books waiting to be read, and this blog is almost ready to post.
Yet worries linger, despite my productive distractions and lay-low daffodil similes. Worry compels me to add more straw to the old barn late this afternoon; it pushes me to set an alarm and check the temperature in the greenhouse throughout the night.
Later - Forget the alarm. We hustled all 70 pots of seedlings into the house for safe keeping until nighttime temperatures creep above wintry.
"Hell no!", I bluster. "Today calls for thinking positively, seizing the moment, stiffening your spine, using the day productively—painting, baking, reading, blogging—and not succumbing to worry."
We've done what we can to prepare for and cope with this latest blast of cold, violent wind, horizontal snow, and drifting. With the weather forecast in mind, we boosted and branded calves and boosted, docked, and castrated lambs mid-week, allowing all of them several days of gentle weather in which to recuperate and regain their sauce and sass. All but one of the calves, that is, a steer that suffered what, for us, was a first-ever glitch at branding. We use a calf table to head-catch, squeeze, and tilt calves onto their side for branding. After we finished with this particular calf and hoisted him back into standing position, the "claw" tips of his left front foot wedged in the gap between the floor and the vertical front panel of the calf table. In pulling his foot free, he left the outer horn of one "toe" behind as he leaped out of the head catch on three legs spurting blood. Each day since then has brought improvement, but he remains too sore to move about with the rest of the group.
Late yesterday afternoon, visualizing that calf as an isolated, drifted-over lump in the maw of our predicted blizzard, we moved him and his mother into a corral, the driest one that we had. I re-bedded the old barn, yet again. Surely it must have two feet of accumulated bedding, fresh, then soiled, then added to, then soiled, then refreshed, then. . . (Ultimately, the mucking-out of these layers could be a qualifying test for a world-class weight lifting competition.) At dark, I pushed ewes and lambs into a corral with access to that barn.
This morning, I gave quiet thanks to the Fleming family for the extensive shelter belt of cottonwoods, willows, and even apple trees that they nurtured through homestead years. Now mature, those Fleming trees provide much protection for our barns, corrals, and small nearby pastures, allowing ewes and lambs to be fed outside their corral and cows and calves to be fed in a sheltered area. I added an electric floor heater to the greenhouse to augment the heat lamps that have, thus far, maintained survivable temperatures for our tender tomato and pepper seedlings. Today, I'm testing our fuses during daylight hours, nudging the temperature setting on the heater ever-warmer, hoping to use a high setting to push back against the 18 degrees that NOAH is predicting for the night.
In a further effort to think positively and be productive, I'm thawing frozen grated zucchini from summer 2018 in readiness for transformation into zucchini bread loaded with chopped pecans and the candied citrus peel that I make at my sister's annual December Bake-Off festivity. Likewise, a painting is calling to me, a graduation present commissioned by a former teaching colleague for her daughter, who is one of my former students. Of course, I have a pile of books waiting to be read, and this blog is almost ready to post.
Yet worries linger, despite my productive distractions and lay-low daffodil similes. Worry compels me to add more straw to the old barn late this afternoon; it pushes me to set an alarm and check the temperature in the greenhouse throughout the night.
Later - Forget the alarm. We hustled all 70 pots of seedlings into the house for safe keeping until nighttime temperatures creep above wintry.
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