Welcome to my world little one

In the wee hours of this morning we welcomed the first Highland calf born on the farm. He was born after a long cold night of trudging through the snow in the dark only to finally be born with the sunrise. JoJo as usual did not care about my sleep schedule, therefore she just walked around aimlessly the entire night ensuring I had to spend extra time just to find her in the pasture and see for myself that she had not yet given birth. Until this morning, just after Dylan had gone to work and I was fully exhausted. That was the perfect time for the little baby to arrive. 

Because this was my first calf I of course made myself sick with worry over it being too cold and when he started to shiver I exhausted every farmer/neighbour contact in my phone asking for advice and help. Eventually I coaxed JoJo away from her calf with oats and was able to get him out of the snow and onto some hay and under a blanket. I don’t think the blanket helped, but it made me feel better. 

I will admit that I took full advantage of my opportunity to give him lots of rubs and pets. He still did not get up. By this time I’m entering a full panic mode, all the things I’ve read about hypothermia in calves is rushing to my head. So is the fact that he did already get up to nurse, and is possibly just really sleepy having been born only two hours ago. Here is my thought process;

• He’s shivering and cold, I have to get him warm
• But how - I’m alone and unable to both carry a calf and fend off an angry mom
• I’m probably being paranoid
• Text/call everyone I know
• Some say to leave him, some say take him and get him warm - who is right?! 
• If I take him will JoJo take him back? 
• A sleepy newborn is normal
• Shivering is not
• Google says some shivering is normal, severe shivering is not
• What the hell is the difference between normal and severe shivering?
• Do I have time to watch YouTube videos of cold calves or will he die of hypothermia while I do that?
• Settle down. 
• Oh my Cher, he’s not breathing - wait yes he is, his breathing is normal
• Distract Jo, get him back on the hay
• So soft, so snuggly, I’ll just pick him up quickly 
• Run away from Jo
• SOMEBODY HELP ME
• I’m going to take him, I’ll never live with myself if he freezes in front of me
• I’m probably being paranoid- leave him JoJo is being a great mom, you need to simmer down
• Please get up little guy, please just be fine
• Go in the house, nope stay out and watch. ( at this point I’m just wandering around)
• Prepare the heaters in case you have to take him
• Probably going to have to take him
• I wish I was better at this
• He’s probably fine
• But what if he’s not? How can I tell
• Internet says to look at moms udders to see how much he drank
• How can I tell by looking? Can people actually just tell by looking? Is everyone a better farmer than me? Yes. 
• Why did we buy animals
• Why did we buy a farm
• Cher have mercy on my soul
• You’re being a freak, he’s probably fine

Then one of our lovely neighbours comes over. To either look at him and tell me he’s fine, or help me take him to warm him up. Thank Cher, I was in a tail spin of sorts. Of course because I don’t already look like enough of an idiot, she arrives, and he gets up and goes to have a drink. I am embarassed and relieved. Mostly relieved. 60/40 split. 

The calf, a sweet little bull calf we’re calling Juicy was born eight hours ago. I have not slept in 32 hours. I tried to go to sleep after I had seen the little guy have a good drink and wander around but alas, I am a neurotic mess. I keep getting up to make sure he’s still okay. He is. Everytime. 

So the first Goldie Acres calf is here and beautiful. Poor thing, he has no idea he’s been born into a home with a psycho that just wants to love and spoil him. Poor little guy just wanted a nap and instead he got me, helicopter parenting, hand wringing and pacing all about. I hope I someday become the kind of person that can look at an udder and know whether the calf has had enough nourishment. Today I am not that kind of farmer. Probably not tomorrow either, but maybe sometime. Hopefully sometime. 

I found endless joy today in seeing a newborn calf get up and drink and in it not snowing today. 

Fine, fine, fine.

It’s snowing again. That’s fine. It’s only the middle of April and I had only gotten a tiny bit ecstatic to see a mud patch in the driveway. So the two feet of brand new snow is fine. It’s fine. It’s totally fine. I’m fine. Everything is not terrible. It’s been winter for seven months. That’s fine. Seven months is only a little more than half a year. My friends are enjoying spring in my old home. That’s fine. I’m just wading through snow. 

The other day I trudged through the snow and mud (which is gone now, replaced with new snow) and went to give my critters some oats and love. Well, I went to give Brisket some love, he’s the only one that accepts my scratches. I gave the others bribes to love me but, once again, it did not work. As I was giving Bridget oats and Brisket pets Bridget decided to also bestow me with an offering of her own. 

A beautiful line of bruises along my knuckles. She’s so generous. She still doesn’t like me petting her baby. 

The one nice thing about winter being endless is that it’s left me with a glorious feeling of not giving a single shit. Which has left me no longer afraid of the yaks. I slapped a yak that charged me, and since then she quit charging. Now she runs away or comes up nicely for oats whichever she’s in the mood for. I recognize that a slap was an insane reaction to a thousand pound bovine, considering I had a stick in the other hand, but it seems to have worked. So that’s progress. 

We’re still waiting on lambs and calves, we expect JoJo to calve any day now. I’ve been watching calving videos on YouTube daily and trying not to read about all of the things that can go wrong. Just joking. That would be a reasonable thing to do. I’ve read every single available article on the difficulties of calving which has me both prepared for emergency and petrified. Cher have mercy on my soul.

I expect we’re a few weeks away from lambs, so the search for a shearer has begun. I’m doing my best to not have a repeat of last years trauma. This time I’m hoping to find someone experienced with Jacobs. Not an entirely easy task. Poor old Walske was very warm this winter with two years of wool growth, but he does need desperately to be sheared before summer. If summer ever comes. At this rate summer will just be a couple weeks of snow melting and mud and then we’ll be back to winter. I have found no endless joy in the endless winter. 

Still learning how to bend

It seemed like a really good idea to pasture all the animals together. It was easier to feed and water and monitor. It seemed like less of a good idea when Molly died. It seemed like a damn terrible idea when it came to separate. 

For the last two days Dylan and I have been working on getting the sheep into pens in preparation for shearing and lambing. We only have four sheep. 

Day 1:  We got Calpernia and Scout in with relative ease. Then we tried to catch Polly. Molly and Polly were not quite as tame as Calps and Scout (which is saying a lot). Calpernia was a good mom so she didn’t let the lambs too close to me and if I got too close to them, she was sure to let me know with a horn or two. So Polly ran from us. 

She’s a smart little lamb, she runs alongside the yaks or cows knowing that we won’t dive on her if we’re likely to take a yak hoof or horn to the bod. The oats didn’t work to lure her either, it only lured the Highlands and the yaks. Polly hid under/between them. We ran around the pasture like maniacs for a while trying to catch her. We did not. We set up a kind of run from the gate of the barn to the lambing pens, hoping to chase her in. She did not fall for our trickery, Bridget did. I didn’t anticipate that. The run was not big enough for a cow, nor for a cow and a person at the same time. She finally wandered back out and the chase was on again. Then I slipped and fell directly into a puddle of melted snow and yak/sheep/cow poop. 

The old me probably would have cried a lot and screamed. New me however just screamed and said the F word a few times. Much improved. We did a couple more chases before finally giving up. 

Day 2. I decide I’m going to shovel out the gate to the second pasture and try to separate sheep from yaks and cows. Cool, there’s only about six feet of frozen snow on both sides of the gate. Dylan told me that it wouldn’t work, but I felt like we had to at least attempt a different technique than the day before. It didn’t work. I couldn’t get the gate open after an hour of shovelling and turning my arms to painful jello. I am not farm strong. 

We go back to running through the pasture. This time we focus on separating her from the herd and getting her into the deep snow to slow her down. That also slows us down. We have a number of unsuccessful attempts. One of which breaks one of my witch nails and finds me doing a belly flop into the poop puddle. Finally, we’ve got her and Walske seperated and in the deep snow. Turns out Dylan has learned the art of fully committing. That man of mine took three giant leaping steps, in his socks, (the boots were lost in the first step) and dived down onto Polly. Success!!!!! We got her in a pen. Now for Walske. 

We got Walske cornered and seperated, he’s a bit more difficult to chase because he puts his three foot vertical horns down and chases back. No diving onto that. We chased him, once again I slipped and fell into the poop puddle. More swears. I am prepared though, I have dressed in layers to be removed as they get wet and smelly. Brilliance. We carried on. Poor Walske’s big horns are both his best asset and biggest downfall. They are large targets for us to grab. Dylan was finally able to get hold of his horns and the two of steered/forced him into a pen. He’s not a big fan of the pens, the girls don’t seem to mind, but he never gives those accommodations a good review. 

We spent three hours chasing sheep. Which was less than the previous day, but more time than I want to spend in poop and hip deep snow.

Once they were all fed and watered I went to the house. I had to scrape the manure from my engagement ring. My life is one glamorous event after another. 

Walske, looking pretty unhappy about his new digs.

Polly sticks her head through there like she’s trying to hide. 

My Scout, with her peculiar horns and little moustache. 

Darling Calpernia, just a good sheep. 

The anniversary

Thanks to Facebook memories I know that today marks our official one year anniversary of having chickens. Y’all remember when I was naive and so excited to get chickens? Now I know that they’re actually suicidal little maniacs. Honestly, chickens are crazy. We’ve had so many die from the dumbest things. Freezing to death outside the open door to the heated coop, flying into the walls of the coop breaking their necks, jumping into the waterer and drowning. I try so hard to keep them alive but I am constantly overestimating their will to survive. I mean to be fair to the little psychos, we lost two to Bella the chicken eater and three to some kind of weasel or something. But mostly they’ve just succumbed to their own antics. 

So we’ve been on the farm for a year, had animals for a year. It’s been the longest 365 days of my life. It seems there’s always some new challenge that we haven’t even begun to imagine, we attempt to have backup plans for our backup plans but none of our little critters care even the tiniest bit about our plans or sanity. Within the year we’ve lost a cow for months, lost two yaks, celebrated births and mourned deaths of our animals. 

I would have laughed previously if someone said they lost a cow for months. I mean you wouldn’t think it possible to just misplace a two thousand pound animal with two foot horns. It’s possible. So so possible. It all ended relatively well I suppose. JoJo came home thanks to a neighbour who had had her for months and didn’t know where she belonged, once he knew he loaded her up and brought her home. Much to her dismay. Our yaks were returned home by other neighbours, though some days I will admit that I wish they had just stayed wild. Yaks are mean little buggers. 

We’ve survived the last year not because we’re tenacious and brilliant farmers but mostly because our neighbours are patient and kind. I can’t even begin to tell you how many times I’ve called one neighbour or another for help. That concept in itself is a touch foreign to me, in my old apartment I never once met my neighbours. Which is surprising because we shared walls, halls and elevators. Out here we live a significant distance from the neighbours, all of whom have gone out of their way at some point to help us. I’m sure we’d have packed up and put the farm for sale months ago if not for all of them. 

Our lives have changed so drastically in a year and so have we. Some days are bad, some are good, sometimes there are more bad days in a week and sometimes more good. It’s like a roller coaster except not fun and you can’t get off. So maybe it’s more like Hotel California. 

Our home renovations have been progressing at a snail pace, but progressing nonetheless. We now have three out of six rooms completed or mostly completed, so that’s something! Last week I hung pictures up and now it almost looks like we actually live here. 

Here is what I’ve learned about the joy I was searching for:

• I can find it in the quiet of a sunset
• I can find it in the warmth of bed sheets after a long cold hard day
• I can find it in laughing with Dylan about how terrible/crazy we are at farming
• I can find it in the little tiny progress I make with our animals (like the yak taking hay from my hand without charging me first) 
• I still find it in having ridiculously long witch nails
• I can find it in my dirty muck boots when they keep my feet from getting wet and cold - I used to find it in my beautiful extensive collection of heels
• I can find it in little moments as long as I look for it, sometimes I have to look harder than others
• I can find it in the neighbours and their unwavering kindness
• There is immense joy in seeing Rocky and Bella and their pups enjoy freedom and not listening to Rocky howl endlessly because he’s bored and miserable cooped up in a yard. (Bella runs away so she mostly stays tied up, but still)

There are just as many things that bring me joy out here as there were in our old life, they are just drastically different. It’s a little bit easier to see the joy in a good dress than it is to see it in a barn, but it’s there. Most days. 

Funny Farm

On today’s edition of weird shit the dogs find. A sawed off cow leg. 

This morning I went out to find the dogs gnawing on this treasure. No idea where it came from. Cows have big ass legs. Picking up a half eaten frozen cow leg was never on my bucket list, but at least I can cross it off now. It was heavier than I expected. Also grosser. Bella and Rocky pranced around with it like it was the greatest discovery since time began. I felt differently.