Babies

Bottle Calves – Coronavirus Day 28 & 29

 We now have bottle calves. How on earth this happened I’m still scratching my head to figure out… but… Let me paint you a picture…

Last night just after normal chore time, I got a text message from both my parents saying my dad needed help and how fast could I get there. Real fast. Abug and I threw our shoes on and out the door we went. Good thing we just live down the road. She was in play clothes so she went into my parent’s house with my mom (too cold for how she was dressed) and I went out to see what was going on. I had been there about an hour before and a cow was laying funny on the hillside. Turns out, momma was pregnant and trying to calve. 

She got the calf out all right, especially for a first-time momma, but then she ran off. The baby needed a little assistance. So dad and I grabbed some towels and off to the field we went to try and dry the baby off. It wasn’t cold out, but it was cool and just coming out of mommy, the calf was cold. Momma cow wouldn’t come near. I think part of it was because we were there but she was a first-time momma and sometimes they don’t have those instincts they’re supposed to. (more…)

And just like that… Coronavirus day 6

It has been an interesting last few days… to say the least. Life is never boring on a farm, that’s for sure. While we’re supposed to be self quarantining, you can’t quite do that exactly when you live on a farm. Anyway, you can’t stay indoors because there are animals that rely on you. 

My parents live the next place over and then my grandma is the place after that. So I have a couple hundred acres to keep me occupied in this self-containment time.

It seems like these days there is a bad rap on people who are farmers. They are horrid people who don’t take care of squat. Well, I have pictures and stories to prove that’s just not so. Today is a prime example.

My uncle lives with my grandma. Moved in after he and his ex-wife went through their divorce. (more…)

We got a Puppy

We got a puppy. I have been wanting a Basset Hound for as long as I can remember. Maybe even longer than that. Well… We finally got one.

She’s 9 weeks old. I’m starting to wonder why… maybe we fell off our meds. I’m now having to potty train another dog when it’s cold outside. Oh, it snowed yesterday. And I’m having to potty train a dog. The last couple of dogs I’ve had to do this to, just so happens it was this time of year. What were we thinking? UGH! (more…)

Our Newest Edition

Blondie sprouted! haha!

Blondie is our momma mare. In fact, she’s the momma of our my Bucky! This year, we had it calculated when she was to foal, but she had other plans I guess. Two weeks after we thought she’d sprout, she finally did!

One thing I did realize in all of this waiting… this little colt’s (yes I said colt, more on that in a minute) granddaddy stayed in his momma 13 months. I’m not kidding. Now if you know anything about horses, they carry for 11 months. Way back in the 90’s when granddaddy was born, we hauled our mare Lena down to Texas to get bred. We knew the date we brought her home. We know the date they bred her. All those dates were accounted for and when her due date came and passed, by like 2 months, I kid you not, we figured she just didn’t conceive.

Now my dad had been sick and in the hospital. He was released the day before Munchkin was born. My mom got up at 6 am to go out and do chores so that my dad wouldn’t worry about the animals. She went out to find this little heap of what she thought was a big pile of poop. In fact, it turned out to be Munchkin. So, when Blondie came and passed her due date, I giggled remembering Munchkin. Wondering if those were genetic traits and she’d have to carry for 13 months as well. You never know… (more…)

The Bucky Files… His First Year

Normally I post photos and stories of our newest babies on the farm. Those babies typically are horses of course. This morning I went back through to see about Bucky’s post and… I guess I screwed up and didn’t post his. Shame on me. I posted the colt we sold earlier this year and I posted Little Brother 2 Spot‘s post, but not Bucky’s. Shame on me! He was born April 7, 2016. Just a couple days after Little Brother 2 Spot. If you’ll remember, I was swamped with trying to finish up my Master’s, graduating, and leaving for Cozumel. Maybe that’s how I brushed over this post?

Bucky is out of our mare we call Blondie, for obvious reasons… she’s a Palomino… aka Blonde. In the beginning, we thought we might have had him sold so I didn’t mess with him too much. I didn’t want to fall in love with him and then be heartbroken when he went bye bye. It happens. A lot!

Like I said, since I thought we had him sold, I really didn’t mess with him much. One night though I decided I was going to go play with the colts. We had three that year. I opened up the pen where they were and though, I’ll see which one comes out first. Lo and behold, it was Bucky.

Up to this point, none of the colts had really been messed with. It was only less than 5 minutes and he was loving on me and nuzzling me for attention. I decided to go to the barn and get a halter and see if I could get it on him. Now, remember, at this point, I hadn’t had a halter on any of them. The only messing with they really had was when we did chores and fed them. By this time it was early fall, just for a frame of reference in timing. (more…)

Easter 2018 (Better Late Than Never)

Easter 2018

Yey! Easter has come (and gone!). This year we made a trip to my aunt and uncles in southern Oklahoma for Easter. It is a 5 1/2 hour trip down, so we left Friday, celebrated Easter (with dinner) on Saturday and drove home on Sunday. Luckily this was our year to have Tbug with us too! Woot woot!

We weren’t able to get Tbug until something like 1:30 on Friday and my dad wasn’t able to get off work until closer to 3ish so by the time we got out of there, it was closer to 4 or 5. I can’t quite remember but does it really matter?

On the drive down I listened to the book, The Time of My Life by Patrick Swayze and his wife Lisa Niemi. I can’t read in a car. I get car sick just sitting in one if I’m in the back seat, so reading is totally out of the question. But Audible to the rescue! It wasn’t a total loss, yey! I’ll have to do a “book report” on that in the coming days. So totally worth reading (or in my case, listening to).

We stopped in Oklahoma City for dinner. Technically Norman at a restaurant called Salt Grass. So totally YUM! Oh and don’t worry, I sent my friend Camille a picture of the water tower. I didn’t forget her on my way through… although I never got a response. In the words of Stephanie Tanner, How Rude! haha.

We got into AC & UB’s close to 11 pm. Abug told UB she was going to get up the next morning at 7 am and do chores with him. (more…)

Where the Wild Things Are Sugar Cookies

The next round of cookies are made. One minute I think I’m totally happy and the next minute I feel like I totally screwed them up. Gosh. I may be hard on myself, I don’t know… We’ll see. Oh wait, they’ve already been delivered and eaten. These were made in the middle of the month for a friend’s daughter’s baby shower.

Today I was walking through TJ Maxx and saw this book. Then I realized I actually knew this book. When I was initially hit up about doing these cookies I had no clue what the book was. Isn’t that funny how things like that work out? (more…)

You have to Dance at Dance Class

Wednesday night my baby girl started dance class. Yes, I know, we’re about a month late, but every time we talk about putting her in dance class we forget about the sign-up date. Luckily we found out we could still enroll her, so that’s just what we did. She was officially enrolled in dance class Tuesday and Wednesday night she had her first dance class.

I was in ballet for 10 years while I was growing up and loved it. Although I do remember sitting there at times wishing that the hour dance class would be over because I was bored. Things you remember…

She was quite nervous. So they put the littles in the smallest room. The rooms all have video cameras and so you can watch their lessons on a tv monitor. I saw that the teacher gave them all a circle that they went and placed on the floor. That was where they were supposed to sit. My poor baby must either have extremely good manners or was extremely scared. She sat while the other girls sat, did summersaults, spun around, etc. She just sat there.

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