Saturday, March 28, 2009

Fastest Snow Storm Ever

OK I was up this morning at 5:00 a.m. only a dusting of snow on the ground. Around noon snowing and blowing so much Amy got her van stuck down the road. 6:00 p.m. still plenty of snow in the yard but the fields are almost melted clean away. Amazing!

It is great snow for a snowman. The kids are out now rolling their snowmen.

OK finalized all the summer vacation spots today too. For the 13 & 14 we will be at Fishing Bridge campground in Yellowstone. These were the only two nights available when Tim called last week.

The 15 th through the 21 we will be staying at the Cody KOA. http://www.codykoa.com/ We went ahead and reserved the fancy sites with the lawn furniture. I mean this is camping but I want it to be nice! Then we will travel on to South Dakota to the Rafter J Ranch campground. http://www.rafterj.com/ We will be here for the nights of 22 to 25. This is over a weekend so any and all of you please consider coming to Mount Rushmore with us! Or heck just make reservations for the whole trip with us. I'm sure you could find a spot at the Cody KOA the first two nights that we are staying in the park. It is only an hour drive to the park.

I can honestly say I was bummed when the TV satellite kicked in and started working again. I actually made everyone help me clean up the living,dining,and kitchen. We split up by twos and each couple took a room. It really went fast this way. You know when the kitchen is clean I don't mind cooking so I whipped up the family favorite chicken spaghetti. We really chowed down! This is the only meal I can think of that everyone even the kids will eat!

It's about time to go out feed our little calf again. So far so good. There are two other cows in with her and one is ready to calve anyday. They really are protective of the little calf and I have seen her try to nurse on the expectant cow. We are hoping she will have her calf soon and the mom will have enough milk for both of them. If not we will be feeding this cow for some time.
Update on feeding the calf this evening. Ok I don't know what it is. The little calf will come up to me if I have the bottle. If Tim has the bottle it turns to back away from him. So this time the baby was in with the two cows. Tim walked up and it backed away. He gave me the bottle and she started walking toward me so I started slowly going toward her. Then out of no where the pregnant cow started charging me. I turned and ran for the fence. Tim was yelling at it and she stopped before she got me the stupid B_ _ _ _ H! So Tim ran them all in the other part of the corral. I still had the bottle and the calf started sort of coming towards me again. So (while watching the other cows) I got the calf started on the bottle and then tried to back into other part to shut the gate and damn if the other cow didn't start at me. What the heck! I finally got her into the other pen and then the kids took over giving her the bottle. As soon as we opened the gate the other cows came right in for her. Scared the crap out of me!

I have to share the events of the night we gave her the first bottle. I of course go out with my camera thinking oh this will be a great opportunity to get the kids feeding their first bottle calf. You know I drive Jessi crazy with my camera but anyway. Tim has her pinned in the alleyway in a 8 x 8 area. Jessi gives him the bottle and he starts following the calf around chasing it in a circle trying to get it to take the bottle. Now mind you this is the first human interaction this calf has ever had. She is scared to death trying to run through the fence and here is this man chasing it with a bottle it had never seen before. Jessi was scrambling around to stay out of the way because she was afraid of getting kicked.

After several minutes of the here calfy calfy, come here calfy calfy. I laid my camera down got in the corral herded the calf into a corner and climbed around her where I could hold her between my legs and give her the bottle. And yes it was almost that quickly. She took about thirty minutes to figure out what was in the bottle and that we weren't trying to hurt her. She got loose a couple of times and Jessi would squeal and run. I finally said Jessi trust me Jake could kick you harder than this little calf can. Tim tried to catch her a couple of times but he too is afraid of getting kicked. What a bunch of city folk I live with! They are learning though.

Jake took Roxi the bulldog outside with him earlier. He came back in but forgot to bring Roxi back in. About 30 minutes later someone asked where are the dogs. She was still outside. I let her in and she was just shaking. I wrapped her in a blanket and she has been asleep on the chair ever since. Poor baby!

1 comment:

chadandkimi said...

no pics of the snowman???