Calving – Page 5 – As Far As The Eye Can See

Day 4….Was that a roller coaster? No. What was it?

Part way through the day yesterday I found myself thinking that a title for a blog about the day would include the idea of a rollercoaster. Later on I realized that just wasn’t accurate. A roller coaster goes up and down several times. That wasn’t the shape of the day. It was something else, but what? As I pondered that I had that very familiar verse of Scripture rise to my mind, “though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death”…..and for a while yesterday that was how it felt. We started off in wide open places, and without warning came upon that valley, it was pretty rotten in there, for me at least (grief triggers, etc.), and then I/we found ourselves being lifted out of the valley. The possibility of returning to the valley meant a roller coaster was in the making as the day wound down. I find myself pondering the verses I read first thing in the morning, a Christmas text, “he will be Emmanuel which means God with us” and noting how that echoed with Psalm 23, “yeah though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for thou art with me.” I don’t have the time or mental power to untangle exactly how “God with me” shaped this day but I made it through a painful valley, I was not alone, I am thankful for the people and gestures and currents of grace that proved to be the elevator out of the valley. I took lots of pictures yesterday, it was that kind of day, but none of the valley, so have no fear about seeing something hard, I will just tell you about it.

After my own routine and my blogging was complete I had a call from Russ, he had two calves that were doing quite well they just needed a warm up. “Get the dog room ready!”

A little while later Morgan checked on them. He called to me, “Mom! One is standing! Mom! Two are standing!” I could only envision that two calves moving about in this small room was going to be trouble, especially with a plugged in heater in the mix. So I rushed in and together we enjoyed these quiet and beautiful calves. Morgan called Russ to tell him the calves were ready for pick up. Russ said he had six straw bales he was dealing with and then he would be right in. Morgan suggested we let them out into the rest of the house. I thought he was crazy. But we did keep the door open and let Coffee dog have a chance to see what was happening in her bedroom.

Coffee dog was super impressed with her new friends.

When it was clear to me that the calves were not steady enough to be galloping around the house we let them do what they felt led to do. This is Begonia’s calf, she ventured out into the porch. Jill zoomed up from her desk when I sent her a text “two calves are standing, its fun in the dog room.” It was in these moments she said “I absolutely love this!” We were in a wide open meadow of space at this point in the day.

Begonia Jr. is so cute and a little more adventurous than her room-mate whose Mom is “Cop Car”. Someday soon I can say more about the weird names we have for our cows.

Jill was very on duty in reining in Coffee’s love for interaction. I thought that Coffee was telling herself, “Wow, the quality of the toys in this house has really gone up!”

21 seconds of sight and sound featuring Coffee.

Russ and I thought we might be able to walk the calves all the way back to the barn but in the end this was a hard go. We put them in the back of the white jeep and drove them over.

Cop Car and her baby getting themselves established.

Begonia and her adventurous little one did very well right off the hop.

While out and about Russ took me to see the established pairs he had in the pole shed. Here is the calf that looked so pitiful in yesterdays pictures. Russ calls her “Navajo Rug” after the Ian Tyson song he had me play for her while she was warming up. That is her Mom Katie watching Russ with some guardedness.

About 20 minutes after the two calves were gone Russ called and said, “is the nursery still open?” He had a fairly needy calf to bring in. The snow had stopped but the wetness and chill all around were still causing us troubles. In came the calf of “Support.” She sure didn’t look great and I was not feeling great about things, but, wow did that calf respond. It didn’t take much of a rub down, just time. I put my finger in to test her sucking instinct after a while, Russ thought she should have a bit of a bottle if she would suck, she definitely was up for it. I made her 1/3 of a bottle to give her a bit of something and she appreciated it. When Russ lifted her to take her back to her Mom he said, “Kathy, your’e a miracle worker!”

Meanwhile, like sometime in the morning, Marcel the vet made his second trip to the ranch for the day. In the first trip Russ was looking for Marcel’s help to diagnose what he was seeing in “Gloria”, in this second trip our heifer whose name is Like was in calving distress and Russ couldn’t even find the calves head when he reached in. Apparently Marcel has a special tool to get a head that eludes the rancher and with it he, Morgan and Russ were able to “pull” the calf. It was a very hard pull and Like and the calf both needed recovery time.

Russ didn’t make it in for lunch and didn’t want a lunch to go. He is really good at fasting and with the reality of all the places his hands go in a day, he would rather fast. I had the chance to give him a cup of coffee part way through the afternoon. We have a philosophy at this ranch, that a word of encouragement or a compliment is never misguided, never a waste, never a bad idea. I could hardly wait for Russ to see the top of his cup. He was touched.

It was after this that things went south. The calf that had been pulled in the morning was not doing well. There is a disheartening reality to this. Russ intentionally left the heifer and calf to lie and rest after the pull. He understands this is needed given all that they have each been through. The trouble is that things got super challenging for Russ after this. He was not able to get back to those animals as quickly as he should have. Everyone else was under experienced or busy or both for the assessment and retrieval that needed to happen. Its kind’ve complicated. Fast forward to late afternoon, Russell brings me Like’s calf, it is not doing well and there is a sign that another cow stepped on it. He headed out to get to other things. I was left alone with this beautiful but struggling calf. I rubbed it and rubbed it, trying to dry it and to get its circulation improving. I was assessing what I was seeing and hoping for the best, leaning over that calf and pouring every caregiving instinct I have into it, and it died, right in front of me. I couldn’t give up, partly because a bit of spontaneous movement would give me fresh hope. You know where this is going right? Flashback and emotion. Damnit. I couldn’t save my Mom and I couldn’t save this calf. It was overwhelming. It was the deepest and darkest part of the valley. I called Russell, washed my face, changed my pants and called Grandma Shirley. Despite being late I was coming for tea. This is where the elevator out of the valley started this time around. Russ was so sorry to have put me through that. Sympathy helps. I got to Grandma Shirley’s, who is in our Covid bubble, and she said to me, “dear, at Christmas I put four shortbread cookies away in the freezer knowing there would be a day that I would need them, I think today is the day.” Her delicious tea and those beautiful cookies and just getting off the #*#* ranch were a bit of ointment on my wounds. While there I got an odd picture from Russell and Morgan. Shirley and I thought Morgan was holding a baby deer on his lap in the jeep. That wasn’t it. It was a second time in the day that animals elevated our experience and brought wonder.

Russell and Morgan had found this rabbit injured at one of the hay feeders. They decided to bring it home and see what could be done for it. Russ said, “even if it dies its better than it dying cold in the mud with predators all around.” They decided to name it Diane, after the rock song “Jack and Diane”, we call almost every bunny we see on the road Jack, it is time to have a Diane.

We had a fiesta of leftovers for supper and then Jill served us this beautiful cake she made in honour of her Nana. The colours were chosen based on the blue and coral we so often saw Mom choose for her clothing.

The hope for my blog is to be real, like as real as I can bear to be. So welcome to my horrendously messy kitchen and my very weird hair. I am not up to snuff these days. I wanted to use this picture though because our credit union ag rep gave me this t shirt when Mom was sick. The credit union was established in 1937, that is when my Mom was born. Weird fact…..a woman is born with all the eggs she will ever have and use in her lifetime. So that means that the egg that became me was established in 1937 too. Cool.

Another low carb part of the week. Can you hear my eyes rolling? Delicious.

As we went to bed there was the possibility that Diane the rabbit was going to die in the night. Russ said, “she is either going to wake us up at 3am lunging out of her box (by that point located in “the company bathroom”) or die.” The valley of the shadow of death lingered near once more.

Thats all for this day. I think that is the end of this storm too and future posts won’t be such a long read. I hope.

Day 3 and I’m excited about Yorkshires!

Hello from the Bar MW Ranch where after three days of snow I think the sun might just shine today. We are thankful for it all. Yesterday was another busy day of Russ, Ron and Morgan working hard to keep calves alive. I called Ron around 8:30 to tell him we had no water and ask him to check the well house for troubles. He told me he was trying to save a calf but he would get right to it. I updated Russ with the situation. Russ got to the well house before Ron did and reported back that “some idiot had unplugged the heater…….and that idiot was me.” We had water again in short order, after a line thawed. Shortly after this my house guest for the morning arrived, the calf Ron was saving, a big beautiful red calf, her Mom is “Katie.” Russ carried it in and asked me to please play some specific music for this calf. So I cued up Ian Tyson “The Navajo Rug” song, thanks to YouTube, and the calf got to hear Ian singing about its Mom “Katie.” Here is Katie Jr. at the point she was handed off to me. Our little dog room heats up fast and makes a great warm up spot. Coffee our puppy is doing absolutely wonderfully with sharing her corner of the house.

Russ reported in while checking the cows “Buttercup” was not doing so well, seemed to be in distress. Morgan was still his helper at this point and was the one to get her lined up to get in the trailer and come home. Russ did an internal assessment and thought we needed the vet. Marcel came in a flash. I got a call from Morgan, “come to the pole shed! We are having twins!” By the time I got there Marcel had pulled the 2nd calf and Buttercup was at this stage. She is licking them off, getting them drier and and that motion is working on their circulation in the process.

Jill and I both came to see the action and here was a little catch up moment. Wolf quickly found Jill and got to be part of the post birth meeting.

Saddle horses are the saviours of many of our days.

Back at the house I needed to help this calf get dry. It is absolutely amazing how long they hold moisture in their legs. I rubbed and rubbed and just could not get them dry. The room was hot as hades. Anyways….Gina called, she was walking to school, so I put her on speakerphone and she got to hear the calf moo a little bit and we did an interprovincial session with this calf.

And by this moment it was definitely perking up.

Perhaps the most stressful moment of my day happened when Russ called and asked me to check the heifers. These are cows that are pregnant with their first calf and we keep them in a separate pasture because they need closer supervision. Russ was so busy he did not have time to check them and didn’t know when he would get to. By this time Jill and Morgan were in class and Ron was busy. It needed to be me. However I had a list I wanted to do too, including getting a shower. I told Russ I was too busy. He understood. I felt tremendously guilty. The biggest things on my list were the food prep needed for our lunch, a menu to celebrate my Mom on her birthday. I needed to let go of my firm grip on how that would unfold and flex. I did it. I agreed to check the heifers. Here is why…….it was self care in a way. I realized that if I didn’t I would ruin the rest of the morning worrying about how the heifers were doing, worrying that a cow and/or calf could be suffering. I knew how I wanted to feel. I wanted to be rolling out cinnamon buns and feeling peace in my heart. So, in order to make that happen, I had to hit the road and go do the check. I found that all was well, most of the heifers were enjoying hay at the feeders and it was an easy and pleasant job. I returned to the house, had a quick shower and got down to business on thick cut bacon and cinnamon buns, Georgie specialities. It seemed like a good shift within me to do something not because I should, but because of how I knew I wanted to feel.

Heifers at the feeders. The red one standing alone is named “Tender”. There are at least two big stories that go with this and maybe they will get told somewhere down the line.

Unfortunately my afternoon was hard. Just sad. I could not avoid that sense of loss, I was missing my Mom, really mindful of her. I almost let go of my plan to honour my Mom by making Yorkshire pudding to go with supper. I wondered if I really needed a challenge when I was punk. I thought I should at least do a search on the internet for info. I found a great post with tips to make successful Yorkshires. I got started. I did it. They turned out! They maybe needed a little more salt, the recipe called for a generous pinch, I wasn’t generous enough I do believe. These were best with butter not gravy and I ate 3. I am trying to eat low carb as much as I can, but this was not the time! Here is the website where I got the help I needed “kitchensanctuary.com”.

The guys got in early and we ate supper at a good time. We put the mashed potatoes in this awesome serving dish that was my Mom’s.

That was April 13th, we got through it, we saved some lives and we lost one. A calf was born with its sack on its head that it never burst through and no-one could get to it in time. One of Buttercups twins is getting adopted onto “Flirt” the Mama of the calf we lost. We do a lot of thinking about Moms and their kids in calving season and this day we all talked about my Mom a lot. We all miss her so much. I couldn’t help but think she would be flattered by our many efforts to comfort ourselves and the delight we took in using her recipes, dishes, tablecloths, runners, serviettes……its all a connection.

Day 2 and its April 13th

Its 6:29am and I have two guys at the counter, managing their own coffee and breakfast needs, here I sit. There is more snow falling and Russ says what has accumulated so far is more than we had all winter. He continues to be overjoyed. The kids start online school today. This has become neccesary now, after Covid variants combined with Easter holiday travel and rapidly rising cases numbers have led to more concern than we have known yet in the pandemic. Morg got up to do the morning check with Russ so that he could be back and ready to “go to school” at his appointed time. We shall see how this goes.

A little follow up from yesterday……..

Despite our best efforts, the efforts of all of us, one of our morning house calf guests lived and one died. It was the biggest and noisiest one that died and Russ figures that it was stepped on by a cow before he got it in. That was disheartening. If I can figure out how to post a video that Jill originally posted on our family chat I will do that. I like it. Its a glimpse of Rev. Kyle in her leggings and her Dad’s old shirt doing her best to bottle feed a calf that is not too interested. The other calf, Fifi Jr., responded really quickly to the heat and a few sips from a bottle and was trying to stand in short order. That was fun to see, she was quickly returned to her Mom and from what I hear Fifi was glad to have her back and all is well. Our heifer whose name is “Enjoy” is not taking too well to the calf we are adopting on to her. “Claire” had twins a few days ago and was doing fine with them but when Enjoy lost her calf we thought we would relieve Claire of her double milking duties and give Enjoy that chance to bring her mothering skills a go. (Heifers are first time Moms, they need extra supervision at first and most do well eventually.) Our calving season is slow to start, we only had one other calf yesterday and that was Penny, she birthed a beautiful big calf but seemed a bit disoriented by the weather, by mid day she had walked that calf way far from the herd and shelter. Morgan walked her back, on foot, (which Russ remarked was quite brave of him given that Morg has a healthy amount of fear of cows).

And its April 13th…….84 years ago today a brave and kindhearted 23 year old woman gave birth to her first child. It was 1937 and that baby was my Mom. This is our first April 13th since Mom’s death in October. Its hard to know what to do to mark a day like this. Last night my sisters and I shared our plans as we went back and forth on our Sister chat. The common thread through all of our plans was food. Another dimension was flowers and a plan to share some flowers with some of Mom’s special people. Food, flowers and sharing, Mom would be pleased I think. My Mom savoured creating and sharing food, receiving flowers and being generous. With a presence as huge as my Mom’s was in our lives I found myself compelled to plan something more than a single day or a single food item. For this year anyways it just didn’t seem enough. So we are having a whole week of celebrating Georgie here at the ranch. Yesterday I made the cake that bonded her and Russell forever, oatmeal cake with brown sugar icing. Today Jill is making one of her amazing Jill cakes to honour her Nana and I am going to try my hand at Yorkshire pudding tonight, along with a roast of beef. Later this week I do believe bran muffins and Christmas morning wife saver will be on the menu. A chocolate cake with brown sugar icing will figure in there too. To do this week right a batch of fudge needs to be included somewhere. Grief is such a sneaky bear and I have danced with it way too much for my liking over the last months. Somehow having a positive focus of creating food and getting to share it with the crew here helps me to hope, maybe naively, that this week can unfold without a flood of struggle. We shall see.

Until tomorrow, that is the update from the Bar MW Ranch.

My Mom as an infant, in the arms of her great granny. Her Mom and Grandma are in the back. Mom is in the presence of the women who faced down the work and the joy of birthing. As a result of these women she and I and many others in our clan had life.

My Mom as a young girl, with that effervescent smile that so many have been blessed to know.

Mom serving her famous chocolate cake with brown sugar icing on the trail in 2019.

Getting icing onto yesterdays Georgie inspired cake.

Russ heading out the door with Fifi Jr., she is feeling better and ready to see her Mom. The ears on this calf remind me of a mule!

Jill and I working to nourish/warm from the inside a cold calf.

Day 1

I have resisted having a blog for a long time, fearing the pressure to create content regularly. Suddenly, however, it feels like freedom not pressure. Interesting how that goes. I have spent several days setting up the page with not too much to show for it. It is definitely a learning curve. There are some in our circle that like to keep up with events on the ranch so this is a chance for me to record and share the events of life.

As I write today we are dealing with the opposing realities of stormy weather. On the one hand we have been desperate for moisture. We had very little snow over the winter and an extremely dry fall so we have been staring at dry and browning ground for what seems like weeks after a short winter. There were tears in the head ranchers eyes several times yesterday. The moisture found in the snow and rain that has fallen over the last day and a forecast for more is giving some hope that we might have adequate water for the cows and hopefully a hay crop. On the other hand, cold and wet weather as calving gets underway means trouble. It has taken me an hour to get this far in this post due to the needs of the ranch. It started with a phone call from Russ, “I need you to get Morgan up, tell him to start the white truck and saddle the horses, and, if I don’t call you back in 2 minutes its because I am under the jeep” (where he would be hiding from a mad Mama cow.) He called me back in 5 by which time I was getting dressed, preparing to go see what I could do, and telling God how much I wanted my husband to be okay. Follow up phone calls and action ensued. Jill was needed too. As I sit now here is the status report…..I have two calves in the dog room in the house here. One of them is quite vocal. Morgan and Jill both had hearty breakfasts thanks to leftovers. Hoping to ensure that a sleep teenage boy did not go back to sleep when he was needed I lingered nearby in the laundry room and got the first load of laundry done. That means that all the sheets/blankets that our puppy “Coffee” peed on last night, right at bedtime, are in the process of getting clean. Morgan did well and got to breakfast in good time. While he ate I unloaded the dishwasher, got that job off the list. Then I cleared the supper table from last night. It was late and we were tired and distracted after supper last night, so we didn’t make that the priority. Paid for it this morning. Russ came in with two wet and cold calves just as I was getting the dog room floor swept and a mat down. We brought a heater in and now hopefully the calves of Coby and Fifi will warm up and be okay. Jill is out at the barn dealing with a different calf, a twin that we are adopting onto a Mom that lost her calf. Russell and Morgan are out on horseback rounding up Coby and Fifi and bringing them home to the barn where they will be reunited with their babies, hopefully warmed up and ready to suck. At this point, now 8:52 am, Russ also had word that Penny has calved and her calf is doing fine, up and moving around with her. Thankfully not every morning is like this, but this is calving season and this is how it will be for a bit, especially in cold wet weather. We are very grateful for the wet part of that.