Just another Day on the Farm

I bet you are wondering what this cat has to do with Girl and her wee one or ones that she is growing her body, but its because at this stage in her pregancy, her calf is right about the size of a large cat, so I thought I would put a visual with that image..

Its amazing to me that she is already over half her way though her first pregancy, she is now at a very low risk of losing her little one at this stage in the game, the next big things are supporting her health and the babies health in the coming stages, and then the big event, along with her bagging up and udder health..

I am needing to make the final call now on where her birthing area will be, I had planned on making it in her loose box stall but I am having long second thoughts on this, the reason being that there is a poo/pee alley in the middle of the stall, with higher on one side, then the step down and then the second side is just a bit lower in sloop then the front.

Given that she needs to get up and lay down, get up and lay down and that its a cement floor, I am quite leary about this being the offical birthing space, while its the most sheltered, I am thinking about seeing if we can prepare the loafing part of the back open part of the barn for her to birth in..

It provided shelter on three sides, has a dirt floor, and lots and lots of bedding area, we could clean it out, and have two or four large straw bales placed inside and then close off the back half, still allowing the cows to lay in there for rest and cud chewing, keeping it a comfortable place that she already enjoy’s using, and then as the time gets close, break open one full bale, spreading and allowing her to push around a second bale to her liking, and having the extra’s for after the calf is born..

So far so good.. steady as we go..

My Knitting is not fancy, but its steady and honest and I can make a goodly number of different things that I really enjoy having and using.. as the weather gets cooler, the urge to head upstairs and go though trunks full of different colors and weights of wool speaks to me, projects set down in late spring are suddenly dug out an worked on, new small ones started and finished in a day, gets the juices running, having two or three or more different projects on the go allow you to switch, and suddenly instead of checking the net when I sit down, I am grabbing the needles instead..

This switch tells me even more then the darker mornings and early darkening evenings that winter is indeed well on its way..

Brandy was over in her favorite corner, the one where she watches the children down the way stand and get ready for the bus or where she just hangs and is a nosey girl as she listens and watches what happens at the farm across the way..

I didn’t think much of it, and then I looked and realized that she was at the very same spot, and went hmmm, and then came back and she was still there, that is a bit odd, she naturally tends to move around, she seemed calm but I thought if she is that lonely, I should go out and just say hi, bring her a apple and maybe give her a little grooming.

So I bundled up, (its cold outside right now folks) and I headed out the door and gave her the come whistle, now I have done this since the first day I got her, I call her name and her whistle and normally no matter where she is on the farm, she meets me at the gate.. I got to the gate, and she is still there standing looking at me..

I got the rope and called again, adding the the come!, and then she lifted her foot and I thought, O god, she got it stuck though the sheep fence, and I was heading for her as fast I could, now the panels are big enough that I figured I would be able to lift her foot up and pull it off, good plan.. right?

Wrong, she had somehow not only got her foot though the sheep fence but got it in front of the second strand of barbwire that runs in the middle of the fence, she could lift the foot high enough for the sheep but not the barb and if she put any pressure on it, she was going to drive a barb right into the back of her leg.. Standing there as she was, she was safe but trust me, if she decided to fight, it could get ugly fast!

I would like to say I called for DH loudly who was working in the barn but I think it would be more like SCREAMED for him, now we have a rule that if we need the other we ring the bell, three solid rings and its come to the house, three plus hard fast rapid rings, means ” I need you now!, get to the house as fast as you can” which has served us well for many a year but I can’t leave Brandy to go ring the bell, I need her to stay calm and steady,with my screaming next to her while still needing him to go get the wire cutters..

Well, then I saw the next challange, riders coming up the road heading our way, on any normal given day, I love seeing them, and Brandy plays run with you, and gets all worked up, but horse in fence while worked up.. bad! idea, so I called for them to wait, Bless them! even though they were not sure why or what was happening, they did as asked, and even rode the horses back a bit and waited.. I know that them doing that helped with things turning out right.

At that point one of the girls mom A, had heard me and came running down the road and over to help, and DH had finally come up, and grabbed the wire cutters, we had to snip the barb free, and then we were able to balance and lift her out of the sheep fence, she came though the whole thing with nar a nick and we got to fix fence, I find the idea sad but I am starting to think, I am going to have to have a powered line to add to the sheep fence and the barbwire fence, three parts to the fence is just a little over the top in my mind but I can’t take the risk..

I am still not sure how she pulled this fence trick, I have looked at the fence, tried to figure it out and I just don’t know, but in the end the answer is pretty simple, can’t happen again, and the answer to that is a hot wire, just one more thing to add to our to do list.

So here are the starting points of the ones that I am really considering..

Ok so this one is the base for one, I would like to put in Maeve and Nat’s first names only in very pretty matching celtic style on the flatter area’s on the wings of the tree’s.. then in the big tree, I want to have a few buds in the lower branches and ideally when we hope to have a new wee one that stays with us, I will have blooming flowers added in on the top, so the artist will need to know what the final one will ideally finish at and make sure they plan now accordingly.. So what do you think, can you see it in your minds eye?

Now the one above it in honor of my family, these ones are more for me, this one is related to the fact that hopes and dreams have to be followed from seed, to grow, and mature and ideally soar.. I like this one very much but again would want it modified just a touch, I woud want the doves to come up and just come over my right shoulder, instead of coming up my neck as they do in this one..

Last but not least, I am drawn to these..

I have to admit that I am really! feeling the call of the tattoo these days, I have three tattoos on this body of mine and each one marks a important part of my life, even where they are on my body was picked for a very personal reason..

On my ankle is a two headed snake as the circle of life (and also my base animal based on my birth) with the inner showing me being one with earth, air, water, an fire..

Years later, crawling half way up my other leg is a ying/yang turtle as I found balance in my life..

A few years after that I lost my daughter, and shortly after that I got my angel baby tattoo over my heart, and I had a tattoo planned after that but it just never seemed like the right time to me.. Then I had an lost my son and somehow because I had one for Maeve, it was somehow talked that I should have one for him and that didn’t feel right for me, or perhaps I have just never found the right tattoo or reached the right point in my life..

The last year I started noticing every parlor, and I started drawning and looking at the magazines, and I knew that one would be coming in my future, as it was the same feelings of needing to mark a turnpoint in my life,  I am still not sure what it will be but I know that its coming..

Do you have tattoo’s and if so? Care to share why you have the ones you do? I will share when I get my new one..

As its a piggy post, just seems fitting that I got a cute photo of Miss Rooten Tooten with hay head happening this morning, I did get a awesome photo today of the piglets but I am saving it for wordless weds 🙂

So as someone else noticed, along with myself that while we had three different good size black feeder bins, which worked just fine for chow, when it came time for real food, the piglets where overrunning it and themselves, which means that the strong are pushing the smaller females out of the way a bit, so it was time to build a longer piglet style trough, I like the width of the bottom but can already see that the side height that the book said, must be for wee piglets because we will need to take it apart in the next week or two and add in another two or four inches in height, once we split them off, we will need to troughs, my book says one foot of length per piglet and two feet per adult pig, so for the piglets we need eight feed of trough..

As I am splitting them up into two groups and because it mean that the feeder troughs can be used in other ways later for other critters, I had him make them into four foot lengths, helping control weight, fitting though doors, carrying an fitting on pen walls etc.

If you want to see the first introduced on the piglets to it, here is the video, what I can’t figure out is how come if I take a picture in the barn it comes out so dark I can’t use it, even with fiddling with the lighting but if I can a video I get ok footage.. very odd, might have to crack out the booklet and see if I can figure out how to adjust the settings somehow..

Ps, the front half of the video is working but the back half is glitch on my computer, sorry about that, I will see if I can figure out why, it worked perfect when it went up..