Farm Life

It has been some time since I wrote last - over seven months to be exact. To say a lot has happened is a horrendous understatement since about 2800 hours of life have been lived out in that time. (I subtracted out sleeping hours for that time period.)

We have been without employment other than a short stent working with a friend from church as a plumber’s helper. Needless to say, the job was too difficult for me to do for a long period of time. It seemed that all the positions required to do the job properly are the ones that cause my, once broken, back the maximum amount of pain. I did not mind the conditions or the messiness of the job, but I could not keep up with the working under houses or in attics in difficult positions for long periods of time or digging hundreds of feet of ditches. So since mid-April I have been at the farm full-time living off of our saving.

That has been a blessing because so much has been needed and if the Lord does give me a job again I will look back on these months as a major blessing - getting ready of goats, getting places set up for the chickens that are hatching, getting the cows to the vet for issues we are dealing with there. It has been really great for Mama. I think she is getting really spoiled to my uninterrupted help.

Lately, I have quit praying for a job and start praying for an income. With that in mind, I started looking at small one-person franchises for a home-based business. I shopped several and put in applications to only two but once I really investigated the cost and the time commitment I set them with aside.

About two weeks ago I sent my email to a marketing website that has proven to be a better than average opportunity for me. I will let you all know more as I progress through their introductory program. I can say at this point that it is the best system I have ever seen put together. More on that later.

Speaking of the cattle issues, Mama and I were somewhat disappointed earlier this year when one of the three cows we purchased in January lost her calf - a little bull calf. And we did not get overly excited about the next two calfs born to us here on the farm; both bull calves. Mama and I had been praying that at least two of the calves born to us this year would be heifers. Oh well, we thought, at least they are healthy calves. So healthy, in fact, that we are never able to get very close to either of them.

Well, last week we loaded up Daisy and her calf because Daisy (she is our bottle baby) was not looking very healthy. We also loaded the other calf because she had a huge abcess on the left side of her face. There was no hope of getting her mother loaded. She one of the most skittish cows I have ever seen. The last time we loaded her she broke through the head gate on the loading chute. In the work we asked of the vet we planned that the two calves would be castrated during this visit.

Once at the vet we unloaded the calves and the one Mama cow and Daisy’s calf was the first into the squeeze chute. When we had confirmed the procedure we required the vet laid out the necessary tools and lifted the calf’s tail. “I cannot castrate this one.” He told Mama. She was a little taken aback and asked why he had said that. “Well”, he smiled at Mama, “because this one is a heifer. And so is that one.” (Referring to the other calf.)

Mama explained that we were greenhorns and the calves are very flighty and  they both had such big umbilical cords and swollen naval at birth. I just told the vet, “It’s difficult for me to tell the difference between girls and boys these days.”

Everyone got a laugh out of the incident but Mama and I were thrilled to know that God had answered our prayer - even though we were too ignorant to see it.