Old cows, frost, stinky dogs, disappointing purchase

Mama got the check for the sale of the cows hand delivered by the owner of the sale barn. I think she felt badly that one of the tow cows we sold did not bring us much money. Big Mama was an older cow and was listed for the sale as “Long” – which translates “old”. Both she and 95 were two months bred, but Big Mama was at least a seven-year-old. All told we lost about $1000 on her but we managed to break even on 95. Not too bad overall. If I had put a reserve on Big Mama we would have been able to bring her back to the farm and let her have her calf and then sell her and the calf, but we did not set that up properly. So, our herd is down to Daisy and hopefully her calf, Mellow (which is Big Mama’s most recent calf) and the little steer that 95 delivered for us this year. I think Mama and I are going to concentrate more on the goats for an income generating herd. We will see how that works out in the long run.

The ambient temperature this morning was 37° F according to the temperature readout in my truck. The wind chill must have been enough to get the temperature low enough to frost up the windshield because I had to run the defroster on high for a while to get the windshield cleared. Along with the falling temperatures, the drifts of leaves along the chain link fence of the back yard are starting to pile up.  I had to use the blower to clear the garage of the leaves that blow in when we leave the door open for very long. It is hard to acclimate to living with the garage door closed because most of the year we leave it fully open. It feels awkwardly reclusive to have the garage closed up. At least right now it is fairly easy to blow the leaves out of the garage because we have cleared a large portion of the garage by relocating items to the shop as well as discarding a lot of unused items that blocked the area for no good reason. By the time the real cold gets here, I will have cleared enough of the garage for Mama to park the Sequoia inside. That will be a first for her.

Speaking of things being inside, the dogs are not. It has been three days since they killed and ate a skunk in our backyard and they still smell awful. For the past two nights Victoria has closed the three of them up in the sunroom. Each morning when I get up I open the door to let them out for their morning ritual of tearing across the backyard in search of fleeing rabbits. This morning, the sunroom smelled horrible. It was a strong mix of fading skunk odor mixed with dirty dog aroma. Fairly disgusting. I can see a dog bath assembly line being set up this weekend. Besides the smell, I was almost knocked over by the three of them positioning themselves to blot out the door once I got it open. All three of them brushed against me on their way out and I did not think much of it until I got back in the house and discovered that the right leg of my black pants was literally covered in dog hair. I hate dog hair almost as much as I hate stepping in their bowel movements. Fortunately, I was able to get the majority of it off of my pants. Otherwise, I would have changed.

I spent about an hour putting together a file cabinet I ordered online. I wanted a wooden file cabinet to sit beside the desk I inherited from my dad knowing the wood would look better than a steel cabinet. I was disappointed by the cabinet once it was put together. It is one of those situations when I have to decide to redo the assembly using a few more screws and some very strong glue or chalk it up as a loss and go back to shopping for a more suitable cabinet. The cabinet was not nearly stout enough to suit me as it now sits. Oh, well.

It has been a week of hard lessons for me and Mama.