My epic fail, Mama’s excursions

Saturday morning, after feeding the goats and chickens, I lured the cows into the corral. Friday evening, I had parked the stock trailer at the loading chute so I could load Daisy and Mellow to transported them to Norman’s acreage. That was the plan. I had even taken the time to rewire the trailer lights because the cows had chewed the wiring in two. My challenge would be to make sure the calf was safely loaded. When they are that small, they can fit through some spaces that only they recognize. My hope was that I had eliminated those spaces. As it turned out, I was able to get the calf onto the trailer first. She almost squeezed through the small space between the trailer and the corral fence, but I was able to get her into the front of the trailer and shut the center gates of the trailer. What I forgot was to make sure the small gate at the front of the trailer was secure.

As I was getting Mellow loaded I found out that the front gate was not latched shut and the calf jumped out. She ran out like she had been stung and I knew I would not ger her back easily. So, I opened the trailer gates and let Mellow out. I would have to try again later. I was very frustrated. So, frustrated in fact that I hollered at the top of my lungs which resulted in my losing my voice so that I could not sing Sunday. A total fail. However, later that afternoon, after the events I will describe momentarily, I was able to get Daisy, her calf and the steer loaded and delivered to Norman’s. We needed to separate Daisy from her larger calf, but now Mama is worried that Daisy will not have any shade where Norman has her penned up. I will let the two of them work that out.

Since I had failed with the first attempt loading the cows I changed and Mama, Victoria and I went to Denton to do some shopping and to see if we would get our cell phone service moved onto Victoria’s plan. That took several trips to the Sprint store, to the Cricket store (our current provider) as well as calls to both Customer Care centers. We also called Apple Support for advice. We stopped at the AT&T store to see if they could help. No go. Five hours later we were not able to get anything accomplished. Mama’s phone, in three hours, did not fully back up to the iCloud and my phone could not be unlocked normally because the number I have was once registered to a corporate AT&T account and I do not know that account number. We could have bought new phones to make the swap, but our goal was to save money, not spend more. It was a very disappointing day for me, but it was a nice outing for Mama and Victoria since we had to stop at Chick-fil-A for lunch trying to kill some time while we waited for Mama’s phone to back up – which it never did. If it had, we could have made that sitch.

We were back home about 3:30. A couple hours later – after the coop was cleaned - I was curious to see if I could try again with the cows. I took the other half of the bag of cubes and walked into the corral with Daisy and her calf, the steer and Mellow hot on my heels. The skittish heifer stayed out of the corral. That worked out well for me. Since Mama told me after my morning failure that she did not want to send Mellow. I got Mellow out of the corral and moved the feed bucket into the loading chute area and closed in the steer, Daisy and her calf. A few minutes later they all walked onto the stock trailer and I closed them in. All gates were secure this time. I was able to get the trailer moved with the tractor, hitched to the truck and ready to roll a few minutes later. When I went to the house to let Mama know my progress and to have her call Norman, I found her already on the phone with Norman. Victoria had looked for me and had seen me connecting the truck to the trailer. I was back at the farm with the empty trailer by 7 pm. Just in time to water everything before I sat down for the evening.

Yesterday, Mama was anxious to go to church, but I asked her to wait until the evening service. It would be a shorter time at church in case she was too uncomfortable there, and there would be less children to bump into her. She agreed. Everyone was very happy to see her and she was thrilled to be there. It really filled out her weekend.

Today she has her first physical therapy session. One of the ladies from church will pick her up at the house and take her to the appointment. Another of our church ladies will collect her from the appointment and take her to her house where I will pick her up this evening. Mama was looking forward to the appointment last night but not so much so this morning. She was hurting badly when I was leaving the house this morning.

Please pray it goes well.