Calf

Saturday..  Cow has twin calves.  As typical, wants only one of them.

Bring calf home to old chicken house, and pen it.

Give it a tube of nurse mate, and tube feed a bag of colystrix.

Sunday AM..  Try to bottle feed calf, no go, cannot, does not, operate his sucking muscles.

Short on time, tube feed another bag of colystrix.

Sunday PM..  Mix up milk replacer, (borrowed from neighbor)

Use lamb nipple, eats a little, try again later and he is starting to get the sucking motion.

Monday AM..  Lamb nipple again, now he is getting the rhythm.

Roger stops at neighbor’s on way to town to get milk replacer, taking a bar of gold along to pay for it.

Neighbor’s girl friend says “I want the calf, here is a check for $200.00.”

Roger comes home, and we make a calf delivery.

Goodbye to a 2 month/twice a day chore!!

Spring and Gardening

Beautiful day in South Dakota.   I did some laundry and hung it outside, love that outdoor smell!

We made the garden area bigger, brought up more panels.  Several raspberry plants made the winter, and the 3 lilac trees are inside and protected from the deer, but not the rabbits.  You can tell how deep the snow was this winter…deep…by where the lilacs are eaten off.  However, they are finally showing some leaves.  The apricot tree is starting to bloom today, and I saw plums in some other shelterbelts with blossoms.   Maybe spring is coming!!

I bought some asparagus roots…a $2 special, 6 crowns, each with lots of very long roots, so today,  finished digging the trench, watered and got them put in the ground.  My lone asparagus plant from last year survived as well, even tho I had to move it in the middle of summer.  There are 4 or 5 raspberries plants sticking out of the ground.  The spinach I planted is coming up, and the onion sets are peeking.   I spaded up a short row by the fence and planted a half dozen old sprouted potatoes.  Also bought another Rhubarb plant, a Canada Red, so now have three.  That should be enough.  The ones I put out last year look good.  Roger’s horseradish is 6 inches tall or so.  We can dig and grind any day now.  And my tulips, or some of them opened up today!   I got some lettuce and peas in the ground this week. 

Need to get another compost pile started, and let the one in the middle of the garden finish cooking.  I can see as I turn it, that eggshells need to be crushed, and I have no idea if I am getting the right greens (high nitrogen) to browns (high carbon) mix right.  It is supposed to be 1 part to 4 parts.  But I will keep at it, see what I get.

Roger brought up 3 railroad ties, and we extended one raised bed, so he brought in a tractor scoopful of dirt today to fill it.  Couldn’t get the tractor all the way to it, so it required some scooping.  We needed some younger bodies and backs here to move that dirt around, but we got it done and pretty well leveled off.

When we enlarged the garden, it also encompassed one of the burr oaks I planted 2 years ago, and it looks like it is still alive and budding out.  I decided that by the time it gets big enough to be a problem, I won’t be gardening anymore anyway.  They should grow to 40-50 feet, so don’t know if I will get to see that or not.

Wahoo, let the growing season begin.