It seems to be a week of "what can go wrong, will go wrong", starting with the blizzard and digging out. We knew we needed to get the couple of open cows and some late calves we'd been feeding all winter to market to open up some pens and get ready for the new calves that will be coming. J agreed to haul them to Glasgow for us on Thursday morning. M assured him we'd have them cut out and ready to load by 9:00 am. I was dubious about that for several reasons; a) I wasn't sure we could get the trailer out of the snow, b) we would be sorting two smart old cows and some stupid calves from possibly stupid pregnant heifers, c) I wasn't sure the trailer could navigate the snowbanks on the road out. As it turned out, things went pretty smoothly. M had plowed up to the trailer, and it came right out. The heifers worked very well, and it took no time to get them sorted out. The cows were a bit hard to load, but it didn't take too much cursing to get them in the trailer. Sadly, one of R's replacement heifer calves got wild on us so we decided to just send it down the road as well. He had picked out some nice ones and we're not sure what happened to that one.
We had been needing to get our replacement heifer calves moved over to the neighbor's but had plowing to do first. M was sure he could plow the trail through the fields to save us a bunch of miles. The rest of us thought he was crazy and apparently we were right because he didn't get far and gave up. The county snowplow showed up on Friday to plow the road to the neighbor's (the one M had shoveled a hole through so we could go get our tractor) and J was plowing over there because they were cleaning grain there. We didn't get time to haul any calves over on Saturday, but when our first calf arrived Sunday morning we had more of a sense of urgency.
M had walked through the heifer pen first thing on Sunday morning and nothing was happening. Not 20 minutes later I was waiting for him to come with a bale and heard a cow making strange noises so looked in the pen and one had a calf. That's the way we want them to calve! We have four now and they've all been nice, small calves and unassisted births.
We decided we'd better load up some calves and start hauling them so we loaded both our trailers, and we each took a load over. As M was pulling the first trailer away, the handle of the trailer gate hooked on the barn door and kicked the hitch pin out and the gate started to come open. Luckily, I saw it and ran to catch up and caught the gate before it came all the way open. I had to put my whole self into it to hold the calf that was partially out until M could come help me get it pushed back in and the door shut. Good save!! We were back home in time to watch the NASCAR race but had enough daylight to take two more loads after it was over.
M thought he could get the rest hauled on Monday while I was at work. He didn't count on a gate coming open and the calves getting mixed in with some of the cows. That was very weird considering we hadn't been through that gate the day before and everything was fine when we were there Sunday afternoon. I was just so happy that I was going to my town job and didn't have to deal with sorting things back out. The weather didn't cooperate either with strong winds and drifting snow so that the roads were drifting in again. There are another 10 head that we have to move today as well as feed troughs and feed buckets.
I ended up not making it home from work that night but stayed in town with my mother-in-law. I didn't think she'd mind the company and I didn't want to venture out by myself on nasty roads with poor visibility. I'm so over that, guess I'm getting old. We went out for pizza and stopped at J and K's house to check out their new living room and master bedroom carpet, master bath tile and the baby stuff that's accumulating. K is determined to have their remodel project mostly wrapped up by the time the baby comes, and they are making good progress.
That baby will be here before we know it, 9 weeks left, so my plan today is to get started on the baby quilt if M will leave me alone.
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