I'm still alive. By the grace of God, the little calf I'm bottle-feeding is still alive. It is a greater miracle that his mother is still alive--I've thought of shooting her several times over the last few days. When I take her calf away from her so that I can bottle-feed it, mommy mooooooos. Why? Because she sees me and knows that I bring hay and corn. Baby? What's that? When I let Mom out of the medical pen to stretch her legs, eat some grass, and walk down to the hay ring, she prances gleefully away. To get her back into the pen with her baby is not quite so easy. I don't think I could do it without a bucket of corn waiting for her. As my brother-in-law sees it, she better be careful, or she will soon be singing the Ronald McDonald song...
So now I put on my barn clothes 4 times a day. I fill bottles with milk replacer and electrolytes and urge the calf to drink.
You know, kid, this is the bottle that brings life.
Without me you’d be missing:
this spring down pour;
my looking like I just crawled out of the swimming pool,
and watching me attempt to remove 10 cows from your space
after they crashed the gate to investigate your mom’s corn .
Without me you’d never know:
anything about all this muck, mud, and mess;
the glee of running around while I try to get a halter on you,
the joy of dragging your feet while I tug you over to the gate
so that I can throw my leg over you to hold you still,
so that I can shove my thumb into one side of your mouth,
and the nipple into the other side,
so that you can drool milk all over my boot,
so that you can bump the bottle and spray milk (which I am allergic to) all over my face, glasses, coat and hair.
I think I know why my parents quit farming before I was born. City life looks, well, inviting right now…
Did I tell you that I nearly lost a boot in the muck? When I tried to pull that foot up without losing my balance, the other boot got stuck in the mud. When I tried to get the second boot out of the mud, um, well, you can no doubt see the rest of the story. What was I doing? I was trying to get another mommy to lead her brand new baby out of her hiding spot—a mud pit. I met with moderate success.
Ah, yes! The life of the poetic farmer! And to think my dear husband did this for the last 8 years because he LOVES it!?! Wow! The farmers of this world are a hardy breed, are they not? Did you know that this is just part of the food chain that puts your meals on the table each day? Unbelievable! And to top it all off, these hard workingmen and women rarely make much of a living around here. Again, wow!
So what else is new in my little world?
Um.
Well.
Not much. School still goes on. More and more classes are winding down for the end of the year in our little home school. Spring rains come and go, and the yard and pastures are turning green. The birds have returned, and I heard one today that I did not recognize. I’ll need to get the birdcall CDs out.
I could not do what I do each day without the help of my 3 children. They are precious helpers. Bethany cooks, cleans, and does laundry. JM does the heavy chores and whatever else I ask. Jacob keeps the odds and ends in order—the garbage, compost, and clean up around the farm and house as well as errand boy and calf’s bottle cleaner.
And my dear hubby runs and runs between teaching a class at the university, his new job, and planting oats, corn and soybeans. He fixes machinery and feeds round bales of hay to the cows. It is hard to keep him down long enough to get a Sunday afternoon nap.
And so, we ask the questions: How can we learn to do these tasks with grace and humility? Where do we see God’s loving and merciful hand? How do we build a close-knit family in the midst of all these tasks? How shall we plan for the future? Where to from here?
One thing we know: He is faithful.
Blessings.
