may the odds…

…be completely not anything that is remotely normal in our case here at the farm.

It’s Baby Time out here at TexasNorth! My favorite time. Sweet little calves running and hopping around the pasture… getting lost, getting found, sleeping half the day and growing the rest. I love it.

IN GENERAL, the whole baby thing works itself out to be 50-50, ya know? Half girls, half boys. It’s pretty easy to keep track of cow pregnancy stuff… it’s very similar to human stuff. Females cycle every 21 days. The bull determines the gender. Gestation is 9 months and 2 weeks. I think we’ve talked about this before, but let me say again that breeders generally want more girls than boys. Girls have more babies. Boys… eat. The boys feed a lot of friends and family as super-lean beef, which is fantastic. But in order to expand and diversify the herd, it’s absolutely necessary to have girl calves. Heifers. If you don’t get heifers the natural way, the breeder has to pay cash for new mammas. That gets  a little deep in the pockets, ya know?

In our 5 years of breeding with 8 different bulls, we’ve had 55 calves. 

13 of them have been girls. THIRTEEN.

Y’all. That’s not even MATH. It’s wild. Six babies this year and so far… SIX BOYS. No one knows why. We’ve talked to MSU. We’ve randomly run into Animal Science PhDs with a focus on cattle breeding and talked their poor educated ear off in the grocery aisle. We’ve read the articles, and we’ve cataloged the wives’ tales… there is simply no explanation. There are as many experts as feet of fencing in this business… and they’ll all tell you something different. Watch your minerals. Put the bull in at the beginning of the heat. Put the bull in at the end of the heat. Put goldfish in your water. Up the nitrogen in your grass. Do a rain dance. But at the bottom of every journal essay and in the last breath of the wisest cattlemen, there is always this phrase: “more research needed.”

That translates to “we have no idea.”

With our track record, we go into every calving season expecting boys. It’s just what we grow here. When a sweet little girl shows up every now and then, well, it’s pretty fun because it means we’ll finally get to keep one for awhile! We’ve got 3 calves still waiting to make their grand entrance this summer from mammas Safari, Lindy, and Abigail. Let’s take a poll, shall we? What do you think they’ll have? If you’re like my Great Aunt Myrtle*, you need to see the belly before you can guess at gender. Here’s a picture of them from just last night, if that helps.

[*There’s no Great Aunt Myrtle. There’s a little Great Aunt Myrtle is all of us, amen?]

What’s your best bet? Click the poll, certainly, but be sure to leave your guess in the comments. I’ll draw from the winners for a new TexasNorth tee-shirt.

I SAID FREE T-SHIRT.

Now, if you’re not the betting type, I’ve got another option for you: you can buy your t-shirt outright. Imagine this thinner, soft as a cloud shirt (red tri-blend, 3.4oz, 50% poly, 25%cotton, 25% rayon) in a washed-out red with our sherif badge logo in white ink (just like the hoodies last year). AND, KID SIZES. You heard me.

 

Adults: XS through 2XL

Youth: S M and L

Both youth and adults shirts are $12 each. Of course I’ll mail it to you, but I’ll need a little extra cash for shipping. I’ll double check, but I think $5 on your whole order will do just fine. It’s unisex sizing. I can wear a medium or a small and will order a small. If you’re ready to commit, PLEASE EMAIL ME (katiemulder AT gmail DOT com) so I have all the orders in one spot and my brain doesn’t explode. Gracias.

Yahoo for new shirts!

I’m off to do a rain dance.

She’s gonna jump.

For you today, as this house nurses stuffy noses and short fuses: a small but extremely accurate window into my marriage.

Curt was gone for most of last week, and to add salt to the wound, Mother Nature completely lost her mind while he was away. Six-foot snow drifts changing shape hourly like sand dunes made our road completely unpredictable. Snow piled up in the pastures and along the fence line covered up the bottom 2 of 5 rungs, effectively raising the ground by 2-feet in some cases.

The chickens huddled in their coop to avoid the wind, but the cows had no such luck. Personally, I nearly lost my boots in the back 40 post-holing to the water pump to refill. Like, literally. The snow came up to just above my knees- the last time I had such a serious cardiovascular workout was in college as a sports major. The children asked me why I was breathing so hard. When I told them I was tired from walking outside to check on the animals, Gideon asked me if he needed to call an ambulance. Ahem.

Curt returned late, late Wednesday night. Before he could even hug me and tell me how excited he was to be back in my presence, I launched into the following desperate and update that I had been holding in for three days:

Curtis James. The snow is so high. The cows are fine. I fed them. Their water is fine. They’re all happy. I mean, they’re not happy- they’re miserable. They stare at me and I think they are silently cussing at me. The wind is KICKIN’ out there. Today was nice. The sun was amazing. But, Curt… we got SO MUCH snow and the ground is so high now. Those cows can jump over the fence without any problem on a normal day… what if they walk over it now? What if they come up for a drink at the fountain and just keep walking? What if they all get out? I have been trying to figure out a plan in case they bailed on me. I mean, I can’t walk out there in the yard, the snow is so deep… how would I push them back into the gates? How would I even get some of the gates open? They’re iced shut! Who would help me? You were in Colorado! What if the cows slipped on the 2-inches of ice on the driveway? What if they took off down the road again? I would never be able to get them back alone in this kind of weather. I almost died taking the trash out. And if they came back on their own, they’d be so amped up that they’d hurt themselves on the ice. And then what would I do? Call Doug? Call the vet? Oh, man. You saw that you can’t get through to 6 Mile, right? We wouldn’t be able to get the tractor through some of those back fields to surround them and we wouldn’t be able to get up the hill FOR SURE. Lawd, Curt. It’s a little nuts. Everything’s totally fine, but the snow is making me nervous.

Curt took off his coat in our bedroom and stared out the window where the yard met the pasture. He sat down quietly on the bed and began to unlace his shoes.

The cows won’t jump the outside fence, Kate. There’s no green grass or corn growing to entice them. All their food is inside the fence.

 

*blinkblink*

I am so glad you’re home.

Every day, Folks.

EVERY. DAY.

 

You are welcome.

How to have a hayride:

You should definitely invite everyone you know. After 7 years, let the record show that whether you mail invitations, facebook invitations, evite invitations, or stand on a street corner with a banner, 50 people will show up on your doorstep at 6pm. Invite everyone.

You should have only one bathroom. That bathroom should both NOT LOCK and have 2 doors. One of those doors should be made of plywood that enters into the master bedroom. Keep it classy. Make your bed.

You should forget to put out drinks. Remember the hotdogs and the sandwiches and the salty chips with dip, but forget the drinks until halfway through.

You should host in a home with approximately 400 square feet of accessible inside space. Seven years has proven that the basement goes completely unused. Some people head straight to the bonfire out back and do not come back inside, using children to ferry drinks and food. Others claim the couch and still others the porches. It’s enough room. It is. It seems like it’s not, like it will never be enough, but people make themselves comfortable whether there is actual space or not.

You should build a massive hay fort with 5-foot bales and secret passageways that encourage children to stay outside and makes new friends/fake enemies. Put the fort within easy viewing from the front window so moms can monitor any injuries without having to be away from the chocolate pecan pie.

You should know that you’ll forget to eat. You know everyone who’s coming, so you’ll be hugging and laughing and smiling… and you’ll forget to eat. Plan ahead by making incredible friends who hide pies in your kitchen cupboards for you to find after everyone has left.

You should have glow sticks. It gets dark out in the country, even with a full moon… so have glow sticks and candy apples for children. This will endear you to them and trick them into being visible and perhaps 1% safer.

You should have a hay wagon that is excessively bumpy. The trail should have random tree branches to surprise people and very steep hills. People will think the tractor sounds “tough” and “vintage” and you will nod and say, “Yes. It’s fun, isn’t it?” all the while knowing it’s just in disrepair because you forgot to fix the muffler. Perspective, folks. Perspective.

But, and this is the most important thing,

You should.

You should do it. Welcome them in with spotted windows and dirty floors, questionable forecasts and stuffy noses. Turn on the porch light and light the fire for new friends and old friends and the possibility of fellowship. Your sink will be dirty and someone will fall off the trampoline and yet another will miss the hayride all together, but there will be news of new babies, stories about grammas and moose, and the ease of friends making friends with other friends.

All you have to do is hold open your door. Your cheap, non-locking, finger-printed door and say,

“You are welcome.

You are welcome here.”

You have good friends. Really good friends. And while this season of life does not allow for weekly dinners or sing-alongs anymore, studies have shown that people will come if you make them macaroni and cheese. They will. They will come even if it might be muddy, if the kids will go to bed late, if it’s 45 minutes out of their way, if it’s a full moon.

They will come and you will say, “You are welcome.”

But what you mean to say is,

“Thank you.”

lost and found

Yesterday, I picked Rylie up from Sunday school and her teacher pulled me aside to let me know the earplugs we’ve been using are helping Ry feel more comfortable during the loud music time (amen and alleluia). Then, she asked if things were fine at home and I said, “Yes, actually. Things are fine. Right? I mean… are things fine?” She laughed and mentioned that Ry had been praying for 2 weeks now about the BABY COWS! and today she was very excited to share (something) about the BABY COWS! but the teacher wasn’t quite sure what story Ry was laying down (welcome to my world).

Ah, yes. There’s a story there, I thought to myself.

Remember? Rain was due to have her baby on the 19th? She did. In the middle of thunder and lightening and a complete downpour, that sweet first-time mamma had a little boy calf. I found it immediately after I wrote that morning and mamma and baby were doing fine, despite the weather. The calf was walking… wobbly, but walking… and the skiies were clearing, so we dubbed him Lightening and went on with our day.

That night, Curt walked out back and saw the two of them together again… wobbly, but walking and apparently nursing… so all was well.

Until it wasn’t. The next morning, all the cows- including Mamma Rain- were up front and there was no Lightening. No big deal, we thought. It’s early and she’s young. She probably has him hidden. She’s a helicopter mom.

But we didn’t see him later that day.

Or the next.

Or even three days after that.

I mentioned to Curt at dinner one night that I had a bad feeling and he agreed. A long search in the back 40 revealed… nothing. No calf, no signs of struggle, no anxious cows… nothing. We were sad. I mean, I saw him! We both saw him. And he was fine! What did I miss? And what could have happened? It was such a mystery… but there was simply no way to know. We finally told the kids that we weren’t sure, exactly, where Lightening was. He was hiding. And I think Ry knew that he was lost. So she, in her infinite awareness as a child who sees everything but cannot speak well, she had been praying. he Sunday school class had been praying.

Wednesday, a sweet friend came to visit and we walked a little ways to see the cows… all up against the fence again… on display. And there was sweet little Tex right there in the back.

Except… it wasn’t Tex.

It was Lightening. Sure enough… there was the tiny calf… a week later… completely fine and very shy. He popped up immediately, ran to Mamma Rain and the two of left left us to sweet talk the other cows. They walked quietly and very quickly with no ceremony or distress.

Two days later, I found him again. This time, he gave me a good 10 minutes before retreating with his mamma… and since then he’s been sticking around a little longer each day.

first glimpse

He sees us.

Where’s my mom?

safety

Mamma Rain giving us the eye.

Mamma and baby making their way… away.

together

Sweet Pea playing defense while the pair leaves in the background

a farewell

I’d be lying if I said I didn’t get a little teary with amazement when I “found” him again that Wednesday. I guess he was never technically lost, but I was so afraid he’d been hurt or sick and I’d missed it. I’d not been there to help. We’ve had our share of death on the farm… a calf born too soon, chickens losing against raccoons, and even our sweet cow dog Blue. It happens. It happens whether you’re ready or not, whether the baby looks fine or not, whether your brand new  or have been farming for generations.

But what sweet relief to see that baby… fine and strong and shy. A first time mamma with a little baby to take care of and 12 other mammas alongside her to help and guide and protect. She did just fine. She did it exactly right. Not like any of the others, but still exactly right.

We were all thrilled. Rylie squealed and giggled and clapped… which I wish I had been free enough to do myself.

Such an amazing find.

Life.

I found life where I did not expect it, where I had counted all for loss.

Anything, absolutely anything, is possible, friends.

the fruit of my labor

The fruit (and veggies) of my labor picked today.

The Yukon potatoes were the total yield grown in 2 tires, and there are still 3 traditional rows to harvest. I’d say there’s 20 pounds on the table, at least.

Lord, help me not waste this harvest.

And maybe I mean that literally and figuratively.

See you Thursday, friends.

Friday’s vacation postcard

The Mulders are making their way through Maine with a mini-van, a trailer, and a tent. Let us pray for the Northeast, amen? There’ll be a postcard here each day this week.

Friday

We love us a good youth county fair.

guess

 

 

 

There will be about 25 of you who know exactly what this picture means. And it will make your heart race and your face smile and your hands itch to build.

For the rest of you who were not with us almost exactly 5 years ago, let me explain that the trailer holds one hundred and thirty-five years of history in the form of a red barn skeleton… all labeled and ready to be raised again.

Today begins the process of pulling it all out, looking at the diagrams, and making a plan.  Because next Fall, you’ll all be here to help us put her back together again, won’t you?  We’re counting on it.