A Season of Many Frantic Prayers

I usually wait to start a new piece of writing until something really exciting happens. Actually, I wait until several exciting things happen, then I decide that I’d better sit down and start writing before I forget what happened, but it’s too late by then, because I’ve definitely forgotten.

To assist me in remembering, I shall compile a list of titles for happenstances that I’d like to embellish in this post...

• The Misrepresented Drill

• The Haphazard Horse

• The Great Immigration

• The Most Terrible Trip

• The Breath of Life

• Robbing the Cradle

• The Covert Operation

• A Bamboozling Baby

• Flight of the Newborn

Tantalizing, isn’t it? But I won’t keep you waiting long, Grandma(s); here’s what’s been going on...

It has indeed been an exciting spring season. All the things we had all winter to think about piled on us at once, it seems. Procrastination makes you deaf to the responsibilities that are sneaking up behind you.

Not that we were procrastinating on everything. I mean, we can’t make the cows calve any quicker. After the breeding season in August/September, that ship has sailed. We also couldn’t pick rocks or harrow the newly purchased land when there was snow. In fact, we couldn’t even check fence effectively, because we had so much snow left in mid-April when the cows went out, the tractor couldn’t even get to all of it. When we moved the big herd out to their summer grazing pasture, we just checked the two sides that were along a main road, then hoped the cows wouldn’t wander if the fence was down. Most of the herd there is older cows that know where home is; if they got out, they’d only wander home, if they wandered at all. That’s the theory, anyway. We seem to still have all the cows, so it’s working so far.

One thing that we had all winter to think about was the seeding of the new farm land. We played around with the economics of planting corn, greenfeed, and even canola, but always concluded that we didn’t want to be farmers, we want to be ranchers; ranchers that don’t seed land every year. So perennial forage it is. This narrowed our options, but there are still a lot of choices for establishing perennial forages. We had to decide what kind of grasses and legumes to seed, and what kind of cover crop (annual) to put with it for the first year.

The more we researched, the less we knew.

I won’t go through all the considerations we considered and reconsidered. It wouldn’t be considerate of me to put you through that.

Mostly Dad was doing the figuring because I have zero experience with seeding anything. The last time we seeded grass, I was too young to participate much. I can’t even seem to establish mint seeds in a little pot at home, and I hear they’re sort of an invasive weed.

In the end, we decided to seed meadow brome, alfalfa, cicer milkvetch, and a little bit of clover. The annual crops that we’ll seed with it are radishes, turnips, and sorghum. We wanted to throw some sunflowers in just so it looked funny, but we haven’t been able to find a bag. Maybe people will drive by, see the well-thought-out variety, and think, “Wow, that guy must know what he’s doing.”

Or maybe they’ll drive by, see the strange concoction, and think, “Wow, that guy really doesn’t know what he’s doing.”

Maybe it’s the scientific method, maybe it’s the shotgun method. Who knows? I guess there’s more than one way to pluck a duck, anyway.

If I thought researching seeds was bad, trying to decide on a method of getting them into the dirt was worse. I once started a 4-H speech with, “Plants are interesting.” It was my hook! My big opener! The audience was supposed to be on the edge of their seats! It all went downhill from there.

I didn’t go on to the next level of competition with that one, but it would have been even worse if I started with “Machinery is interesting.”

Not to say these things aren’t interesting; they just don’t captivate me like other things. Like cattle. Cattle captivate me. One of my speeches started with, “He was the biggest! He was the fattest! He was the most beautiful steer in the pen! And his name was Ebenezer.” Now that’s a hook. At least, when it comes from an eight-year-old.

Anyway, I got sidetracked even trying to write about thinking about machinery, so you can imagine how lost I was when Dad was trying to figure out the best implement for the job.

I won’t drag you into the mire. Dad decided that the best implement for the job was a John Deere disc drill. Since it cuts a narrow path for the seed with a disc, we wouldn’t have to worry about it pulling up the many rocks that are lurking beneath the surface of the land. It is also supposed to be the best machine for seeding grass (which needs to be seeded shallow), and for seeding into stubble. Sounds like a win-win-win, right? But there’s a couple of tiny drawbacks.

One is that the drills are not very big. Fifteen and twenty feet are the options, though I suppose you could buy two of the expensive things and hook them together. Dad did the math on a fifteen-foot and figured he could seed ten acres an hour. With nine hundred acres to seed, that would take him ninety hours, or almost four round-the-clock days. Or eight half days. Doesn’t sound so bad, right? Or does it still sound bad?

Another drawback was that there seem to be none for sale in western Canada. There are a few in the eastern provinces, but some in the US would be closer to drive to than those. Dad even went ahead and got his passport earlier this year, just in case he’d have to run down to North Dakota and pick up a drill. Well, he got the paperwork for his passport, anyway. I think in lieu of this whole COVID thing, they probably just suspended the process, thinking they’d have one less Canadian travelling abroad. Mom also applied for hers, but ran into a snag when it was discovered that one of her IDs didn’t have her maiden name switched to her married name.

The patriarchy strikes again.

I believe she got her marriage certificate sent in and the process underway, but her passport has also not arrived.

As it turned out, they didn’t need to go down to the States because we eventually found out about a guy in southern Alberta that buys the drills from the US, hauls them back, fixes them up, and resells them. Dad got a hold of him and spoke for the next drill he had.

And here we have arrived at The Misrepresented Drill.

Now, it would have been about an eight-hour drive to go and see this drill in person, so we took the guy’s word for its being in excellent condition and his having fixed it up in an adequate way. Off went the cheque.

No sooner was the sum of money cashed than the guy was chomping at the bit to get it out of his yard and delivered here.

“Calm down,” Dad told him, “We’re in no hurry over here; we can’t seed until June, anyway.”

But as soon as the highways were dry, he was on his way.

If Dad had not already paid for the machine, he would have sent it back. The seed boots, heralded as “Excellent condition! Must have been barely used!” were worn right out, and would need replacing. The frame (“We’ll weld up any cracks, but this machine looks good!”) had two major cracks that were definitely not in hard-to-see places. The seed box had holes in it, many of the rubber tires had chunks missing (but he threw in an extra one, with even more chunks missing), and to add ultimate insult to injury, all the discs, which had been replaced with new ones, were put on bass-ackwards (well, all but two).

Dad pointed the boots out to they guy, saying they were way more worn than he’d said (“Well, you wanted a cheaper machine, so we didn’t replace them”).

Dad pointed the frame cracks out, as the guy said he’d weld any cracks (“Oh well, you have a welder; you can just do that yourself”).

He pointed out the discs to the guy, and said that it was unacceptable. On this, the guy finally agreed, and assured him that he’d pay for the labour it took to make them right. At least there was that, right?

But then the guy phoned back a couple hours later, still driving himself home.

He had changed his mind.

He said if we didn’t like the drill, we could pay to have it shipped back and another shipped out to us. He would do nothing else. As an excuse for his misdealing, he said we hadn’t sent a cheque for the full amount. Surprised at this accusation, we dug out the hand-written receipt. Fifty Canadian dollars. That is how much we were out, and we could see why; the last two numbers on the sum were written a little unclear, so that the ‘50’ looked like ‘00’ joined together.

It was an honest mistake, I think, and an inconvenience not to be compared with the hours of work ahead to put the discs on right (which is what he was paid to do in the first place).

It was a pretty rotten deal over all, but Dad sassed himself a tiny bit of peace of mind. The drill guy had forgotten to put on one of the seed-box sticker-charts, and said that he'd send it to Dad when he got back. He got a text on his flip phone a couple of days later and when we squinted, we could make out a crappy picture of the chart on the tiny screen. So we took a picture of a hundred-dollar bill sitting beside the phone with the picture of the sticker on it and said something along the lines of “Here's the rest of the cheque that was missing. Keep the change for your excellent efforts.” I thought I'd better include that in the story, since it was the only fun bit Dad had in the process.

Anyway, the whole thing left a very bitter taste in our mouths, so if you’re looking for a drill, Dad would love to be a reference for that guy.

I don’t want to talk about that stupid drill anymore, because it’s looking like it’s not going to be the win-win-win it was supposed to be. All new boots and discs, but the land we need to seed has huge amounts of straw and chaff that it won’t cut through. The guy who rented it previously used about a forty-foot swather, then their combines kicked all the mess out in a ten-foot space, as they had really poor choppers and spreaders. It’s a mess, and an ongoing battle.

Update: the drill seems to work as long as the litter is dry! I will continue to update you on the latest panic attacks about this seeding endeavor since we might just be done fighting with this all by the time I get done this post...

Another Update: the hawksbeard is unreal in there, so Dad's trying to figure out what kills it without also killing new forage seedlings.

Another Update: the guy that was supposed to be spraying for us kept putting it off, and the forecast was solid wind after one day of calm. Dad phoned a bunch of farmers that do custom spraying and no one was available! A few of them in a row said, “Oh! I'd have been happy to do it, but I just took my sprayer apart to fix it.” That would have been comical if it wasn't so frustrating. In the end, the original guy came out and got a hustle on to get most of it done that day. The rest was done the following morning before the wind got really wound up.

Now, let’s move on to happier things: The Haphazard Horse

I will not attempt to convey the roller coaster of emotions that I’ve been on since mid-March, when my mare began to show that she was getting close to foaling. Many times, I told myself never to put myself through it again; just buy a yearling, if I want a baby. I still think that would be wiser, but spoiler alert: I already have a stud lined up for the mare to go to in about a week.

The trouble started pretty early in March, when I noticed Pigeon’s little horse udder starting to grow. I began researching horse udders to make sure I would recognize the telltale signs when they arrived. The problem with the telltale signs, though, is that there are exceptions. I know they’re supposed to form little wax nubs, and be really big and swollen, but a picture on Google is not worth a thousand words, because none of them told me if my mare was close to foaling or if I was just panicking. I didn't even need a thousand words. I just needed a Google image to slap me on the face and say, “Your horse isn't due for another month! Don't put her in the chicken coop!” But they did not do that for me. They did not tell me not to put my horse in the chicken coop. So I put her in the chicken coop. It's not like there were chickens in there. We cleaned it out. Put a nice thick layer of straw down. Gave her hay. She should have been living the life. But Pigeon didn't choose the stall life. And the stall life didn't choose her, either. At first she was okay; maybe a little wide-eyed by morning, but okay once she was with her friends again. Then I took her away from her friends full time, to try and get her used to being alone more. That's when the happenstances made it clear that I had messed with nature too much: Pigeon got colic. I don't have a lot of experience with colic. Both my horses and myself enjoy a generally colic-free existence. The last bad case we had was several years ago, when a gelding impacted. In that situation, even the vet thought he was a goner. She pumped him with some mineral oil and told us that if he was alive in the morning, we could bring him to her place for more treatment. That old plug survived somehow, though his front feet took a few years to fully recover, as they'd abscessed in the process. Anyway, I noticed one evening that Pigeon hadn't eaten much of her hay, and didn't touch the oats I offered her. I knew she was stressed in her lonely pen, so I decided to let her have her way: I kicked her out with her buddies. For a few minutes, it seemed as if it was just a passing tantrum, but then she started getting bad fast. At first, I thought she was going into labour and about to kick out a premature foal, since I didn't really see her kicking at her belly (which is a typical colic symptom). She was only getting up and down a lot. Soon she was sweating, grinding her teeth, kicking, switching her tail, getting up and down, rolling, and pushing into me. The pushing into me part was presumably to ask me for some meds, because she wasn't seeking support from any of the horses she had apparently been missing so much. For several hours, I thought Pigeon was going to die. For several hours, I contemplated pulling my bets from the dead horse and trying to place them on the baby. It wouldn't have taken much to convince me to post-mortem-style C-section that baby from its mother. Luckily, before I got too wound up, we called the vet (because the only thing worse than beating a dead horse is calling the vet for one). There was some tranquilizer, some painkiller straight to the jugular, and a violation of both her nostril and her poop chute. It was the best of times and the worst of times. To her credit, she handled it like a total champion, but in the future I will just be administering painkillers as a treatment, and will be leaving all those other orifices alone. The vets said that it could be just gas, or could be her foal moving around a lot and causing discomfort. Either way, all she needed was the pain meds, and by morning, she seemed completely fine.

Even though that fiasco had a happy ending, I was still watching the mare like a hawk, trying to identify any signs of foaling. By April, I decided to separate her from her buddies again, but this time allowed her an old, retired, mellow gelding for a penmate. The weather was getting a bit warmer, so I decided to put both horses in the big barn at night and just keep a close eye on her, rather than put her through another chicken-coop-related near-death experience. I kept the coop ready, though, because if she foaled in the cold, the insulated coop would be way nicer than the big barn. For weeks, I checked that mare, diligently patting her growing udder and peeking under her tail. Nothing. Then dawned April nineteenth; Divine Mercy Sunday – the weekend after Easter. Brother and Sister-In-Law and their three boys were all out for a visit (which is COVID kosher, because they are now our family circle – more on that later). Sister-In-Law had been quizzing me on how we might induce labour on Pigeon, who had been due on the tenth. She wanted to be around when she foaled, and wondered how we could convince Pigeon to oblige. When I checked her udder that morning, though, there was no wax. It looked the same as it had for the past week, as did her under-tail region. Sick as I was of checking on the mare late in the night and early in the morning, I had begun to think she was actually due for the end of April, and that the breeder had missed seeing her second cycle. None of the telltale signs seemed to be showing up. Surely she would not foal... I was peacefully taking a Sunday-afternoon nap while the kids were out for a walk, when I was greatly rattled by Mom coming in the house and telling me I should check on my mare, as she thought she might be foaling. I scoffed, as I arose. “Pfffftt,” I grumbled. “She's probably just got gas again, stupid mare.” But out I went, to check my mare for the hundredth time. Horses are supposed to wax twelve to thirty-six hours before foaling. They're supposed to foal in the middle of the night. They're supposed to get standoffish and exhibit strange behavior prior to foaling. None of these things happened. I didn't see wax that morning when I let her out of the barn (but I sure seen it when she was flat out and pushing); it was not the middle of the night when she started (it was two in the afternoon); she was just being normal, chill, Pigeon (except that she was laying down and had a horse coming out of her). In hindsight, I do recall her being a little bit warmer in temperature than normal, but I didn't read about that being a factor in all my Google searches. Anyway, when I got out there, two little front feet were making their way out. Pigeon didn't seem to mind my being there. In fact, she kind of pushed into me again. Probably inquiring after some more meds. She laid down and pushed some more. One set of contractions... another... by then, the whole family had gathered nearby to watch. I looked to Dad, in case he had any words of wisdom. He just watched. Another contraction. I had heard that horses should foal really quickly; that if they go very long, there's probably something wrong. She had had three good pushes, but still not popped the little thing's head out. I looked to Dad again. He was directing a mimed pulling action at me. I gave myself just one second to have a tiny taste of anxiety, then I was in action. I poked open the sack around the little hooves and got a good grip on them, sitting in the straw directly behind Pigeon. I shoulder-checked in Dad's direction, just to make sure I hadn't misread the mime. He nodded. When Pigeon tensed up for her next contraction, I pulled with her. We got the little head out, then took a pause. At the next contraction, the shoulders slipped out, along with the ribs. With cattle, when we're pulling a calf, we'll often pause at the hips to give the cow a break, let the calf's lungs drain, and make sure the cow doesn't push her uterus right out after the calf leaves her (that last one is the most important; I don't know why I listed it last). When I did another shoulder-check, though, Dad indicated that I should pull the foal right out. I didn't end up having to, as Pigeon pushed it out the rest of the way. She stayed laying there for a bit, looking shaken, so I dragged the little thing to her nose and left her be. It's a little colt (male); a red dun that might go gray (like Pigeon). He's pretty adorable.

And they all lived happily ever after...

But wait!

There's obviously more!

Because that darn thing almost died on me too!

Here I was, thinking it had all turned out alright. Thinking that this horse thing isn't so bad. Reveling in the fact that I got to watch the birth. Admiring the colt's clumsy legs. Counting all my unhatched chickens. Several days in, I noticed the colt's eyes and nose were runny. I was concerned, but I thought I'd observe him a while before panicking, to see if he looked healthy and maybe just had a dusty day. He was coming up to me and rubbing his face in my hands, standing to be pet. This was all very touching, but not at all like the frisky, spooky little thing I'd come to know. I managed to follow him around, distract him by scratching his rump, and take a rectal temperature. It was high. I called the vet. I'm his number one customer these days, it seems. He suggested penicillin (since that's all we have on hand) and painkillers, then to come in for something better if the colt wasn't back to normal by morning. He wasn't normal by morning, though, the painkillers did seem to perk him up. Maybe he got an in-utero taste for them from his mother. Someone was going in to town that day, anyway, so they grabbed a bunch of sterile needles and syringes, and a potent anti-biotic that the vet recommended. The routine would be a needle, morning and night, for seven days. The poor little guy did as well as could be expected. He fought it a little, but never did panic his way into a tizzy, which is good. Dad would hold him, cornered against a straw bale in the barn, and I would try and get him jabbed and injected as quickly as possible. I got him onto eating sugar from my hand, so that it wouldn't be an all-around terrible experience. I don't think it quite made up for the inch-long needle in the neck, but what can you do?

Slowly, he seems to have forgiven my good intentions. He's a month and a half old now, and full of much sass. It took me a long time to name him, but I think I've settled on Job (like the Bible's Job, pronounced 'Jobe'), because the Lord gaveth him to me, and I thought the Lord was going to taketh him away.

Well, we are cruisin' right along here; only ten pages in and already onto the third bullet point on the list! I'm starting to think it would be a good idea to just write about a few happenstances at a time, so if this article ends with a cliffhanger (as in, I don't finish the list), then you can just await the next installment on the edge of your seats.

So. The Great Immigration. In terms of cows chasing me up a fence, this was not a very exciting event. But in terms of big life changes, it was very high on the excitement spectrum. Brother, Sister-In-Law, and their three sons (more importantly, my three nephews) moved back into the province of milk and honey at the end of April. Not only did they move closer, but they moved so close that they are now our next door neighbours! Mom and Dad are over the moon to have grandkids this close, thrilled to be nearer their daughter-in-law, and reasonably tickled to have their son back, too. The last few weeks have been flying by in a whirlwind of little boys and big changes! The whole process has been a whole process for Brother and Sister-In-Law, I'm sure, but in the end, I get to play with my nephews a whole lot, so all their hard work sure paid off for me!

That short bit is all I'll write about a big new bit of our life, but it leads me into the next thing on the agenda: The Most Terrible Trip. I don't even like to tell this story, because then I have to remember how terrible it was, but here goes...

When The Great Immigration was in its early stages, we had many days of helping out Brother and Sister-In-Law with the transition. One day, Brother was away at work, and Sister-In-Law had taken Nephew One to the house they would be living in to do some cleaning and organizing. That left Mom, Dad, and I with a napping Nephew Three, and a very much active Nephew Two. We left Mom inside with Nephew Three, then Dad and I took Nephew Two out with us to work on The Misrepresented Drills. Dad and I are both practiced in the ancient, hereditary art of imagining the worst case scenarios in any given moment. With sweet, cherub-faced, husky-voiced, clumsy-footed Nephew two with us, we were imagining these things in every given moment. Since Dad couldn't concentrate on the drill and on his grandson, he entrusted him to my care. I was responsible for his every action. The buck stopped with me. Every little snag of his toe, and I imagined what would happen if he fell in that spot. Would he hit his head on the metal poking up here, or the big metal thing over there? Would he knock teeth out, or break bones? Blunt force trauma, or laceration?? It was over an hour of this agony, as Two toddled around, taking our tools, handing them back (sometimes), and insisting that he “Needs to wook on sumpin.” He would grab tools or scrap iron and bring them to Dad, saying, “Scooze me, Grampa. Do you need dis?” He was being so well-behaved and having such a nice time with us, that it was worth the anxiety to have that little delight around.

And we did it. We kept him safe. All the imaginary terrible scenarios were staying inside my head where they belonged. All the gashes and punctures and breaks and bleeds were avoided.

Then Mom came out with Three. She came as the relief shift, to take Two onto different adventures, so that we could properly concentrate on the drill. She was about twenty yards away when we pointed her out to Two. “Look, Two!” I said. “It's Grandma! Go see Grandma!” I guided him past what I thought was the danger zone. I guided him onto the clear path to Grandma. It was just a stretch of gravel that he had to run, I thought. If he fell on the way (as he is so very wont to do), I thought he would just get some gravel burn. No big deal, I thought. He's safe with Grandma now, I thought. I turned away from him and back to the drill, to hand Dad a tool.

Then I heard crying.

My first thought was that he had, indeed, acquainted himself with the gravel. I glanced that way, thinking that Mom could comfort him adequately by blowing on his hands.

But he wasn't just on the gravel. He was right by the drill's hitch, which was unattached and had been sitting off to the side. It hadn't been in his path to get to Grandma, but Two had looked to his right at something, and his clumsy little feet had followed his head, veering him towards the big piece of metal.

All the bad scenarios came back to my head as I ran to Two, who was crouched on the ground, wailing. I lifted him up and turned his face towards me, so I could see what damage was done.

A huge gash was opened perpendicular to his eyebrow, over an inch long and clearly through the skin. I yelled for Dad, who was already hurrying over, and he came even faster, probably picturing the worst, as I had been. We were shocked and horrified as we sent Mom in to call Sister-In-Law, who probably had some of the same shock and horror. She hurried over, took a quick look at the gash, then she and Mom packed him up and took him to the emergency room. Dad and I were left with One and Three. The two boys were angels for us, more so than normal. We fed them, cleaned them up, and put them to bed. The older one bustled around, giving us instructions on how to put the younger to bed, handing us pajamas, toothbrushes, and soothers; then he settled right into bed himself. When Two finally got back, he was as chipper as could be, and hamming it up as the local hero. He deigned it appropriate that his Grandma should spoon feed him some supper, then held the room captive as he explained how the doctor “fixed him all up!” and how he had “tripped on 'quipment.”

Not to make this all about me (obviously I have to bring it back to the MVP: me), but this was the most upsetting day of my life so far. I definitely cried more than poor Two, who napped on the way to the hospital. Maybe one day he will learn how to walk properly and we can stop living our lives in fear.

That's enough about my emotional trauma for now, even though I'm sure you were very concerned for me as I relived that Most Terrible Trip.

Now we can move on to one of the most exciting bovine-related experiences I've had. This one left me quivering with adrenaline at the time, and was also the catalyst for this article of writing, since this is the sort of happenstance that just begs to be documented...

Oh wait! We're out the arbitrary time I've just now set for this post! I'll have to leave you with that cliffhanger and continue fleshing out my list on another post. Stay tuned! (Actually, don't stay tuned; it takes me so long to write new posts. You could die.)