Good morning, I am so glad to be here with you – hasn’t the weather been just beautiful today and yesterday? I can hardly bring myself inside.
Our first calf of the year is on the ground — a beef heifer calf, petite and bright-eyed, already nosing around the grass like it has always been here. And not to be outdone, Rosie our milk cow is HUGE, she take up a whole doorway of the barn. That dairy girl looks ready to burst. Any day now, I keep telling her. Any day. She just blinks at me like I’m the one being unreasonable.
It would have been a gentle start to June, except a storm that hit recently had other plans.
It came through hard in the wee morning hours and took several trees down with it, and a few of those trees took our pig fences with them. The good news first: nobody was hurt. Not a pig, not a person. For that I am grateful.
The less good news is that Benj was buried on campus all week with a convention, which meant the cleanup fell to me. So I did what you do. I oiled up the chainsaw, pulled on my boots, and got to work — branch by branch, post by post, the whole time with wet pig noses snuffling at my ankles.
I lean on Benj for just about everything out here. He’s good at this stuff in a way I’m not, and I’ve gotten comfortable letting him carry it. But there’s something a storm teaches you when it leaves you no choice. I found out that when something needs doing and there’s no one else to do it, I can often do it. Slower, sure. As good? Probably not. A little at a time. But the fence got mended and the branches got cleared, and at the end of the day the work was done all the same.
I like being able to help when needed. And have learned that one step after the other I can manage. It is good to be alive and able to work!
Now if Rosie would just get on with it – we all are eager for fresh milk, ha!
Until next week, Leah
