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The calf from last week’s post is still alive, but not without a good deal of blood, sweat, tears, and vet expenses.

“He’s a dandy,” an old cattle rancher told us.

Translation: he’s a big, fine-looking calf.

But he wouldn’t nurse. We don’t know why.

He was separated from his mother for a short time. Maybe he couldn’t nurse, or maybe he was traumatized.

Then his mother, in pain, wouldn’t let him nurse.

I found him curled up in the tall grass the morning after he was born. His nose was cold, his eyes were rolling back in his head, and his mother was nowhere near. With my husband at work and helplessly unable to leave, I rushed to town to buy colostrum. The calf wouldn’t take the bottle. My mother-in-law came to help, and we got him to drink a pint of colostrum from a bowl – a relief, but hardly enough for that critical first 24 hours.

The colostrum didn’t sit right with his insides. He threatened to dehydrate before antibiotics could cure his “scours.” Mabel, smelling foreign milk, began to abandon her baby. Things looked pretty grim.

“Feed him his mother’s milk,” the old rancher said. “She’ll take him back, all right.”

Translation: We had to milk the cow.

We had never milked a cow, nor were we set up to milk a cow. The cow, for her part, probably had never been milked, either. She wouldn’t even let us near her.

Standing out in the freezing cold near midnight on the third night, waiting to pull a rusty chute gate closed, I began to think cattle ranching might be the end of us. Mabel didn’t want to go into the cattle chute. Mabel didn’t want to be milked. Mabel weighs appx. 1,200 pounds.

That third night, she lowered her head and charged. My husband leaped out of the way, onto the nearest round pen panel. Mabel caught his leg and pinned it there. I, not having any clue what to do, started clapping my hands and charging and yelling at Mabel. It was a fine moment. Mabel was a little bewildered at this behavior (perhaps she’d never seen this old cattle ranching trick), and she backed off to scratch her head in puzzlement. My husband, being astute, seized the opportunity to get out of the round pen.

We did feed the calf his mama’s milk. Never mind that we gave it to him through a tube inserted down his esophagus. Just as the rancher said, Mabel started sniffing her baby again, remembering him.

We milked and tube fed for nearly a week, watching for any sign that the calf would take over and nurse. There were high points: Junior got to experience milking a cow, laughing and aiming the stream of milk at his dad. Mabel liked the grain that she got when she was locked into the chute. The calf was perking up after each feeding.

But we couldn’t keep this up. We were getting up early, going to bed late, each time wondering whether we’d be able to get Mabel into the chute with everyone’s bones intact.

Yesterday, the day before Mother’s Day, I was feeling sleep-deprived, snippy, and overwhelmed with farm life.

I took my camera out for a couple final shots before writing a contemplative post about the sometimes long and helpless wait for God to heal families.

When I went out to take pictures, Mama Mabel was stamping her feet to shake off the flies. The calf was flicking flies off his ears. Flies were showing up in all my pictures.

I got the livestock fly spray and carefully opened the cattle gate, talking to Mabel in low tones… hoping she wouldn’t lower her head at me while I sprayed her, too.

The calf, roused by the spray, got up and ran to his mama. He butted her neck. He tried to nurse at the loose skin. This was new. He was just in the wrong place. He wandered to the water tank, sipping for a long time. I shooed him away, back to his mama.

And then…

With Mabel finally standing still, the calf figured it out.

Do you know… that calf was mad! Poor Mabel raised her leg to deter him, but the secret was out. The calf ducked under her and butted his head to let down the milk. He raced from side to side, frantic and happy, as if to say, “That’s where this has been! How could you have hidden it from me all that time?!”

Now he knows, and there’s no going back.

The waiting is over.

Happy Mother’s Day. Please pray today for someone who might be wishing the waiting was over in some way.

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I never did find out who put the “vases” there in the first place…

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As the kids get older, we’re slowly shifting our focus toward homeschooling activities. Last week was a good one for showing the types of things we do.

Monday, it looked like it was shaping up to be “Duck Week.” An egg hatched in our incubator overnight! It was at least a week early, so the first thing on the agenda involved ditching our original plans and driving into town for a heat lamp.

My older daughter (now dubbed “Nutmeg” for the blog) is thrilled with the duckling (who hasn’t been dubbed anything yet).

We’re reading fairy tales this month. We added The Ugly Duckling to this week’s plan. The kids got very quiet at the part where the harassed “duckling” sees his grown-up reflection in the water. I’d forgotten how moving that story can be.

Nutmeg figured out how to make ducklings with her pattern blocks.

Later in the week, in addition to the usual phonics and math, we worked in the garden. “Junior” planted watermelons in a newly-mounded watermelon hill.

I planted marigolds to keep bugs out of the garden.

Sunday had included a trip to Nana and Papa’s house. Papa did an amazing demonstration of magnets.

See the horseshoe shape of the iron filings on the piece of paper? That was just a start. By the time they were done, they had a huge nail with wires wrapped around it, attached to an even bigger battery. That was one impressive magnet.

Below, they’re working with the materials that came with our magnet kit. Papa thought he could do better (which he did, of course – the duct-tape-wrapped nail in the foreground is one of the sizes they used).

We also visited Grandma and Grandpa’s house. The kids explored their beautiful yard, which led to learning about maple (“helicopter”) seeds.

We are learning about habitats this month. The kids colored a savanna and stuck stickers on it. A couple animals from other habitats visited, too.

We had a good mix of following our interests and completing planned work.

Today is Monday again, and our plans have already been ditched. We had to run into town this morning for milk replacer for a newborn calf who isn’t nursing well. We hope he makes it. If he does, I may be posting a “Calf Week” overview!

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A huge box arrived on our doorstep one day last winter. The boys tore open the box and spread pieces of wood all over the living room floor. And so began our adventures with beekeeping… including me getting stung by a bee for the first time since childhood! (That story mid-way down…)

Part 1: The Hiving of the Bees

My husband built several hives. Then he ordered our bees, and we drove to Kansas City to pick them up.

On the way home, some bees escaped and buzzed around the van. My older daughter was delighted: “Can I keep them as pets?” Like any good parent, we said, “Go for it!”

(She didn’t get stung.)

This is how the bees came:

Five boxes are nailed together, each full of thousands of honey bees. One box went to my husband’s parents for their new urban beekeeping adventures.

With dwindling daylight, we headed to the apple orchard for the “hiving” of the bees.

A tree nursery expert had come out several months ago. He showed my husband how to mercilessly trim those old, half-dead apple trees. Now they’re loaded with apples.

We hope the bees will make themselves busy next spring, pollinating the blossoms.

Each bee package had a tin can that had been full of sugar water. We sprayed (more…)

One evening last November, my husband and I shivered in the cold and in the glow of truck headlights as we caught up on the overdue task of planting bulbs. Bulb planting is an exercise in delayed gratification.

This spring, it was worth it.

It probably would have been worth it to trim the grass around the edges of the bed, too… but then, of course, it would just grow back. 😉

The toddler loves the tulips. He pulls their petals off ever so tenderly, saying, “Beau-ful!!!” Here he is, reseeding the dandelion patch:

For all the trouble he causes, he’s a cute one.

The mundane cleaning up of spilled milk and the laundry hamster wheel are a little more bearable when he produces his special smile intended solely for the camera:

God did his work and then said it was good. There are brief moments when I feel that way, too.

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It has been a fairly quiet few months around this blog, hasn’t it?! I’ve been fighting a deep exhaustion. I suppose that shouldn’t be surprising, considering all the changes we’ve made in the past year.

While I’ve been buried in a dark cocoon lately, a few other metamorphoses have been brewing…

When I was young, someone described me as “complacent” – in a good way, I think. Peaceful. Eager to please. Not wanting to ruffle feathers.

Lately, though, I’ve been Forming Opinions, and there has been no place for them to come out. Here are a few that have been collecting… exploding here in an untidy, splattery list:

– I’m grateful for evidence-based medicine. It saves lives, and if more doctors paid attention to good research, more lives could be saved.
– I’m grateful for the right and ability to raise my own organic food. If more people grew gardens, we wouldn’t need so much medicine. (Sometimes health is not a choice at all; sometimes it is.)
– Many forms of evangelism feel more like an attempt to justify the evangelist, rather than actually loving people as they are, as God does.
– Confession: I didn’t want to live on a farm. But I’m finding plenty of reasons to love it.
– I’m not a bit sure the earth was created in exactly seven 24-hour days, and I’m still convinced I’m saved.

Why does having an opinion feel like a grumpy thing to do? To me, none of these statements should be a shocker, but lots of people get really heated up over them. Michael and I continue to settle into our farm – our first long-term home – and our new, rapidly forming paradigms keep popping up like asparagus in the unwieldy patch in our yard. It seems like a shock to the blog to start posting these things here. I considered starting a new blog – The Grumpy Blog – but I don’t have time for the setup, so here they are.

And now for something that’s not a bit grumpy (except maybe the oldest boy, who was freezing cold on that first day of spring, and who wanted my keys so he could load everyone in the van):

With much love from your curmudgeonly, sporadic blogger friend.

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Mom means more to me than I can express. Below are more life-giving words from her. These aren’t empty words; they’ve been lived, and they’ve formed Mom’s character.

I had to tell you girls what I found this morning. In Psalm 50 God is saying that He doesn’t rebuke us for our sacrifices; they are ever before Him. But He doesn’t need them at all, because the world is His, and everything in it. The cattle on a thousand hills, every bird in the mountains. So what does He want?

Psalm 50

Sacrifice THANK offerings to God, fulfill your vows to the Most High, and call upon ME in the day of trouble; I will deliver you, and you will honor Me…

He who sacrifices thank offerings honors Me, and he prepares the way so that I may show him the salvation of God.

Our thanks is what isn’t already His until we give it to Him. And sometimes thanking Him for something IS a sacrifice.

I Thess 5:18
Give thanks in all circumstances.

But right now I’m just praying that in my everyday life, my eyes will be open to what is around me, so that I will live with an attitude of thankfulness. And in some way sacrificing thank offerings prepares the way for God to show us His salvation? Wow. I don’t even really understand that, but again, we do, and then we understand!

Love you all! Mom

For extra credit. A few days later, Mom sent this:

Look at Psalm 63! Read verses 1-8 with your focus on God. See the emphasis on You and Your, all pointing to Him? There are 18 in those 8 verses.

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In the last couple weeks I’ve:

1. Said goodbye to my sister-in-law. She went back to the city where she was living before she came to stay with us. We are very sad to see her go.

2. Made an awesome-tasting angel food cake with my sister. Pictures and recipe coming soon.

3. Watched Food Inc. and am pondering going all-natural, buying only organic, local food (except angel food cake, of course… and brownies, which I also made recently).

4. Became nuts about homeschooling again. I love teaching my kids. Love it.

5. Decided that treating all people with basic dignity is a goal worth pursuing, even when there are no rewards or accolades for it. It’s good for me, good for my character. But sometimes it is more complicated than it looks.

In the next several days, I need to clean up my hard drive. My computer is three years old, and – oh my – I’ve already filled it up. I’m at a bit of a standstill until I delete a whole bunch of pictures.

I want to clean out my closet, too. I still have clothes from high school in there, and I’m 35 years old.

Time for spring cleaning!

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I have a bad case of the winter blues. Last night I sat down to look through pictures, and this set made me smile:

My husband was playing air guitar with the kids. There may have been some tickling involved, too.

They sang Hootie & the Blowfish “Let Her Cry” (sad), “Fortunate Son” by Creedence Clearwater Revival, and Goo Goo Dolls’ sweet “I’ll Be Your Crying Shoulder.”

My husband kept looking over at his computer… checking the lyrics? Ever since we first met, I’ve been impressed how quickly he memorizes lyrics. I make them up as I sing along.

It wouldn’t be a family post without my oldest boy’s tongue sticking out. He’s figuring out how the frets work.

My husband picked up a real guitar this weekend for the first time in a long time. I really miss that. The last time he played, the twins were pretty young.

Life is better with a little music, even if all you’ve got for playing along is an air guitar.

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