Day 20 of 75 HARD, Still No Calf, a New Fence & Other Bits (Including a Couple Cool Finds on the Farm)

Today is day 20 and I’m still chugging along, almost 1/3 of the way done. I’m feeling really proud of myself. I’m eating a lot of egg whites, white rice, vegetables, and chicken breast. Although a neighbor gave us some bison steak which was delicious!

not as many baked goods around the house right now.

I’ve done mostly just walks for my outside workouts, but I’ve spent a lot of time with the cows. Mrs. Fitzgibbons is showing a lot of the signs that she might be close to calving, but still no baby. If you aren’t familiar, some of those signs are separating herself from the herd more often, restlessness, vaginal discharge, holding her tail higher and more ‘out’, pinking, swelling and loosening of the vulva, and finally losing tail ligaments (which usually means it will be within 24 hours). She’s new enough to the farm that she doesn’t trust me for me to do exams on her yet so I have no idea about her tail ligaments. A fellow farm friend commented this morning that she has found that “one of the signs is no signs”.

But, we are prepared for any situation just in case of midnight calving and any issues with taking mom’s colostrum and milk.

All my seedlings are growing along happily in my little greenhouse and I’ve repotted several into larger containers. They still have a couple of months until they can go into our garden outside.

My parents came down for a fun visit the other day and I tricked them into walking out in my field for 45 minutes. These dang teenagers are always on their phones.

As it turns out, my dad was taking cute photos and my mom was using her neat bird identification app, which I’m not ashamed to say I also downloaded and have been using. Spoiler alert- the cute song was from a Western Meadowlark. If you want the free app too, it’s called Merlin Bird ID. You can use it for free or pay money to get extra features.

From left to right- Luna, Mom, Me, Brawlie, Kona, Claire, Percy, and James.

While we (Tom) were digging post holes, we (Tom) hit metal. He dug this out of the ground. What do you think it is?

Here’s the finished cow pen, complete with gate and our cute makeshift water trough which is an old cast iron bathtub that we found in the barn when we bought the farm. (It has beautiful claw feet too, but we haven’t put those on it yet). But seriously, water troughs are so expensive.

We woke up to snow on April 5th, which was a bit ridiculous.

Tom also found this really cool brick pattern under moss around the house/garden area. He thinks there is more to uncover around other parts of the house too. We think it is from one of the original two chimneys. More to discover and research on that front I think.