To the Rescue

"Eight Ball," not in the side pocket, but tucked for warmth in the front of my friend's jacket.  I had received another SOS call early in the morning, "Do you have any milk? I need it now!"  Tim raises Kiko meat goats and a doe had delivered triplets, one of which was not getting enough or even any milk and was dying. I said I had buckets in hand to go to the barn.  "This baby can't wait.  I'm bringing him and heading your way!"  I was milking when Tim and Eight Ball arrived.  He had not been exaggerating.  Eight Ball couldn't even hold his head up and had not been able to stand for hours, getting weaker and weaker.  I poured Cindy's warm milk into a pan and Tim, with a little one-handed help from me (still milking with the other), got a tube down the baby's throat and used a syringe to get some nourishment into that tiny tummy.  It seemed pretty touch-and-go for a bit, Eight Ball's head lolling on Tim's arm, eyes closed.  I went on tending to my barn chores.  Eight Ball perked up a little, so much that when we gave him some of Tessie's milk, we could use just the syringe because he could at least swallow on his own.  A stranger in the barn freaked out Inga (she spooks if I hang my jacket on a nail), so Tim took the baby out of the pen to sit on the grass in the sunshine, thankful that there was sunshine.

The transformation was utterly (udderly!) amazing.  By the time I'd finished in the barn, Eight Ball was on his feet, nosing in the grass.  When Bessie Anne (who had been standing guard over the baby) sniffed his little behind, Eight Ball spun, tossed his head, and gave her attitude.  Talk about instant gratification.  I sent Tim and Eight Ball home with a gallon of milk.  This little boy is going to be just fine.  My girls are heroines once again.

It was a good day.  (The storm is back this morning.)

Friends With Benefits

I needed a new vegetable brush, just a simple little brush to scrub potatoes.  It took three stores before I found a reasonable facsimile of what I wanted.  What I really wanted was a brush like the Fuller Brush Man used to give away as a thank you for letting him show his wares.  When I was a kid, there were all sorts of door-to-door salesmen.  No one thought a thing then about opening the door to strangers and inviting them in.  During and after The Depression years many men found work this way.  It couldn't have been easy, walking long miles lugging heavy sample cases, facing rejection with every push of the doorbell.  We lived at the outskirts of a rural area, a many-hundred-acre truck (vegetable) farm just across the road and, like most women then, my mother did not work outside the home and was semi-isolated.  Mother might have had no interest in buying a set of Encyclopedia Britannica books, but she always listened to the enthusiastic spiel, offering a chance to sit down and a glass of water or a cup of coffee.  Like traveling tinkers of old, these men brought news, jokes, and gossip to housewives, and once in awhile they even made a sale.

I and my wares remain stationary, and my customers come to me.  Yesterday was a bonanza day, with an egg customer in the early morning (before goats) and milk customers later on.  More than the sales, I enjoy catching up on what's going on in their lives, discussions on weather, growing conditions, domestic animals and wildlife, etc., etc., etc.  When Bessie Anne was a puppy, if she behaved well and didn't bark or jump, she got a treat.  Now she nearly throws her back out, wiggling at the door, eager to greet a guest politely and accompany them to the kitchen where we do business.  The problem is that she still expects a treat and might get a little pushy if I'm slow in delivering.  That's her problem.  Mine is that I have to watch my garrulous tongue.  Most days, I have only the animals to talk to and I have a tendency to run off at the mouth, given the opportunity to actually converse with people.  Kellen and William brought me the "gimme" yesterday, more of those delicious oyster mushrooms; way better than a vegetable brush!

It was a good day.

Winnetka West

Big Noise From Winnetka is a Bob Crosby Big Band song from the '40s, often thought of as "Big Wind."  Watching Bessie the other day as she waited in the drive with her ears flapping like standards on a flagpole from the wind, that was the song I heard.  I wasn't sure we wouldn't all end up in the Land of Oz.  Yesterday the wind died, so the torrents of rain fell straight down instead of sideways as they had the day before.  Rain pounded on the metal roof of the barn so loudly that I couldn't hear the milk swish into the pail by my side.  Water ran into the girls' sleeping room in rivulets so that I had to make a trench to direct it through.  I drew the lucky number, though, because the rain slacked off as I made my way back to the house, slogging through ankle-high wet grass with two buckets of milk.  I'd anticipated a second shower of the day, this one ice cold.  Bess had the good sense to wait up on the porch during the deluge this time.  The dust pits dug by the chickens are now swimming pools, if the hens were so inclined.  I've got my work cut out for me whenever we dry out.  The weeds are taking full advantage of this rain-sun-rain to sprout up and are going to be out of control soon.  My days will be spent on the mower.  The weatherman has promised a short break before the next storm hits this weekend.  March is definitely going out like a lion this year.

Holy Cow!

Squirrel burrows and mice holes are nothing new in the barn.  A pile of fresh dirt by the milking stand did cause me to look under the stand yesterday and, Holy Cow!, I couldn't believe it.  Some thing or things have a major excavation going on under there.  There is a crater nearly the size of the stand itself and close to two feet deep.  It (or they) must be carrying out loads of dirt through tunnels because the one small pile was the only evidence, the giveaway left by some careless miner.  A leg or two of the stand have tipped in the past when an underground burrow collapsed, but I can see stand, goat, and me dropping into a pit and lost if this goes on.  This latest storm blew in with fierce wind and heavy rain, so there's no dry dirt with which to fill the hole.  One just never knows what form excitement will take up here.

There's some suspense I can do without.  Strong winds for days combined with soaked earth have me really concerned about the safety of the trees.  I pace through the house, looking out windows to check the treeline on all sides.  I know some big dead branches have broken and fallen, fortunately in areas where they did no harm.  The old beauties, the oaks, are the ones I worry about.  We've all been asking for rain.  Well, we got it.

Peekaboo

It's nice to know I'm still trainable.  Sheila has persevered, even though she probably thinks I'm a little slow on the uptake, and I've finally learned the program to her satisfaction.  Unless it is raining, in which case she is right there at the door banging to be let in, when it is her turn to get up on the stand we must play The Game.  I stand in the doorway and call her name.  There is a short wait and then she peeks her head around the corner.  This gives me hope.  I coax, I plead, I demand.  She just looks at me.  She pulls her head back.  I cuss.  Sheila peeks again.  Okay, fine.  We move on in The Game.  I grab the lead rope and head after her.  She no longer roams all over the pen (it's a big pen) as she found out I lost interest easily and quit playing, and that wasn't any fun for her.  Now we play her version of Ring-Around-the-Rosy.  She ambles all the way around the barn, me trailing after her (usually muttering something about danged goats).  When she gets to the milking room door, she stops and looks back over her shoulder as if to say, "I win!  Now come on, we've got work to do."  I swear that girl can smile.  Wanna play?

Great Finish

The big, fat, wet, plopping snowflakes that had fallen at dawn were replaced by off-and-on downpours of rain all day.  "Sunny California" is going to lose its reputation with easterners.  The NASCAR race was held down in SoCal at Fontana, and Clay was there (without his jacket).  Enough laps had been run so that when it started raining down in buckets a winner could be declared, but it couldn't have been pleasant for those stuck in the stands, far from the parking lots, when the race was called.

I'm old enough to remember when crooners, not rappers, were in vogue.  Bing Crosby, The crooner of all time, warbled, "Where the blue of the night meets the gold of the day...," and that fits these photos perfectly.  Stepping out the door to tend to nighttime chores, the blushing pink sky nearly stopped me in my tracks.  It did, in fact, and I went back in for the camera.  After tucking the chickens in their coops, the sun had dropped below the horizon, but left the night light on.

Win Some

The wind that had awakened me yesterday died down, but the sky remained heavily overcast.  Rain seemed imminent all day.  This did not bode well for someone expecting delivery of a refrigerator in the afternoon.  Like watching a spinning roulette wheel, I kept waiting for the ball and the first raindrop to fall.  Believe it or not, I won!  It stayed dry.  Delivery Guy showed up well within his window of time, hooked up the new (used) fridge, whisked away the defunct one, and drove off with a couple of buckets of eggs that would have gone to waste.  (I couldn't talk him into taking a Silkie rooster.)

After the excitement died down (hey, it's all relative and a matter of perception), it was a good day for piddly chores in the house, a good book, and a nap.  Even the wood stove cooperated.

It's raining today.  It's snowing!