Did I miss my calling ??

I'm soo sorry I have let my poor followers down, but let me tell ya I've been one busy lady these last couple of weeks, but not to fear I have plenty of good blogging to follow because of it!  Well as most of you know it's been calving season for a little bit here around these parts and I thought I was doing pretty good because I didn't have any "HORROR" stories to tell at the local watering hole.  We hadn't lost a calf and not even pulled one to the day, but there I went and started pattin my own back before the season was over!

 I have this shorthorn cow that I was starting to get a little nervous about because she was as big as a house, couldn't even fit through the dutch door in our barn!  So I decided to palpate her on her due date the saturday before easter, well let me tell ya people it wasn't a normal experience.  My grandmother even laughed about it afterwards because she had never seen me reach a hand in then yell "O, @#$*!".  It felt as if she had the worlds biggest water ballon in her, I couldn't even find a calf there was so much pressure.  So I decided to call ol' trusty doc for his expert opinon.  Well of course he determined the same thing, this cow was in trouble and we needed to induce her right away!  So I stayed by her side til tuesday morning, or as I like to call it the morning when I thought I had seen it all!  Her water broke about 4 am, and when I mean her water broke, I mean the Hoover Dam opened up, litterally that stall had standing water for a day and a half!  I decided to go ahead and throw her in the chute to check her out since all tha water pressure was gone.  Needless to say I could feel a baby and determined to go ahead and pull it out.  At 4:30am arrived my precious Millie all 30lbs of my tiny hairless baby, needless to say I was quite shocked that she was still alive!  I noticed that my cow was still fairly large, so I decided to examine her again and that's when I felt the beast.  I admitly knew it was a PHA calf and didn't quite know what to expect.  I yelled at my grandfather to go call doc while I stayed with the cow and tried to figure out what I was going to do.   Well unfortunately doc was on another call so i was gonna have to deal with this one myself, dear lord help me, was all I could think.  The neighbor boy Harold came over to help me, ( I needed some extra muscle) I was able to get a set of chains on the bugger and thought well if I can just get the head out maybe it'll pop.  Well to get the head and feet out we had to use our jack which let me say I had to dig it out of the mound of dust it had collected since we hadn't had to use it since I was in high school and I'm not gonna tell ya how long ago that was.   We were able to get the shoulders out and it still hadn't quite poped.  That's when I determined it was time to make it pop, I cringed at the thought of cutting this giant white thing hanging out of my cindy lou but I knew to save her I was gonna have to do it :(.  When I punctured it water went flying everywhere!  It was like a water hose!  I caught two 5 gallon buckets of it till it finally drained.  The poor thing still wouldn't budge so I made the horrifying decision to cut the front off and push it back in so we could jack it out by the hind legs.  My poor cow stood in the chute through this whole process when it was all done she walked out of the chute got her a drink of water and went to the hay bale and started eating, she cleaned and is up and happy to this day.  The beast took both of us to carry a piece out of the stall in all he weighed 210lbs!!  My baby girl Millie only weighed 30lbs and is two weeks old tomorow, she lives in the house with the rest of us, gets fed every four hours and just realized how to run!  Let me say she is quite a site!  So now I can say I've had a set of twins with one being a PHA!  I really don't think I'll brag on that one too much :p

The cows don't care if your sick

I love it how everyone wants to be a farmer!  They think it's sooo awesome seeing pretty babies in the field, going for trail rides, etc....  But those are the rewarding times your a farmer, this past winter, putting up hay, vaccinating, pulling calves, mucking stalls those are the times that people don't realize create the rewarding times.  Farming is a 24/7 job even on so callled vacations your really not at ease because more than likely somethings gone wrong at the ranch ( as it always does when you leave town, it's like they know they can get in trouble or something).  I wish there was a on/off switch, especially these last couple days.  If you follow me on facebook you would see where I've been fighting this bug.  I don't really know what was wrong, all I know is that I was running a fever around 101.5 constantly but the only other symptom I had was that I was REALLY tired.  But that really didn't stop me, which caused me more heart ache because andy was ordering my butt to bed but I had to calve cows, go to the farm and tag calves, we had the bull sale on saturday, yesterday the farrier came and was suppose to put new shoes on everyone, but we only managed to get Pro done because the mares weren't cooperatting that well and I was too sick and agitated to fight with them ( yes I gave up, not really proud of that :( ) we were also out of feed, so had to go to the feed store.  Andy was so mad he was like you can do it another day and all I could come up with was hunny farmers don't get sick days.  The honest truth is we don't, and I don't think that HSUS, PETA, or any other so called animal welfare group really understands what we farmers go through to support this country.  Sometimes I wonder why we do it, when all the thanks we get is someone slammin us down and telling us how so called horrible we are.  But then I get a new baby on the ground and I helping it nurse for the first time, or I'm riding my horse at sunset over the ridge, or it's sunday supper at the farm and the whole family is there eating food we grew right there.  So no we don't get sick days, we don't get high praise and rewards from the public, but the good lord gives us so many more blessings than most would ever realize and that's the reason I still do it.

Sale day

This past saturday my grandmother and I headed out to the WV Southern Bull and Heifer test sale where we had 2 heifers and one bull entered.  We've been doing this for several years now and honestly I really enjoy it.  My grandmother and I in the truck for 3 hours, talking about new calves, potential show animals, who we're gonna use this spring, upcoming sales... it's just plan good management time with no interuptions ( that would be from our better halves that don't know about good cattle managment :p ).   I won't lie I'm always nervous during this trip on prices, how our animals are gonna sell.  Because we are your non-typical cattle producers, we don't bring a trailer load of bulls to test ( we are heavy on the knife), we raise two breeds( angus and Simmental ), our animals have real names and not just a bunch of numbers, but most important of them all is that it's because we're female.  If you can't tell by now I sorta have a chip on my shoulder on that issue. 
This trip was no different, nervous and excited I knew we had good animals to sell but we weren't part of the boys club of producers our state has.  Which showed it's ugly head in the ring, literally!  It just irretates me to no extent how these producer raise cattle on paper and pay no attention the phenotype or disposition when selecting breeding animals.  I mean some of these cattle came in the ring ready to eat someone up! Pawing, screaming, trying to jump the fence and some farmer pays $3500 for them!  Or the animal has great WDA (weight per Day of Age for you non farmers out there) but structurally are a mess you wonder how the good ol' boy is gonna go out and breed 20 cows this spring? but yet he brings a fortunate because of where he came from and his stats.
Ugh now I'm not saying that these breeders produce nothing but bad cattle, they do raise some really great ones, but seriously people need to get a little heavier on the knife!  But my grandmother and I still did well in the sale because we have a reputation for superior mommas with good dispositions and that got us far on this day so thank you to our buyers!
But the greatest part of the day was coming home to a 1st calf heifer that calved out in the field by herself calf's been up and nursed and the heifer cleaned!  Those are the kind ya like!

Busy Busy .... Busy!

Wow am I behind on blogging, but it's that time of year.  Spring!!   With the winter we just had I was begining to think it was a myth ( Spring that is).  But sure enough it's popped it's beautiful head up out of the snow and melted all the gloom away!  With warmer weather brings lots of duties to catch up with!  First and most importantly they started on our new barn! YAY!!  They finished the site prep work today and let me just say they went over budget :(  But that can be expected with building projects.  Also it's breeding time, I've been working on getting all my promo work for Pro done thanks to Ranch House Designs, we have babies on the ground and I have lots of site visits with work to be done!  So needless to say I'm behind on blogging but I promise to keep up better! 

Twins!!

When I was growing up on the farm back in the 90's(yikes), we only had Simmental  cattle and they were the traditional yellow and white monsters that are known to spit out a bunch of twins.  Now most farmers cringe at the thought of twins, but babies are babies and we welcome them with open arms ( secretly I know marge gets upset if she doesn't have any twins to brag on in their yearly christmas letter!).  Well in the evolution of the simmental breed twins don't happen as much anymore, at least not as many as we are use too!  I'm serious 5 sets of twins in a year isn't anything new too us.  Up till now we hadn't had any twins and are on the downside of the calving season and honestly had given up any hope.  Until last week when Marge called with that little twinkle in her voice ( I knew something was up!)  She told me " well I guess they're coming in twos now" dumb me I was like what which two COWS calved?  She laughed and said no goofy Sweet Dreams had a set of twins!  I was shocked, of all our cows she really didn't look big enough to have a set of twins, needless to say the little girl weighed 55lbs and the boy 52Lbs.  Both happy and healthy and now marge is tickled to have to fix a bottle for her babes:)

On the road with Marge

Last wednesday I was lucky enough to be asked to speak at the same conference as my grandmother!  I was excited as well as nervous about this, because hell I had to follow the Honorable Marge Burke for goodness sake!  The first and only women majority whip in the WV House of Delegates, let alone the millions of other prestigious titles she had won, along with at the present time being the Committee Chairman for the WV Farm Service Agency.  What was I going to say that was going to be anymore important or interesting to hear then what she said ?!?  So on tuesday during the 2 hour drive to Lewisburg ( and while Grandma was sleeping in the passenger seat) I started kicking around ideas on what I was going to talk about.  I could talk about.... going to college for Agriculture education....... my experience in the American Junior Angus Associtation and my run for Junior Board ( good times weren't they luke! :p) ............... graduating college to turn around and go on the road showing cattle.  All these were ok ideas and I had a hell of a lot of great stories to go along with them ( a lot of them weren't appropriate to talk about though :p) but I really didn't think they defined me and my role as a woman in agriculture.  We got to Lewisburg and I decided to give up for the night and just sleep on it.  Well no matter how many stars I wished on or Robert pattersons I dreamed about :p the idea still had yet to come to me.  We drove on into beautiful Lindside, WV and walked into this wonderful celebration.  As soon as we walked in, it was Hey Marge! all over, random people I couldn't name and lots of good friends and peers I have memories with since I was a child.  She was Ag superstar in our state and no one could top her, everyone wanted a hug and kiss from Marge and her big bouncy voice rang throughout that gymnasium.  That's when the idea hit me, all the ideas I had come up with to speak about they were great ideas in there own right but they weren't who defined my role as a woman in agriculture it was that big beautiful laugh from a little gray haired lady that defined me, this woman is who shaped my life and plowed the way of guidance to all the great things I have done in my life, she was the one who taught me to judge cattle and help me buy my first angus heifer (twistville's power play lady) to show at the 96 eastern regionals which began my wonderful jr. angus career, she was the one that enrolled me in 4 -h and ffa and instilled in me the desire to teach agriculture.  She planted the seed, tended the plant and made it blossom into all the wonderful things I had done in my life, but she was MY grandmother to all these people in the crowd she was a strong-willed, spunky woman that no one wanted to fight with and everyone loved.  I had a unique view on life because of her, I never thought that it was the man's job to farm, I never knew anything but how to work hard in life.  So that's what i talked about I brought my world to them, the same teachings that Marge instilled to me I tried to bring out in that crowd of women both young and old in Monroe County, WV.  When I was done speaking my grandmother was so proud and the whole ride home we talked just about life.  I will never forget the woman I am, nor the woman that made me, my idol and my grandmother Marge Burke.

Where's the FIRE?!?

If you live in Central WV this last few days have really made our namesake of Almost Heaven.  You couldn't ask for prettier days!  Well this past tuesday afternoon I had just gotten out of the shower( I was preparing for a roadtrip for Women in Ag which I'll blog about later!) and heard the doorbell ring.  Who could it be?  So I looked out the window and it was the State Fire Marshall's truck!!  I threw on some clothes and flew downstairs to see what the problem was; was the house on fire? did I not get the right codes for our new barn? were the animals out?  Believe me I was really concerned.  Needless to say I open the door to this nice older gentleman asking me if he could take a picture of our goat and cow!  I guess he drives by our house quite often and tells his wife about this trick cow and goat and she wanted a picture to show her friends!!  Needless to say I was quite humored and told him he could take as many pictures as he wants!  Well as mister Fire Marshall was outside taking pictures guess who came home from work?  That's right Andy and I don't think I've ever seen a vehicle fly into a drive way that fast or someone get out of it that fast!  He had the same idea I did and I don't think I've ever seen color rush back into someone's face as quickly as his did when I showed him what was going on!!  God Bless our trick cow and goat!