September 7
Last week we moved some big bales in our upper stack that was leaning over into the bushes toward the creek. We stacked them on the end of the smaller stack, reconfigured the black plastic covering and put deer mesh around them to keep the deer out.
Emily’s wedding was Friday — marrying her good friend AJ. Andrea and AJ’s mom and friends supplied food for the reception dinner. Sam came home from college for a few days to help with all the preparations.
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Thursday we moved the cows from the field below the lane and took them up the horse road to heifer hill.
Friday morning everyone left early to drive to AJ’s dad’s place at Gibbonsville to get things set up for the wedding. Lynn and I drove to Jenelle’s ranch the other side of town and went with her; she drove our pickup so Lynn wouldn’t have to drive so far.
It was a lovely outdoor wedding. Samantha and Dani were bridesmaids, along with several of Emily’s friends. Four-year-old Christopher was part of the procession. After all the other bridesmaids walked to their places Dani led Christopher by the hand as he pulled a little wagon that contained a bubble machine spewing bubbles into the air. The bubbles were in memory of Emily’s Grandma Bubbles — the nickname she had for her dad’s mom, who died when Em was very young.
The wagon also contained flowers and a quilt with pictures of Ammarie. The original plan, before Dani’s baby died, was for Ammarie to be in that wagon in a car seat, as the flower girl, pulled by Christopher.
Many of Emily’s elderly patients at Discovery Care Center wanted to come to her wedding, so she arranged for the Discovery bus to bring them. Many people helped them get around in their wheelchairs for the wedding, and the reception dinner at the old schoolhouse afterward.
At the dinner it was heartwarming to see Emily in her wedding dress, helping those old people with their food and making sure they had everything they needed. It’s easy to see why they love her.
I’ve never been to a wedding that had so many old folks and young kids! AJ has a big family; some of his siblings, relatives and friends have little kids and they were all running around having a great time. Christopher has many new cousins to play with.
Christopher is growing up fast. He tells people that baby Ammarie is up in the stars. He likes to go outside at night and look for Ammarie. One night he told Emily, “It’s dark now; I want to go outside”. He sat on the porch and said he was looking for Ammarie — but it was overcast so Emily told him it was too cloudy right then… and he said “I’ll wait.”
At an evening barbeque for Emily and AJ and family the day after the wedding, Christopher saw some moving satellites and got excited and said Ammarie was moving around up there. He’ll probably always equate stars with that cousin he only had a brief chance to know.
Saturday, when Andrea and I checked the cows and calves on heifer hill — which we didn’t have a chance to check Friday because of the wedding — we discovered Zorina (a first-calf cow) lying in the bushes. She was dull, with moderately fast respiration, and didn’t want to get up. I had to rub on her to encourage her to get up. She was weak and took a couple of tries to get to her feet.
We located her calf (Zork) and brought him to her, and eased the pair through the gate into the next field. We slowly brought them down through that field but the calf wanted to run back to his buddies. Several times we thwarted his attempts to run back past us, but then he made a big run and got around us.
It was a weekend and we weren’t able to get a vet (the new cow vet is only in our area part time) so we gave her Banamine to reduce pain and inflammation, and a two-day dose of antibiotic. The pain relief helped; she started nibbling grass, but she also missed her calf and started pacing the fence.
We went back to heifer hill and selected a couple of pairs that would be fairly easy to handle on foot and used them as a little “herd” to bring Zork back to his mom. We left those two pairs in the pasture next to her pen, so she’d have them close by for company, and not be so stressed.
She did better the next couple of days, pooping normally and chewing her cud again, but wasn’t recovered. We called the new vet, and he came to look at her. She was definitely better than when we first treated her, because this time she was livelier and did NOT want to go in the head catch!
Dr. Abbey checked lungs and gut sounds and checked her rectally (and she was 80 days pregnant). He discovered that her rumen wasn’t functioning properly and might benefit from probiotics to get it working better, but didn’t have any with him. So he simply gave her more Banamine and antibiotics. She’s still a little dull, but eating and drinking and maybe Mother Nature and Father Time will aid her recovery.
September 13
This past week Jim has been splitting wood, preparing our piles for winter. We had a power glitch Friday evening and the phones went dead for a while and the internet went out. I had no internet service for several days and had some urgent deadlines for articles and many interviews to line up for future articles, so my brother accessed my email messages from his computer and read them to me over the phone or printed out the ones I desperately needed for interviewee’s corrections/changes to rough drafts I’d sent them. I called some editors and they gave me extensions on deadlines. Finally on Tuesday a tech person came out and spent a couple of hours working on my computer internet problem and got it going again so I’ve been madly trying to catch up with interviews and article deadlines.
September 20
It feels like fall, quite cold in the mornings. I’ll need to start draining my hoses for watering cattle and horses.
Monday morning I did chores early, then called the cows in from the field above the house and down into the calving pen. Andrea came down on her four-wheeler as I brought them through the driveway past the house to the corrals, and helped me sort the cows into one pen and calve into another. By that time Carolyn and Charlie arrived and we were ready for Dr. Abbey and his wife.
We got the cows and heifers preg-checked, dewormed and vaccinated, then put the calves through the chute to vaccinate and Bangs vaccinated the heifers. Andrea and Charlie took the calves to the orchard pasture; it has green grass more than a foot tall and should be adequate feed until we sell the steers.
Today the brand inspector is coming to look at the calves and cull cows we’ll be selling, since a brand inspection is required when cattle from one state are sold in another state. The weather is supposed to be bad Thursday, with rain and maybe snow, so Charlie will go with Andrea to haul the calves to the Montana sale. He’ll be a lot more help than us old folks if they have any trouble on the road.
