First Caramel

When people ask me if I'm working, I say, "no, but I keep really busy." I talk about raising our own food, the homeschooling, the cow, the cheese-making, but as it comes out of my mouth, it sounds like fluff.  It sounds so optional, just keep-me-out-of-trouble work.  I realize that I still harbor some lack of respect for this life-style.  But we are working hard and it is real work!  Long days with lots of time on my feet, lots of planning and figuring things out. And a tiny little grocery list.

Our three squash a week diet is already falling behind.  It's very possible we skipped last week; I honestly don't remember.  Today I grabbed the three sorriest looking fruits to cook up before they get any worse. 

Last year we made lots of caramels to give away and eat.  Caramels are easy to make and they just taste like Christmas to us.  Our regular recipe starts with butter, cream, and milk.  We decided to try with just cream and milk and see how it goes.  It saves us the step of making butter.  Figuring that a pint of cream makes a half-cup of butter, we mixed it up and got it cooking.  It cooked down in about the same amount of time as regular caramels. 

The texture isn't perfectly smooth, but the flavor is good.  The girls descended upon the pan and licked it clean.  As soon as we get the recipe worked out, I'll post it.  My family loves it when I'm working out recipes like this because it means I have to make a lot of them.

Today I'll try my first Monterrey Jack cheese.  It doesn't need much pressure so I can use my mold with just weights on top, rather than that nasty spring thing.  These cheeses use whole milk, and it's hard to let all that cream go.  In the three gallons I'll use for the cheese, there is at least half a gallon of cream that could go for caramels!  But hopefully it will become really good cheese (please God).

We got out the advent wreath and candles.  Counting down advent has become so much more fun since we got this wreath.  Every night this week at dinner we'll light one candle.  Next week we'll light that one and another one.  The week after that we'll light those two and the pink one.  The last week of Advent we'll burn all four.  On Christmas we light the white candle and all five will burn through the Christmas season.  By the end we'll have five candles at different heights witnessing to the time we have waited, the steps we have taken to be ready to meet God face-to-face, and the anticipation we savored in it all.

Could the Problem Actually Not Be Me?

I made a colby on Saturday and this is the final cheese that came out of the press.  This is NOT a good-looking cheese.  Look at all those holes!  Every one is an opportunity for something to make a bad taste.  It just didn't knit together well.  There's nothing to do now but age it and see what happens.  If it's nasty we'll throw it away, but maybe it won't be that bad.

I was really careful this time, so I don't think it was the curd or cooking step.  It might be the pressing.

I got this press on eBay for not a lot of money.  It works but it's a big pain to use.  It occurs to me that maybe it actually doesn't work.  God only knows what pressure I'm getting, even when I follow the directions.  I've had the best luck with cheeses that I stack weights on top rather than using the screw mechanism.  Then I found out that the pressures in the recipes are for 4.5" diameter and since I'm using 6.0" diameter, they all have to be proportionally increased.  I didn't know that!  I have begun to look in earnest for a new press, or plans that my husband can build.  Cheese takes too long and I do it too often to have the press be the problem.  I can buy a decent press for $300 but I'm just too cheap.  I'll keep looking, but I'm determined that a new one is my future.

My daughters love ranch dressing.  I think it's nasty and I'm incapable of making nasty things, so I told them that they had to make it.  They added cream to some cultured buttermilk left over from making butter and kept it warm (75-80F) in a water-bath crock pot for a day.  It was probably about three cups altogether.  Then they added 1t salt, 1-1/2t parsley, and 1/4t garlic, celery seed, pepper, and dry mustard.  After an overnight chilling they declare it "good," although "watery," but it looks fine to me.

Advent has begun as we experience a 9 hour 13 minute day.  It will drop to just below 9 hours at the solstice, at Christmas time.  The readings about staying awake, being ready for the coming of Lord, have a irony during this time when the sun goes down at 5pm.  It's easy to stay awake at "night!"  But just staying awake isn't enough.  We much be watchful.  Is God asking me to open my eyes?

Cheese Trouble

The parmesan gave me trouble.  It didn't make a nice curd in the normal time, it matted a lot during cooking, and then it didn't hold together well during pressing.  I finally looked up curd problems, thought back to what I had done, and realized I put in too much starter and too little rennet.  In the last pressing, it finally mushed together and it looks nice.  Today it sits in salt water (brine) and tomorrow it begins its 10 month aging.  Maybe next time I'll follow directions better.

We added a little milk to the whey (the left over liquid from the cheese) and made ricotta.  I think of this as the normal way to make ricotta — heat whey up to 200F, add a little vinegar, strain, and hang to drip (I slip in a cube of "fresh" starter for flavor).  My husband set up a hook on the pantry ceiling and it makes it so easy to hang things, with food buckets underneath to bring the bowl up higher.  This ricotta is creamy and rich.  I can just eat it straight.

I've had a busy morning — hung the fromage blanc that I started last night, boiled brine, got the parmesan in the brine, skimmed cream and poured milk for the day, made bread, made chocolate sauce for hot chocolate or chocolate milk, and churned butter.  When I tell this stuff to people they look at me like I'm crazy and must be about to collapse.  I keep expecting to feel overwhelmed, but instead it feels invigorating, like the afterglow of a good workout.

It's our third time making butter and we're finally remembering how to do it.  We were stopping the churn before it was in big clumps and it needed a lot of kneading.  This time, we went until the churn wouldn't move, the chunks were so big.  A few quick kneads, working some salt in, and we had a beautiful glob of butter.

A half-gallon of cream gave us this mass of butter that looks like about a pound to me.

This morning, after a fast milk filtering, we are declaring a preliminary victory over Christina's mastitis. It had been getting better, no clots and faster filtering, but it was still hanging on.  Yesterday we added an extra milking in the afternoon and it seems to have done the job.  We have milked that mastitis right out of our cow!

Having a cow takes lots of time — milking and all this time making dairy stuff.  Is it worth it?  I sat down and figured it out — whole Jersey milk is about 170 calories per cup (higher than Holstein milk because it has more butterfat and protein), we're getting about 3.5 gallons per day, and there are seven of us — Christina is giving each of us about 1300 calories every day.  That's more than half we need!  Add in the meat from the calves she has every year, and a cow has been the biggest step toward feeding ourselves that we've taken in this urban homesteading adventure.

Tonight at sundown Advent begins.  We start our four week journey in preparation for Christmas, the incarnation of God among us.  My advent discipline will the same as most years — working for presence, because that's where God is most fully, in the present moment, not in my memories of the past or my plans for the future.  I come back to this disciple each season because I still have so much to learn from it.  May your preparation for meeting God face-to-face make your ready for the fullness the joy has to offer.

Homesteading in the Dark

Our Thanksgiving dinner was mostly homegrown, but not the turkey.  It was a locally-raised free range bird.  We spent a lot of money on it, but it was the best tasting turkey we've ever had.  We are feeling well affirmed for the expense.  A day of homegrown and homemade food on my great-grandmother's beautiful china was a specialness I've never experienced.

Our butter is yellow.  Really yellow.  High food-coloring frosting yellow.  Christina's butter has always been yellow, we've assumed it was because she was on pasture, but we've forgotten how dark it is.  This is the same dark yellow as our chickens' egg yolks.  During our two dry months, we ate commercial butter with its mild color.  Christina's butter is such a strong color that I feel like I'm putting frosting on my toast.  Because I grew up with margarine being the strong colored stuff, it creeps me out until I taste the flavor and confirm it really is butter.

The freezing weather has kept up and our hard-won water system is nonfunctional.  My husband thinks he may have figured out the problem, but needs to wait for a thaw to fix it.  A storm this weekend is supposed to bring higher temperatures.

In the meantime, we've instituted a bucket brigade after each milking to fill up the water tanks.  The girls half-fill four buckets and run them out.  Two girls can do it faster than the time it takes them to get dressed for the outdoors.

Our evening milking is in the dark.  It's been overcast which gives plenty of light for walking out to the cow shed.  As we go through this milking routine — my husband and I milking, me taking the milk in to filter while two girls run water out and help fill the cows' feeder — it makes me wonder if this life is feasible for a small family.  Would we be able to do it if it was just us?  Or is it made practical by our large family?  I am grateful that the burden is lighter because it is spread out.

Christina has developed a nasty habit of peeing when we milk.  She only does it when jerky is not nursing.  At first it may have been an accident, but it's feeling like a pattern now.  I read that you can break a cow of the habit by catching her pee in a bucket, so today we tried it.  My husband said that when he caught it, Christina had a look on her face like, what the heck is going on?   I hope so, that's the idea, to creep her out.

Our first cheese is cottage cheese.  Two gallons gave these curds, about six cups.  The process is the same as for hard cheese except you skip the pressing and aging.  In the store they add cream to the curds, but we leave ours dry.  With applesauce, it makes a wonderful lunch.

There are three gallons of milk in the frig calling to me to become a block of parmesan.  Being in the kitchen with warm milk sounds pretty good to me.

Cozy Cold

It dropped to 9F.  Yesterday, we finished all the pipes and fittings and put heat tape along the exposed areas.  This morning the water isn't flowing.  Dang.  We assume the problem is a fitting but after an hour of pouring hot water here, there, and everywhere, we gave up and filled the stock tank with buckets of water. 

With this cold snap coming, we suddenly remembered our irrigation pipes.  The pipes have a low spot where they take the water to the back of the pasture.  My husband and oldest son pulled and yanked until they finally opened up and found they were already dry.  Dang.

The milk is still filtering slowly but there are no clots.  By the end of the pail, it's just dripping along.  So we're still fighting mastitis.  Dang.  It's getting better but I'd like it to clear up faster.

The cows don't seem the least bothered by this cold weather.  We moved the pasture gate to split the shed in half and put jerky and beefy on one side and kept Christina on the other.  A friend suggested we put beefy with jerky so they can keep either other warm.  It's cute how they cuddle up together when they sleep.  All three cows go out in the pasture several times a day to just run around.  Jerky is bouncy like a fawn.

For as cold as the thermometer reads, milking isn't unpleasant.  I figured it would be painfully cold, but it's not.  The shed breaks the wind, the cows' body heat warms it up, and Christina's udder keeps my hands nice and warm while we're milking.

This morning Christina gave us two gallons and jerky got his belly full.  Our frig is filling up with jars of milk; it's a beautiful sight.  This morning I warmed up two gallons and got a batch of cottage cheese started.  I cooked up a quart of milk with sugar and egg to start ice cream.  A half-gallon of cream is awaiting an attempt at cream cheese.  It is warm in the house, the sun is shining, and the early cooking for the holiday makes everything smell good.  It is easy to be thankful this year.

Homegrown Freedom

Four milkings yesterday have left us with fatigued hands and arms, but the mastitis has gotten a lot better.  The milk is filtering faster and the clots are almost gone.  We still have to be vigilant, but we are on the right track.  We didn't end up giving any medicine, so we can still use all the milk.  I guess I'd rather buy the medicine and not use it than buy it and use it.  The extra milkings have brought up production — Christina gave a full four gallons yesterday and two this morning. 

Jerky is a week old today. I'm amazed how much bigger he is already.  He's strong and energetic, a spaz.  As we've gone through this week of worry, it's been a week of new life for him.  He has a wonderful exuberance to just be alive. It's a reminder that God always has something else going on besides the worry in front of us.

Jerky "helps" with milking. He gets one quarter and we get the other three.  With aching hands, it's nice for one hand to have a break and he gets his milk.  We still have colostrum from last week so he also gets a bottle in the middle of the day.

My cheesemaking life starts up with making starter cultures.  After sterilizing the milk by water-bath canning it, I heat water up in a crock pot and then culture it all day long.  Tonight I'll pour it into ice cube trays and each cube will be an ounce for cheese recipes. I have three different starter cultures to make — one for italian cheeses, one for cheddar & colby, and another one for cottage cheese.

Some friends came over yesterday to see our "farm."  I asked what they were interested in and they said, "just everything."  So I started showing them around and watched the sparkle in their eyes turn to fire. 

I feel deeply called to this life, but it amazes me how much it touches and inspires others.  I think there is something about actually seeing it done that makes it seem possible, and they never knew it was possible.  Just a year ago there were big pieces of this that I thought were impossible too.  Somewhere along the line I concluded that feeding yourself was just too hard to do without a grocery store. 

Where did I get that idea?  It came from stories, but I think it came mostly from advertising: you can't raise your own food, you have to buy it.  We lost the link with the past that held the knowledge for raising food.  Today the advertising even goes further: you can't cook your own food, you have to buy it.  Something as basic as baking bread is seen as super-human today.  Deep down I think we all know that living with that kind of dependence on commerce is an oppression.  We are kept in our places by forces stronger than ourselves.  In these circumstances, an economic recession is a genuine threat to survival, not just something to be waited out. 

I think that when people see our "farm," they see freedom.  They see freedom from the grocery store, and therefore freedom from dependence on money and occupation.  They see freedom from systems that are raping the earth and freedom from helplessness to change it.  Jesus said, "the truth will set you free."  I think that homegrown food also sets you free.

Butter

We churned our first butter.  We got this old Dazey churn off ebay and it's amazingly fast.  Turning the handle requires no strength, it's just stirring milk, and it breaks in 15-20 minutes.  We have learned that it breaks easier if we culture it first.  I pour the cream in the jar, add some mesophilic culture, and leave it alone for 12-24 hours.  After it breaks (holds together in globs of butter), I spoon it into ice water and then knead it to remove the buttermilk.  After it's kneaded nicely, someone sprinkles a little salt on it for me and I knead that in.  You can churn commercial cream into butter yourself with a mixer.  It sure is good to have Christina butter on the counter again.

Zucca lasagna was on the menu.  We have mozzarella left over from before Christina dried off but we were out of ricotta.  I usually make ricotta from the whey left over from hard cheese, but we just made some from whole milk.  Ricotta is so easy.  Just heat a gallon of milk to 185-195F, foamy but not boiling, add about 1/4 cup of vinegar (or any acid), then pour into a cloth-lined colander.  I hung it for a little while to drain off the extra liquid, but you could probably just leave it sitting there too.  When it's done, salt to taste (about one teaspoon).

Our zucca lasagna was all homemade and almost all homegrown.  Lasagna noodles are easy to make using a roll pasta maker.  It's the grown up, "productive" version of play dough fun factory.  We make lasagna with lots of cheese.  I added it up and this lasagna had about 3.5 gallons of milk in various dairy ingredients.  The zucca (butternut squash) gives it a nice creamy flavor and consistency.

Christina update: The milk fever seems gone, but every day is still new.  We are now fighting mastitis.  The milk filtered very slowly yesterday, requiring two filters to get it all done and this morning the cream had already started to sour.  Dang.  This morning's milk was a little better but I still ran to the store to buy antibiotic.  We read that the old fashioned way to treat mastitis is to milk very thoroughly 3-6 times a day.  If we use the medicine, we have to throw the milk away for four days, so we are motivated.  We figured it wouldn't hurt to milk a few extra times, but in the daytime only! 

At 1pm we did our first extra milking and milked each teet into a different pot to see if we could identify which quarter was the worst.  I filtered each one separately and it actually all seemed pretty good.  It's possible we are beating it.  So, we'll milk again at 5pm and again at 9pm.  Christina's production is low, under three gallons a day, but we figure that is from not milking her much through the milk fever.  These extra milkings might help increase production too.

Milk for Us

Christina continues to improve. Yesterday she seemed marginal, but she came out of it. Her eating is not quite up to normal, but it continues to improve.  This evening we will milk her out fully for the first time.  We are still seeing signs of mild mastitis but we're hoping that it will resolve with diligent milking.

This morning we had our first snow.  After milking, we turned jerky out with her while we cleaned the shed.  He bounded around in that wild, goofy way that babies do and Christina tried to keep up with him.  These times in the morning are becoming cow parties.

We are finding a functional pattern of letting jerky nurse while we milk.  It helps with the let down and he does his own work.   Christina is pretty full and it takes a lot of strength to milk her.  My arms have probably weakened in these two months too.

Christina is past the colostrum days and her milk is now for us.  Tomorrow we will make our first yogurt in two months, and maybe fromage blanc, and we're thinking about whip cream.  Monday I'll make cottage cheese.  These what-to-make-first decisions are difficult.

The storm we've been racing has come in, but the temperature has stayed above freezing.  Work continues on piping water out to the cows.  We got it dug out, laid all the pipe, and have most of it filled back in.  Tomorrow we'll enjoy some sabbath rest and we're hoping to finish Monday.  The kids were complaining about the work until I explained how much water they would have to cart out to the cows *every* day if we didn't do this.  The complaining stopped.

Relief

Christina has spent the morning grazing, like we are used to seeing.  She moves like herself, she eats like herself, and even looks at us like herself.  Of the past year and a half that we have been at this living-off-the-land thing, the last three days have been the hardest.

My sense of demoralization at Christina’s decline was profound.  As I suffered from stomach fits and inability to sleep, the most common phrase in Scripture kept coming to me, “be not afraid.”  My response was, what a worthless thing to say to somebody.  I didn’t choose to be afraid, I just was.

I was terrified.  I was afraid of Christina slipping away and not being able to help her.  I was afraid of her falling on me or hurting me when we had to give medicine.  I was afraid of the calf slipping away from lack of good care.  Then I was afraid of losing all our milk that we've worked so hard for.  And truly, I was afraid of being afraid.  It kept coming to me, "be not afraid."  Ok, it is a little bit comforting.

For me, conquering fear comes from experience and confidence.  The first day I knew Christina wasn’t doing well, but I didn’t have have a clue how to deal with it.  The next day was terrible with giving her the shots, but at least she made some improvement.  Yesterday was better.  Even though we had to give her a shot, we knew a little of what to expect.

What got us through all of this has been generous care of our friend from the dairy where we bought Christina and our friend who first introduced us to family milk cows.  Our friend from the dairy has dealt with milk fever many times, and she has skillfully guided us.  But she did more than that.  She answered every relevant and irrelevant question.  She was always available by phone and took our calls as they kept coming and coming.  When Christina was really bad off, she offered to come in the middle of the night and give her a shot if she needed it (it's an hour drive each way).  Even when things were at their worst, I knew I could count on someone who really knew what to do.

And our friend who first introduced us to family cows has been right there too.  She's never had to deal with milk fever, but she has experience with baby calves, mastitis, and fear of the unknown.  She was the one saying, "you'll get through this, try to sleep."  She also said that she expected Christina to get milk fever because we were so prepared...  what?  ...that God put it on my heart because we needed to be ready.

There have been moments of humor.  At one point my husband said, “there should be labor, delivery, and RECOVERY hospitals for cows.  Don’t send them back until everything is all better.” Through all of this, our six-month-old steer, who would never would let us within a few feet of him, has been watching and hovering.  He gets close, lets us pet and scratch him and seems to want attention.  He's acting like a prepubescent who is sure they are missing something good.  He seems to be saying, whatcha doing? ...you can take my temperature ...I'll try the medicine. 

In the midst of worry and fear, I wondered about the call I felt to getting a family milk cow in the first place.  If Christina died did it mean that God didn't really want us in this.  Or why would God call us to this life and then punish us with her death?  But maybe God was watching out for us the whole time, getting us ready for milk fever, putting the people in our lives would could help us through it, and giving us the courage as we needed it.  If you told me a week ago that I could do the things we've done the last three days, I wouldn't have believed it.  But we did get through.

This living off the land has heart pulls that I never experienced eating out of a grocery store.  It's putting all your eggs in one basket, so to speak, and your heart getting pulled along with them.  We are invested in this land and these animals.  That means more than physical investment, it is an emotional investment too.  Sometimes that emotional investment is heart-crushing and soul-straining, but most of the time it's the blessing of genuine thanksgiving and confident dependence on God.

We don't know if this episode is over.  We still aren't to full milking and Christina may have more set backs.  But, living off the land isn't about security so much as it is about living.

Our Christina is Back

This morning we woke up to a familiar cow.  Christina was standing by the fence looking at us, with ears aimed toward the house, the same place as she was every morning last summer.  She had that look on her face, I'm ready, you can come now.  When we opened the gate to the milk parlor she hurried in, gave her calf a lick and then enthusiastically headed for her candy (molasses covered grain).

Jerky was pretty enthusiastic too.  We let him nurse on the quarter that we're worried about while we milked the other three.  He emptied it out faster than we ever could.  We didn't fully milk her out, just took the pressure off, but it was still almost three quarts.

With milking done, we turned to cleaning out the shed.  It had lots of cow pies, more than we've seen in the last three days combined.  A high functioning GI tract is another sign that she is recovering.  In the short time we were out there, she pooped twice.  Normally I would have been bothered, but this morning it was welcome.

Remember that trench we made on Monday before this all started?  It's still there and a big storm is heading in.  It's supposed to rain and snow for the next four days and get really cold — a forecast low of 5F next Tuesday.  Yesterday my husband made it to the store for all the pipes and fittings.  This morning he'll get them all put together in the garage and we'll all help lay them in as fast as we can go.  Hopefully we can get it all laid today, but it won't be hooked up.  I guess we'll be carrying water out to the cows for a while.

On Monday night I also started some tomatoes.  They were all frozen and Monday I scalled them and slipped their skins off.  I filled two buckets and hung them in cheese cloth to drain overnight.  I didn't get back to them until Wednesday.  By this time, almost all of the water had drained out.  I put the resulting pulp in a pot and heated it up.  In less than 30 minutes, we had thick paste. Those six or seven gallons of tomatoes reduced down to three pints of paste.

Today we praise God for Christina's health, we watch to make sure it sustains, and we thank God for all the people who have helped us through it.

Better?

Christina got up and seemed to be doing well and then she laid back down.  She just sat there, not eating, just looking around.  Uh oh.  But her ears felt okay, and she has gotten a lot of calcium, so we decided to give her a while and then go out at milking time.  We set some hay and water where she could reach it, then we went inside and stressed.

At 8pm we went out.  She was still in the same place, just looking around.  I was dreading more problems.  Her ears were nice and warm (cold ears are a sign of milk fever), not even a little cool.  I headed for her back-end to take her temperature. I figured that would get her to her feet, but she didn't even resist when I put the thermometer in.  It was 101.5, exactly normal.  While we were there, she leaned over and grabbed a few bites of hay, but she didn't budge.  I took a pail of her grain over and she took a bite, but wouldn't get up to come to the stanchion.  I called the lady at the dairy and her assessment was that Christina just didn't want to get up.  "She's had a rough few days."  Boy isn't that the truth!  She said it was okay to skip this milking and just leave her alone.  We can do that!  I think Christina is thinking, I've had it.  I know exactly how she feels.

Jerky is on the bottle.  We still had some colostrum left over from this morning so he got it all in the bottle.  He's figured out the bottle now, which is nice.  It goes pretty fast.

Tonight we go to bed with some hope that tomorrow will be a good day.  Any day without poking a cow with a needle sounds pretty good to us.

Day 3: It's Not Over

The night went well, but then Christina went down again this morning.  Last night she ate constantly and stayed on her feet all evening.  My husband got up once to check on her.  I feared she would be laying down sleeping and then we'd worry, but instead she was out in the pasture grazing.

This morning we went out to milk for the first time.  She was really full.  We planned to only take two quarts to decrease the draw on her body, but it seemed that we needed to take the fullness off.  After five quarts it finally seemed like she wasn't totally full.  When I filtered the milk, it had lots tiny clots, which can be a sign of mastitis.  Oh... dang... now what?  The best treatment for mastitis is to fully milk her out but the best treatment for milk fever is to not fully milk her out.  Our friend from the dairy said, it really comes down to which do you want to treat: milk fever or mastitis.  Well, since we have some experience with milk fever...

We decided on a compromise.  We went back and fully milked out the one quarter that seemed the hardest, and therefore might be the one infected.  If it is mastitis, it's still pretty mild.

In the midst of all this, we noticed that jerky sounded gurgly when he breathed.  He's at risk of pneumonia because he didn't get the colostrum as quickly as he should have, so we took his temperature to see if he was developing an infection.  I am getting way too experienced at taking cows' temperatures.  It was normal, thank God.

After milking we let jerky go with Christina and he immediately started suckling.  Two hours later we noticed that she had stopped eating.  Uh oh.  I ran to the store and bought extra of everything, including four bottles of calcium.  When I got back she had laid down and wasn't doing anything.  Her nose was dry but her head and ears were up.  We prepared for another under the skin injection, but this time with a cow who had a bit of spunk in her.  We would tie her up but we needed to be able to release her quickly if she flopped around. First I searched the internet for quick release knots and then we practiced tying them.  Finally, we headed out, ready for a fight.

Our older daughters were stationed at her back end to push her down if she tried to get up.  We tied her to the post and got the shot going.  She actually didn't fight too hard, but she did jerk her head and the needle pulled out. My husband stuck her again and this time the fluid started dribbling out of the first hole.  So he had one hand holding the needle and the other one pushing on the first hole.  It would have been funny if she wasn't so sick.  He finally gave up and went to the other side of her neck.

That shot went better, but the first shots were still leaking a bit.  Again he had one hand on the needle and another hand on the two leaking holes.  Toward the end, Christina leaned her head over on me as if to say, "I don't feel good."  My older daughters spent the whole time watching, trying not think about the needle, but they didn't have to shove a cow back to the ground.

In half-an-hour she was still laying down, but chewing her cud.  In an hour and a half, she got up and has been eating ever since.  Until she is completely out of the woods, we will keep the calf away from her.  At least we have the milking area gated off so we have a place for him where they can be separated but still see and smell each other.

Yesterday her head was all the way down and it took two bottles of calcium and six hours to get up.  Today it was one bottle and one-and-a-half hours.  We're looking forward to a no-bottle day.  Then we'll only have mastitis to fight...  and a calf to feed...  and keep healthy...

Recovery

Christina is up and eating!  It's a beautiful, wonderful thing.  She's not out of the woods yet, but things look really good.  She tried four times before she finally got to her feet.  Those legs were wiggly and wobbly.  She stood still for quite a while and then took her first shaky steps.  She went right over to her baby and then promptly to the food.  She hasn't eaten in over a day and we are so relieved.

It's been a long day.  After that first bottle of calcium this morning, she still wasn't getting up and her temperature stayed low.  At 12:30pm we gave her another bottle of calcium under her skin.  While we were waiting for the solution to drain into her, I took her temperature again and it was just beginning to come up.

An hour later we took her temperature; it was coming up but she still looked awful.  After a bit she picked up her head and kept it up, looking around.  We expected her to get up soon, but by 3:30pm she was still down.  We talked to another vet and she recommended that we roll her over (yeah, she actually told us to roll over a thousand pound cow).  She said that the side she was laying on would be really sore and falling asleep.  Five of us pushed with everything we had.  Finally, on the sixth try she went over.  We brought her calf over and she even tried to get up.  Her legs shook hard and she went back down.  After several more tries, she finally got her back legs under her and straightened up in slow motion. 

Jerky hasn't had much attention today.  He's gotten some milk in the bottle, but was shivering.  We got out an old coat to wrap around him and set up a heat lamp.  We have him in the milk area so Christina can't fall on him but close enough that they can touch noses.

Tonight we'll keep an eye on Christina to make sure she doesn't go back down.  Tomorrow, her due date, we'll do our first real milking and, God willing, will begin normal, mundane milking.

Thank you for all the prayers.  God has answered them and saved our cow.  I think I'll be able to sleep tonight.

Christina's in trouble

In the night Christina walked out to the pasture and laid down.  This morning she can't get up.  Our cow is down.  The vet can't come until this afternoon and the dairy says she can't wait that long.  Her temperature is 96, five degrees lower than normal, which makes it likely that we are dealing with milk fever, hypocalcimia. I drove out to Nampa and bought calcium and an IV set.  They walked us through the process of giving her the injection under the skin.   With nerves of steels (actually nerves of jello, that's all we've got now), we got the needle in and got the solution into her.

We started at 10:20 and the bottle was empty by 10:40.  Now we wait.  If she's not up in an hour, we give her another bottle.  At least we get to do this waiting in the house.

The calf hasn't gotten much to eat with Christina down.  This morning he gratefully took the bottle and emptied it quickly.  I got some calf formula when I bought the calcium and the girls gave him another bottle while we worked with Christina.

Milk fever can be fatal quickly, but usually responds rapidly to treatment.  God willing, she will be up soon and this will all be over.  But for now, we wait.

Incompetence that Matters

This has been a hard day.  Both the calf and Christina haven't done well and our incompetence makes it hard to handle. 

This morning we went out to give Christina the calcium gel, which it turns out she doesn't like at all.  My husband and I got on each side of her to block her head until we could sneak it into her mouth.  A good portion of it got spilled, but we got some into her.  The vet said that if she's up and eating and drinking normally, then she's okay.  She was getting up some, but as the day went on, she spent more and more time down.  Then we realized that she has stopped eating and drinking.  We offered her the molasses grain that we call her candy, and she even rejected that. 

Meanwhile, we toweled the calf off and figured it would take to nursing on its own.  We milked Christina this morning, like we thought we should.  The colostrum was thick and yellow like egg nog, but we figured she had lots of it.  By early afternoon, we noticed that we had not seen the calf nurse.  The shed is situated where we can't see the cows, so it could have, but every time we went out, it was curled up sleeping.  The vet seemed more concerned about the calf not nursing than about Christina.  So we went out to help the calf nurse. 

Holding it between my legs I pushed its head into Christina's teet and got it nursing.  It would nurse for a while and then let go and start searching around between her front legs.  We went out to help this little calf nurse every hour or two.

At 5pm we talked to the vet again.  He said to give Christina another calcium gel and to get a calf bottle to give the calf the colostrum we milked out this morning.  So while I drove through rush hour traffic, my husband gave Christina another calcium.  On the way, I talked to the lady at the dairy where we bought Christina.  She recommended that we take Christina's temperature.  A low temperature would be milk fever and high temperature would be infection.  My poor husband headed out to the shed with a thermometer to get into her back end.  Two phones calls of, "she is not going for this." and he finally got the job done.  Her temperature was normal.

I arrived home with the calf bottle and filled it with the colostrum.  We took it out to the calf.  After a dozen tries, we gave up.  The calf wouldn't open his mouth, and when he did, he wouldn't suck.   Christina seems wobbly and I'm afraid she's going to fall on me.

I feel totally overwhelmed and incompetent.  I am emotionally drained from a day of worry, even to the point of losing my ability to cope.  I'm stressed, my stomach is in knots, and I can't remember if I've eaten today. This is a horrible feeling. Is Christina in real trouble and I'm not reacting fast enough?  Or are things abnormal but okay and I am overreacting because I just don't know better?  Is the calf really in trouble or is it nursing when we're not around and it's fine?

We decided not to milk this evening, but we still need to give her one more gel.  It's dark and I don't want to go out there, but my husband has gotten good with the gels and I only have to watch.  I'm so grateful.

Thank God for the lady from the dairy and our friend with a cow.  They've helped us through this.  The vet came come tomorrow afternoon if things don't look up.

It's a terrible feeling not really knowing what to do but being responsible for life.  I've decided that since Christina will live until the vet arrives, I need to just quit worrying because it won't help.  If the calf doesn't make it, well, we did our best.  Tomorrow is another day, the sun will come up, and I'm going to try to think about something besides cows.  But I dread tomorrow.  I wish I could call in sick.

A Calf!

We found a calf in the shed this morning!  Christina had calved in the night, in fact, probably pretty recently.  It was still wet.  We covered it with towels and gave it a good rubbing. Christina was licking it well.  I got a glimpse under it's tail and didn't see any boy parts, so we think it might be a girl.  It's windy and stormy today, but inside the shed, in this corner she has it in, feels cozy and decent.

I'm sad that we missed the birth, but not that sad since it happened in the middle of the night.  Yesterday was a long, hard day.

We started an emergency project.  We have a hose that runs out to the cows for their water and we got heat tape to keep it defrosted through the winter.  After opening it up, my husband discovered that he'd have to buy some heavy-duty extension cables to make it work, so we decided to put our time and money into a longer term solution — burying a pipe below the frostline.

My husband spent the morning getting things ready.  Early afternoon he rented the trencher.  The guy at the shop said that a 100 foot trench would take a couple hours.  As soon as he started, things looked dismal. The ground was heavy and slippery and it the going was slow.

As the sun was going down, he was no where near done.  I took a headlamp out to him and he kept going.   We took water and cheese out to him every half hour and he kept going.  I took this picture of him working.  My camera isn't very good in the dark, but it didn't look much better to the naked eye.  Finally, at 9:30pm, after six hours, the trench was done.

I've heard about farmers having to work in the dark and always thought it sounded awful.  His spirits seems pretty good, but I would have been cranky.  At least it wasn't freezing cold.

All the while I was inside taking care of kids by myself, while getting tomatoes skinned and hanging.  I've heard that the self-sufficient lifestyle means regular 12-hour days.  Part of me feels good at investing so much hard work.  Part of me does not.

But then I see that cute little calf.  There is joy and wonder in the midst of all this work that is bigger than any of us.  Christina let us over to the calf, but pushed beefy back when he tried to get too close.  Christina seems okay, no sign of milk fever, and is enjoying her first morning with her baby.  Today we'll watch closely to make sure she doesn't develop milk fever, that the calf nurses, and that everybody gets along okay.

This morning will be our first milking.  In five days the colostrum should be done and we'll be drinking fresh milk.  Praise God, creator of all good things and the mother of all mothers!

Bonus Eggs

Seven eggs!!  We got seven eggs!  The twins ran in from putting the chickies to bed with eggs rolled up in their shirts.  How will I use them all?!

I had shifted my thinking to three or four eggs a day. I had accepted it as God's way and in humility, I adjusted.  Right at that moment to have seven eggs in one day feels like God winking at me: that's right, it all came from me in the first place, and today I felt like a bigger gift just to surprise you.

It is so easy to take control from God.  When we got our first laid egg last February, it was magical.  The eggs were just there and all we had to do was go get them. But as time went on, I began to feel entitled to those eggs.  When they started to decline, I was a little out of sorts.  I felt the eggs were mine now, that somehow I had earned them.  I had gotten to that place without thinking about it, without any conscious or malicious thoughts toward God.  My eyesight had dimmed until God was the small wish-giver that pervades most of American spirituality.  And then God reminded me, again, of who is the Creator and who isn't.

Christina looks different this morning.  Her udder is rounder and the birthing area has become red and a little swollen.  Three days until her due date.

We pulled out the last cheese I made before Christina dried up.  It had more holes in it than I had hoped, but the flavor is good, although mild.  It tells me that I still don't have it all figured out (dang!), but things are moving in the right direction.  When Christina freshens I'll make extra cheese so some has time to sit around and get sharp. This cheese was two months old.  We have to let it sit for six months to get sharp.

With two bushels of grain corn drying in the garage, we figured it was time to use some.  We popping the kernels off the cob and then we ran it through the grain mill.  It ground fine like wheat flour.  Tomorrow I'll add some to our bread and see how it goes.

A friend told me about being caught in a blizzard years ago and having to live off the canned food in the pantry for a week.  I realized that we could probably live off the food we have stocked away for at least a month.  We rarely get traffic stopping blizzards here in Boise, but now I kind of look forward to one, just knowing how well we'd eat through it.

A Good Name

"There's a mouse in a bucket," my daughter came running in to say.  My husband put another bucket on top to capture it and they headed out to release it.  I told her, "take it away from the house." Boy, did she mind.  She took that mouse all the way to the back of the pasture. She came back in with her head held high and said with a lilt, "I took care of that mouse."

We have been at this homesteading thing for a year and a half.  Our first summer was just cleaning away weeds and trees and garage.  In August we got chicks.  We butchered the roosters in December, had our first eggs in February, and this past summer was our first growing season.  We are still in our first year of eating off the land and finding an annual rhythm that matches.  With so many squash to eat, I've found lots of good recipes, but most of them use eggs.

Our egg production is down to three to five per day.  Yesterday we got four.  In the summer, this favorite nesting box of the hens would have upwards of ten eggs every day.  Today there are only two.  We could push the hens into laying more by adding light to their coop, but that feels too industrial.  We will live with the way God created chickens to lay.

In the summer we were coming up with ways to use eggs, and I'm still in the habit of using them up.  But suddenly we have only a few in the frig and I have to pay attention.  This is part of the annual cycle that I am still learning.

While taking the picture of eggs, one of the hens came to check things out.  They really do look like little dinosaurs, don't you think?

Six days to Christina's due date and she seems the same.  My husband calls this area of the shed the cow's nest.  It's funny to call it a nest for such large animals, but it's a good name.  They each have their own place where they lay down, but they are always free to go out to the pasture if they want.  Today is cool and damp and they've been in the shed more than usual.  I think that beefy just hangs out wherever Christina is.

Christina has never kept a calf before so we don't know how this will go.  I'm not that worried about the delivery, but afterward we need to get Christina the calcium supplement as soon as possible, and watch to make sure that she doesn't reject it, and watch that beefy doesn't bully it. I guess we need to watch the weather too. 

Naming is an ongoing conversation at our house.  A boy calf will become a steer for meat so we'll only give it a reference, like jerky (or beefy).  But a girl calf will become a new milk cow.  Her name is important.  The girls are on in hot debate between Clarabelle, Jody, and Gracie.  My husband and I like Clarabelle, but the girls prefer Jody.  What would you name a cow?