the puppies are here! the puppies are here!

Some states call it Super Tuesday because of politics. Here on the farm, it was Super Tuesday too. But not because of Donald Trump's inability to articulate a thought or Hillary's angry rants. Our Tuesday was super because . . . Petunia had puppies!

Last year, Chris found me another Great Pyrenees. We took an afternoon road trip to pick Petunia up, and she curled up in a little ball on my lap and slept the whole way home. That sealed the deal. 

See how cute she was? So tiny. So happy. So little! 

Now she's the size of a small horse. 

See the two puppies in the back? The one on the right is Winchester, and he's half Great Pyrenees. He's now a proud papa. 

Colt, on the left, is Petunia's faithful sidekick Colt, half Shar Pei. But bless his heart, he'll never be a dad. Let the reader understand.

You can see more pictures of their adorable puppy cuteness here. 

So with Blackjack the lab and Winchester running around the farm, Petunia was basically destined to be a mom. And from the looks and sounds of things a couple of months ago, there was no way she couldn't be. 

Doesn't she look like pretty much any mom who has just given birth? Exhausted. Bleary eyed. Hungry. And yet still pretty magnificent!

Chris took a look at Petunia a few days ago and pronounced that it would happen any day. And he wasn't kidding. 

One moment she was shuffling along the deck, dropping treats out of her mouth and then slobbering on them, as is her custom. 

And the next minute, she was nosing at a pile of little puppies that were busy making itty bitty kitty sounds. 

For now, they are tucked up under the deck, sleeping, eating and snuggling. Mama Petunia growls at any dog who gets close and is grateful for any head scratches we have to offer. 

Donald Trump may be busy building walls and Hillary can pant suit with the best of them, but over here, with six puppies, three chickens, 650 cows, a pasture full of heifers and four dogs, pretty much every day is Super Tuesday. And, as with most of farm life, we vote yes.

My name is Adriane and I approve of this message. 

dads

I'm a firm believer that children need a mom and a dad. 

Certainly there are cases where the mom is left on her own, or where the dad shirks his duty and takes off, or where the dad has passed away. 

But I'm not talking the exceptions. 

I'm talking the rule. 

I know how much I need my dad . . . and I'm 31. 

And I know that Georgia already recognizes her dad and responds to him with smiles and toots and big eyes.

She knows her dad because he's here.  

Because he sings to her. 

He reads to her. 

He prays over and for her. 

He tickles her. 

He smooches her. 

He takes her to church. 

He keeps her safe. 

He comforts her. 

He snuggles her. 

He explains things to her. 

He tells her about her future. 

He describes the puppies and the cows and the chickens to her. 

He works long, hard hours so that her mom can stay home with her. 

He tells her about Jesus and politics and land prices and farm markets and how to build fence and dig tile and why Lent matters. 

And he always has a smile and a kiss for her when he comes in, even after working a 21-hour day. 

I can feed her and change her diaper. 

But she needs her dad. 

And I'm glad the Lord blessed her with this one. 


PHOTO COURTESY KATIE LOCKHART PHOTOGRAPHY 

oh dear

It turns out that our Great Pyrenees - Petunia - has been, uh, KNOWN. 

In the biblical sense. 

Ahem. 

To make this even more complicated . . . our first Great Pyr, Wally, got the neighbor's lab pregnant. Then he got run over. 

So we got a second Great Pyr . . . the exact same day the neighbor asked us to take two of the lab's puppies. 

One was Wally's protege and one was their Shar Pei's offspring. 

That's correct. 

We ended up with three puppies in one day. It was also the day we told our parents we were having a baby. 

Like I said . . . oh dear. 

Now Petunia is pregnant . . . perhaps with Wally's son's baby or perhaps with our black lab Blackjack's pups. 

Can someone please cue the Lion King's Circle of Life? 

In any case, if you're in Missouri and are on the lookout for a 3/4 Great Pyr -- or perhaps a half Great Pyr, half lab -- give us a shout-out. Petunia, like State Farm, has got you covered. 

christmas in the country 2015

We have four dogs -- four -- which is roughly three more than I ever planned on having. Chris takes two of them with him to the dairy. Two stay at the house with me. But when we're gone, and they're all at home, all four love to eat packages left by the UPS man, the FedEx guy and the mailman. 

Like the time Blackjack ate through a box and then took a bite out of a cutting board meant to be an engagement gift. 

Or chewed up some pictures. 

Or Winchester and Colt ripped up a dish towel. 

Or Wally gnawed up a box and carried around the coffee cup inside it. 

It's really kind of a pandemic. 

So when a Christmas in the Country 2015 package ended up in our garage -- hidden but in one piece -- it was nothing short of a Christmas miracle. 

Christmas in the Country is the brain child of four bloggers who encouraged women involved in agriculture or farming to sign up, swap gifts and make friends with other women in the same field. 

I received the loveliest package from Darcy in Idaho. She's expecting her own little one! And knows all there is to know about cows! And takes gorgeous pictures of her life on the farm! And puts together the sweetest box of goodies! 

All the exclamation points. 

She included a beautiful Christmas FiestaWare tablecloth (which I have already put to use during Advent and the 12 days of Christmas . . . with our FiestaWare, no less), a Christmas print made by a local gal (which promptly found its place on our piano) and a gift card complete with book recommendations. 

On top of that, she added peppermint bark (which tastes pretty darn amazing frozen, just FYI) and delicious smelling vanilla candles and the kindest note from a fellow sister in Christ. 

Her care and thoughtfulness were a true treat . . . and not just because the dogs didn't demolish them first. Farming can sometimes seem like lonely business -- especially when your Great Pyrenees tries to eat coffee cups -- but thanks to Christmas in the Country and a new friend gained,  the agricultural world just got a little smaller . . . and I wouldn't have it any other way. 

You can head on over to the blogs of the four ladies who hosted the event -- Jamie, Lara, Laurie and Kirby -- to learn more about the ladies who were involved in the swap. I put together a little vintage-esque package for Kelly at Old Blue Silo, another blog you should probably just go ahead and bookmark right about NOW.

And Darcy, again, thank you! 

babies and mustaches

"Hard work, honesty, integrity, faith, family, love, forgiveness." 

That's what we're about . . . and something tells me, that's true of a lot of other farmers too.

PS Oh yeah, and Baby and my farmer's mustache make appearances too. 

day 9 of farmacology: naming animals

  

One of the things you may not know about farm folks is that

sometimes we name our animals; sometimes we don't.

I was homeschooled for a couple of years before I headed off to school. Whenever any kid found out my dad was a hog farmer, he inevitably asked, "Do you name your pigs?" 

I always thought that was a weird question. It wasn't because giving names to animals was awkward. It was because, well, how did people expect me to tell the difference between all those identical-looking pink pigs?

A few did have names. One sick pig got the distinct pleasure of hearing 8- or 9-year-old me read Charlotte's Web outloud. I perched on a footstool next to her while she recovered, thinking I was a pretty good nurse, although perhaps my literary selection could have been slightly more helpful. Her name was Princess. 

We don't name all our cows today, but sometimes we do. There's Snout, Lucy, Snowflake, Snickers, Reba, Ruby, Queen Mother, Talulah, Clementine, Gandalf, the General, Dorothy Lynch . . . Some also have numbers, and my farmer can recall many of those digits just as quickly as he can a name. 

We have a whopping six chickens at our house right now. Our rooster's name is Horace, but the five hens have no names. We've had well-named cats too, like . . . Truck Kitty and . . . Little Kitty. (Ok, so we struggle in the cat moniker department.)

And that's not even mentioning the four canines who keep all coyotes, mailmen, falling leaves and raccoons at bay. 

Some farmers name all their animals. Some don't. Some, like us, go for the combo approach.

But if you come to the farm, and you spot a calf that you think is just downright adorable, tell us her number and give us her name. 

We'll remember both. We promise. 

Want to read more of my 31 day farmacology writing challenge? Click here. 

Petunia

Blackjack may be my farmer's number one farm dog, and Wally might have come in a close second, but Petunia is rounding third base and heading for home. 

Just observe that grace, that poise, that . . . look of complete uncertainty about what exactly is going on around her.

 

Thanks to Wally, we've discovered that Great Pyrenees really are our favorite dog breed. They're chill, they're massive and they're quiet during the day. 

And they also apparently like to curl up like small woolly mammoths in your lap.

Of course, they love to eat gigantic hunks of meat and bark all night too, but their faces definitely make up for it.

Well, Petunia's does. 

Or at least that's just what we'll keep telling ourselves. 

this week {August 24, 2015}

This week, we are:

• Focusing on all things silage. Silage time is kind of like Christmas on the farm, but you have to replace the presents, snow, special breakfasts and trees with a silage chopper, corn, trucks, tractors, two-way radios, a sturdy work ethic and long hours. 

The guys worked all week to tear the choppers apart and repair them, then to put them back together without any leftover pieces, which would be unthinkable if this were left up to me.

"Um, guys, does anyone know where this extra tire goes?" - me

or

"Do you really NEED these brakes or can you just kind of roll to a stop?" - me 

As you can tell, critical thinking and logical deduction are not my forte. I just make the coffee, which leads to the next thing that's defining this week.

• Living on caffeine. When everything is running the way it's supposed to, the chopper go-go-goes and the trucks run ride along side it. It means getting up at 5:00 a.m., and running until 12:30 a.m. the next morning and not falling asleep until 1:00 a.m. So if there's a watchword for the week, it's: gimme-all-the-caffeinated-things. Correction: watchwordS.

• Thankful for a forecast filled with sunshine. Silage is all about timing. The corn's moisture has to be just right, and the corn itself has to be a certain maturity. All the machinery has to be ready to go. The weather has to cooperate, and it can't be rainy. And when all those factors collide, silage can run like a well-oiled machine. A chopper, as it were. 

• Taking credit that isn't ours. It had been a long week. Silage hadn't started yet. There was one lingering issue to fix on the chopper, and the guys had spent hours working to figure it out. I'm not saying that when my mother-in-law and I showed up, the problem was fixed within minutes but . . . well, yes, that actually is what I'm saying. We'll just go ahead and take credit for it, even though we had absolutely nothing to do with it. Because we're fun like that. 

• Slightly amazed. Did you know that silage choppers have kernel processors that basically crack corn kernels so that cows can digest the corn more easily? Those four stomaches need all the help they can get! And come to think of it, that's almost as impressive as the pre-digested goat milk my mom fed me when I was a colicky baby. (Do I want to know who digested it first? I don't think I do.) 

• Good senses of humor. Silage season requires a lot of patience. Combine that with hard work and reeeeeeally long work days, and it would be easy to get testy or out of sorts. And yet every time I pop in at the dairy, someone is joking, teasing someone else, pulling a prank, spouting a good one-liner or smiling. It must be something in the silage dust, but whatever it is, we're grateful for it . . . and for good humor in general. 

• Digging two-way radios. Can you imagine what life was like before those puppies? How would you know when your truck was full of silage? Or when you're driving too close to the chopper and need to give it some room? Or that there are fresh-baked cookies in the shop to nab the next time you drop off a load of silage at the bunker? You wouldn't, that's what! 

• Grateful to be living in the country. Silage season requires a lot of time spent in trucks and choppers and tractors, but it also provides a lot of time to watch sunsets and see the stars to come out, to enjoy the autumn weather and get in healthy doses of sunshine. Add to that the animals that dash out of the ends of corn fields, and you've got yourself a full-fledge nature lallapalooza. Heck, if I didn't think everyone would assume I was crazy, I set up a lawn chair at the dairy, pop a chocolate milk and watch the magic happen . . . for hours. 

• Trying to keep Blackjack off his gimpy paw. Blackjack hurt his foot, but this hasn't kept him from hobbling around on three paws, regardless of how much we try to keep him calm. Then again, this affords him lots of benefits: like getting to eat the frosting off of people's cupcakes, sitting at the feet of kind people who order him his own hamburgers from McDonalds, and lots of time laying around in the air conditioned office. Wait a minute. Why walk regularly? He's got it pretty good!  

It may not be silage season where you are but . . . what's this week look like for you? 

real things

When I lived in St. Louis, my morning consisted of a twenty-minute commute through eight lanes of traffic. After I learned that the key to city driving is to drive about 10 times more aggressively than you're comfortable with and to realize that you might, at any point in time, be squished to death on the highway like a sardine between two semis, it wasn't so bad. 

But it is nothing . . . NOTHING . . . compared to mornings in the country. 

Fog. Sleepy cows. Barking dogs. Chickens putting up a fuss. Pick-ups  with farmers at the wheel, taking their time checking out the fields while finishing their first cup of coffee. 

Sign me up. 

If the sound of horns and sirens, squealing tires and doors slamming have got you down, find yourself a spot in the country. Stay a day or two. But if you can, wake up early. 

Nothing compares to laying in bed, with the windows open and a cool breeze blowing in, and slowly waking up to the sound of birds or, sometimes, to the sound of nothing at all. 

"The real things haven’t changed. It is still best to be honest and truthful; to make the most of what we have; to be happy with simple pleasures; and have courage when things go wrong.” - Laura Ingalls Wilder 

a (p)update

Colt - half Shar Pei, half lab 

Just a few weeks ago we suddenly found ourselves in THAT category: the one that includes people who have too many dogs. 

summer camp applications are in!

Remember that time that we conned our little nieces and nephews into thinking that coming to our farm is tantamount to summer camp? (You can read about it here.)

Oh, wait. 

That's still happening. 

farming meets springtime

We're just one day away from spring, but here in Missouri, we've already enjoyed some seriously warm weather. 

Give us a couple of 70 degrees days, and we're off to the races. 

And by "us," I mean my farmer. 

He's busy hauling manure, getting ready for planting season and listening to me try to explain how I want to build a teepee out of hedge posts so that morning glory vines can wind around it and make a cool fort for our nieces and nephews. 

He really loves that last one. I can tell by the look in his eye. Or maybe that's desperation. I won't quibble. 

In the meantime, my dog is laying in a hole in the garden trying to stay cool in the dirt (I think he's wishing he really did live in the Pyrenees about now) while Blackjack is, uh, well . . . 

what exactly IS he doing anyway?

burning down the barn

Chris is a sixth-generation farmer. I'm a fifth. 

You might say things have changed since our ancestors first started farming. 

And you would be right. 

My side of the family includes the first white folks to break ground in our county in Iowa, right alongside the Native Americans. 

Chris's family's history has its own set of stories as well, like how his Grandma Heins worked her teenage years in a garment factory, saving money so that when she got married, she could buy nice furniture for her new home. But when she did get married, she ended up using the money to help put a down payment on their first farm, and the furniture had to wait.

But while we're no longer using horses and oxen to break ground, we're still doing the same thing as our ancestors: working land, caring for animals, enjoying sunsets and watching herds of deer run through the bottom ground while our dogs sleep obliviously through the whole ordeal. 

Maybe not that last part.

 

owning a great pyrenees

Women love little, bitty tiny things: babies, mini quiches, puppies.  Sure you could have a regular-size quiche, but who wants that when you can have an itsy bitsy quiche that's just your size?

Women, that's who.

wally and blackjack, cowdog wannabes

We had a lot of snow last year. Like, the kind where my car couldn't always make it over the drifts to get into town kind of snow. 

This year has been snowless and relatively warm. I--to put it mildly--find this fantastic. 

farm party

Chris is a practical kind of guy. He sees a barn, and he puts things in it, like, you know, tractors and sprayers and lawn mowers. I see a barn .  .  . and then I see a barn party. 

10 minutes with a dairy farmer

On our way to visit family in Illinois this weekend, I devised a great plan. "You're driving! I'm just sitting here! We should write a blog post!" I exclaimed to Chris. "Umm, gosh. We're going through St. Louis. Look at all this, you know, traffic and stuff," he said. Undeterred, I pushed forward. The following resulted. 

Well, not the calf, but the interview. 

AH:      People probably wonder what a day in the life of a dairy farmer looks like. So, what's a day in the life of a dairy farmer look like?

CH:      I start by working on heat detection in the AI pens.

AH:      I have no idea what that means. You wanna check the heat? Why not just look at the thermostat?

CH:      Umm…….

AH:      But seriously.

CH:      Let's start at the beginning. AI stands for artificial insemination.

AH:      Not artificial intelligence?

CH:      *ignoring AH* We as dairy farmers don’t have any magical way of knowing when a cow's in heat and is ready to breed so we look for certain signs. I could go into detail about those signs, but we’ll save that for another day.

            When we find the cows that are in heat, we prepare semen. It’s frozen in tiny little straws. We thaw it out, and we use that semen to breed the cows. 

AH:      *in my best three-year-old voice* But whyyyyy?

CH:       There are several reasons for this:  (1) Safety. Dairy bulls are very dangerous, and every dairy farmer knows someone who’s been injured or killed by a bull. (2) By AIing, you get access to higher quality bulls and thus higher quality genetics.  Some bulls have better genes for milking, just like some families have better genes for running, for example. Sidenote: This has nothing to do with GMOs; genetically modified livestock isn’t a thing. It doesn’t exist. We do use bulls on the farm in certain situations, but we try to minimize the amount we have to use them for our safety as well as for the overall genetic quality of the herd.

AH:      Then what do you do? Also, I’m hungry.

CH:      Have a carrot.  Well, I check with different people on different projects, make sure everyone’s got work for the day, that they’re pointed in the right direction. Then I start looking over the milk data and the calving data from the previous day and look for anything that stands out.

AH:      What’s Blackjack the dog doing while this is happening?

CH:      He’s pouncing in piles of manure, playing tug of war with cow tales, digging in my trash can, licking snot off of cows's noses, and generally wreaking havoc. And chasing cats. Basically, it’s a dog’s wildest dream come true.

AH:      What else?

CH:      The next routine thing that’s done every day is checking our hospital pen and our post-fresh pen. When a cow has a calf, she’s said to freshen. A post-fresh pen is filled with cows who have calved in the past two weeks. They get their own pen with more space and more feed and more care. The vast majority of health problems will occur within two weeks of calving, so we look at this group of cows in extreme detail every day. We look at how much milk each cow produces. We look at each cow's body temperature, their manure, how bright their eyes are and how perky their ears are. We look at how much they’re eating and their overall appearance, and we do this for each cow every day for the first couple of weeks. Prevention is key in all of this! We would rather prevent problems early on rather than let them develop.

           The hospital pen is for any cow that has gotten sick and has been treated with antibiotics. The reason these cows are kept separate is because their milk cannot be sold and cannot enter the market for human consumption. Once the cows have gotten better and they’ve not been treated for a set amount of time (ranging from several days to several weeks depending on the type of medication and how quickly it leaves their system), we test their milk for antibiotics, and if the milk tests negative, they re-join the herd. If it tests positive, they have to stay in the hospital pen until all the antibiotics are out of their system.

AH:      Sometimes you get called away from what you're doing to pull a calf. Why’s that?

CH:      When cows are having their second, third, fourth calf, 90 percent of the time, they have it on their own with no problem. When they have their first calf, they need help about a 1/3 of the time. So when we do need to help, either the cow isn’t able to push the calf out on her own and she needs assistance, or the calf is presenting incorrectly, which means the calf is coming out backwards or upside down. At that point, I help to rearrange the calf and help it out.  My job is to make sure mother and calf are both alive and well by the end of the calving process.

AH:      So you’re like a cow ER doctor.

CH:      Sure.

AH:      What’s your favorite part of your day?

CH:      Coming home and kissing my wife.

AH:      Awwwww, honey. Ok, favorite part of your day on the DAIRY.

CH:      A large part of what we do is prevention. We try to prevent problems before they happen. Rather than treating a cow when she gets sick, we’d like to prevent her from getting sick in the first place. Rather than pulling a calf, we’d rather do things earlier to prevent the calf from needing to be pulled. So for me, herd management is my favorite part of the job, and prevention is a key part of that. I like preventing problems so that the farm runs smoothly.

AH:      What’s the messiest job you’ve ever had to do on the dairy?

CH:      Crawling through a tunnel filled with mud and muck to fix a broken pipe. Being shoulder deep inside a cow trying to help a calf come out correctly while being soaked in blood, amniotic fluid, and manure. Riding a four-wheeler in freezing rain, trying to get cattle in after they just tore down a fence. Want me to keep going?

AH:      I think I'd rather not know. Final question: As a sixth generation farmer, what do you think your ancestors would think of what you’re doing today?

CH:      They’d be blown away by the efficiency that dairies today are able to achieve. They would see the technology that we’re able to use, and they’d be astounded. They would see how closely we’re able to monitor and care for our cows, and they’d be impressed. They’d see the quality of feed and the quality of cattle we have, and they’d be jealous. And I think they’d see our family, and they’d be proud.