Sunday is a day of rest. Andrea wanted out of the house. She spent a while observing the chickens. She is getting so big. Now that it's cold I can finally trim my roses. It has yet to be super cold. I hear that's coming this week.
With all my time in the chair working on books, I've been listening to podcasts. One by Rabbi Daniel Lappin suggested the necessity of quitting TV watching. He said it kills brain creativity. To be successful either with new products or finding solutions to problems one must have a very creative mind. He also said to list 5 things every day that you are thankful for to improve positive thinking and to read great books aloud. I loved all these! Saturday night I pulled the power cord from the TV and we began a TV-less sunday. At the end of the day this is what I observed everyone deep in a book.
Afton of the there-are-no-good-books club had taken over Pippi Longstocking after I read her two chapters. The rest of the kids were reading their own adventures.
Merle was ready for sleep and fell asleep a few minutes after this picture.
And then I got a call to come to tube a calf. I checked with Mr. Rancher Ty and he said try a bottle. I sent that with Mark who had been working on speeches with me. I got chewed out for not coming with the tube feeder and so prepared myself to go down checking hastily which side of the calf to insert the tube. Right or left and my left or it's left. That is very important as I have killed one almost instantly when I went the wrong way. This calf was so cold. Like ice to touch inside its mouth and hoofs. It was born at dark from a heifer. The mother never licked it and it never got up. We came back a few hours later and it was so cold. They finally took it to the shop and rubbed it mostly dry.
Mark tubed it correctly we gave it some colostrum and rubbed more. I realized we needed to add heat and got the heat lamp. That was not large enough so we got rice socks.
After wishing for an electric blanket that we had gotten rid of, but only half of it worked, we decided to use a quilt. When we put the first rice socks on the calf mooed relief. I made this quilt 30 years ago when I was in young woman. Oh well it has been used by a few kids and I guess it was time to move on. We added about 10 hot rice socks wrapped the calf securely and called it a night. We couldn't leave the lamp going for fear of fire. I took 4 more socks an hour later. This morning ADdie was first out the door to go check. She announced it was dead. Sometimes that happens.
She had invited BRuce to work the night shift with her. He thought they were going gopher trapping at midnight and brought an apple. She said no we would just sit here with the calf. I told them we needed to sleep as tomorrow was another day of responsibility. So at 12:30, we headed home. I went back at 1:15 with more warm socks. This is the pile.. I'm not sure what to do with them. The calf was just too cold and we were too slow figuring out a method.
But in the middle of that disappointment, I got this picture from John. His friend Markel is a 23-year-old man "with an awesome family." So while there is hard and sad there is good. I love my Savior Jesus Christ and the restored gospel. My children are encouraged to participate in church and worship and I as a woman am given responsibility and understand my divinity. These are restored truths. The gospel and Salvation are for all not just some and not through others. We can know and interact with our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ!
As a family we work together, we support, encourage, fight, and live together. I am thankful for the moments that make up our life. There are hard situations death is not easy but it's reality. Bruce was uncomfortable and didn't want to touch the cold calf last night. I told him we had to rub it to get it's blood to move. He was more okay when we were all rubbing it. He helped take it to the dead pile today. I hope that as death inevitably crosses their path in the future they will realize we do our best to prevent and we accept that life ends too.
With all the time watching and waiting I saw many jobs little hands could do and so today the kids have been working on cleaning the shop. Many hands make lighter work. A sense of accomplishment comes from creating order. We are blessed.
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