One of my passions when it comes to photography is…landscape and so I was happy to see it is this week’s photo challenge.
More often than not there are cows in my Landscape.
Category: Agriculture
Calving Capers 9
The Hyatt Regency – my home away from home for a couple days this week as I attended the Advancing Women Conference. Country girl in the big city whilst calving capers continued to carry on back home on the ranch – and with a vengeance. The calf count went up considerably in my absence!
I was fortunate to travel to Calgary and network with other women in agriculture as we gathered to listen and learn from some amazing gals in the industry.
The very best thing about a conference like this is the opportunity to meet new people and develop that very social skill called “networking”…always my favourite part. Thanks to Tamara, Elan and Christen – three fun and warm-hearted girls from Saskatchewan that I met for the first time – for a fun evening enhanced by a little wine and calamari.
Calving Capers 8
What happens, more often than not, during springtime on the ranch in the early stages of calving is – a winter storm. We just departed from probably the mildest winter in decades to be greeted, on the second day of spring with a blizzard.
Also, what happens, more often than not, a blizzard-y storm brings on the birthing! Our heifers started to calve one after the other. Between hubby and myself we were getting up to check the herds every two hours.
We are so fortunate to have a big old hip-roof barn for shelter and warmth for the critters and their babes. It doesn’t take long, however, to fill it up when these girls just keep dropping their calves! We are at full capacity!
My heart goes out to these young females, on a good day, when they experience motherhood for the first time. Throw in this nastiest of nasty weather to compound their new adventure – all I can say is….it builds character! For animal and human alike! So far we are very gratified to see they have taken to their calf almost immediately and become the strong, quiet mothers we have raised them to be.
This gal was so quiet in fact that we were able to pull her calf right in the barn pen where she lay. Here you go….freshly pulled!
Calving Capers 7
Recent events have resulted in bringing our cows in from the field this week…TEN days early. Our official calving start date was “calculated” to commence March 26. Wellll, as I started to say…recent events have encouraged us – most strongly – to bring them home within eyesight and a close by stroll from the house.
So this is my new view from the kitchen window. Suits me just fine. It has been a chilly few days, during the snow squalls and winds, riding the quad out to the far field to check on these girls.
“The Watch” is now underway. Flicka Rancher does the midnight check as I am the night owl and like the quiet evening hours to tackle the paperwork projects back inside until it’s my turn to head out. Then hubby checks whilst I sleep…..but the deal is….if there is a hint of trouble….I am to be rousted from said slumber!
And so…it begins…
Photo Challenge – One Love
The love and connection between a cow and her calf is ultimate. The mother cow will watch over her babe with earnestness and gentleness, fierceness and protectiveness. Should they become separated either by man’s choice to offer assistance, or regular maintenance or if they should become separated in the pasture, that mother cow will do everything in her power to get to her calf or to find her calf. She can in fact sniff the little fella out from a mile away or more as I’ve seen happen over the years watching these girls.
This same consummate oneness of love repeats itself as she continues to deliver us a calf year after year as long as she stays in the herd. Every calf she has becomes her One Love.
Calving Capers 6
Another part of preparing for the spring calving season is to have the freezer full of homemade muffins and make-ahead-casseroles. I’m behind on the casserole category but the muffin mission has been satisfactory.
Looking forward to spending as little time as possible in the kitchen in the days ahead. My preference is to be out in the corrals, fields or barn and helping our new little critters start their lives with us on the ranch.
Photo Challenge – Harmony
Photo challenge this week
Harmony – the quality of forming a pleasing and consistent whole.
A newly cultivated field at day’s end…could there be anything more harmonious?
Calving Capers 4
Calving Capers is pretty tame right now as we are in the preparation stage and carrying on with our day to day routine. Filling, packing and feeding 100 chop pails daily, feeding bales and bedding pens with straw every second day or so. Add the calving escapades to this in a few weeks time and we are going to be “occupied”!
During this relative calm I have the opportunity to introduce the final cast member in my pen of Calving Capers Characters. Meet my fancy heifer… Shirley Temple…[17B]…note the “blonde” and “curly”….
I picked her out as a “keeper” shortly after she was born two years ago.
Even then she had that blond and curly look. To my mind, it’s neat to have a few unique looking animals in our herd. My husband concentrates on the all red look and admittedly it sure does make a big herd look lovely and uniform out there in the pasture. Thankfully, I’m “allowed” to identify and keep a few characters that I like the look of. I trust pretty Shirley Temple will deliver some fancy calves of her own
We have oh so many more “personalities” in our herd, but the animals with a story have been introduced over the past three weeks. They will earn a special watchful eye and attention from this blog-writer.
For now, my husband and I need to stay healthy, store up on sleep and carry on our diligence to care for these precious animals that we are stewards over.
The night-time watches are coming up real soon!!
Calving Capers Episode 3
One of my favorite cows is Vanilla Dip, aptly named in reference to her white-tipped nose which looks like it was dipped in vanilla ice cream. She has provided us a nice mix of female and male calves over the past few years. It is actually Vanilla Dip and 3B, as mother and baby calf, that I chose to introduce my blog-posting feature series back on Jan 27. They are also the pair on my Calf Count image on the sidebar to my blog.
The girl she had two years ago is 3B the next in my cast of Calving Capers characters….an aspiring young bred heifer.
Unbelievably, she is almost two years old, about to deliver her first calf, and she still doesn’t have a name! Perhaps my blog readers have a suggestion or two…if so, please feel free to share in a friendly comment.
I look forward to seeing her progeny as her mother has such a nice temperament and so far, 3B is turning out to be the same. We love to keep the quiet ones around, so if she stays with the herd she most certainly needs an imaginative name.
Photo Challenge – Life Imitates Art
This week’s challenge is to imitate a work of art in some way shape or form. I found that the process of taking on this challenge created a story itself.
This past Christmas my husband received a small table sculpture from his twin boys of a praying cowboy by his horse.
I thought this would be a cool piece of art to recreate with him and his dedicated, faithful hard-working horse. When asked, I was thrilled that my husband willingly agreed. I thought I would have to beg and plead!
We chose today, after chores, to tackle the project. Because we have had our two older horses out in the field partnered up all on their own, it required hubby to quad out to them this afternoon to halter up his gelding, T-Bone. The second horse, Shadow, trotted right alongside. Horses need to be together and these two are the best of friends.
Subsequently, when separated, Shadow became very anxious and ran along the fenceline in despair for the duration of our project because her T-Bone buddy was taken out of her sight.
We needed to set up out of view so we could try to recreate a “peaceful”, prayerful pose of cowboy and quiet horse. We went with a couple of different renditions:
A few minutes later, it was all over, the humans had their photo challenge fun and the friends were reunited, free to graze and meander without human intervention for a few more weeks.
Flicka Rancher 