TERRY
Terry is caring on as usual. She will have two water therapy sessions this week but they do not happen until Wednesday and Friday. As write she is reading the paper. We did not practice walking yesterday as she just was comfortable in bed. She did sleep off and on for short periods of time. She was then not all that tired when bedtime came so she watched a movie. I watched the first part but then gave in to sleep!
There will be NO tennis today and as it looks there may not be any for a few days. I did not go over to the tennis courts this morning but looked at my phone and we have had .8" of rain in the last 24 hours and they say more rain is on the way.
Not much to say this morning. I think I will go to the bank later on but that is about it. We decided to fill the tub with water yesterday just in case but I think we will not need it for anything. I did fill 3 growlers with water just in case we run out of drinking water but that too looks to be not needed. So IF things continue life will be kind of normal with light rain over the next few days.
One of the things I get on my phone is comments and pictures of OLD farmsteads. It is almost depressing to see the many many farms that WERE but are no more. Often when I look at them of course I think of our farm that was destroyed by fire and think maybe that was not such a bad thing as at least one does not have to look at run down things but then of course Mom and Dad losing the entire farm when they were still in their 60s was heartbreaking.
From page 103 of my book. This really captures what milking was like during the winter time on the farm. The only thing missing is the beady eyes of the cats waiting for a squirt of milk. The lantern usually hung on the west wall of the barn just behind the cow. As we milked the cows would be eating hay that we had forked to them from the hay barn part of the barn which was the north third of the building. It does not show much of the cow but one of the cows, Lumpy, always had to have kickers on as she would get restless and kick the pail of milk over if she could. We had Shorthorn cows so they were not raised for milk but rather beef. That meant each cow may give less than a gallon of milk. In fact maybe only a quart plus. If we had milk cows they would have given much much more. As I remember milking in the winter it, now in a more mature age, almost was a romantic kind of experience. Not in the sense of human romantic but in the sense of life. One would walk to the barn, often through the snow, and as you opened the barn door you had the smell, aroma, of cats, calves, cows, hay and then some smells that maybe were not so nice. As one entered the barn there was a shelf on the right side wall. It was there that we kept the containers for feeding the cats etc. With the lantern and milk pail in one hand I would grab a container and head for the the stanchions where the cows would be. I would hang the lantern on the wall, put the milk pail on the cement floor and then get the pitch fork to get hay from the hay barn. After each of the cows got a fork full of hay I would settle down to milk. Usually we had 3 or 4 cows to milk. I always milked Lumpy first as she could be kind of cranky! IF she kicked the pail over I wanted it to be kind of empty. There would be squirts of milk often to the cats and then when I was finished I would fill their container as several cats emerged from the darkness to enjoy their evening meal. It was than the snowy walk back to the house with the lantern and milk pail in hand. Sometimes Mom would take care of the milk but other times she would ask me to take care of the separator. In a short while we would have a pint or more of thick cream and a bigger container of milk which would go into the fridge. The cream would be delicious for pancakes, breakfast food or cream and bread for the next day.
Such was the life of a farmer useing beef cattle for some of the food needed on the farm. It always was a sad day for me when the cattle truck would arrive and the calves that almost seemed like pets would be loaded up for market. I think Dad always wanted them to be grown to the point that they probably weighed in the range of 300-500 pounds.
So here it is a little past 9:00 AM. Sonja is here doing some work, Terry is finished with the paper and has the TV on and I need to figure out how to use my time for the rest of the day. What should I do? I have everything for Christmas finished so no more work there. I almost have papers cleaned up and filed. Maybe I can settle in with a book which I have not done for a long time! My FP is almost gone so that means the day should begin!
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