Life in the country

George and Gracie received their last bottles of milk replacer yesterday.  When I stepped outside for a walk, this is the look I got, along with some pitiful mooing.  They are eating plenty of calf starter and alfalfa hay.  They'll be fine.  

I still turn them out together to play sometimes.  Gracie is getting more black on her face all the time.  

George isn't falling down, he's practicing his quick turns.  

Over the last two days, Red-the-Bull spent a lot of time trying to climb Mount Everest.  I would be very surprised if he succeeded, but it's early anyway.  Grow, Red, grow!  

We were going down our first steep hill during this morning's walk and I said, "Stop, Cliff, I want to take a picture of our shadows."  If you look closely you will see our other two shadows, Mama Kitty nearby and Iris, far ahead.  Iris isn't such a good shadow, since she usually runs off by herself, but Mama Kitty often goes all the way with us.  

I've been letting both Jody and Bonnie in the stanchion once a day for a bite of feed.  Bonnie needs to get used to it again, and I just feel sorry for Jody because of her limp.  When they saw us going back toward the house, they followed; I rewarded them with some sweet feed.  

I have a bloggie friend in Washington whose husband has lung cancer.  The outlook, of course, is not good.  She's a school teacher and is dealing with one difficult situation after another.  She mentioned to me the other day how hard it is to have to switch from planning a wonderful retirement with her husband to the idea of losing her husband and possibly never retiring.  There's another blogger I follow who recently retired from teaching.  Her husband is in the hospital with congestive heart failure.  This got me thinking about how my life would change without Cliff, and if my life changed, of course so would my blog.  
I would sell this place as quickly as possible and move to senior citizen housing in a nearby town, since I don't drive and wouldn't be able to afford the upkeep of this place on my own.  Nor could I do the work required here.  There would be no more pictures of cows and horses.  Pictures taken of my daily walk would show sidewalks, streets, houses, and businesses.  I'm not sure I would have enough going on to even maintain a blog.  I'm not trying to make this a downer, but I have to tell you I sure appreciate Cliff when I think along these lines; if you enjoy my pictures of country life, you had better appreciate him, too.  
He's working on a chicken tractor for me as I type this.  Sounds like another blog entry, right?