My new baby, Luna

I had Grace's due date written on the calendar as October 26.  She gave birth just at dawn, October 25..  Because it was almost time for the full moon, I named the baby heifer Luna.  As it turns out, this is the only calf we got from that ornery Jersey bull I raised, since we butchered him before he managed to serve Penny.  He was such a runt, it's amazing he was able to climb Mount Gracie and do the deed.  We butchered him and let the grandson have half the meat for paying the processing fee.  I am ecstatic at getting a heifer, because a Jersey bull isn't worth much to anybody.  Both the mom and the sire have some Holstein in their bloodlines, and it shows up somewhat in Luna:  She doesn't have the lovely "dished face" pure Jerseys have, and she is a little longer-legged and larger in general that most Jersey heifer calves.  Here she is trying to get her first meal:

I fully intended to buy a couple of Holstein bull calves by this time, but the dairy didn't have any available when I called.  They have calves being born all the time, so I hope to get some within the next week.  

We babysat our prize little girl three days this week, but now her mom is off work until Monday.  I took the opportunity to take some straw to the barn, and then I picked tomatoes.   The weather-guessers are forecasting near-freezing temperatures for tonight, so I decided to get in gear.

I've been eating four or five tomatoes every day, just because I know it won't be long till we'll have to resort to plastic, tasteless, store-bought tomatoes.  We've had BLT's quite a bit lately, too.  

That's a three-gallon bucket almost full of green tomatoes.  I hope they ripen a few at a time so we'll have some for the table after the present ripe ones are gone.  I used to wrap the green tomatoes in newspaper to ripen, so that if any of them started to go bad it wouldn't spread to the others.  This time I intend just to go through them every couple of days and check them.  

I sent the poem in the previous entry to the secretary of our tractor club, and she asked if I'd read it at our club Christmas dinner; of course I agreed to that.  Where would I get a more receptive audience for that poem than with a group of tractor-loving people?