I almost made a big mistake

Tuesday a fellow who owns the nearest dairy texted me asking if I was in the market for a Holstein bull calf or two.  I asked him the price, and he said this week only, he'd take $100 apiece. 

When we butchered our last two bobby calves, I swore off cattle forever.  It's costly, by the time you raise them and feed them, but I like cows so much it used to be worth it to me for the pleasure I got out of them.  So on hearing the bargain price he was asking, I decided to talk to my husband.  I was thinking maybe I'd just have them for pets, something to graze in the pasture again.  For two days I was mentally getting ready.  I talked to Cliff and he said if that's what I wanted to do, he'd do what he had to do.  

I called MFA to find out the price of milk replacer.  Wow!  Fifty bucks for a bag that would only last one calf for three weeks, and I was wanting two calves.  That's another $200 spent at least, and I prefer to bottle feed them longer than that.  We no longer have haying equipment, and most decent grass hay is $7 for a small bale.  Winter is coming:  Would I enjoy mixing the milk replacer with warm water morning and evening and going out in the cold to feed the babies?  What about keeping them in drinking water after they're weaned?  

I finally realized I wanted the calves, but I didn't want to do all that work and worrying again.  It would make a lot of work for Cliff to mess with, too: going after hay somewhere, putting it up in the barn, fixing a place for the calves while they're young.  And while they're on the bottle, we couldn't go anywhere and stay overnight.  The grandson could bottle-feed them for a day or two, but that wouldn't be much fun for him since he often leaves for work at 4 A.M.   Oh well, I had my day with milking Jersey cows and bottle-feeding calves.  It's time to let it go.

Yesterday morning when Gabe and I went walking, Blue-the-cat decided to follow us, as he sometimes does.  However, he made the decision to stay in the woods about halfway through our walk.  He's done this before, and usually is back at the house before the evening feeding time.  Once in awhile he fails to show up, and I go where I last saw him and call him out of the woods.  He wasn't here at suppertime, or even breakfast this morning.  While I do often have worries about him being eaten by coyotes, I was fairly sure he was back there someplace, so Gabe and I walked back to where we'd left him almost 24 hours earlier.  As we got near that place, I began calling, "Blue, kitty kitty kitty!"  It wasn't long before I heard him from across the canyon, meowing his loudest.  He was ready to be delivered.  Each time I'd call his name, he'd meow; soon we met him, coming our way.  When he's home, he meows at a whisper, but he knows when to get loud.  I picked him up and carried him for awhile, with him rubbing his head against my jawline, neck, and face and purring loudly.  Back at the house he ate ravenously, then looked through the window to let me know he wanted in the house.  I'm positive he knows the way home from back of the place; I think he just likes to make me worry.  

Who needs calves when you have a dog and a cat to spoil?

Now he's resting from his grueling time in the wild.

 

Success!

I do believe the guys got things fixed yesterday!  They finally found the real problem, which wasn't with the actual pump or with an O-ring, but with the plumbing on the pipe that brings the water up to our level and sends it to our homes... ours and the grandson's.  At the very top of the pipe through which the water travels to get to us, which attaches to the pump a hundred feet below at the bottom of the well. The fitting at the top of said pipe had actually eroded a tunnel where water could escape.  Here it is in my husband's hand, next to the replacement fitting:

 The guys couldn't find a fitting that size in the nearest towns, so they had to go to Blue Springs, where they were told there were no fittings of that size available; then the guy waiting on them remembered there had been some fittings returned.  Thank goodness, one of those was the right size.  

This being the last you'll hear about the well problems until some new disaster occurs, I took a picture of the hole in the ground where our old well is.  It still holds the box where they turn the pump off when they're working on it.  Also a tank that makes pressure to lift the water up to us.  Once in awhile it gets "water-logged", but I won't explain all that boring stuff.  It isn't a big problem, and could be totally fixed by buying a new pressure tank.

As for the huge leak that started near the barn later in the day Monday, Cliff can't imagine why that happened at the same time they were working on the well.  I think that after the water had been turned off for hours that day and Arick turned it back on, the lines bled back some of the water in them and had gotten air in them that compressed and caused what was already a small leak in a cracked fitting into a gusher, but my husband isn't so sure... and what do I know about this, really?  Nothing.  Anyhow, it gave them two separate problems to solve instead of one.  I have told Cliff for a long time that I thought we had a leak someplace, because the light that lets us know when the pump is running was coming on too often.  Sometimes when Arick (the grandson) wasn't at home, and Cliff and I hadn't been doing any flushing or hand-washing, I'd look out and see the light on.  But as in other situations, I have learned to shut up about such things; after all, I'm not the one who has to repair them.

Now, on to happier things.

When we went to Iowa on Labor Day weekend and came home, Mama Kitty wasn't here; she often seems to disappear when we're gone, and I often announce her death prematurely; I think she gets mad at us for leaving and goes away to pout.  The cats always get fed while we're gone, thanks to the grandson.  But this time she came back not looking well and throwing up her food every time she ate.  I babied her and soaked the food for her, but she was only showing up about once a day to eat and the rest of the time I didn't even see her around.

Well, she's back to normal for a 13-year-old, outside cat.  She hangs around the porches much of the day, waiting for me to pet her.  And yesterday, I noticed she was back in the tree-climbing business.

Grooming herself

"What are YOU looking at?"

The longer she lives, the more I appreciate this wise old mama cat.