Off To a New Start

One week into the new year and things have settled down nicely. As much as we loved to see the whole family and visit over the holidays, I cannot say that I haven't enjoyed the peace and quiet we've had since everyone returned to their own homes - and I have no doubts that they feel the same way too. It was great while it lasted, but it's wonderful to get back to normal too.

Our household has been lucky to dodge a miserable cold that has been making its rounds. Glen had a touch of it before Christmas and I seem to be fighting the sniffles, but it's nothing compared to what my sister Wendy had. I don't know how I've managed to escape it - one of my fellow employees has been having quite the time of it too. Guess I'll just count my blessings (and knock on wood).

It's been back to work for me this week, and Glen has spent most of the week out on the CAT, too. The oilfield work has slowed down over the holiday, but with so little snow cover, the conditions for clearing land are excellent. Before we were married Glen did a lot of this. That was back in the day when farmers were after as many acres as they could get. They wanted to cultivate clear across every field with no trees to go around and no brush to trap snow (so that the spring melt would be slower). We all had this ideal of grain farming on big, effecient tracts of land. It just might have worked, too, if grain prices were anywhere near reasonable when stacked against the cost of putting a crop in.

We've gone through our share of growing pains, and in the process have had to re-evaluate what we are doing here on the farm. There may be farmers out there who are making a go of it at straight grain farming, we never discovered the secret, though. But, we weren't prepared to give up our farm either. It has family ties for Glen, but more than that, we liked living here for ourselves, not just because of the history of the place.

Cattle seems to have been the answer for us ( although we wondered at out timing when BSE showed up just months after we acquired our first cows.) Glen loves working with the animals and it's something we can do on the land that we own. The irony of it all is - we could sure use more trees on the place. 30 years ago some dumb farmer pushed them all over and burned them. Now, if he wants to shelter his cows he has to build them an expensive barn. He sure has spent some time these past few years muttering about how dumb that guy was. And, every time he goes to clear land for other farmers he tells them what he thinks before he starts - just in case they might think better of their plans. Hasn't worked so far.

Glen has been doing chores in the dark all week because of work, but he got home before sundown today due to a breakdown. It will soon be time to start watching the cows for signs of calving. None of ours should be coming until April, but we bought a dozen new animals at the auction and you never know about them. They are all supposed to be checked before the sale and marked for the month they are due, but we've discovered that this method isn't to be trusted 100%. Glen is already suspicious of one of them. Whenever they do start coming is likely when winter will hit again. The only real winter we've had so far was in November and early December. At the moment we have hardly any snow and the temperatures are almost shirt-sleeve mild. You just know it's got end sometime.