Just lately I’ve been sleeping through my alarm clock in the morning. My husband looks at me when I tumble into the barn as he’s more than half done milking, wondering what’s up. I get at my chores and because I don’t have as much work as he does, and if I hurry, which I hate, I am just about done with my work in time to wash up milkers when he’s done milking.
One day my daughter and I were shopping at a really nice clothing store. As the clerk was checking out our purchases, there was an annoying sound just behind her. It kept up and kept up, and my daughter and I glanced at each other, eyebrows knit together in bewilderment.
Leaning in toward my girl, I hissed, “Goodness, this clerk needs to do something about that noise!”
After a little while I couldn’t stand it anymore. I turned to the clerk and sternly said, “Listen. If you can’t shut that clattering off, we will take our business elsewhere!” My daughter looked at me, astonished. She has been raised to always show respect for others and here her own mother was being blatantly rude.
“Oh, oh! I’m so sorry!” The clerk stammered. Turning to grab a small square board, shestarted nailing it to the wall, trying desperately to cover the hole behind her where the noise was apparently coming from.
It did nothing to stop the racket. Annoyed, I turned on my heel and abruptly left the store, my daughter following, red-faced. All the way out she was scolding me for being bad- mannered.
Soon it felt like I was rising from the depth of an ocean. Fighting my way to the surface, I came to realize I was in my bed and I was dreaming and it was my own alarm clock’s “BEEP” “BEEP” “BEEP” “BEEP” that was causing that annoying racket! I laid there for a few seconds, giggling.
I used that as an excuse for showing up late for work that morning. For some reason hubby didn’t think it was as funny as I did. Perhaps because lately, it’s been happening more often than not! Is it because I’m getting older and I can’t keep up with all the work? I find I have no other excuse.
Getting to the barn late or not, the work is there waiting. The other morning a cow was freshening during morning milking. She had her calf just as I had finished washing up milkers. My husband carted the newborn around in front of the momma and she started licking it with her sandpaper tongue, head to tail; the perfect natural stimulant.
Before coming in for breakfast, we got her little corner pen ready with a layer of clean, fresh straw and my husband tucked in the calf. Later, after breakfast as we worked through our mid-morning chores, we checked on momma and baby and both were doing fine. The mother had even cleaned (which means delivered the afterbirth), was chewing her cud and seemingly on her way to recovering nicely from postpartum.
The first thing my husband did as he walked back into the barn for late afternoon chores was check on the new mother. To his dismay and total disbelief, he found she had given birth to a second calf, and it was stillborn. He discovered it in the gutter behind the mother, dead. We do not know why. Sometimes it can’t be explained. The first calf was born approximately six hours before the second one. We had no clue that the cow was pregnant with twins. This was something we had not encountered before, in all the years we had been farming: twin calves born that far apart.
The bit of good news is that the surviving calf is doing well, eating and growing, and jumping around in its little pen. The mother bounced back and is holding her own in the milk production line.
Now if I can just get out to the barn on time to get my morning chores done. … I had a dream I was looking for the barn and couldn’t find it. Wonder if he’d believe that one?
(“And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through Him.” Colossians 3:17)
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