From time to time we take mini-vacations from the farm. We don’t have the opportunity to get away for longer stretches very often. I went to visit our son in California last September for six days. I wanted my husband to come along, too, but it just didn’t work out. Corn silage was being harvested; it’s always something. The list of “How could we?” is always longer than the list of “Why shouldn’t we?”
A few times every baseball season, a resourceful fellow from Leopolis organizes a bus to a Brewers game. Transportation, ticket to the game, tailgate party before the game and supper on the way home are all included in the price per person.
It’s fantastic. We’ve gone other years and always had fun, so we went again this year, catching the last one offered this season. I don’t go so much for the game itself, just for the chance to relax away from the farm. We secured a milker and our daughter handled my chores. Good to go!
The bus left from the Leopolis ball diamond, dropping us off at Miller Park. We enjoyed a great meal of brats, hamburgers, potato salad, baked beans, fresh fruit salad, amazing homemade desserts baked by this guy’s talented daughter-in-law, and all the pop, beer or water one cared to consume. Halfway home, supper at a wayside was leftovers from this great meal.
On the drive down to Milwaukee we played sheepshead with a couple of fellas, using a cooler in the aisle as our table. We met new friends, caught up with acquaintances and had a lovely time. I promised a couple of my new bus pals that I’d write a story about the day before we left. Of course, there’s always some kind of drama when we want to get off the farm!
The day before we left we put up 25 acres of hay in between morning and night chores. I was on the tractor from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., and when I crawled out I still felt like I was sitting in the tractor cab. I was beat. As I drove into the yard, husband met me coming around the barnyard with the skidsteer. My heart sank. Now what?
“Cow’s having twins, come on, she needs help!” He doesn’t talk much when there’s trouble, and I don’t ask many questions. It just goes over easier that way.
Following him down with the skidsteer we came upon the mother cow, below the hill, of course. She had given birth to one calf and my husband had carted that one up to the barn in between loads. That one was doing fine. The next time my husband had checked the cow he noticed there was another foot coming. The mother let us tend to her as my husband donned a plastic sleeve and proceeded to explore within, exclaiming to me, “It’s coming backwards!” This meant he could feel the twin’s feet, and they were the back feet. It’s no wonder the poor momma couldn’t birth this one on her own!
Trying to wrap birthing chains around a pair of slippery back feet inside a mother cow is awkward and excruciatingly painful. Her muscles contract and she is powerful, even when she’s down and had just given birth to one. My husband was using both hands, trying to get that chain on. Finally he managed to wrap them around the hocks and pulled the chain taunt, handing it to me so he could secure a rope around the chain. He handed me a section and got ready to pull. I was having none of that. I was exhausted, he was close.
“Let’s wrap the rope around the skidsteer and let it do the work!” I suggested. My husband looked at me in disbelief. “Huh?”
“We’re not going to pull this one out by ourselves after the day we put in! I’ll go slowly. Trust me.” I talked him into it.
Getting in the skidsteer, I prayed for even strength and a calm spirit. First I maneuvered the skidsteer so I was parallel with the cow’s backside. I didn’t want an awkward angle to interfere with the gentle extraction of her calf. Slowly, ever so slowly, with my husband guiding the rope attached to the birthing chain, I backed the skidsteer up.
Because she was fully dilated from birthing one calf already, the other one came fairly easily, even if it was backward. Getting past the back hips was the trickiest part, but after that, it slid out along with a gush of afterbirth. Quickly, to stimulate the calf, my husband poked open her nostrils with a small twig, pumped her front leg but unfortunately, to no avail. This one didn’t make it.
The momma survived, we had one healthy heifer calf; that was all considered a blessing. We gathered the supplies and headed up the hill to unload the last load and start evening chores.
The break from birthing cows and harvesting hay and barn chores was welcome. The Brewers lost but they managed to make it interesting. I enjoyed every bit of it, the food, the journey, the time spent with my husband away from the farm, and all the delightful conversation along with meeting new friends. I found out there’s a bus leaving from Waupaca to go to a Packers game at Cincinnati in September. “Hey, honey, …?”
(“A cheerful heart is good medicine.” Proverbs 17:22)
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