Soon.

Snow is lightly falling outside and I am sitting at the kitchen table, typing away. The kitchen table is, incidentally, our office, meeting room, mail sorting desk, research table, and the place where we sometimes eat meals.  It's a multi-purpose table. This is where decisions are made, folks. Sometimes over a plate of spaghetti.


A recent photo of Jeff feeding the group of first and second-time calvers.
They eat hay, but also the supplement from that bag Jeff is pouring.

Jeff has been ill lately and I am hoping I don't come down with it, too. I find that part of me thinks it would be good news if he has the flu because I got a flu shot this fall and would therefore be safe, right? All the same, it's no fun when a member of the house is sick. I hope he gets better quickly.

With Jeff under the weather, I went out today and checked on the heifers out in the corral at our place. These animals will be bred for the first time later this spring and hopefully will calve in a year. It amazes me how fast they grow, and how fast they EAT! They are teenagers, I guess... if we were to compare to human growth and development anyway. They go through hay quicker than I always think they should. They had eaten the outside of a bale Jeff fed a few days ago, so I grabbed the pitch fork and loosened another ring of grass off the bale.  Harvey likes to go nose to nose with the heifers, who are still curious enough not to stomp and snort him away right away.

Every day we are nearing the beginning of calving season. The official "due date" for the herd is March 1, but we are getting within the range of possibility for a calf to be born almost any day.  If there were a birth in the next week to two weeks, it would still be early, but not outside the realm of possibility. Several of our neighbors who have cows have seen their first calves in the past week. Of course, their respective "due dates" may be earlier than ours.

I wonder sometimes if the cows know or understand what is happening to them. Do the older ones remember from previous years? Do the first-time calvers understand what is happening at all? How much is sentiment versus instinct?

On a more somber note, it seems as though the death angel has passed over some of our friends and neighbors recently. Our landlord and good friend lost his sister a few days ago, funeral on Monday. Earlier today, as well, we attended a particularly sad service.  A neighboring family we are good friends with had a son about Jeff's age who went to Blue Sky high school (back then, it was Hingham and Rudyard together to form Blue Sky).  Jeff had known him since boyhood.  He and his wife got married about the same time Jeff and I did.  The young man lost his wife to complications from a brain aneurism, just a few weeks ago.  She was 28. Same age as me, and in perfect health. It is unfathomable to me that she could be gone, and the grief her husband must be left with... I simply can't imagine.

We are in the dead of winter, and I find myself looking forward to calving more than I have in previous years. The newborn animals bring such joy and hope. The first healthy calf born will be not only the first sign of spring, but a new leaf, a renewed promise that there is so much good in the world.