June 7, 2007

do believe it will be an interesting day...

4:30 am

I get a call from Mary to tell me her husband and daughter have arrived and the hatching eggs are here. I go and get my truck out of our barnyard and as I come down our driveway, I see "Daisy" and her calf, who had come home and are standing in the middle of the road from at least 3 miles where we last saw her 2 days ago.. I feverishly pitch hay and call the names of all the cows (who aren't here) and hope "Daisy" will come up the driveway. Nope.. she dekes into the neighbor's field which is not 100% fenced. I am already planning... for the later mornings events. I move a dog, and start scheming.  On the way to Mary's I see a huge black bear laying in a field, close enough I can see his eyes. I am not convinced it was "VW".

5:00 am

I unpack all the eggs and installed 50 heritage turkey eggs, 24 Chantecler eggs and 56 barnyard cross eggs to fill the incubator. Each has their own shelf. But the 3 possible Chocolate turkey eggs are on the shelf with the Chantecler eggs. I have leg bands ready and will stay up to watch everyone hatch and leg band everyone as soon as they are out of the egg. Thank you Margaret and Bruce for such a wonderful packing and labeling jobs. The eggs made the trip wonderfully. I will send hatching reports.

5:42am

Heading out now to do any fence repairs; thinking on where to cut the fence to make it easier for "Daisy" and her calf to get into the front pasture, rather than through a gate, up and around the fence, miss the garden and into the front pasture. I have 10-12 people I can call for this roundup project. Basically we need people for a walking living fence. I fed the sled dogs to keep them quiet with a bunch of meat to make them too full to bark.

Keep your fingers crossed for us and if you know where we live, park a few hundred yards down on each side of our driveway to keep her our way and not back out onto bushlands. The gong show should start to commence around 8 am. I am hoping for slow, easy and not a problem, but I can see events running amuck. Are you sure you wanna homestead?

7:24am

Waiting for people to arrive. Amy fell back asleep. I just got back in from fixing and cutting fence. I hope this plan works. Starting to rain. I think I need a nap this afternoon.

11:27 am

We got 1o people out there looking for them and we spread out and basically did a grid search. No "Daisy", but we saw a moose and her calf and 3 deer. Later the boys found what they thought was our calf and it fell down the cliff. They went running after it and then they got to it, same colour, same size,.. weird head. They caught the moose calf and carried her back up the hill.

Three of us went back into the top corner nearest our fence and found "Daisy" and the calf. Off they went with us yelling to the others and in hot pursuit. Our plan went according to plan until "Daisy" went through Monica and got on the road. I stole Amy's car and raced "Daisy" down the road to cut her off from the cut block. I got her pushed past there and tried to get her to another ranch and then finally she did not go to the ranch I wanted, but did go to a small farm and I got out and shut the gate then announced to the owner we were in his yard.

I went back home, 3 miles away and told the others what happened and what was needed. The calf hit the fence and we tackled her and hauled her off to the truck. "Daisy" has started swinging horns by now. She became agitated enough she jumped the fence into the man's cow pasture and met up with his bunch. He has 3 bulls and I quipped that I need to pay him bull fees now. He said no worries and I can leave her there for a few days to let her calm down. Mary and Amy took the calf home and she is in a dry warm stall. We will try again later to give her more "Crystal" milk from the baby bottle. She has a split lip, but otherwise she is fine!! I was really worried about her running so much. "Daisy" will never be our dairy cow and she will be lucky if she lives past calving season next year. She will be shipped.

We are now in the house, some of us went home.. some of us are in borrowed clothing, drinking peppermint tea, organic chocolate chips (Amy and I), some have had baths, the boys are eating breakfast.