It’s a Beautiful Day in The Neighborhood

Well, pretty to look at. Not so pleasant to be in. We woke to fog and hoarfrost, the world was white. The temps hovered around zero with a wind chill much lower.

My ever working husband had to go in to his real job so I was feeding. The Goblin Child who is totally not into feeding this year got to go play at the cousins house but 8 was stuck with me. On his way to work and to drop the child off my chauffeur husband also dropped us off at the quanset to get the feed truck. I was excited to find it already running and warm for us.

As I pulled up to load the feed truck I realized that it had no brakes. Its breaks aren’t the best anyway so it can be a little hard to tell the difference but definitely no breaks. The pens we feed are on a hill. We have to come down the hill. It was looking like feeding might be exciting.

On the first load of feed we found water running down the road. The float had come off the tank at the very top of the hill and the water ran through every pen on its path down the hill. So the calves were wadding in water to reach the feed bunks, and slipping on ice when they weren’t fetlock deep in water. We have highs in the low twenties or lower predicted as far as we can see into the future. The ice isn’t going anywhere. The father in law went and got a bungee cord and we tied up the, the what? I should know what that’s called, the thingy to shut the water off.

We made it down the hill with out being run away with. The cows all came to drink right away so the water got down to where it could be fixed. Things were looking good. Except that I was looking to see where the water level was in the tank instead of watching where I was going and hit the corner of the end feed bunk with the tires of the feed truck. Not good. In the cold it broke maybe even worse than it would have other wise and knocked the whole corner off. Oops.