Sunday, March 6

Good morning folks!!

It's a beautiful Sunday morning and the geese are flying overhead and honking!! Our Canadians are honking back, so it gets pretty noisy outside.

We got done smoking the 700 lbs. of deer bologna around 8 pm last night. The guys were here at 5:30 in the morning to start the fire. I think they had nine batches in the smoke house and they each took about 2 hours to smoke. It was Grand Central Station here at times. I think I counted 8 vehicles on the yard once. It was a fun day. It also helped that the temperature was almost at 60 and there was no wind. Perfect smoking weather. The guys went through lots of food, snacks and pop. They hauled all the lawn chairs to the smoke house and just gossiped and solved the worlds problems while they waited for another batch to get done. It's always lots of work for the 'cook', but he loves doing it. I think this is the most meat he's ever smoked at one time. There was even some elk and caribou bologna in there somewhere.

March came in like a lamb, so I expect that our nice weather will turn before the month is up. We are getting rather dry and could use some moisture. MaryE, are you getting any moisture at all?? Hope your lambing goes well.

DH found a couple of aborted calves in the cattle yard last week. We always rotate prairie hay and alfalfa to the cows, but there must have been a moldy spot in one of the alfalfa bales. This will make a cow abort her calf if she gets even a little bit of mold. The third trimester is touchy for cattle that way. Some guys feed moldy hay all the time and get by with it, but evidently our cows' systems can't take it. We try to stay away from anything that even looks funny, but sometimes it just happens. Hope the other calves are born ok. Some may be born really weak if their moms had any of that moldy stuff.

I'm getting ready to take seeds and starting material to my dads so he has something to do. He's pretty antsy to do something now that the weather is getting nice. It's hard to find things for him to do. He used to make lots of bird houses, but with his eyesight failing, I don't want him using the table saw anymore. I bought some 'gems' at the craft store for him to glue on to terra cotta pots for me, but that won't keep him busy for long. I see that some of my chairs legs are separating from the rest of the chair (probably from having several 250 lb. men sit in them yesterday) so maybe I will take those to him to have him glue. Good thing the set of 6 chairs only cost me $20 at a rummage sale. I used to have metal chairs on rollers, thinking those would last longer, but the rollers kept breaking under all that stress. I keep my antique wooden chairs upstairs now that I have learned that they and big men just don't go together. LOL

Well, I better get moving. I need to catch up with the housework since I didn't do much yesterday. Take care everyone.
Ruth