It’s a farmers life for us

Life on the farm, or more accurately, the ranch, moved on. We celebrated the new year by keeping an extra close eye on the calves, most especially our rolled-over victim, L5. Happily, his recovery was swift, and within a few days he was as fit as the rest.

By now we’d settled into a regular routine, with two or three calf walks on the ‘off’ days, punctuated by the major effort of feeding every third day. Jasper the dog was a constant companion, and always up for a “cow walk,” but soon Shamus the cat decided he wanted to be part of the daily action too, and started coming with us on our morning walks.

Shamus would even come out on the snowy days… although he didn’t really like it.

Our days revolved around cow walks, water checks, basic house maintenance, the occasional snow ploughing, and then the big feeding day every three sleeps. This was actually the fun day, because we got to use the tractor. As always, we took turns, and each got the same amount of time behind the wheel.

Although the calves all look the same, they each have their own personalities. It’s a bit dangerous letting yourself get to know them, because, well… 🥩. But we really did start to make connections with a few, especially the “M” group. M7, M3, M2, and most especially M9 would often come over to us and start to sniff and lick, which is apparently what cows do with those in the same group, or family. It was all rather touching, if a bit disgusting because cows are snotty, poopy, slobbery creatures.

In between cow and house duties I found time to do some food processing and dehydration in preparation for the coming sailing season . And Ann kept busy with her video exercise class, along with plenty of cross-country skiing, which Jasper was always eager to help with.

Our time indoors was mostly spent being entertained by the two critters who lived with us. We’re sure going to miss them both:

The remaining time passed relatively uneventfully. No new (major) problems occurred, and all too soon we were picking up Les & Chris (the homeowners) at the airport and saying our goodbyes. One of the harder parts about this life is the departures, but with each one of those comes a new (or renewed) arrival.

And so it is here where we move from one farm house to another; in this case back to Cochrane, AB. This is the small hobby farm we have sat for before. We only have 10 animals to care for here: three cats, one little dog, two parrots, two donkeys and two horses. Should be easy 😉.