All I Want for Christmas

It may not look like much, but it's a work in progress. (OK, for those of you who are thinking I'm talking about Randy, that's just not very nice!)

He - and those flags - are showing where our new calving shed will be. He and Jake did a little dirt work before the crew shows up to build the 20- by 20-foot shed.

The old barn in the background is starting to show its age. Like a secretive woman, the barn isn't revealing its true age, but it has likely celebrated its Diamond Anniversary sheltering cattle and other animals.

And it is starting to show its age. Last spring, a couple of old barns in our neighborhood fell to the fury of a spring storm. The bow in our barn got deeper and the door blew off.

And we started thinking we might need to have a different facility available to shelter newborn calves and their mothers from the cold. So we spent an afternoon at the Kansas State Fair talking to building salesmen. Some people go to the fair to ride the Ferris wheel. Farmers go and spend money on machinery and outbuildings, I guess.

We rent the barn and the pasture, but we own the property just to the west, where the new calving shed will go.

Randy ordered fencing and gates from Stroberg's. (We also visited their display during the state fair.) In addition to the fencing, he ordered a walk-through gate for us humans. That's the most exciting part for me. During one of our cattle ventures last winter, I ended up with a bruise the size of a saucer, trying to climb over the fence.

Randy has one gate hung, but we'll have to wait on the rest until the shed is built. They'll also move my Christmas Gift of 2010, a calving pen with head gate, to the new shed.

Oh, wow! I guess the calving shed is my 2015 Christmas gift. Oh, honey, you shouldn't have! (Actually, yes, he should. He says it was my idea.)

I wish we were getting it for Christmas. The company was supposed to start construction this month. (It's one of the reasons we chose them.) Now, they say it will be January. Our heifers are due to start calving at the end of January, so let's hope the crew arrives January 4, their new scheduled time.

Otherwise, it will be a "bah humbug!"