Family Photos

All photos in this post are by Demiurge Photography, Manhattan, KS

You know the worst thing about family photos?

They look just like me.

I'm kidding - sort of. 

 

I love taking photos, as evidenced by the thousands on my computer hard drive. 

I'm not as fond of being on the other side of the lens. 

 

However,  Jill arranged for a family photo shoot this fall, and we really appreciated being included. I love getting new photos of everyone else. I'm just not as wild about the process for myself. 

But as one of my favorite sayings goes, "It is what it is."

The weather didn't cooperate for the first try. But our second attempt was a perfect fall day. And I'm thankful for the updates to the photo frames scattered all around my house.

Isn't this one fun? It took several attempts to get everyone in the air and looking at the camera at the same time.

But I love all the more traditional poses as well. 

Kinley is 8 (almost 9). Brooke is 6.

I'll leave the rest of us unlabeled.

 

"Photography takes an instant out of time, altering life by holding it still." 

Dorothy Lange

 

 

Thanksgiving Outing

Beef: It's what for dinner.

That's more than a marketing slogan here on The County Line. Because we raise beef and that's what's in our freezer, it's most often on the table. 

But Thanksgiving was going to be turkey for two, with all the trimmings. 

And then we had beef for dinner anyway - sort of. A phone call from a neighbor revealed that we had cattle out. 

Grrrr! We were having beef for dinner in a different way.

Randy hopped on the 4-wheeler. I had a warmer job. I used the pickup to block from the road. Randy says he almost got stuck several times in the snow-saturated fields, but he managed to work his way out of the predicament. 

 

Eventually, they were back in the corral. Mission accomplished.

And Randy worked on fixing fence.

The turkey kept roasting while we chased cattle. And after I got back to the house and slid the dressing into the oven and turned the burner on for the potatoes, we only ate an hour late.

It's probably just as well that Covid-19 kept us at home this year. (I keep trying to find the silver linings, OK?)

Mud and the Blue Iris: Thanksgiving Ponderings

 

This image on a friend's Facebook page was one of the first things I saw when I unplugged my phone from the charger Monday morning. Irises are a favorite, so even though it's a flower more associated with May than November, it caught my eye. 

And then there was the poem:

It doesn't have to be

the blue iris,

it could be weeds in a vacant lot,

or a few small stones;

just pay attention

then patch a few words together

and don't try to make them elaborate,

this isn't a contest but the doorway into thanks,

and a silence in which another voice may speak.

From Mary Oliver's book of poems, Thirst

It was a dreary, overcast, chilly morning to begin this week of Thanksgiving. And for many of us, Thanksgiving will look much different this year. 

November 2018

From two years ago

Instead of gathering with family, I'll be making turkey and dressing for two. We canceled a trip to Topeka and Kansas City. The last few years, we've celebrated Thanksgiving on Friday at Jill's and then have done a little Black Friday shopping in the afternoon - long after the die-hard early bird fans were back home for an afternoon nap after being up at dark o'thirty.

The extended family Christmas Eve get-together at my parents has already been canceled for this year. And while it was definitely the thing to do, I am already dreading its absence. In my 63 years on earth, this will be my first time to miss this traditional family gathering that also celebrates my mom's birthday. 

I've been furiously looking for silver linings.

"Well, I guess I'll get to go to my church's Christmas Eve service," I originally told myself in a pep talk. (For 40 years, it's been a challenge to gracefully decline participation in this special event - especially when Randy and I say "yes" to pretty much any church task.)

But then came the letter from the Great Plains UMC Bishop, recommending a move back to online worship services. Reading between the lines, it seemed the Bishop was recommending we celebrate Advent and Christmas at home - just like we did Lent and Easter eight months ago. 

Last weekend, as worship chair, I canceled our annual Hanging of the Greens to decorate the church for the holidays.

I texted another faithful family to make sure they saw the email cancellation notice. And the "little girl" I used to direct in the Joyful Noise Choir who is now a mom with children of her own texted, "I understand, but it makes me sad."

I texted back an emphatic, "Me too!!" complete with too many exclamation points.

So for Thanksgiving Sunday, I wrapped Christmas presents and listened to the fabulous organist at Wichita's First UMC play "Now Thank We All Our God" and "We Gather Together" instead of playing them on piano myself. Now that I'm the regular pianist at our church, I'd ordered a seasonal book and was practicing solo arrangements for our Stafford UMC service. 

Oh well, I sighed.

The Mary Oliver poem was just another "nudge" in my quest for silver linings. The night before, I'd finished the book Everything Beautiful in Its Time: Seasons of Love and Loss by Jenna Bush Hager. I told both Jill and my sister that it was the right read for this week of Thanksgiving. 

I must admit I'm a little jealous of celebrities who seem to have a Willy-Wonka-like "golden ticket" to publishing books. I'm sure her celebrity got her foot in the door of William Morrow Publishing, but if I'm honest, she writes well, and I enjoyed the book. In fact, I'd recommend it.

The impetus for the book was losing three grandparents in just a year's span. That grief is different from what most of us are feeling right now. But the loss of these hallmarks of our family life - like Thanksgivings around a family table or Christmas in a farm shed - are grief, too. 

In the book, Jenna Bush Hager detailed some of her grandparents' "rules for living." These are just a few from her grandpa, former President George H.W. Bush:

• Don't get down when your life takes a bad turn.
• Don't blame others for your setbacks.
• When things go well, always give credit to others.
• Don't be afraid to shed a tear when your heart is broken or because a friend is hurting.

And from her non-famous grandparents - her mom's parents Jenna and Harold Welch - this one stood out to me:

• Get out of bed to go look at the stars - and always, always wish upon the first star you see.

So the poem about the blue iris - and most especially the weeds and the small stones - seemed to just continue to reiterate the message. It was a "God wink," as another friend calls it.

 

Even though I'd consciously thought about the words I was reading, it sometimes seems my perspective is as hazy as the view on an overcast day, with the drab days of fall reflected through a dirty feed truck window and fractured by a broken rearview mirror.

The way out of the pessimistic point of view can be as helter-skelter as a country road after a rainy weekend.

 

But it's all about perspective. That rainy, overcast sky dropped nearly 3/4-inch of rain over the weekend. 

It gave the young wheat crop a small shot in the arm even if it made for a few mud puddles while feeding. 

 

It's a lot easier to find the silver lining in migrating whooping cranes  ...

 

... who "breakfasted" for a couple of weeks in a field not far from our house ...

... or in sunset skies 

But in this week of Thanksgiving, I hope to notice them all - blue irises, mud and all. 

 Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours. 

Handiwork by my late mother-in-law, Marie

For another look at how cloudy skies produce the best silver linings and sunrise skies, check out this Thanksgiving post from 2013.

If Only It Worked for Us

 "Here's a timely blog topic," Dr. Bruce said, as he put a medicine bottle down on the table.

And there it was: Coronavirus Vaccine.

No, Dr. Bruce didn't pirate a shipment of human coronavirus vaccine. 

This was the bovine version. The entire label said "Bovine Rotovirus-Coronavirus Vaccine." Coronavirus in cattle causes diarrhea. Of course, that symptom appears on the ubiquitous internet Covid-19 charts for humans. (But let's get real: What symptoms aren't present on those charts?)

But this vaccine was administered to calves born last winter here on the County Line. The visit from Dr. Bruce was the cattleman's version of a "well-child check," during which the calves were vaccinated in a similar fashion as taking your infants to the pediatrician.

Early on in the pandemic, some enterprising(?) person posted a photo meme of a similar bottle. It suggested that news providers were being dishonest about the coronavirus being new, in order to cause alarm and make the public purchase protective equipment. 

A coronavirus vaccine, you say?

 

In truth, the bovine coronavirus, which has existed for years, is not the same as the new strain of coronavirus behind this year's global outbreak in humans. The strain of the human coronavirus causing our human world to change so dramatically is called SARS-CoV-2. 

I couldn't find when the bovine vaccine was first available, but even back in a 2003 report, the bovine version was being used in cattle operations.

(It kind of looks like this calf could use a vaccine for its runny nose, but, hopefully, that got covered, too, in all the shots given to each calf and cow that went through the working chute.) 

So, no, I don't have breaking news on the human vaccine front here on the Stafford/Reno County line in rural Kansas. But after three separate visits from Dr. Bruce, our cattle herd is protected with a vaccine for their version of coronavirus. 

Dr. Bruce did go high-tech with some of the preg-checks he did on our cows. The fall visit from the vet includes Dr. Bruce determining whether or not our cows will deliver 80-pound "bundles of joy" this coming winter.

During one of the visits, Dr. Bruce was testing out an ultrasound machine for bovines. Normally, he uses a manual exam to determine whether or not the cow is pregnant and estimate how "far along" she is. 

At one visit, he used his newfangled machine, which he was testing to see if he wanted to purchase it for his veterinary practice.

He knows I'm interested in seeing things for myself. (I wasn't the only one: Randy wanted to look at the screen, too.)

Unfortunately, I didn't discover until later that my photo attempt of the screen instead revealed my windswept profile.

Blog fail! So, of course, I Googled to find an image.

Image from https://www.yourvet.co.nz

And just like the human version, I need labels to explain what I'm looking at. But Dr. Bruce knows what he's doing. He would tell me how "far along" the mama cow was - usually between 4 to 6 months - and I'd write it down on the chart. 

For a couple of cows, he thought the ultrasound was inconclusive, so he reverted to the tried-and-true palpation method. That particular day, the manual exam revealed that they were all pregnant: The fetuses were just in a position making it difficult to see on the ultrasound screen.

So why is determining pregnancy in our beef cattle a management tool for the County Line and other beef producers?

The identification of non-pregnant animals is essential if you wish to decrease numbers and remove these animals from your herd. We took the open (non-pregnant) cows to the Pratt sale barn. That way, we're not spending money to feed and care for cows who are not building our herd. 

Having Dr. Bruce estimate how far along each mother is in her pregnancy is also important. For first-time mothers (heifers), we try to synchronize their reproductive cycles so that calving of this group happens in a "condensed" time. When it's calving time, we check the heifers much more frequently, since they are more likely to have difficulty during labor. 

One of the cows wasn't bred during her first cycle, so she was only 2 months along, rather than the 4-6 months we'd expect. That may mean the cow would calve after we move cattle back to summer pasture. Many times, Randy also culls those cows from the herd, too, preferring to have all the mothers calve in a similar time frame. 

After the vet visits, we hauled the pregnant cows to stalks, where they will graze this fall. We'll move them closer to home after they eat "the leftovers" and as they approach calving time.

While the mamas have to dine on their own, we provide meal delivery of "take out" to the feeder calves, the babies who were born last winter.

I hear meal delivery is a big thing during the pandemic.

Out here in the boondocks, that only works if you're bovine or feline.