First things first - THANK YOU MOM!! For all you do for our family and our farm...and for being the glue that holds everything together through thick and thin!
Mother's Day on the farm is usually celebrated by filling the seed drill, moving fresh calves and their moms to new pasture, checking calving cows or any number of spring time chores. The month of May is a busy one for our farm with seeding and calving happening at the same time. This means that taking a day off for Mother's Day rarely happens.
It's a good thing Nora enjoys the farm as much as she does and checking calving cows or working in the garden is just as good as taking the day off.
Some years we make our own Mother's Day when the farm gets too busy on real Mother's Day. We still like to take a day with Nora to crop tour and cow tour and take some time as a family (her #1 request) - some years this plan works better than others. So this year we decided to wait a week to celebrate when Cara was home for the long weekend.
One of our cows had different plans and added some excitement to Mother's Day. On her mid afternoon check Nora found a cow and her red heifer calf out in the pasture. She was a brand new baby. Nora looked a bit closer and realized the cow was still in labour! A few minutes later she had a second baby - a black heifer calf! And just to make things a bit sweeter, the cow likes them both!
Sometimes cows either don't have enough milk for both calves or they only want one. In that case we either have another cow that lost her baby adopt one of the twins or we have to headgate the cow twice daily to make sure the second twin gets enough to eat. But this cow gets five gold stars as a momma and she's been no trouble. We did bring her closer to the house to keep an eye on her in case she had any problems.
Meet Betty and Veronica!
They've claimed the entire yard as their playground and it's only a matter of days now until we're chasing them out of the flower beds. But they are pretty cute and so entertaining to watch!
We waited until the long weekend to celebrate Mother's Day round two. Well over half the cows are calved, all the cash crop is seeded and Cara is home! Since we were wrapped up in the field we were able to take some time to crop tour and see the first few fields of wheat coming out of the ground. We are blessed to be able to work together on our family farm and it's always a treat to slow down for a day and appreciate what's around us.
We finished off the day with a steak supper - and don't think we made Nora eat hotdogs on her real Mother's Day! Even though it was busy we had a delicious roast - cooked on the grill to shorten the amount of cooking time so it fit into our busy schedule. Check out the recipe here.
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