Anxiety

This weekend marks the 35th anniversary of my introduction to this thing called farming. By this point the "firsts" become more rare and the "rarely's" happen randomly.  It is 30 years ago that we had an odd form of pneumonia come into the herd in which we lost a few cows, salvaged a few and in the end had treated 22 cows (1/3 of the herd) with IVs twice daily for as long as 7 days each.  During those days we had 2 vets and Bruce all running IVs, dumped hundreds of pounds of milk and had our first vet bill over $1000 when $200 was considered high.  At the time we were on a monthly herd health program and all the animals were current on their vaccines.  Weird stuff happens sometimes.  We have enjoyed high milk prices and survived the lows, although the volatility the last few years along with ever increasing costs has changed this business and the outlook of farming.  We have seen amazing things and have been frustrated to tears.  After the events of the last couple weeks there is a level of anxiety each morning just walking into the barn.  We have endured worse and this farm has a 130 year history of existence.  Bruce has always been good at saying "next year will be different".  All I can say is I am hoping to have more days writing about doing just the routine stuff!!!  Enough already!!  : )

Today was one of those days.  We did the routine stuff.  Bruce had an appointment in town and was gone part of the day.  We ended up with about 6 inches of wet snow from yesterdays storm.  Today much of it has settled and there is plenty of water running down the driveway that takes you by surprise when you step through what looks like solid snow on top.  The cool weather continues to make the pastures and lawn grow slowly.  All this moisture will be good for them.  Tonight there is only 1 special needs cow.  There are no heifers that I would be afraid to milk myself.  It was a quiet day and we liked it!