Great Day

If I could pick the weather for the rest of summer, today had the weather I would pick.  We had sun, mid 70's and 60% humidity which was a nice change.  We decided not to cut any more hay until after tomorrow, partly because it is Sunday and partly because we have rain in the forecast for tomorrow.  The weather people claim we will have warm and dry weather the rest of the week so we are counting on that to finally get our hay and pastures done.  It was a quiet farming day otherwise.  I spent the day out with friends and Bruce spent the day doing what he loves to do, digging in the garden.  He is a farmer to the core but also a gardener when he has time.  Today he was getting an area ready to plant raspberries.  This summer he is also hoping to enjoy a project he started a couple years ago.  There was a very old apple tree  on our property that was starting to die. It had been his grandmothers and he decided to take cuttings from that tree and graft them to a couple trees both here and at our other place.  The first year he pinched all the blossoms off  so the plant energy would go into healing these new branches into the tree but this year he has a few apples growing.  There aren't very many but he is excited about the success of his new hobby.

I made the mistake of thinking too much while I was feeding calves.  It crossed my mind how beautiful the day was.  I also thought how nice it was to have no special needs cows or calves and how smoothly milking and feeding has been going lately.  I also thought how nice it was that we hadn't broken anything lately.  Bruce started carrying the milkers into the washing sink and realized the cooler had turned off.  Given the fact it never turns off that quickly we knew that was the first sign of trouble.  The 2nd sign was the temperature guage said the milk was 32 degrees.  The tank is set to cool the milk down to 38.  Bruce took the thermometer we use to check the hot water and found that the actual milk temperature was 60.  He called our equipment dealer got some information on things to check.  They determined that the sensor isn't working right but Bruce was able to get it to cool the milk enough that it will be OK over night so the good news is the service call can wait until tomorrow.  Bruce had mentioned at supper time that we would be on track to get in early tonight.  I guess we should know better!