"Track Record"

Calving time is always intense.

By the middle of March, when the worst bite of winter has passed, the bulls and the female "mellankalvar" (heifers that were born the previous year), have to be moved out of their winter stalls in the small animal barn,

to the "gated community" out in the open air 

of the new doorless hay barn.

There they have enough shelter and deep,  fresh, straw in their pens to give them warmth and protection that is more than adequate in the still brisk Spring air.

 Their departure to the great outdoors makes it possible for us to power wash that area of the barn and scrub up all the necessary facilities to make room for the mothers who will be having their babies within a few weeks. 

This year we had done everything we could think of to be prepared but we got hit with an 
unexpected glitch 
that we never could have foreseen.

Normally the process goes like this: 

The mother has her baby in the soft, clean straw in the birthing stall and the two of them stay together by themselves for five days.  During that time the mother feeds her baby and takes care of it.

Then it's time for the baby to be outfitted with an identification eartag.

(SUPER IMPORTANT!)

 The ear tags are the system that allows us to keep track of which calf has come from which mother. That birth record must be submitted to the government since we have pure-bred animals.

 Once it is safely tagged, the baby is taken into a calf box where it is taught to drink milk from a bottle.  For the next five days it will be fed  it's mother's milk from the bottle,  and have access to  fresh water and hay. 

Finally, when it can drink from the bottle well enough it goes to a larger pen with the other new baby calves who have also graduated through the calf-box training process.  

We call that larger pen "Play Group",

 where the calves will continue for eight more weeks to be bottle fed until it is time to go out into the field for the summer.

When the baby goes to the calf box, the mother goes back to the main barn and into the milking line. 

 

We have learned that "5" is the magic number for both mother and baby. 

 If they are separated earlier than that the mother cries and so does her calf, but if they stay together for five full days, they both seem to make the transition just fine.

This year, with the calving in full swing, we discovered that the stash of government-issued ear tags that we had in the drawer of the big storage cabinet of the ladugårdsporten (entry to the barn), were...

SHEEP TAGS!

This was very bad news....After #119, we ran out of CALF TAGS completely. 

 When we called to get the next numbered sequence of tags from the government control office they said,

"Sure...we can have them to you in about three weeks"!

We made a desperate attempt to keep track on the chalkboard in the milkroom.....not working.

Meantime, the untagged calves were adding up in Play Group at an alarming rate and we were beginning to panic.


We tried giving them descriptive names like "Full-Dip" (see the one that looks like it's entire ear was dipped in ink?)  or "Half-Dip" (front and center), or even "Bambi" (that would be the one in the back that is brown and white). 

But there were just too many!

Pappa's good idea in action.

It was Pappa who came up with the idea of taking a close-up picture of each one of them and writing the date of birth, mother's identification number, gender, etc. on the back.  

Brilliant. 

When the tags finally arrived Gustav and Lauren went to work and while she was feeding bottles to one group, Gustav was tagging the others.

It was such a blessing that we had the pictures with all the information.
   We never would have been able to remember without them.

Maxie always says, 

"There is no problem on the farm that can't be solved",

and maybe this proves that he's right.

Look closely at the tag numbers on those fluffy calf ears and you'll see they are.. 

All Done!

"Pouring SALT, 
(Oh wait! - I mean..)  
SUGAR, 
on the Wounds"

Right around the time that Lauren came,  Gustav, to his great delight, became the proud owner of a new
l-o-n-g-b-o-a-r-d.! 

We tried to snap pictures of him speeding along with the wind plastering his hair back from the sheer  force  generated by riding this new and wonderful item,
 but no......
the only shots we could ever  manage were of the multiple wounds he inflicted on himself in his attempts to master the instrument.

The amount of cream, rubs,  gauze bandages,  saunas, and sympathy was  reaching epic proportions, but somehow it didn't seem to be enough.  After a while we weren't sure how to comfort him anymore - each day seemed to bring a new scrape or graze or bruise.

But Lauren knew how.

With her kind heart and deep belief in the old adage

"the way to a banged-up teenage boy's heart is through his stomach",

she baked and cooked up a storm on Gustav's (and the rest of the family's) behalf.  

And she was a formidable force herself in that respect!

Pictured above is a Princesstårta, one of the classics of Swedish baking.

Not only did she make the "from scratch" cake with it's rounded top draped in bright green marzipan, but she  hand-fashioned the pink marzipan flowers that decorated it.


It was deluxe! 

And guess who was first in line to dig in?
You got it....(notice vestiges of wounds on lower forearm).

 She made cream-filled, fruity masterpieces, she made super frothy smoothies,

but her pièce de résistance was unquestionably,

  

The Swedish Pinocchio Cake.

She made so many of them we lost count and every single one was vacuumed up by the family in record time.

A light meringue-y top and bottom housed a luscious billow of sweetened whipped cream in the middle and toasted almonds crunched up the top. 

Flake-A-Riffic!

We loved it all, but even more we loved her kindness and sweetness as she worked away on the treats every day, even with all the other responsibilities she shouldered with us on the farm. 

It is still such a happy memory.

"Our Cup Runneth Over!"

This Spring, Summer and Fall on the farm has been like no other. 
 We never could have imagined the enormous progress we would make and how having the wwoofers and members of our family here would "fast forward" our efforts to beautify and complete the farm.

The coming posts will chronicle the whirlwind that was May to October and in the process we hope you will come to know our dear friends, feel the miracles that took place, and rejoice with us in the blessings that came to us as a family.  

Gustav and Lauren Haddad creating the new perennial flower bed.

The early days of May were cold and wet but they brought us our first-ever wwoofer from the U.S. and she was anything but chilly!  Warm-hearted and willing to try anything, this cute girl who had two degrees from NYU under her belt already, was as fun as she was beautiful.

She and Gustav addressed the formidable task of creating a new perennial flower bed at the front end of the vegetable garden near the storstuga. We wanted to bring the heritage peonies, miniature purple iris plants,  and dazzling yellow lilies that had been down by the pump house up to where they could bloom for all to see at the entry to the farm, but we worried that they might not survive the move. Hand carried from their ancestral home in the far north of Sweden, they had been nursed along for four years and had only barely bloomed the previous season.

Gustav decided to do a trial run in the transplanting department with the six lagging rhubarb plants that had been isolated in a patch of grass by the red currant bushes instead of being over lined up in "rhubarb row" that runs along the side of the weaving house.  Of course we knew that rhubarb could survive just about anything and still live, but he figured it would give him an idea of what the soil was like and how to deal with the root balls in the best way.

And it worked. 

Moated and watered profusely, within just a few days the plants had taken hold and began to send out strong stems with their ruffled leaves that promised enough cobblers, pies and saft syrup to last through the coming year and beyond.

 Spurred on by his success, he measured out the area for the new bed, calculated where the plants should be placed, and cut the sod.  Our clay filled soil needed a fair number of turns with the rototiller to loosen it up enough, and then it was time to bring the first peony.

 It seemed to go OK...lots of soil around it and gentle handling.

Before we knew it, he and Lauren had all of them dug up and into the bucket on the front of the tractor, then down to the new bed where the they were snuggled into the waiting holes, flooded with water and filled in.

It was so slick!

What had started out as a blustery, windy morning (look at how Lauren is dressed in the first photo), turned into mild and almost balmy afternoon.

It was perfect, a good job done and we were filled with hope. 

And did they make it?

  This picture was taken twelve days later when the first buds on the iris plants appeared. 

In fact they bloomed so profusely that we took some of the leftovers and put them in the ground in yet another new bed, beefed up with some yellow daisies.

 And here's a close-up of that test-run rhubarb plant, flourishing complete with dandelions!

(We're on a roll...)

But for the

 final triumph......

This picture was taken just over a month later. The irises had bloomed beautifully and then the buds on the peonies began to appear. 

Only a few days later we saw the lilies begin to swell at the ends of the stems. 

We were so excited and felt overwhelmed with happiness to see each flower arrive...so healthy, so sturdy and such a beautiful display.

It was better than we ever could have hoped.

 It was a miracle!

(..and there were more to come.)