Schoonover Farm Blog

I have been getting ready for this day all week.  I hard boiled a bunch of eggs, and some of them were dyed.

Yesterday I took a British Baking zoom class called Bake with a Legend.  One of the recipes called for glacé or candied cherries.  I couldn’t find them in the local stores so I bought frozen sweet cherries and used this recipe to make them myself.  The recipes were for Howard’s Chocolate Cherry Hot Cross Buns & Calabrian-style Easter Nests.  Here is the class in action in our kitchen.

Here are Howard’s finished bakes.

And here are my hot cross buns (I struggle with piping),

and my Easter nests.

This morning I got up early getting things ready.  One of the tasks was to make a fruit salad.  The poultry got to enjoy the leftovers from this.

The stanchion worked well again, and the calf was able to nurse on both sides completely so that is a win.

I let the cross beaked hen out of her pen as her companion chicken had died.  We will put wetted food out for her in the chicken pen.  Hopefully this will work out for her.

We also put out the Easter eggs in the orchard this morning.  Fortunately we were blessed with amazing weather.  Can you see the eggs?

I got the rest of the food together which also included carrot cake, pickled eggs, and deviled eggs.

When the grandkids arrived, they wanted to meet the calf first.  Here is William petting him for the first time.

This is Jay, his mother, also petting him.

And William was able to feed him his electrolyte solution.  This may be his last bottle as his scours seem to be resolving.

Here is Thomas and Diana meeting him.  Everyone was enamored with him.  After a discussion, it was decided by William and Piper to name him Jameson.  It seems to fit.

Tom made London Broil, oven baked potatoes and steamed asparagus. Everything was really good in my opinion.

After eating there was the Easter egg hunt.

Then they got to got through their loot.

There was quad riding in the mud out back and another visit to the barn to pet Jameson.  The weather was perfect, and everyone seemed to have a great time.  Another Easter done, but this one without any drama, which is good.

P.S. I finished this book this evening.  It was more about theory in my mind rather than specific of Indigenous foods.  But I did learn a lot and have some information to follow up on.  It is a good book if American Indigenous foods are an interest to you as they are for me.

Farm life continues here.  I was able to start tomato seeds in the greenhouse finally as it warmed a little as well as plant peas and radishes in the garden.  Wally is supervising this.

Here is the bull calf yesterday morning.  He is a cutey.  He should be named tomorrow by the grandkids.  He developed scours so we had another emergency run to the feed store to get electrolyte solution which he has been taking well, in addition to the colostrum for the first 24 hour and then milk replacer.  He has been acting fine so that is good.

But we did notice yesterday that Summer, his mother, was getting engorged.  We didn’t want her to get mastitis so we risked ourselves to milk her again.  We got some nice milk from her.

But then Tom had the idea of building a stanchion for her so she, us and the calf could stay safe in this process.  He was looking at the llama stanchion which in the past we thought was unusable for this purpose.  But Tom moved it into the barn and worked on repurposing it into a cow sanction.

Meanwhile I moved the younger sheared sheep out of the barn onto the pasture.  They seem to like it.

This morning we got Summer into the stanchion which went fairly well.

Then we got the calf to nurse on her.  He was able to empty two teats but unable to do the other side.  Tom milked it, filtered and fed it to the calf in a bottle.  So pretty much a complete success.

We will keep this up and hopefully the calf will be able to nurse without the need for the stanchion.  The scours are getting better too.  So things are looking up.

The story actually begins last evening when we gave Wally some wet cat food.  She actually ate it, but Roscoe was upset he was not given any.

We did the chores this morning, and Mr. D. is still shivering.  So I put an old sweater on him and offered some extra food.  I really hope the temperatures improve soon!

I added fertilizer to our vegetable garden area.  I had taken down the tomato hot house structure too.  After lunch, I had a work meeting, and Tom had a dentist appointment.  And we both had some shopping to do after.  So we were going to meet back up at home, but I got a text that Summer was in labor.  I found out her water had broken.  So we hung out in the backyard so we could watch her.  Tom rototilled the vegetable garden and the hothouse soil.  I harvested the last of the carrots, onions and potatoes and planted some potatoes.  Here is our gorgeous rototilled garden.

Summer was nervous with us watching her so I moved the Arlo camera so we could watch remotely, and we headed into the house.  We check on her periodically.  She had been pushing for about 1.5 hours, and we were getting  nervous.  We have had to pull calves before including using a come-along on one and weren’t excited to do this again.  Then we saw one hoove then another. We kept watching remotely, and then suddenly there was a calf at around 6:30.  There was loud bellering so we ran quite quickly out there thinking the other cow was interfering.  We moved her into the barn but realized it was Summer who has hollering.  She did lick the calf so we were encouraged.

The sheep were concerned with all of the ruckus.

She initially seemed to be caring for him well.  Tim was able to identify testicles using binoculars.

But then when the calf tried to nurse she kicked it.

This kept happening, and then she started using her horns on it.  We tried to get the other cow to care for it but no luck.  We tied Summer in a barn pen and got the calf to nurse (with a lot of help).  Summer didn’t kick at it then and was actually licking him again, but when we let her free she immediate started using her horns on it again.  So we separated them, tied her back up, milked her colostrum and bottle fed it to the calf.  Fortunately he took it all well.

Then we made an emergency run to the feed store before they closed to buy some calf colostrum and milk replacer.  We had a late dinner.  I then went out to the barn to check on the animals.  The moon was dramatic.

The calf seemed OK in a pen by himself.  Initially he appeared to be dark chocolate brown, but as he is drying he is a light milk chocolate like his mama.  We are going to try to reunite them again tomorrow but do not have much hope. It is seeming like we will have. bottle baby.

We will leave it to the grandkids on Easter to name him.  One more calf to go with hopefully a less dramatic story.