Not exactly the look I was going for...

Well, I was going to post my pictures and write about this evil spring storm that's blowing through, but I got a CF error message on my camera. The camera was quite insistant that I change the card, and even though I took it out and put it back in several times ( mistakenly thinking I could trick the camera), it still won't work. It's a pretty smart camera. I'm not getting anything by the EOS, I can tell you that.

So, I decided I'd try to find an image for "blizzard", and lo and behold, this is what I got! I'm 82 miles from the nearest DQ, mind you, so sitting here typing, looking at the picture is almost painful. Angus would say, "Hice cream? ummm...OKAY!", which means, "I'd like somma that, and it doesn't matter what you think, I already okayed it!"

Wayland, Vern and I spent all afternoon yesterday bringing cows in closer to the barns and shelter, and sorting the ones we thought might calve to keep in the pens by the barn. It's that time of year when they ALL look 6 hours away from dropping their calf, so our "In" pen was markedly larger than the "Bye" pen. And one of the "In" cows did, indeed, calve about 20 minutes after sorting. The cows hate all this nonsense, but there's not much cover on the prairie, and with the 3-6 inches of predicted snow, there's 30-40 mph wind! (In one of the pictures on the stubborn camera, you can see the snow blowing completely sideways. ) That's no good for wet baby calves.

Maggie and I fed the bum calf in the barn. Well, not exactly a bum, since her mother is laying there, too. But the cow is so sick she can't feed the calf, so it's been getting bottle fed. It was so much fun to share that experience with my daughter, since that was my favorite thing when I was a kid. When we got done, I asked her what she thought about it and she offhandedly said, "It was alright. But I REALLY like feeding bum lambs better." AND when queried as to her preference of cows, instead of black Angus, she chose purple cows. I'm afraid her ranching career may be a shaky proposition, and we should look into other vocations when the time comes to choose.

And today, the cows are calving with all their might. Wayland and I have talked about how they seem to be more likely to calve when the barometric pressure drops, and there's weather. It appears to be true, to the grief of ranchers everywhere.

I'm going to get busy, here, washing everything I can, because I don't think we'll have power much longer. I'm completely astounded it has stayed on this long!

(And despite being completely technologically impaired, I do know what to do with the CF card, I just don't have the means to fix it right now. I'm just saying that so I won't have a whole lot of helpful tech comments on the fridge door. Just tell me what's going on in your igloo, today.)