Welcoming Hector

Yesterday was bright and sunny. Early in the morning as I went into the barn to release the four animals we keep in at night -- Matilda and her heifer calf Amy, and Polly and her yearling calf Chuck -- I was greeted with this sight:

Amy was in late-stage labor. I knew her time was close -- her udder had been bagging up -- which is one of the reasons I wanted to keep her in the barn at night.

So the fact that she was having her calf didn't surprise me. What DID surprise me was the calf's position -- the back legs were emerging first. This was all wrong.

I don't know if this is what's termed "breach," but one thing was certain: calves aren't supposed to be born this way.

I slammed around, yanking the other livestock out of the barn and into the driveway to give Amy room. I threw hay into the feeders at maximum speed to feed the rest of the herd. Then I sped back to the barn and saw, to my surprise, that Amy had already dropped the calf (I honestly expected to have to pull it). But the calf had slithered down a small embankment under the barn door into the mud outside (and we're still in the stage where it's DEEP mud).

I ran into the house, threw on boots, ran back to the barn, and scooped up the wet calf. His -- for yes, it's a boy -- right front leg was bent funny and I worried it was broken.

Amy got right to work cleaning him off.

Our friend GG named him Hector, after a character in The Iliad.

It took Hector an unusually long time to try standing, and I was anxious because I wasn't sure about that leg.

Of course he did the usual baby crash-and-burn as he wobbled to his feet, but thankfully his leg wasn't broken.

A little dirty on the face, but isn't he beautiful?

The rest of the herd knew something was up, and milled about the muddy corral, bellowing for an answer.

Amy rested for awhile after her ordeal, but not for long. She still hadn't passed the placenta, and I'm sure she was cramping.

The chickens came in to peck at anything they could...

...but Amy, still hormonally deranged, chased them away.

At long last Amy passed the placenta...

...which she then proceeded to eat. It's a revolting thing to watch, but it's very instinctive for cows, doubtless a survival strategy.

Amy is very loving and attentive. Sometimes she would just lay there...

...and stare at her first-born, as if unable to believe he was real.

No question about it, he's darling.

The hours went by and little Hector got stronger on his feet.

But as the afternoon wore on, gradually we noticed something was wrong with little Hector.

First, it seemed his front legs were unnaturally bent, but we hoped it was merely a result of his traumatic birth and would eventually straighten out. In fact, this has been the case and his legs are nice and straight now.

Second, and far more serious, Hector isn't nursing. It's not that Amy isn't making herself available, or that he can't reach the udder. It's just that he shows absolutely no interest in nursing.

So Don and I defrosted some of the first-day colostrum we had frozen from when Amy herself was born, when Matilda's udder was so massive that little Amy couldn't nurse. We had that life-giving stuff poised and waiting for when we needed it -- and how grateful I am for that.

Starting yesterday afternoon, we heated the colostrum to body temperature, straddled the calf, and forced the nipple into his mouth. Unlike when Amy suddenly "got it," little Hector has shown very little initiative or interest in nourishment.

Over the last 36 hours, I've managed to get perhaps a pint and a half into him, a few ounces at a time, but it's a struggle. Not that Hector himself is struggling -- in fact, he's quite passive -- but it's a struggle to get him to swallow anything.

Perhaps the breach birth has left this little boy brain-damaged... I don't know. I do know that, while he gets on his feet and moves around, he shows no interest in Amy's udder or the bottle. Nor does he have any of the happy little skippy-hops of a healthy newborn.

At this point I would say his prospects are not very good.

In contrast to yesterday, today it poured buckets the blessed day long. Amy was restless, being cooped up, but of course we weren't about to release a sick little baby into the muck and mire and downpour. I cleaned the barn around them and made sure he was as warm and comfortable as possible. Amy continues to be attentive to her little son.

So I'm not giving up. I'm stubborn. As long as Hector allows me to get some nourishment into him, I'll keep trying.

Ouch

Make a note: bare feet and immovable objects do not mix.

My little toe is either broken or badly sprained as of last night. Fortunately my shoe tends to act like a cast and keeps it fairly immobile.

I'm walking, even if I'm limping a bit.

I suppose it beats a broken foot or ankle....

Hi! I'm Rat Fink Barbie!

The world is getting creepier and creepier.

Here's a new version of Barbie that interacts with children. "The tech-enhanced version of the classic toy will be equipped with a microphone so that it can pick up the audio from what kids are saying. The words will then be transmitted back to a cloud server where the speech will be recorded and processed so Barbie can respond."

So let me get this straight. Parents are introducing a doll into their home that records conversations. These conversations are then transmitted to a cloud server and the recorded speech is then "processed" so Barbie can respond.

It goes without saying these recordings won't be limited to childish prattle. And how will Barbie respond if the recorded conversation involves, say, personal financial matters? Relationship issues within the family? (After all, who knows what Barbie considers child abuse.) What about political conversations? Parental arguments? Parental intimacy, for that matter?

And what happens when Mattel's archived conversations are subpoenaed by the courts for whatever might have been said in the privacy of one's own home?

As one commenter put it: "Introducing the new... NSA Barbie!!! Tell her your family’s deepest and darkest secrets to Barbie and she will listen... 'Does your daddy own guns? Do your parents vote republican? Do they eat meat or hunt?'"

Another commenter referred to this as Rat Fink Barbie, which is vastly more apt.

The scope of potential abuse of this new toy boggles the mind. Only a stupid fool would have one of these dolls in their homes.

Heating people, not places

Here's an article I came across awhile ago, the title of which riveted me: Heating People, Not Places.

The article says, "These days, we provide thermal comfort in winter by heating the entire volume of air in a room or building. In earlier times, our forebear's concept of heating was more localized: heating people, not places."

This, in a nutshell, summarizes what I've always loved about our woodstove: it's a point source for heat. When winter comes and the house is chilly, we stand by the woodstove until we're warm and then can go about our tasks.

Because of the advent of central heating, it became popular to heat rooms, not people. People spent more and more money attempting to keep an entire house to a single comfortable temperature. If you were chilly despite all that warm air, you had no option but to raise the thermometer or don extra clothes... and often then, you were still chilly.

I remember during my childhood, my parent's house had central heating. Most modern homes did (and still do). During the oil embargo of the 1970s, heating bills hit my parents hard. In an attempt to save money, they began using the fireplace more often. Everyone knows how inefficient fireplaces are, but it did provide one benefit: if someone was cold, they could sit on the hearth or prop up their feet or hold out their hands... and they got warmer.

In other words, it was a point-source for heat. It was heating people, not places.

Nowadays, without central heating, there are parts of our house that get or stay chilly during the winter. Yet we can't complain we're cold, because whenever we want, we can go stand by the stove and warm up. Even in the summer or other time the stove isn't lit, we will sometimes unthinkingly stand in front of it while conversing with someone, just out of habit.

One time I was explaining the benefits of a woodstove to a friend who has central heating. I said the stove didn't heat the entire house uniformly, but instead acted as a point source for heat. She looked at me, entirely puzzled. "But that would mean you'd have to go stand next to it to get warm," she observed.

"Yes. And then when you're warm, you go about your business until you need to get warm again."

I thought it was an advantage, but she didn't see it that way, and we each concluded the heating system of the other person was inefficient.

I believe I stay warmer during the winter now, with our humble woodstove, than I did when I was a kid, with central heating. Or maybe it's my imagination.

Either way, I prefer to heat people, not places. As we get our wood cookstove installed (which will be far more centrally located than our current woodstove), we may even be able to heat places a little bit too.

Happy Pi Day

Happy Pi Day!

Pi, as you know, is the mathematical ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter.

While pi is a constant, it's also infinite.

3.14159265358979323846...

My kids get a kick out of listening to The Pi Song.

For convenience pi is usually shortened to 3.14, hence Pi Day -- March 14 -- get it? Get it?

And of course, this year is special because it brings pi to the next two decimal places: 3.1415 (March 14, 2015). Way cool, eh?

Come to find out -- no surprise, I suppose -- that there's a website dedicated to Pi Day.

Yeah I know, that's what I get for growing up in a family of nerds...

"Take a picture! She's reading a book!"

Older Daughter had her two lower wisdom teeth pulled yesterday. She's doing fine during her recovery (and I certainly won't be posting any photos!) but I wanted to relate something interesting that happened while I was waiting for her in the oral surgeon's waiting room.

The two women working behind the counter in the office asked me to stay in the waiting room during Older Daughter's procedure (as opposed to leaving to do doing errands). So I fetched my book and read while she was in the hot seat, having her teeth pulled.

All of a sudden one of the office women half-jokingly said to the other, "Take a picture! She's reading a book!"

I lowered my book and saw them looking at me. "Most people are on their smart phones while they're waiting," one of the women explained. "No one ever reads anymore. We've been thinking of stopping our magazine subscriptions since no one ever reads them."

I found their observation interesting. They're clearly in a position to see many people waiting for friends or relatives -- and apparently hardly anyone ever reads a book or magazine any more.

Sad.

First step for the wood cookstove

Some of you have been wondering about the status of our wood cookstove and whether or not we'd installed it.

In a word, no. Not yet. We've been blitzed with tankard orders and needed to get things done. Besides, we want to install the stove properly, and the infrastructure will take a little time.

So the stove has been patiently waiting in the barn.

But we wanted to move it into the house in order to see how it fits in its appointed space. The stove weighs about 450 lbs. Don used the tractor's tine attachments to lift it out of the barn.

To get it into the house undamaged, we put an old blanket on top so nothing would scratch, then put ratchet straps around the stove.

These straps were designed to anchor vehicles, so they're huge. We bundled the long ends and rubber-banded them so they wouldn't dangle and get caught under the tractor tires.

We put two straps around the stove, then used a third strap and looped it around the lower straps so the tractor could lift and dangle the stove.

You'll notice it's still bolted to the pallet. The reason for lifting the stove is we have porch steps to get it over, as well as a low porch roof to get it under.

Don carefully maneuvered the stove over the steps and through the doorway. Notice the low beam on the porch he had to avoid.

Then he lowered the stove to the floor and I took the straps off the tines. The stove is now in the house.

We manhandled the stove off the entry platform onto a furniture mover. (We couldn't use the furniture mover in the driveway because it won't move on gravel.) The house was a mess with tracked-in mud, shoved-aside furniture, and other evidence of a heavy lifting job.

We're not ready to install the stove yet, but with it in the house we can start measuring how large a platform to build, etc. We could also assemble the various parts it came with.

It comes with a small seven-gallon water tank that affixes to the back of the stove.

That's as far as we've gotten so far. As I said, we've had lots of tankard orders and other commitments that have pushed the priority down on installing the stove. But I still can't wait to start using it!

Let's all stare at the refrigerator

Along the theme of technological overkill, here's the latest piece of weirdness to come out of technophile-land: internet-connected refrigerators.

I guess this is nothing new. The article notes, "You can actually buy a WiFi fridge already, if you really want to. Samsung sells an internet-connected fridge for $3,599. It says that it opens up 'a world of interactive communication and entertainment.'"

Your refrigerator opens up a world of interactive communication and entertainment... with what? Your condiments? Last night's leftover meatloaf? You can't walk a few feet into the living room and sit down at your computer or television if you want "communication and entertainment"?

The article also says internet/fridge lust started as far back as 1999 with this article.

C'mon, folks -- our society is "wired" enough as it is. Do we really need internet access and a screen on the refrigerator? I mean, what do they expect us to do? Pull the sofa into the kitchen and watch a movie on the refrigerator? How lame is that?

Meanwhile, you know what I covet? An old-fashioned ice box.

I seriously do. I saw one in a local antique store a few years ago and, even though it was pricey, I'm kicking myself that we didn't buy it. And get this, it didn't even have an internet connection.