Tucked In For The Night

I might have told you that about a year ago when I began new employment, I started on a self-directed health program.  Here's why.  I just turned 56.  Although I'm not on any medication, my doctor was telling me to watch my blood sugar.  The numbers had been increasing.  Despite us eating very healthy eating mainly things we grow on our little homestead, I've never met a sweet that I don't like.  Snacking on sweets was going to hurt me sooner rather than later if I didn't make a change.

I don't like lifting weights.  I don't have time to go to a gym and don't like running.  So what could I do?  I could walk.  I set a step goal of 10,000 steps a day.  That seemed simple enough.  So a year later, I hit my goal 99% of the time, going out at night and walking the perimeter of our 5 acres and have lost 20 pounds.  I listen to podcasts while I walk.  My favorites are: Art of Manliness podcast, Victor Davis Hanson podcast, and Jordan Peterson podcast.  

I also look up at the sky.  It is peaceful and serene.  At least once or twice a week I see shooting stars.  It's unfathomable to try to understand in my little pea brain that when I see a shooting star, I'm looking at something that happened many, many, many years ago.  But I don't just keep my head in the stars, I look around, too.  Tonight, I saw the cows sitting down and resting in the pasture.

After a full day of eating grass and hay, Rosie, Elsie, and LuLu are taking it easy.  As we discussed last night, Nick is gone.  Hopefully, all three of them are bred.  I was looking at them sitting peacefully in the pasture, I began to fast forward my thoughts 8 or 9 months from now.  Right now it is crisp and cool.  When the calves come, it will be hot, humid, and the landscape will be swarming with mosquitoes and deer flies.  I welcome the cool weather we're experiencing now.

I began to think about the possibility of having three more calves.  What would they be?  Bulls or heifers?  Heifers are nice because there is a demand for registered Jerseys.  More people are seeing the benefits of having a family milk cow.  We could sell the heifers.  However, bull calves would be fine, too.  Our deep freeze is almost empty.  Raising a bull calf for a year and a half and then sending him to slaughter would refill our stores of fresh meat.  We wouldn't complain about that either.

We will watch them closely for the next month to ensure they don't come back into heat, signaling that they weren't bred.  During the winter we keep them fed with hay and a little bit of sweet feed.  We supplement with some of the smaller sweet potatoes from the garden.  This weekend I'll be planting some turnips, too.  Toward the end of January and February, I like to pull up turnips and cut them up with a pocketknife and feed them to the cows.  They love turnips.  Me?  Not so much, but I love turnip greens.

Well, the podcast is over.  As I look down at my step counter, I'm at 11,348 steps.  Time to go in and get tucked in for the night, sort of like the cows.