I can't believe it's December 1st already! and an introduction to.......

Even with all the snow we have it just doesn't seem possible, where does the time go? We just finished up the last of our tomatoes and will begin cooking down pumpkins. Next thing I know it will be time to start our seedling*Sheeesh*  So much for a long winter's rest*wink*

 The greenhouse held up well under the snow, we did go out and push some to slide off from the inside but otherwise it slid off well on it's own. Now we have to dig the snow away from the sides this afternoon.
Below( next few pictures) you'll see our early Christmas gift! We'd like to introduce you to "Licorice"( my Dad picked out the name). A friend of ours called yesterday morning early and asked if we'd be up for another bottle calf. I said, " Joe, a calf in December?" He told us it was from a cow he'd purchased through the sale barn back in Sept. and they were all supposed to be "Open" heifers. Even though the mama cow was being a good mama, this little guy was struggling to suckle on her small teats and Joe didn't want to see him( BTW, Licorice is a bull calf) go down hill in the cold weather and they just don't have the time nor the inclination to care for a two day old calf. So he made a proposition we couldn't refuse and he delivered him around 10am. Poor little fella was cold and hungry, so we started him off with a 1/2 pint of warm calf replacer, with some colostrum( saved in the freezer from our dear old Bessie, my jersey cow who passed away a little over a year ago.)  He drank it so, so and then we bedded him down in a thick straw bed and pushed it up all around him, within minutes he's stopped shivering and was so.... sleepy.  Joe had given him a bottle( a full bottle, which was way, way to much for this little guy but....., so now he does have some pasty poop, which we'll clean up off his butt with warm soapy water and dry him off good this morning, after it warms up a bit. I dosed him at 8pm with some yogurt mixed with colostrum, and he really seemed to like it. 
The wind blew all night and I worried about Licorice, but when I took out his warm bottle( a pint with colostrum added) he got right up and was happy and hungry :o)  I think if we can keep the weather warmer for a few days, to help get him off to a good start he'll do just fine!  He's so cute and it's amazing how much coat( hair) he has, I guess the good Lord knows he needed a good thick coat of hair!  So this is a project for us girls to keep us out of trouble this winter*wink*  Mike thinks we made a good bargain.

 These were taken this morning and he is now 4 days old. Licorice is a Black Angus bull calf( soon to be a steer)

 This is a bit blurry, he was moving looking for his bottle.

"Button", our Dexter heifer wants to mother him and "Hoss" the other orphan Angus calf( now almost 7 months old) is acting like a wild man, so we housed Button and Hoss together last night, giving Licorice Hoss's stall.  We'll probably do this for a few weeks and see how Hoss settles down with Licorice, then the plan is to house them together, because Button is well... sort of a pig about feed and eats all her hay and then pushes Hoss aside and finishes his off too *sigh*

Life certainly is never dull here and we wouldn't have it any other way :o)

Blessings for your day.