Monday night was a long night. One of the belties went into labor around supper time. Since she is an older cow we expected no difficulties. When she hadn't yet calved later in the evening, we thought it was time to intervene. After getting her where she couldn't move around, we did a pelvic exam and found she had a small upside down calf. We pulled the calf and it clearly had been dead for several days. Because it was quite small, we were concerned that there might be another. We probed as far as we could reach and found nothing else. She is a large cow and apparently we couldn't reach far enough. I went to check her later and she had delivered another dead calf. They were both bull calves and lacked any of the typical beltie hair that is present at birth. We believe that they had been deceased for quite some time before she aborted.

Everything else went well and we left for our visit with Jim on Thursday. We drove his new to him Dodge diesel. Due to some airline fare quirk, we found it would be $300 cheaper to fly back to Erie, Pennsylvania rather than Syracuse. Erie is about 4 hours along the way to Iowa. Mary found a hotel near the airport that had shuttle bus service. We stayed at the hotel and saved the parking which was considerable.

You can imagine our surprise when we pulled into the hotel and saw that the eating/ drinking establishment next door shared its name with my college roommate and lakeside neighbor. We went over and watched some NCAA basketball and got some photos for him.

We made it to Iowa in time to take Jim out for dinner. On both Saturday and Sunday, we watched him in his lacrosse games. Somewhere along the line, I came down with what must be strep throat or something similar. I am just getting over it now and Mary and Jim have it as well. Apparently lots of folks around home have it. I'm glad to be getting rid of it. Every time I go to Iowa, I am impressed with how industrious the college students are. It would take a lot to convince me that their farm background hasn't been a real positive force in their lives.

With Spring, we have had lots of people calling inquiring about cattle. We are lining up farm visits for prospective cattle buyers. I firmly believe that if you are interested in our cattle that it is well worth your while to drove here and see our animals. I don't want to sell animals to anonymous buyers. I feel that it is important to know that the buyers can care for the cattle.

It has been damp and 40ish since we returned. Starting tomorrow, it is supposed to be in the 70's and sunny though the weekend. I checked my peas today and saw nothing. Maybe the upcoming warm weather will get them out of the ground. I am also about ready to plant some onion sets.

I have also arranged to buy two feeder pigs. We have an ideal location to raise them and it will be interesting. I'll bring them home in a few weeks when we can depend on the weather.

It is also time to start preparing our planting and tillage equipment. It won't be long before we are out on the land. The cattle have access to a small winter pasture and they already are finding some new grazing. This is the beginning of our busy season. We also expect several of the lowlines to begin calving. We hope for eighteen more calves this year.

As part of her semester in France and tour of contiguous Europe, Eileen is off to Sardinia for Easter. It is amazing how places you can fly cheaply to around Europe on Ryanair which is an Irish absolutely no frills airline.

I spoke to her today and mentioned that I had read about an underwater volcano between Sardinia and Italy, Mount Marsili. It is apparently poised to have an underwater Mount St. Helen's type eruption. This could lead to a massive tsunami in that area. I recommended that she be alert. Sometimes, you can be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Hopefully the volcano will remain dormant and she'll have a great weekend.