Chapter 20

Thursday morning was full of surprises for me from the first moment I awoke. I could hear the muffled sound of a motor running steadily and it took me a few seconds to realise that it was the generator. That brought me to the realisation that the sound wasn't masked by the wind howling around the eves. On top of that the light coming in the window was actually much brighter than I'd expected. All of those impressions came to me in an instant and I wondered if the blizzard had blown itself out.

Then I felt Lisa-Marie shift in bed at my side and turned my head to say good morning. Only it wasn't Lisa-Marie who was lying beside me... It was Andy. Suddenly the night before came back to me and my mind whirled through a multitude of thoughts in an instant. I smiled though, after all I did like her a lot, maybe even loved her, at least as a friend, but she certainly wasn't Lisa-Marie. However my mind didn't stop there, it went back to the night before and I began to feel uneasy.

'Damn.' I thought to myself. 'Now what have you done, you idiot? You had sex with her and you may have just done it because she was there at the time you needed a woman. Are you proud of yourself? I hope you haven't done any irreparable damage, you horny asshole.'

"Having second thoughts about last night?" Andy's voice stunned me.

"Actually I was, but mostly I was wondering if I'd hurt you with what we did." I admitted, realising too late that from my words she might think I meant physically.

"I'm fine. Actually, I feel really good, but then I knew I could trust you not to hurt me in any way." She smiled. "However we should get up and get going, we slept in a bit late today. So if you're in a hurry for the bathroom, I can hold it for a bit, but not for too long."

"My, but you're the practical woman, aren't you." I had to grin, then I shifted to kiss her lightly on the forehead before jumping out of bed and dashing for the can.

At least I left her happy, she was giggling as I sprinted across the chilly floor. By the time I'd taken care of essentials and had gotten back to the bedroom, Andy was up, wearing a robe wrapped around her and slippers on her feet. The bed was even straightened up.

"What's this? Hiding out?" I waved an arm to include her robe and her slippers.

"I watched you dance around in bare feet and bare buns, but I'm not silly enough to try to be macho about being warm." She answered with another giggle as she ran to have her turn on the white throne.

I glanced at the clock and realised that we really had slept in. I was so accustomed to awakening at five in the morning or a little after that it made me feel guilty that I'd been lying in bed when the animals needed me to be there. It was almost seven thirty and I knew that the cow would be upset with us this morning. She should have been milked by now, so she'd be feeling uncomfortable with an overfull udder.

Dressing hurriedly, I ran downstairs, pausing to look out the window at the weather, then turned on the kitchen radio. It looked to me as if the storm had blown itself out, but if I could, I wanted to hear a weather forecast for confirmation of that hope. While I listened for a break in the country music in hopes of some form of weather news, I started the coffee maker, then grabbed the milk bucket. I set the bucket in the sink and turned on the hot water tap, forgetting that since the hot water tank worked on 220 volts, without hydro it wouldn't be working. Damn, and we didn't have any quick and easy way of heating water either.

"Well, the cow will have to suffer with being washed with lukewarm water, I guess." I complained to myself as I carried on getting things prepared to go outside.

By the time the coffee was perked, Andy was downstairs and saw me hurriedly moving to get ready to do the chores. She came dancing across the room to wrap me in a tight hug.

"Jeez, calm down." She laughed. "You'd think the way you were bouncing around that a deal worth a million bucks was on the line or something. You've got a farm to run, not a blinking bank! A few minutes one way or the other won't matter that much, besides you need something to eat if you plan on working outside in the cold."

I looked at her smiling face and had to grin. She was right. Instead of rushing to grab a cup and pour myself a coffee, I wrapped her in my arms, lifting her up and kissing her.

"Wow!" She giggled. "I should tell you off more often."

"No, you just need to remind me of the truth more often and not let me try to get ahead of myself." I set her back on the floor and spun her toward the cupboards, swatting her lightly on the bottom. "How about some breakfast, please? The toaster should work and I bought an electric frying pan the other day."

As Andy was cooking bacon and eggs and making toast, I stoked up the fire in the little heater and set the partly full bucket of warm water on the top of it. The weather forecast came on while I was doing that and I paused to listen. Basically they were telling everyone that the worst of the storm was past but that it might take a while for the crews to get the roads and services back in shape.

"As if we didn't know that." Andy commented with a laugh. "Now on that note, let's eat, then we can get some work done around this place."

We didn't have a leisurely meal, but we didn't rush ourselves either. Afterward, we rinsed the dishes off with cold water, then left them in the sink. I found an old canning kettle in the back room that we could fill with water and put on the top of the heater so we could wash up with warm water later. After that we finally dressed for the weather and went outside.

It was cold enough that the snow creaked underfoot, but without the biting wind, it felt fifteen or twenty degrees warmer than it had the day before. The weather was clear enough that the snow seemed bright to the eyes even though the sun wasn't shining and a glance at the clouds showed that they weren't scudding across the sky like they had been. For all intents and purposes it appeared that for once the weatherman was right and that was a huge relief. I certainly didn't want another day like the one before.

While Andy headed toward the barn, I detoured to the generator and checked the fuel level. At the rate it was using fuel the tank would probably last another night without a refill, but to be safe, I decided to fill it later in the day. On the off chance that the hydro crews had been able to repair the lines, I flipped the switch that ran hydro power through the test bulb, unfortunately I was hoping in vain, there was no reassuring light. Shrugging my shoulders, I turned my steps toward the barn and more pressing tasks.

Andy was already milking the cow by the time I entered the barn and she leaned over to look at me, grinning widely.

"The horses greeted me this morning, both of them." She crowed. "And I hope you have a second milk bucket. We're going to need it soon. The second cow looks like she's almost ready to calve."

"Aha, that's what that circle on Uncle Silas's calendar was for. I was wondering what was supposed to happen this week that was important enough for him to mark it down."

One glance at the cow in question and I postponed my other chores for a short while as I checked her over. Not only was her udder filling with milk, but her 'calf bed' had dropped and her vulva was swollen. I was almost positive that she was going to have her calf inside of hours and as far as I was concerned, I planned to be there when she did.

She'd obviously carried calves before and from the short notes on the two cows that Uncle Silas had made for his own reference, she'd handled calving easily, but I wasn't about to take any chances. She was the first animal to give birth since I'd inherited the farm, so I wanted to be sure that I'd be ready to help out if I was needed. Besides, in this weather there was no way in the world a veterinarian could get to the farm to help me out, if things went wrong for either her or the calf, I and Andy were the only help available.

As I stood at the cow's side with my hand on her back, simply checking out all the possible scenarios in my head so I could be prepared, I felt Andy move to my side and turned to look at her.

"You really do have a thing about pregnancy and birth, don't you?" She grinned up at me. "I thought perhaps Lisa-Marie was simply reassuring me before, but you really do get into it."

"Yeah, well it's the start of the make or break point of profits on a farm." I grinned back, giving her the standard college answer, right out of the book. "Without new births in your stock, your farm would simply wither and die."

"Oh, sure. You can pretend to be 'Mr Hard Hearted Farmer' all you want, but just remember that I was the woman who felt how careful you were with me last night." She sighed as she leaned against me. "You just plain love babies and young things."

"Eeh, some, I guess." I grinned and gave her a quick hug. "In this case though I was thinking that it's rather a pain in the ass for her to be calving right now. I'm a bit apprehensive about the fact that we can't even call a vet, let alone get him to come out here if something went wrong."

"Yeah, well losing either the cow or calf would be bad, but when it comes to that, I'm sure you know what you're doing and I've helped pull a calf before. It's mostly just hard bloody work."

"Hey, in this case I doubt that, this cow has calved before, so pulling the calf probably won't be needed. I'm more worried about any possible complications. What if the calf is in the wrong position? What if it's a breech birth with the hind legs first? What if it has a leg folded back and in the way, that sort of thing?" I shrugged my shoulders. "There wouldn't be much I could do about either of those things or a lot of others that could happen."

"There's really not much chance of those things though, is there?" Andy asked.

"No, not really, but when it happens getting a vet involved is usually the only option." I sighed deeply. "I want to be here when the calf is born, just in case. I've seen calves smothered because they didn't have the gunk over their noses cleared off right after they were born and they suffocated. Then too, as cold as it is right now, the calf needs to be dried off fairly quickly, so it doesn't catch pneumonia or anything. There are a hundred things that could go haywire after the birth actually happens and I want to be here to prevent them if I can."

"I can understand that." She nodded. "I'd like to be here too, but if we plan on doing that, I think we need to get everything else done first if we can. So what do we need to do with her, just in case she decides to rush things?"

"Well, I like cows to be standing free when they calve, so we need to move her into the pen beside the calves. Why don't I get it ready, while you milk the other cow? I'll get some extra bedding in the pen and some feed for her, then do the rest of the chores in here. As soon as you're done with the milking, you can give me a hand to move her over."

"Okay." She said and spun around to get busy.

As I readied the pen and went about the other chores, my mind was busy reviewing the various books and articles I'd studied at the college about what to do in case of various complications during a calving, so only half my mind was on the job. I'd done this sort of thing so often though that I could let habit guide my hands; I seemed to even be able to notice problems automatically. If there was a problem, I'd pay attention and either compensate for it or realise what was happening and come out of my fugue long enough to fix the problem. I was very careful when I allowed myself to fall into that frame of mind though, it could be dangerous in some situations.

However, that morning I was completely comfortable and safe. Because I was busy with my thoughts, it seemed to me as if hardly any time had passed before I finished the chores in the barn. When I turned to see how Andy was doing with the milking, she was stripping the cow out and looked up to smile at me.

"That worked out well." She chortled. "You would think we had everything timed to finish together."

"You hurried." I smiled. "Probably almost tore the poor cow's whole udder off."

"I did not!" She declared indignantly, then laughed aloud. "This time I didn't get kicked on my butt either."

She was still chuckling as she hung up the milk bucket near the door. "Now how do we handle our soon-to-be Mama?"

"Well, if I remember correctly, Uncle Silas trained his cows to lead when they were young. I was hoping we could do it that way. Of course we could just turn her loose and try to guide her to the new pen, but since cows tend to get so used to heading for the same stall each time, I doubt if that would work."

"Let's at least put a rope on her. Can you do a rope halter?"

"Of course." I snorted, grabbing a rope from a hook on the wall near the door.

I think it took longer to talk about moving the cow than it took to do it. She led perfectly and once she was in the pen, she instantly walked over to the manger and grabbed a bite of the alfalfa hay I'd put there for her.

"Well, that caps it." I chuckled. "I think she's been through this before."

"Either that or she's the calmest and most cooperative old cow that I've ever seen." Andy laughed. "I thought cows lost their appetite when they were ready to calve though?"

"That depends on the cow, but they usually won't eat much for a few hours before calving." I shrugged. "It looks to me like she'll be fine for a while. Since it's harder to separate when it's cold, why don't you take the milk into the house and do that? While you're there, in the back porch there's a bag of rags, could you check in it and see if you can find a couple of flannel rags, just in case we need them for drying off the calf? I'll go outside and look after the beef cattle, then hopefully I'll be able to come up and grab another coffee before anything happens here."

"Okay." She nodded and was going out the front door of the barn as I walked out the back.

After being in the barn for a while, it felt colder than before when I went outside. I moved through both of the cattle pens, chasing the cows to their feet, spreading a few more bales of fresh straw, clearing any snow from the feeders and checking the water bowls, but the cattle were having nothing to do with leaving the shelters. I knew better than to try to force them to get up and move, but knew that hunger and thirst would drive them to move eventually.

Having done what I could, I walked back to the barn and went inside. I hadn't been gone more than half an hour, but now there was a nice little heifer calf in the pen with the cow. She must have barely waited until I walked out the door before she calved. Now she was diligently licking it clean as the calf attempted to struggle to its feet.

I looked at the cow and laughed at my earlier worries, then let myself into the pen and used dry straw to help the cow clean up the calf. As I was doing that, the cow gave a long grunt and cleaned herself of her afterbirth. I scooped that up with a fork and tossed it into the wheelbarrow to dispose of later. When I turned back, the calf had found its feet and was nuzzling under its mother's belly in search of a feed of the colostrum rich milk in her swollen udder.

"You can feed him today, Momma Cow, but tomorrow he becomes a pail bunter." I laughed as I hung a pair of heat lamps overhead to give the two of them a bit of extra heat. "Now, I'm going to the house to brag to Andy about your new calf. I'll be back to check on you both later."

I detoured past the hydro pole on the way to the house on the off chance that the hydro had come on, but was disappointed again. However when I glanced to the west and checked the sky, my face lit up with a grin. There on the horizon was a chinook arch. I sighed happily. As cold as it was, just the sight of that arch made me feel warmer.

When I went inside, Andy was near the door and just putting on her boots to come outside again. I looked at her and grinned, not saying a word, then started to take my outdoor clothes off.

"What are you doing? Don't you need these rags in case the cow calves and we need to wipe it down? What's going on?" Andy asked quickly.

One look at her face convinced me that I'd better tell her the good news now.

"We won't need them. Everything is taken care of." I sighed deeply. "While I was feeding the beef cattle, the cow dropped her calf. I went back inside just in time to wipe it down with clean straw. It's on its feet, feeding already. Oh, and if you look out a window to the west, you'll see a chinook arch in the sky."