Chore time...

It's time to do the chores this afternoon.  We need to check on the heifers every so often.  They are due to have their baby calves just any day.  In fact, we had one calf born last night -- the first of the season.  He's a cutie pie with spotted eyes.  His mother likes him.  They're staying in the corral under the lean-to for now. 

 Each afternoon I throw out the scraps from the bucket I keep under the sink, and the chickens have a feast.  Sometimes the barnyard cats join them.  Bottoms up, girls!

 There were just ten eggs in the nests today.  Most days I get a dozen or 14 eggs.  Since there are some old hens in the mix, they don't lay each day like the younger ones do. 

The menfolk cleaned out the barn today withe the tractor and left it to air out all afternoon.  The heifers are brought into the barn each evening, and we check them through the night to see if there are any problems with the heifers calving or to find baby calves.  The barn gets pretty dirty after a couple nights so cleaning the barn becomes a regular chore during heifer calving.  After the old straw and manure is hauled out, we roll out a straw bale, get our pitchforks, and start tossing straw around to bed the barn floor.

Doesn't this look like a comfy bed of straw for tired cows to sleep on?  From another favorite book of mine, here's a little wisdom on chores from Little Heathens.  Have you read it?  If you love books about growing up on the farm, you'll like this one.

Though certain work was usually thought of as a man's work, on our farm, everyone, male, female, and kids lent a hand to get the job done.  Women, if circumstances required, could be counted on to help load hay into the haymow, shock oats or wheat, and done a corn-husker and work gloves to handpick a field of corn that had become too rain-soaked to accommodate the heavy McCormick Deering mechanical picker.  The same was true of "women's work."  There were times when men helped women can meat, assisted in an extra-heavy wash, lent a hand at making apple or plum butter, and took a turn at the churn.  When work needed to be done, it didn't matter whether the  worker wore pants or a skirt.  

~Little Heathens:  Hard Times and High Spirits on an Iowa Farm During the Great Depression  by Mildred Armstrong Kalish

"...and make it your ambition to lead a quiet life and attend to your own business and work with your hands..."  ~I Thessalonians 4:11