Generations Come and Generations Go

One of my buddies called me yesterday. He bottle feeds dairy steers, and I asked him how much a day-old Jersey bull calf is selling for these days. “Fifty dollars,” he said. Talk about inflation–I remember five years ago when you could get Jersey bull calves for five dollars. Back then, Jersey calves rivaled only goldfish in affordability and ability to keel over and our barn was more or less a triage unit–we worked on whichever Jersey was scouring the worst. 

Sometimes I miss those days, and I actually thought about texting our local dairy farmer for some more calves. Thankfully, that bout of temporary insanity only lasted for a few minutes, and I was able to delete the text message before sending it. 

These days, I’ve mostly been downsizing my farming efforts. It seems like the end of an era. My wife’s grandpa died last year, and he was always instrumental in encouraging me to start dubious farming ventures. Losing money in farming wouldn’t be the same without him. 

The arctic freeze this last month had me thinking of him a lot, specifically of the time we raised a batch of twelve bull calves. A local dairy farmer couldn’t find anybody who wanted to fool with calf care during subfreezing temperatures. I was that fool. The farmer threw in two sickly ones for free, but it was hard to tell which ones in particular were sickly–they were all scouring so bad. 

These days, I’ve mostly quit compulsive livestock buying, but Natalie still lets me dabble with chickens, which admittedly is dangerous because chickens are like a gateway drug to stronger livestock. Of course, we’ve still got some goats, too–most of them have studied at Houdini’s School of Escape and Get Away. Recently, I tried to perform a stake out to see where they were escaping, but they just walked right up to me and started trying to eat the leaves on my camouflage shirt. 

Thomas is becoming quite the farm hand. I bought him a bee suit this Christmas, and he has been helping me with the bees. He is quite calm and composed around bees, which has me wondering if he’s really my kid. So far, he has only gotten stung once–it was on the foot when he accidentally stepped on a bee. The way he was hopping and hollering not only made me proud but also confirmed my genetics. 

Generations come and generations go–but hopping binds us all together.