North Dakota home health care and cow wrangling visit

In mid April I went to stay at Mom's house on the farm to help her out after they let her out of the hip replacement rehab center.  She is getting around OK and is fully able take care of herself, but since she is still getting around with a walker and she is in a fair bit of pain as the bones try to heal, I thought it might be nice to have a house maid there to cook and fetch what ever she needed.  I also packed some things for her upcoming move to a new house. 

The location of her new house will be the same as her existing house.  Here is a picture I took standing outside her kitchen window.  From this vantage point, she can be up close and personal with the cows!  This is a picture of my brother Bob (in the tractor) feeding the cows with a machine that grinds the big round hay bales so the cows can eat it more easily. Fat cows are profitable cows.

Here is a picture of some cows and their calves in the barnyard.

It was calving season, so I got to participate in a little bit of the excitement.  Here is a cow with her calf that is less than 15 minutes old.

This video shows the cute little thing trying to get up on its feet.  You can hear Canada geese, which nest on the lake across the road, cows mooing, and my brother approaching on the four wheeler.



A week off the bike is not ideal for training, so I borrowed my niece's department store bike, which wasn't a bad ride, except the seat post wasn't long enough so I couldn't put the seat up high enough.  Oh well, at least I was able to spin a few times and ride places around the old country that, when I was a kid, seemed like an impossible distance to ride.

An old granary.

Here are the bulls out in the pasture, and an old thrashing machine atop the hill. 

They keep the bulls five miles from where cows are kept, just in case. 

It was a nice visit. I hope I helped Mom out.  The travel back, since I was flying on space-available basis, was torture.  I was basically traveling for 24-hours to get from the farm back to SLC.  There was a night at my niece's in Minot so that I could catch the 5 AM flight, which didn't have room for me.  Then, once I finally did make it to Minneapolis, I was too late to go through Denver so I had to go to Chicago-Midway.  The only good thing about that day was eating the best and greasiest hamburger and fries accompanied by a cold frosty Sam Adams at this place.  The one great thing about that day was getting home to see Drew.