Monday, December 3

Good morning all! Cloudy and dreary out - temps in 50-60's today. Weekends seem to be so hectic and go so fast. Dh had his National Guard Christmas party at an armory in the middle of the state so stayed overnight on Saturday. I really didn't care to go so didn't have a problem staying home and keeping a watch on the home front.

Another beef lesson 101 - a gomer is a bull that has either been vasectomized or had their "reproductive part" surgically tied to the side so that is is not useful. We use our gomer, a jersey bull, for heat detection for artificial insemination. When the gomer mounts the heifer or cow, and she stands, we know that she is in standing heat and we artificially inseminate her within 12 hours. We bought our gomer from a jersey dairyman who turns his jersey bulls into gomers instead of steers. This summer I was checking several state fair beef shows to check on how some of our friends placed. I noticed several states have holstein steer classes. Our gomer (Homer) is slightly crazy and pushes his limits at times. I always take a stick when I get close to him he gets smacked on the nose if he snorts/paws at me.

Eva Mae - what proportions of sugar free syrup do you use with sweet potatoes? My dad is diabetic and I want to try this recipe for him. Oh, and by the way, all your food sounds so good - would you want to adopt me?

Horseshoe - the sheep dogs I was referring to are polish or hot dogs made with sheep. About once a year, we will butcher a ewe or wether that is slightly prolapsing or may have some other "defect" . We wouldn't get anything for her or him at the sale barn and the meat is perfectly fine. People give me a bad time for my sheep dogs. Several years ago I drove to the butcher to pick up a ewe's worth of "dogs". We live 3/4 mile off of a busy highway. As I was waiting on the highway in my 1994 thunderbird to cross traffic (3 of those gravel truck/pups and a car), I was rear ended by a car going 60 mph. I was pushed into the oncoming lane of traffic and narrowly missed by the gravel trucks and slammed headon into another car. As I was sitting in the car, one of the truck drivers came and pulled me out of the car to make sure I was okay and made the comment "you aren't going to have sausage for supper tonight". At first, in my daze (and lacking my glasses that had been knocked off), I couldn't figure out what he was talking about. I looked down on the highway and there was about 50 lbs of dogs on the highway. Found out later that people drove past and called the local radio station to avoid this intersection because there was a real mess (including a pile of hot dogs on the highway). My hot dogs were quite the talk of the locals for awhile.

A hoof trimmer is coming tonight. He will be trimming the hooves on our show calves and on our bull. He charges one set up fee and then $15 per head after that. He is well worth the cost and does excellent work. Show calves are sometimes judged for how they walk and he can correct a bad walk. Several other families will be bringing their calves over to help share the cost.

I seem to have been pretty windy today and better go. You all have a great day and stay safe!