Sunday

Loverboy went out at 2 a.m. and came in again at 2:30 and woke me.

“Can I take your blow-dryer out to the barn? I want to dry that calf off. It’s mother isn’t looking after it, and it’s wet and cold.”

Confused and more than a little dazed, I struggled to remember where the blow-dryer was, then told him and fell asleep again. At 4:00, I got up and threw a couple logs on the fire, and found myself disgruntled because I was putting wood on the fire in the middle of the night and my fella was not in the house yet, but outdoors somewhere in 30-below weather.

There are six calves in the barn now, where they are kept during the day while their mothers spend the day outside to be fed and watered and are brought in each evening to be with their babies. There will be another 45 calves here this spring, if all goes well. I promise, I’ll get some pictures. Usually when I go into the barn to see them, they’re curled up in the straw at the back of the stall, where it’s dark and all you’d see is a lump of brown.

By sometime today, he’d got the calf standing, Pa had fed it some colostrum he had in one of the deep freezes, and its mother was starting to take a little bit of interest in it.

[the window in Don and Barney's bedroom]

It sounds like today Loverboy has organized himself, his dad, and his brother -- the cow men -- to take turns getting up in the night to check cattle. Good thing too, because they’re all going to be operating at pretty low energy for the next two months if they don’t get smart about it.

Only guests sleep in Grandpa’s bedroom now. He’s been dead more than five years, but it’s still “Grandpa’s bedroom.” Above his high double bed hangs a portrait of Grandma’s grandmother, my great-great grandmother. Her name was Mary Jane Walker.

She and her husband and family of five children left Ontario by train in the late 1890s and settled in Portage la Prairie, Manitoba. She contracted pneumonia in 1902 and died at the age of 30. The family left Portage two years later and came further west by train. After disembarking, they came the rest of the way in a covered wagon pulled by oxen. When they got to the White Sand River in Saskatchewan, it was overflowing its banks after heavy rains. They were forced to camp next to it for three days, along with other settlers, while they built a bridge to cross over.

There, Annie May, my 17-year-old great-grandmother, met my great-grandfather, who I remember as Grandpa Jack. They were married three years later.

Saturday night, 11 p.m.

On the way to Grandma’s this afternoon, we stopped at the Co-op to pick up some treats. Inside the door stood my aunt and my cousin, so I chatted with them for a few minutes. I said, “We’re going over to Grandma’s. Why don’t you come over for a cup of tea?”

No, they were going to the hotel because my cousin wanted to “put a few coins in the machine.”

[In the distance — those squarish specks — are the ice shacks on the lake south of my home town, where the crazy people go in winter to catch fish. Mostly whitefish and jackfish, probably, though I wouldn’t stake my life on that.]

One day Grandma phoned here after I’d left to go to her place, and asked Loverboy “Has What’s-her-name left yet?”

*********

Before we left the farm I went to the barn to have a look at the newest calf, which is a heifer as tiny as a fawn and full of spunk. Cats were sunning themselves in the windows on the south wall, and when Pumpkin Cat walked up onto the dead cow, I thought it would make a good picture. But when Loverboy saw the photo, he said “Why would you want a picture of that?”

“Well, it’s what it looks like in the barn, isn’t it?”

“No. Dead animals? No.”

I didn’t argue with him, but the frozen body of that dead cow has been there for months. They’re going to haul it away soon because the stalls are filling up with calves now, but it’s been there quite a while. My first glimpse of it was one day when I’d gone in to gather eggs and thought it must be a sick cow, till I noticed a white-tipped tail quivering in its asshole and had to take a second look to see what the hell was going on. One of the cats was right inside it, gnawing on its frozen innards.

“Crude, I guess,” Pa commented later, “but at least it’s not being wasted.”

************

We got home at 5:30 and, it being Don’s supper night, he and I got busy making roasted salmon bagels, cheese soup, and caesar salad. It was 7 when Loverboy came in, half-frozen, exhausted, and starving. He grabbed a bowl of barely warm soup and was going to head back out to the farmyard, but I insisted he take 10 minutes to warm up and fill his belly.

“I don’t have 10 minutes,” he said. “The tractor wouldn’t go and we’ve been messing around with it all afternoon, and now we have to get bales out and give the cows some chop, and it’s dark already.” I could tell he was feeling strained, and that what he needed most was to relax for a few minutes and recharge. So I put some food in front of him in spite of his protests, and he ate some lukewarm bagels and a bit of salad.

“When’s the last time your dad had something to eat?” He is diabetic, and isn’t supposed to skip meals. “Send him in here and I’ll come out and help you.”

“Do you want to?”

“Not particularly, but if you need me to, I will.”

“I don’t know what you can do, you’re scared of cows.”

He went out alone and I got the kids fed. When Pa still hadn’t come in after almost an hour, I bundled up and trudged across the yard, under bright stars glittering in a black sky above powdery thick snow. It’s cold, about 30 below, and even without any wind tonight my fingers were chilled in no time.

I stood at the fence and called out to the two be-parka’ed men on the other side of the corral, wondering where I could go without spooking the cattle or getting myself yelled at -- or worse, mowed down. They were trying to get a cow into the barn, and she wasn’t cooperating.

“Go in the barn and find a five-gallon pail, and shake it and call ‘Ka-boss,’ ” Loverboy hollered.

A few minutes later the cow was stepping cautiously into a stall where a newborn calf lay wet and curled up on fresh straw. It had been born out in the corral while Loverboy was in eating supper, and by the time he got out there and found it, its ears were already frozen. Its mother, a first-timer, had stood looking at it from about eight feet away, he said. Now she did the same thing, but in closer proximity. Loverboy rubbed the calf to get its circulation going, and we left them alone in hopes the young cow would figure out what to do -- lick off her calf and encourage it to stand and suckle.

Next we had to slip past a group of cattle busy munching on chop near the barn, to a round bale out behind that needed its twine removed so it could be spread out and the cattle could bed down in it for the night. My part was to hold the flashlight while Loverboy and his father struggled in the dark to find the twines and get them off. I wished I’d worn mitts instead of gloves, because my fingers were stiff with cold in no time.

Afterward, I went back into the barn and looked at the calf, whose mother was still looking at it but not touching it. I told her to smarten up and start taking care of it, and gave it a few rubs myself before putting another layer of straw over its back to keep it warm.

“She’s still pretty sick,” Pa said. “They get like that around the time they’re having a calf.”

Later on he did come to the house and eat, and the two of them discussed cow psychology (though I doubt they’d use that phrase, that’s what it sounded like to me). That was interesting enough, but did you know “Ka-boss” is practically bovine language? Loverboy says most cattle will come if you call them that way. I thought it must be something they’re taught, but he says not; they just all seem to know what it means.

It’s 11:30, and he’s in bed. I’m to wake him at 12 so he can go out and check to make sure no more calves have been born in the corrals. He’ll go out every hour or two tonight, because a newborn calf won’t survive long in this weather. He was beat, but was willing to stay up for our dance date.

“Never mind,” I told him. “Get to bed. You need to sleep.”