Petula Had a Girl!

Monday, August 1, 2022

Hello friends,

              Ah, we got a nice soaking rain or two last week, combined with cooler temperatures to keep the moisture where it belongs.  Good thing too.  Looks like summer heat is coming back.  Ugh.  Oh well.  The garden benefitted from the rains, but the beans are still not setting fruit.  My goal is to try to keep them alive until it cools off and then MAYBE we’ll get some fall beans.  Tomatoes are trickling in, and melons are ripening, but the squash bugs have migrated from the zucchini, and I can tell it won’t be too long until they succumb as well.  I hate squash bugs, but I refuse to put poison on my garden, so I guess we’ll just get what we get.  If you have any suggestions besides hunting down every stinking bug ( they are a type of stink bug, you know) I am open.

              Petula had her calf last night and it’s a girl!  Yeah!  She didn’t end up being as early as I thought, but since her due date is tomorrow, she was technically early.  Petula has spots, and this little one has a spot on her head, so the temptation is to name her Star or something like that.  That’s a popular horse name if you ask me, but we’ll still consider it.    Momma had some persistent mastitis in one of her quarters last lactation so we put a plug in the milker and just milked the other three quarters.  We were hoping that she would do better this time, but it doesn’t look like an improvement.  It’s hard when mastitis gets started.  The best remedy is prevention, but when that doesn’t work, we do the next best things….