04/09/2026
God-sightings from the Bunkhouse©
By Charles Hibner
Two Blizzard Week
On Wednesday this last week we got a pretty good blizzard, in fact, it was snowing and blowing so hard that I wore my snowmobile helmet to feed hay. I was sure glad, the helmet visor would get completely covered with snow and hay, but better it than my face and eyes. In fact, the snow and wind was so bad out of the southwest that when we got ready to feed the yearlings and two year olds, instead of them coming toward the pickup, they turned away from the wind and snow and travelled northeast until they hit the west-east fence, then they travelled east down it until they got to the neighbors fence a mile and a half away. The only cow that didn’t hightail it away from the storm was our cow ‘Blindy’ (you probably remember me writing about her a few weeks ago), she didn’t care if the snow hit her in her eyes, and she knew where I fed the hay and simply walked into the wind and snow until she got to it. By the time the wind and snow had died down enough for the rest of the herd to finally return to eat, she had a pretty good head start on them. Then, a couple of days later we got another blizzard! Our good neighbor’s Ed and Gail called us up to report that a newborn calf was sure struggling in the blizzard, so Kyle and I skedaddled down to find that a two-year old heifer had just calved, and she wasn’t too good at licking the calf like an older cow would have, she just stood there kind of helpless feeling, so Kyle and I scooped the little critter up, threw it in the cab of the warm pickup, and made a beeline back up to the house. I was sure glad that our neighbors let us know about the little varmint in time, because it was pretty clear that she would not have made it very much longer. As it was, we spent all day warming the bedraggled thing up next to the wood stove, dried her off good with a couple of towels, put a couple of quarts of warm colostrum in her stomach, and got her in pretty good shape by evening. Since we keep the garage at 60 degrees, and it was going to get down to 8 degrees overnight (it actually got down to zero), I decided to keep the little heifer in the garage overnight. The next morning, we got the two year old mother in the corral and in the chute, let her get a good smell of Pulley (that is the name that Wendy gave the little heifer), and after realizing that the mother recognized her calf, we guided Pulley over to the side of her mother and with very little encouragement, she latched on like she was born to it. After Pulley had nursed for a good while, I let Pulley and her mother back into the corral and I don’t believe that the mother has gotten over three feet from Pulley ever since!
We are sure glad and blessed to have such good neighbors that will let us know when they see something wrong, or when a cow gets across the fence onto their side. In fact, in Matthew 22:37-40 “Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”
We sure do need a lot more love and a lot less hate in this world, that is for certain!
