A Spring Filly

Yesterday, my Pa told me he’d be weighing my steer bright and early this morning. Did you know I had a steer? Well, I don’t. Not actually. I just have dibs on a steer for meat purposes. Every year, we save up and buy half of a steer from my Dad. This year, we’ll be paying about $1.35 a pound which means we’ll be paying close to $700 for half of a steer (including butcher fees).
It sounds like a lot up front, but it’s extremely cheap. Here’s why: we don’t have to buy beef from the store ever. at all.
We always have beef on hand. I’m going to have a fresh load of beef in the next few weeks, and my freezer is still boasting a good 15 pounds of hamburger and a few packages of roasts and steaks. And we paid $1.25 a pound last year. That means we paid $1.25 a pound for SIRLOIN STEAK. And yes, it is 1000 times better than anything you’d get at the store.
So I met up with Dad this morning to see my steer get weighed… it sounds like a morbid thing to do, doesn’t it?
“Goodbye Steer, good luck. I’m most likely to kill you in the morning.”
Well, our steer came to a whopping 1,000 pounds on the dot. We’ll split that with our friends across town, and we’ll all go home happy. I helped Dad and my brother, Jim, load up two of three beefers we weighed this morning. I followed Dad and Jim to the butcher shop.
I inadvertently breathed in the smell of death that rose up from the old blood soaking up in the dirt outside the shop, and then I held my breath and held it tight so as to never go through THAT again.
Dad left his truck and trailer behind, and I gave the boys a ride home in my tiny truck. Once home, my brother hopped out and went to do his morning feeding chores. Dad asked me when I had to be home.
“7:30″ I said. He looked at the clock. 6:58.
“Want to go check Jet?” He asked.
Jet is my sister, Julianne’s, horse. Julianne loves her horse more than… gosh, herself, I think. Ju had been DYING for her horse to get pregnant, and she finally did… but Julianne is REALLY good and math and quickly realized that she’d be on her mission by the time Jet had her foal.
Our emails from Julianne frequently include lines about Jet.
“How’s Jet?”
“Have you been taking pictures of Jet like I asked?”
And the latest: “Unless I’m wrong, and I’m usually not… Jet should have her foal by now.”
Well, she hadn’t. Dad had been loyally checking. As Dad and I bounded through the boonies this morning in my tiny blue truck, Dad kept his eyes peeled for the horses. They were roaming out on the land.
I couldn’t catch a glimpse of them anywhere, but my Dad has these magical eyes that have always been able to spot livestock from deliriously far distances. As a little girl, I tried SO hard to emulate his magic skills, but I never could. Even today as I blinked around the horizon for a hint of something moving, I completely failed.
“There!” He said, “Head up that way. I think I saw a horses head,” my Dad pointed into thin air.
I trusted him implicitly.
And of course, he was right.

“Yep, there’s Lucky… Ribbon… Wimpy…” he knows them all by name, of course. “Where’s Jet? She’s down in the ditch. What’s she doing down in a ditch?” Dad quickly made his way over to the ditch -that had a fair amount of water in it, “She has a little one!” He called out. I hurried over next to him, and saw…
nothing.
I swear. It’s his magic eyes.
Can you see the little one? All I could see was the after-birth which told me she’d JUST had the foal, but where WAS the foal?

Wimpy got in the way, Jet got protective and in the end, Dad and I had to cross a muddy ditch. But it was worth it!
We were able to snap more than a few pictures of the brand new filly!

Years ago, Julianne once said to me, “Horses are so much smarter than people. I mean, when they’re born they already know how to stand AND walk.”
“Yes,” I said, “But that’s only because standing and walking is essential to their survival. If a human infant were to stand and walk, it wouldn’t survive. Probably.”
Of course I was speaking directly from a mother’s perspective and was doing my best to keep from admitting that if my newborn children had walked, I would have been the one who wouldn’t have survived. But moving on:

Jet was very protective of her foal, and while Dad was able to get near the filly… I was most definitely not! Jet did her best to stay between me and her baby… thank goodness for the zoom on my camera. Although the pictures look like I was nice and close… I really wasn’t. And look at Jet’s eyes in the picture I took without the zoom. She wanted to stomp me.

And WHAT a way to spend an early Thursday morning! I came home fully energized and inspired to work on my house and have a full and busy day.
Until halfway through my bowl oatmeal when nausea overtook me and sent me to the couch where I fell back asleep.
Huh.
So much for motivation.
But I’m FOREVER grateful for the chance I had to go see Julianne’s new baby foal. Er, I mean JET’S new foal.
It was a beautiful morning. Steer blood and all.

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