Danny's Doting(s)

  Sitting here in my recliner by the fire in ease and comfort, with the house at 24° Celsius, it is a little difficult to want to return to anything from my past. And yet I still do. I'm the reminiscent, nostalgic sort for sure. Without really having to ponder the situation, I know it's the world that has changed, not me. I'm living now like I wanted to back then. I just don't want to do this living in this present world. Now there's a corundum.  Someone else can have the world out there as it is. And I mean that in every sense of it. I prefer my world in here as it is. During the blizzard we had a while back, while looking out the window at 3AM, I grimly remarked to Sharon, "When I was younger, I'd be setting out now to deliver newspapers in this, thinking that if I worked at McDonald's, I'd be at home in bed, and making more money". Heck, if I was a welfare bum in those days I'd be making more money. And in still bed where anyone with hal...

  Farming is not for the faint of heart. You don't just get physically tough farming, you get emotionally tough. You have to. There is no other choice except to quit, and, goodness knows, farmers aren't quitters. Life and especially death matters are part of farming. Injuries, breakdowns, uncooperative weather, setbacks of all sorts, and the always looming spectre of Death are part and parcel of it.  If you're on a farm with pigs, chickens, or beef cattle, death is your running mate. There's no getting away from it. Even dairy farming has loss of life attached to it, but thankfully just not as regular a visitor. Pets on a farm live in a perpetual state of fatal risk. Machines that would appear positively gigantically monstrous to them are part of their daily lives. They have to learn to avoid being run over by tractors and implements, delivery trucks, pickup trucks, cars, and ATV's. They have to also be exceedingly careful of feeding and processing equipment, and ot...

  I just saw a video 'short' that reminded me, no matter how fond my memories are of my younger days on the Queens Line, it wasn't all daisies and wild strawberries on the farm. The fella in the video had a gate slammed into his face by a young bull running through it while the gate was still unchained. Then the bull unceremoniously ran over him and rolled him in the mud and manure. Yep, been there, but a little different. During dehorning and castrating, I was the rear end guy. That was for the young guys that healed better. Dad and George Olmstead (that year) took care of the head end. That was the business end of the bull. I took care of the end of a bull that made the business end of a bull the business end of a bull. Well, 99 percent of the time. There was 1 percent of the time the end of the bull I took care of was the business end of the bull. The rest of the time it made the regular business end the business end. Am I making any sense here? My goodness, in this day ...

  Limousin cattle are the devil's own breed. I hate them. They can be bat crap crazy and totally unpredictable. They're good for only one thing: Eating. Make that two things: Shooting and Eating. Other than that, I don't want to see them. I like Herefords and Charolais and Black Angus.  Some lessons you learn the hard way. The really hard way. You either survive and you learn from them, or you don't, period. When you're in a hurry, you can make the absolute stupidest of mistakes.  To clear the air as to why she was there in the first place: I didn't buy a limousin heifer on purpose. That female mutt of an excuse for a bovine was mixed in with a group of other heifers I did want at the Sale Barn. So I actually paid good money for an animal I would have normally spared a 12 point buck's life over to shoot instead.   You often hear that "double muscled" garbage about calves from Limousin bulls. Yeah, and half-brained and all of that being murder.  Fal...

  I experienced a troubling thing today. We were in Brockville. After turning out from a little shopping plaza there and heading towards Edward Street or Hwy 29, there was a group of young teenagers running across the street in straggling groups. They didn't have a light; they were running across traffic. Some, then some more, then some more, in order of who was willing to take the chance. I'm not good at guessing ages between about 9 and 17, but Sharon put them at 14. When the last kids ran across before we got to where they were, there came a girl's panicked scream from the sideway they made it to: "My PHONE! My PHONE!" The last girl had dropped her phone on the way across. Sharon spotted it and pointed it out to me. I slammed on the brakes and hit the hazard lights, and jumped out and warned other traffic to stop with my upward outstretched hand like a crossing guard. It was a couple of lanes over from us and I ran to it and picked it up. It was face up and did...

  July 22, 2017 In all of our lives there comes days we don't want to have to face. Days we dread. Today was most definitely one of those days. We laid to rest a Dad, a soldier, a horseman, a farmer, a businessman, and a legend.   I have always adhered to a belief that the greatest tribute you can pay to someone is to remember what they taught you. And I mean that sincerely. The problem here is, I can't begin to recall the encyclopedia of useful things that William Lyons MacKenzie King MacKay, or, as everyone knew him, King, taught me in the over 30 years I've had the honour of knowing him.   I had just turned 18 years old when I first met King. He careened sideways into my life in the hot summer of 1984; a truly larger than life character of such vibrant vigour I was instantly drawn to him.   King loved horses. He practically lived and breathed them. His Belgian draft horses were beautiful; huge, sleek, astoundingly powerful, and wonderfully well mannere...