Dairy

Johannes gave Jenny and I a tour of the dairy where he works.
It is the largest in Winona County. At any one time, the dairy has about 1400 lactating cows. And yes, cows come on a carousel!

First, the workers corral the cows...

Then someone puts iodine on to clean before milking. The next person in the row wipes the iodine off with a cloth, and the third puts the milking machine on the cows.

It only takes less than five minutes for a cow to be milked, which is about the time it takes for the carousel to make one revolution. When there is little milk still coming out, the machine lets loose and falls off. The cow knows to step out of the slot when she sees a pole at the end of the round. Each cow's production is monitored. The box on the collar around her neck registers her when she enters the milking slot. The average cow yields about 70 pounds or less than 9 gallons of milk each day from the three milkings. The cow carousel runs nearly 24 hours a day.

The milk is piped into tanks and tank trucks to be sold and shipped to the Minneapolis/St. Paul where it is tested, pasturized, and processed. Cows that are in heat are artificially inseminated, which we got to see done. The ones that are due to deliver within two weeks are kept in one area. Near that are the calves that were born that day. Across the way is the postpartum unit, for the cows that have just delivered babies to be watched and monitored. In another barn, the calves are categorized by birthday and cared for and fed. There are a few Jersey cows and calves mixed in with the Holsteins. They help add more quality to the milk, while the Holsteins produces more quantity.

The people that run the dairy also raise most of the feed for the cows to last the year. There are around 30 fulltime employees to keep the operation running. Visiting the dairy was so interesting that I was wishing many of you were there with me!

Lake Königssee, Germany

Porky

Hello folks! I am Porky. I live in Texas on a ranch. I've been wanting to appear on the web, but it just took a long time to talk Amy into putting me up here. I first met Amy when this picture was taken.





I was actually sleeping soundly when she first disturbed me.

Naturally, I was scared, but it turned out to be kind of interesting and actually fun getting to pose for pictures.

Bet you didn't know porcupines were so cute!

Visitors

Ben, Tandalee, and Caleb all came to stay for the weekend! It was a great time to just relax and catch up with each other. The time flew by, and I'm back to work again. Work has not been as overwhelming for the last couple of weeks:)

I now have all of our photos from the trip to Austria, Germany, and London last summer. I may be posting some soon. Ben and Tandalee also brought all of my photos and negatives from high school, so now I have the massive project of organizing, consolidating, and putting some more of them in albums.

Hellen Keller

Since it seems that most of you do not read my quotes site, I'm putting this on my regular one. Seek out the most important things and enjoy them--they are true gifts from God!

Work

Some days...I like my job. Other days, I start looking into other options and occupations. There were several days in a row that were rough; I felt so inadequate. One day was particularly hard, but my coworkers were extremely considerate--they helped me, asked how I was doing, and were truly concerned. I drove home crying that night, both from the emotional stress and the realization that everyone cared about me.

Then, there were a couple of easy days that helped boost my moral. Some of the happenings of the last week or so include being hit by a patient who was confused, listening to stories from another confused man about his last battle in Korea--complete with a hand drawn map, having a patient fall unwitnessed and reporting the incident, having a couple of patients who were charming and loved to talk, and yes, giving a man his prescribed whiskey with a doctor's order for no more than 5 alcoholic beverages per day!

Many of you asked what kinds of patients my floor would have, but I never gave a good answer since I didn't know. Now, here it is!

1. Appendectomies (appendix removal)
2. Cholecystectomies (gallbladder removal)
3. Fistulas--an abnormal connection between an organ, vessel, or intestine and another structure. Fistulas are usually the result of trauma or surgery. So...don't get surgeries. Fistulas can take a year or more to heal.
4. Accidents from hay bales, horses, falls, motorcycles, cars, trucks, hammers, fists, rebar, electricity, you name it.
5. Wounds--I love wound care!

The best news is...I am about to have my first visitors!!! Ben, Tandalee, and Caleb are coming to stay for the weekend! I am off work Friday through Monday, so I look forward to just enjoying them!

P.S. First snow flurries 10/11/06. Low tonight: 22 degrees. It's great!

Family

I have been doing some photo editing. Here is a picture of our family from December 2005 with a few adjustments!

Weekend

It was great to have a weekend off after working the last two. Sarah and I nearly went overboard doing things with friends, but we enjoyed it so much!Friday evening was spent with some friends here in Rochester. On Saturday, we drove to Winona, which in on the Mississippi River.

After enjoy a scenic overlook, we met some friends for lunch, then walked around town for 2 1/2 hours just visiting!

Some of the trees are colorful now, and there are many leaves on the ground!

On Sunday, we went to Whitewater State Park with some friends from Rochester, Lyle and Sarah.








Somehow the refreshment of the weekend was not enough to carry over into Monday and Tuesday. Yesterday was one of my worst days at work since I started, but I'm afraid today topped it. However hard I tried to be calm and organized, I felt like I was spinning my wheels. If I was helping one patient and had to run get something, I was sure to be needed by two or three other patients or nurses. Somehow I made it through the day with no major catastrophes, but at the very end, I went into one of the patient's rooms with the next nurse, Sue, to check on a wound manager bag. The patient took that opportune moment to give me a scolding and was not satisfied until I had sufficiently acknowledged the poor nursing care he had received and said I was sorry. All the while, his wife winked at me to tell me not to take it seriously. In the end, the patient said that he accepted my apology and that I was a good nurse. That did not really bother me because I knew it was just the way the patient was, but it was a great way to top of a challenging the day, don't you think?

More Purpose

After that last post about purpose, I didn't stop thinking about it. At a church that I visited on Sunday, the pastor shared some thoughts that fit right in with purpose. He shared mostly out of Philippians 1, but the part that sums it up the best is the first part of verse 21: "For me to live is Christ."

Goals outside of Christ might give us enough to keep going, but all of them can be taken away in a moment. Christ and His love is the only thing that sickness or catastrophe cannot take away.

"For I am sure that neither death, nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord." Romans 8:38-39

Goals on this earth are still needed, but lived without the Lord in the midst they are empty.