Can’t Help But Smile!

Have you ever just been doing your thing…easy or hard..and realized you are smiling involuntarily?  Well, I have!  In fact, it happens often to me here on de Good Life Farm.  I thought I might share with you some of the things that make me smile because this morning, again, I caught myself smiling as I went about morning chores.

Usually, the first smile in the morning happens when I look in at our sleeping goldens…sometimes Beau is laying over by Belle in her kennel; sometimes he and Lacey are laying together; but usually, Beau lays right by the door to the milkroom. I think he does this so that when anyone has to go through that door in the morning to do barn chores, he will have to be awakened because no one can  come in or out of that door without him having to move and he will lay right back down there, even if it means he has to move ten times!

As I walk to the barn, I look over at the west pasture where Caramel, her sister, Truffle and her uncle, Oreo are currently staying. They are so adorable.  I always talk to them on my way by and as I call each name, they turn and look at me. It is impossible for me not to smile when interacting with the calves.

Mocha is the next smile-maker.  First, her face is the cutest bovine face I have ever seen. That alone, makes me smile! Then, she has this habit of standing as high as she can get on her hay pile which increases her height by at least a foot or so.  I ask her if she is playing “Queen of the Hill”. She stands there and watches everything that’s going on in the barn.  She knows eventually she will be getting new hay and watches intently until that happens.  If we open the “window” on her stall, she will stick her head and neck out as far as she possibly can and it is absolutely so adorable, I can’t help but smile at her!

Sometimes when I am milking Mocha, she will turn around and just watch me, but most of the time she stands calmly, just chewing her cud, patiently waiting (most of the time) until she is free to eat her hay.  Just watching her standing there makes me smile. Sometimes, she is not so patient…trying to reach the hay pile if it was left close enough for her to reach.  Then, I am definitely not smiling because I find myself doing one of two dances: The Bovine Two-Step (moving back and forth two steps at a time to keep up with her moving) and the Milk Stool Shuffle (moving my stool over and over trying to reposition as she moves).  Neither of them bring a smile to my face until  hours later and I imagine what it would look like if it had been video recorded!

After milking, I always go into the pasture to love on the calves and Caramel.  For some reason, Caramel  has grown somewhat timid…but she is so very interested in how much Oreo and Truffle love the attention from me that she slowly and slyly saunters over in a “don’t notice me”-kind of way and gets close enough so that I can rub her nose or her chin or neck.  That definitely makes me smile!

Watching Oreo run down the pasture with his legs kicking up so high that I can see his white cream filling (the white patch on his belly) when he is running makes me smile every time!  It is so precious!  He is getting so big but runs and plays like he is still a young calf.

I’m sure my neighbors must think I am a crazy cow lady because I can’t leave in my car without putting down my window(s) and talking to whomever is in the pasture. It takes me forever to leave because I have to call to each one individually and then watching them turn to my voice as I say their name makes my day!  Then, when I return home, just seeing those precious bovine in my pastures brings a smile to my face.

Watching our golden retrievers run and play with each other is so much fun.  But what REALLY makes me smile is watching Belle run circles around Beau.  She is so stinking fast and she loves to tantalize him.  She will run up to him with a stick in her mouth just to tempt him to chase her. When he falls for it (and he does multiple times during each playtime), she takes off like lightning and leaves him in the dust.  Sometimes Beau will find a stick Belle hasn’t found yet but as soon as she realizes he has a stick, she zooms up to him and before he even knows what has happened, she has retrieved the stick from his mouth and it is now in hers and she runs away with it! She can carry at least three good-sized sticks in her mouth at once.  Oh, and Lacey! She plays with them for awhile right in the thick of it, then she sits with her back to them like their behavior is so disgusting and she is too good to be a part of it. Their antics bring more than a smile to my face: more like eruptive laughter!

Then there are other things that make me smile from time to time: a fat robin hunting a stray worm;  a cotton-tailed bunny hurrying across the path in front of me;  a gorgeous pink and purple-striped sunrise; the first flower of spring popping through the ground; the first bud on the tree; and the list goes on and on.

One of the cutest things that made me smile this week was Belle and Truffle.  It isn’t a frequent thing that we get to observe two species interacting with each other; most of the time the canines and the bovines keep to themselves.  But the youngsters of each species are definitely drawn to each other. Yesterday I was in the pasture loving on Oreo and the dogs were playing in the yard.  I turned around to see Belle hopping and pouncing around, putting her nose to the ground trying to get Truffle to play with her…and the amazing thing was that Truffle was nearly imitating Belle’s antics back at her…head down and tapping her front hooves on the ground, hopping around back at her. Keep in mind that there is an electric polytape between them but Belle’s desire to play with Truffle was almost more than she could stand and I was concerned she was going to go right through the electric fence.

This life we have chosen is not an easy life. In fact, sometimes it is down-right excruciatingly difficult but, as long as I can still catch myself smiling involuntarily, I know I am exactly where I am meant to be.