cows – Living de Good Life

Saying Good-bye

Saying good-bye is difficult, whether it is expected or suddenly unexpected. As I have written in a few previous posts, we have dealt with many unexpected deaths here on de Good Life Farm. Of course, we raise cattle and chickens for meat, so those are planned and expected good-byes, but even so, are difficult. Life is precious, whether it is a meat chicken you have raised from “chickhood” or a steer you have loved and raised from birth. We take caring for our animals very seriously and thus, the loss of life is painful, regardless of whose life it is.

As I sat on the bucket milking Mocha this morning, I was very sad knowing that the events of the day would be very hard–hard on her and on me. If you have read My Name is Mocha, you know that Mocha left her mama behind when she came to our farm almost seven years ago, and it was very traumatic for her. She was fifteen months old and pregnant with her first calf. She cried the whole trip through town to our farm and for days after. I later found out Jersey cried for Mocha as we pulled away.

Mocha and Jersey playing around in the pasture after days in the barn

THE WHO?

Jersey is Mocha’s mama. Jersey is also the cow I learned to milk on! I am thankful that she and Ralph, her farmer, were patient teachers. I had such untrained, fumble fingers.

Ralph, Jersey’s former owner, visiting to say goodbye

Jersey has been mama to Coco (Mocha’s older sister), Mocha, Billy (Coco and Billy were both born while still at Ralphs’ farm), our sweet Oreo and our sweet Herbie. She has also been grandma to Mocha’s girls: Cocoa (named after her aunt), Caramel, Truffle, Hazel, Elsie and Daisy and great grandma to Snickers, Caramel’s daughter. Needless to say, without Jersey, there wouldn’t be a “de Good Life Farm”.

Jersey’s milk wasn’t the first fresh milk I had tasted, but I and my family, as well as a host of other families who are part of our herd share program have enjoyed her rich creamy milk for a grand total of about eight years! Our vet lovingly calls her “a lean, mean milking machine”. She’s not really mean. She is stubborn and will bully Mocha if she has the chance to get to fresh hay, water, feed or mineral first. I guess maybe she figures she is the matron and deserves to be first!

THE “WHY”

Jersey doesn’t “show” her heats at all (other than occasionally trying to “ride” Jeff) This makes getting her bred a challenge. When she came to our farm in 2016, we thought she was pregnant, but soon found out she wasn’t. Eventually we were able to get her successfully bred and in 2018 she gave us our precious Oreo! What a sweet boy he was! Then in 2019, she gave us our sweet Herbie! She is two for two on sweet boys for us. The problem is that in five years, trying a number of protocols, we have only been successful at getting her pregnant twice. Two calves when she “should/could” have given us five is fairly significant.

THE “NOW WHAT?”

Unfortunately, there aren’t many options when you have an eleven-year-old cow who can’t be bred. And it is also unfortunate that we cannot afford to feed and bed a cow who cannot be bred. Together, Jeff and I prayed that God would show us what to do.

Eventually, I made an appointment to have her sold at auction. It broke my heart but sometimes being a “farmer” means making very difficult decisions with something other than your heart. Then on Monday, I placed a call to our vet’s office to see if they knew of any other options. They said we could try to sell her on a local site as a “pet” cow who is still lactating. So, I placed an ad.

Within an hour or so, I received a response from a guy who has a cow who is getting ready to be dry in preparation for calving and he was interested in Jersey. So, today, he is coming to take a look at her. It would thrill me if she could continue to provide her rich milk to another family and live a little longer. We will see, but we definitely felt this was a sign from God that we were on the right track.

Mocha (l.) and Jersey (r.) in their barn stalls

THE “KNOWING”

So, as I was saying earlier, it hurts me for Mocha, knowing what I know: that she will again have to say “good-bye” to her mama and this time there will be no happy reunion as there was in her book. She will cry and she will mourn and that will break my heart. It may affect her milk production for a few days and I am prepared for that. However, the wonderful thing about cows is that they are very adaptive and eventually she will become accustomed to a new normal.

THE “NEW”

What Mocha doesn’t know is that rather than keeping the stall next to her empty which will be a constant reminder of what she has lost, tonight or this weekend, we will attempt to bring in her daughter, Elsie. Elsie should be coming into heat soon and we will try to get her bred. She’s a bit of a wild child…”Diva” like her mama, with a little wild thrown in since she has been pretty much free in the pasture since she was four months old. Getting a lead rope on her will be challenging. Eventually, we will succeed!

Elsie (Mocha’s daughter from 2019) and Herbie are buddies and have been since she was born in December two years ago. They are the “queen” and “king” of the calves’ pasture. They actually are more like brother and sister than uncle and niece. We won’t take her away from him for good until March–just long enough to settle her down and get her bred and hopefully in the process, ease the pain for Mocha.

THE GOODBYE

You know, it’s so good when you ask God for guidance and then you look back and see His hand. Jersey just left for her new home. It’s even better than we had hoped for her.

The guy I mentioned above came with his daughter and after looking her over and asking the questions he needed answers to, he decided she is what he was looking for!

She dutifully followed me out the front door with only one quick backwards glance toward the back of the barn where she usually exits. She followed me through the back yard to the waiting trailer. I stepped up into the trailer and she followed me without hesitation except for the step up into the trailer. That hesitation wasn’t surprising as cows do not like to step up into anything!

Herbie was obviously bothered and because he was bothered, so were Elsie and the calves. Anything to do with his mama is always of concern to him! Last year when she passed by him on the way to the barn, he ran to meet her. Jersey? Well, let’s just say she hardly gave him a sidewards glance!

Herbie and Elsie upset and confused as they see Jersey get on the trailer

THE FUTURE

Now, not only will Jersey provide milk for a family during the dry period of their regular milk cow, she may actually have the opportunity to get bred! They have a yearling bull that will run with her. That is like the icing on the cake for me and makes this post so much more happy and hopeful! Jersey has a new home, so this is just the next chapter in her life! I think that means it’s time for a new farm book!

Thanks for reading! If you are interested in my children’s books about the farm, you may check out my website http://www.dianeorrauthor.com and click on the “Books” page.

Farm Life Is a Good Life!

Farm life is a good life but a hard life! We have lived here on de Good Life Farm for almost seven years! It hardly seems possible! I still remember dreaming about the days from our home in a nearby subdivision. We talked for years about what it would be like, what animals we would raise, and I did a LOT of research! However, no amount of dreaming or research prepared me for the constant ups and downs!

We Must Replace the Poly Tape Electric Fence – Escapee #1

We began talking about replacing the electric poly tape with field/cattle fence after taking our last batch of meat chickens to the processor. It was that week in June that Odin decided he was going to take a vacation. I guess he missed the chickens or didn’t feel needed? Who can know, but three nights in a week, he escaped the back pasture. One of those nights it took us an hour and a half to find him. From that night, we knew we had to cable him for his own protection until we could figure out a way to keep him from escaping.

Thank goodness for good friends!

We made plans to purchase field fence and on the hottest day of the summer, two friends came to help Jeff get that big job started! Brutal was the weather but our friends’ desire to help was just as strong! The three of them worked for hours on that extremely hot 90 degree Sunday to get two parts of the fence put up! Their help was amazing and gave us the momentum we needed to get the job done!

Escapee #2

Then another animal decided to taste freedom — Fred, a 9-month old Jersey/Hereford cross steer. I don’t know what it is about the number THREE, but he also escaped three times in one week! After the third time when someone had to call and let us know he was out, we decided we had to contain him in the barn until the fence was completed.

This however was difficult to execute! When we found out he had escaped, he was down by the road trying to get into the pasture with Mocha, Jersey and Daisy. I’m sure he just wanted to play but his entrance to that pasture would have created a whole new set of problems!

I have to say my husband’s years of being on his dad’s farm definitely have come in handy for many situations here at de Good Life Farm! He stayed calm. Me? I wanted to run around behind that steer and chase him, yell or cry…SOMETHING! but Jeff wisely told me to calm down or go in the house. Needless to say, I chose to calm down!

Gradually, Jeff worked Fred toward the house and we got him cornered between the milk room and the propane. “Now what?” I asked. Jeff told me to go to the barn and get the lead rope, which I did…running!

Jeff did an amazing job getting the lead rope around Fred’s head but I have to admit I thought it was a lost cause. Amazingly, Jeff’s patience and methodical tenacity won out! Again, I thought, “Now what?”

One Against Two

We began the trek through the gate and across the back yard toward the barn. I wish I could have taken a picture of the process, but honestly, we had our hands full! Jeff is a strong man, raised on a farm with steers. He instinctively wrapped that lead rope around his waist and started to walk. He COULDN’T MOVE! That steer was STRONG and he had NO INTENTION of moving!

Here I am, standing behind the steer, and I decide to push on his behind to help Jeff gain some momentum! HAHA! My 125 pounds made NOT ONE IOTA of difference in the distance between us and the barn! So, being rather resourceful, what did I do?

I began putting my boot on the back of Fred’s leg which forced him to take a step. So we began our trek to the barn, literally ONE STEP AT A TIME! But, we made it!

We got him into Jersey’s stall, and made sure there was hay and water and walked out. He wasn’t happy but I breathed a sigh of relief! He couldn’t escape from there even though his head-banging indicated he thought he could!

Chain Reaction

milking Jersey in the middle of the barn

As is true in life, for every action, there is a reaction. The reaction to the fact that Escapee #2 was now residing in Jersey’s stall meant that everything had to change when milking time came! This really wasn’t an issue for me. It gave me access to the cross breeze and I didn’t have to sit lopsided in the straw! However, it did impede traffic in the barn while she was there.

Fred looking out the crack in the barn door between head-banging episodes

Meanwhile, we realized that until the rest of the field fence was put up and whatever was making the electric poly tape lack in charge was figured out, Fred had to remain in the barn. That gave us the necessary motivation to work tirelessly (that’s a weird word, because we were exhausted and muscles we had never heard from before were screaming) to accomplish the task at hand.

Git-R-Done!

So, back to getting the fence done. We worked on the back fence which was easier in some ways and harder in some ways. Rather than pounding fence staples into wood posts, we had to connect the fence to metal t-posts which meant taking a weird little metal apparatus and affixing it around the t-post to the fence. Not as easy as it sounds! While working on the corral fence, I had become efficient at being the “fence stretcher”. However, now I was the “apparatus attach-er” and Jeff was the “fence stretcher”! We completed that side of the pasture in one day.

The next morning, when I tried to get out of bed, I couldn’t. I could barely ROLL out of bed. But, one thing farm life has taught me is that it doesn’t really matter whether you FEEL like it, what has to be done, HAS TO BE DONE!

So, I took it easy for awhile that morning, rested my back and took Tylenol (something I don’t take very often at all). By noon, I felt that I could again be the fence stretcher. So we began again and completed what was necessary that day to enclose the back pasture. This meant we could set Escapee #1 free. It thrilled me to see Odin’s happy face and watch him once again bound across the pasture!

The amazing thing that has happened is that by putting up the field fence and taking down three of the four strands of electric poly tape, and replacing one strand of worn poly tape, the electric current on the fence through which Fred had escaped suddenly jumped to 7,000 volts! He will certainly feel that if he attempts another escape!

Inmate Released Back into Society

Fred returned to the pasture with his family

To date, no one has escaped again…and so I can definitely breathe a little easier.

Confused Chickens

Chickens wondering how they USED to get through but no longer can!

The last phase of the pasture transformation was putting hard cloth on all the gates to prevent the chickens from leaving the pasture. This accomplishes two things. First, they now have to remain in the back pasture where they can be protected 24/7 by their capable livestock guardian, Odin. Secondly, they can no longer get into the back yard to eat my grapes and flowers, as well as they can no longer get into the neighbors’ yards.

They have tried every which way they can to get through, but they are now truly “pastured chickens” and not “backyard chickens”. This makes me very happy. If you haven’t read my most recent de Good Life Farm book Odin and Merlin: The Amazing Team at de Good Life Farm, you may buy it here: https://www.amazon.com/Odin-Merlin-Amazing-Team-Good/dp/1639840745/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=Odin+and+Merlin%3A+The+Amazing+Team&qid=1631722987&sr=8-1. After reading this book, you will understand how important it is for the chickens to remain in an area where Odin can protect them.

The End….??

Daisy with her new friends Merlin and his hens

So, this is the end of this very long post. But, it is definitely NOT the end of the tales of the tails, trials and ticklers here on de Good Life Farm! I hope you have enjoyed reading. If so, check out the Books page and see which stories you would like to read…and you may subscribe to this blog. You will find a variety of topics to interest and amuse you! Thanks for visiting! Enjoy your day! I’ll leave you with a sweet picture.

Life Lessons Learned on the Farm – Part One

We have now been on the farm for nearly six and one-half years. There have been happy times and sad times, productive times and less-than-desirably productive times, times of elation and times of despair, times of exhaustion and times of rest and through all of those ups and downs, there have been a lot of lessons learned…life lessons…that go beyond the scope of farm life and yet envelope it completely.

This will be the first of several posts in a series called “Life Lessons Learned on the Farm”. I hope these posts will make you laugh, smile and even possibly relate to your own life lessons.

SOMETIMES YOU HAVE TO LAUGH TO KEEP FROM CRYING!

To be honest, I am still working on this one…but I have been able to implement this lesson a few times! You have heard the old saying “Don’t cry over spilled milk”? Well, the person who said that obviously hadn’t just spent twenty or thirty minutes in preparation for, and milking that cow who decided to shift her weight, or scratch an itch, or kick at an annoying fly, or any number of other reasons and as a result, KICKED OVER THE BUCKET of fresh milk.

Of course, there is the chance to be thankful that’s all she did…because you can salvage the milk left in the bucket, but when she firmly plants her foot INSIDE the bucket of milk, the whole thing has to be pitched! Believe me! That has happened on a few occasions and laughter was NOT what came out of my mouth!

Then, there are the incidents that cause more work; incidents that could have been avoided…but weren’t, and the result is more work. Fussing and fuming doesn’t undo the damage, but finding the humor in it definitely can lighten the stress load.

For instance, leaving a gate open behind you inevitably and eventually will result in a bovine finding their way out of where they are SUPPOSED to be and into a place they ARE NOT supposed to be! One morning, I realized there was manure ALL OVER our back yard, and I am talking eight to ten piles! I couldn’t figure it out because everyone was where they were supposed to be…and then…I saw it. THE OPEN GATE! Obviously, at some point during the night, Mocha and Jersey had discovered the gate was left open and they took a midnight stroll around the back yard (so thankful our back yard is fenced in), eating to their hearts’ content and depositing their evidence all over the place. But, they had been “smart” enough to find their way back to their pasture before milking time the next morning! They acted all innocent but the proof was in the pudding, so to speak!

And then there is the most recent occurrence of this negligence when a gate was left open (do you see a familiar theme here?) and Elsie made her escape into the newly greening pasture. Now, this is a little scary, because too much of the richness of the spring pasture could actually be deadly to her…but 1) she actually made her escape while we were out there and so we could shut the gate before anyone else could escape; and 2)because we were out there when it happened, we put all hands on deck to get her back in. Three humans and one amazingly intelligent Odin (Great Pyrenees, just in case you are new to following my farm antics) worked together and got her safely back into the pasture where she belonged, even though she was trying every avenue available to her to further her adventure!

I think we all had a huge adrenalin rush as we tried to outsmart her, block her passage to the rest of the pasture and then watch Odin exhibiting a magnanimous adrenalin rush as he ran circles around her in an effort to keep her contained to one area. It was an amazing rescue and even though there were some harsh words in the heat of the moment, once she was safely back in her space, and we could all breathe a sigh of relief, the humor of the situation began to explode!

Along with finding the laughter in things, comes the realization that the laughter may not come immediately. Sometimes it takes some time and space from the situation to be able to see the humor in it.

For instance, when Fred and Barney first came to the farm, Fred was a little high strung. He escaped (with a lead rope on, thankfully) from the first person who had a hand on him…leaped through the electric fence INTO the pasture…ran around and seemed to settle down then as soon as we relaxed…he ran THROUGH the electric fence on the back side of the pasture!

This could have been REALLY bad! there was nothing but neighbors’ 5-acre lots and a road and a cornfield facing him. I have to admit that I panicked! Jeff went under the fence and I walked/ran around to hopefully head Fred off if he headed for the open road! As we got to him, ever so slowly so as not to spook him, what did he do? He hopped BACK THROUGH the electric fence back into the pasture where he was supposed to be! WOW! It was scary while we were going through, but as we retell the story to others, we laugh and joke! It IS funny! It just wasn’t funny in the moment!

So, what can we learn from this? Find the laughter. It won’t always be present in the moment, but eventually, you may be able to laugh! The other thing is “this too shall pass”. The spilled milk gets absorbed and cleaned up. The manure gets picked up. The cattle get back into the pasture behind a closed gate, and on and on. Trying to remember that as long as it all ends well, you will have a funny story to tell…may help you get through it, if you can’t laugh in the moment!

And, please know that I realize that there isn’t always laughter. Some things just aren’t funny; they are hurtful…we will address that as well in an upcoming post!

So, in the meantime, laugh! It’s like good medicine!

“Get the Cow Out of the Chicken Coop! ?????

Yep! You read that right! Just when I think I’ve seen everything, yesterday I looked out toward the pasture and at first my eyes couldn’t figure out what I was seeing. It was raining quite hard and my vision was obscured by the raindrops! THEN, I realized what I was seeing was a COW BEHIND sticking out of the CHICKEN COOP!!! So I yelled to Micah to come help me. I wasn’t sure how difficult it was going to be or exactly what I might have to do!

I ran out in my sandals and as I got closer to the chicken coop, I realized that it was Mocha’s behind that was sticking out of the chicken coop door, but what shocked and astounded me more is that Caramel was ALL THE WAY in the coop helping herself to the chicken feed! I yelled at them and pushed Mocha backwards out of the way. In the meantime, Caramel realizes she has been caught in the act and tries in vain to turn around but can’t! Then, Caramel started backing out!

After I got the girls out of the coop and chased them into the corral where they could be sequestered, I went back and checked on Merlin and the chickens and WOW!, Merlin was talking up a storm, telling me all about the ordeal they had just been through. Then I realized that Caramel had CLEANED OUT the chicken feed! I stood and talked calmly to Merlin and the chickens and told them I was so sorry that happened. I refilled their feed and left them to settle down. Can you imagine two “somethings” coming into your house that were 150 times your size? Just let that sink in for a moment! They were FUSSED!

Today, everyone seems to be settled down and I will know NOT to allow the cows near the open chicken door unless I have it secured so that they cannot get in…or, I will make a door from which ONLY chickens can come and go!

Too bad this little scenario happened AFTER Merlin’s book was finished! I bet it would have brought some smiles!

By the way…I apologize for no pictures of the incident! I was just concerned about flying out there and getting the situation handled!!!

“Little Big Mouth” and her Arrival in the Pasture

If you have followed my farm stories for long, you no doubt remember reading about our last calf who, when just hours old, bolted through several electric fences and crossed the road before Micah tackled her on the edge of the cornfields. If not, you can go back and read “She’s Here….And She’s Off” that was written last October. That same calf “Snickers”, when being carried to the barn shortly after her birth as we do with all calves born in the pasture, belted out the loudest cry I have ever heard on a newborn calf. She earned the nickname “Little Big Mouth” on that day and she has lived up to it many times in her short four-month life.

A week ago Tuesday, she said good-bye to her mom, Caramel, and joined her Aunts Hazel and Truffle and her Great Uncle Oreo in the pasture. Now, this isn’t the first time we have been through this process. Normally, in fact with all other calves before Snickers, three days has been the magical timing of when they decide their situation isn’t going to better itself and they may as well just shut up and make the best of their current situation. But, this calf again has made a name for herself and lived up to her nickname.

Oreo, Hazel and Truffle watching in curiosity as Snickers joins the group

She mooed for a full five or six days and five nights….most of that non-stop! Caramel responded in duet with expected moos for three of those days, but conforming to our expectation that she would settle down in three days, she was contented after that. But, Snickers (LMB) kept it up…till she was hoarse! She would go over and eat hay with the other calves and then go back to the area of the pasture nearest the barn and start her complaining all over again.

Then one night, after she had begun to settle down, a neighbor’s dog evidently got bitten by our electric fence late at night and was yelping so loudly I could hear it through my closed window. Well, Snickers decided that was her cue to begin her song of woe once again. Thankfully, when the dog quieted down, eventually she did as well.

The other funny thing that has happened in the pasture since she arrived is the older calves have each “adopted” one of the calves as their protector/babysitter/trainer. When Hazel joined them several weeks ago, I expected her sister, Truffle, to take her under her wing and be her buddy/surrogate mom. However, it was big, sweet and gentle Oreo who became his niece’s buddy and babysitter.

When Snickers joined the calves, I was also hoping that Hazel would be a comfort to her because they had played together in the corral quite a bit and seemed to really enjoy playing with each other. However, Hazel stood and observed this noisy little creature with near disdain and a quizzical look as if to say “WHAAAT IS YOUR PROBLEM???? This pasture was a pretty peaceful place before YOU arrived!!!” It was Truffle who then seemed to have the patience and desire to help with Snicker’s acclimation to the group. Several times I have gone out to the pasture and they were standing two and two…Truffle and Snickers in one place and Hazel and Oreo in another. There are times that all four of them are in one place, either around the hay bale eating, or in the shelter for the night but this pairing up has surprised me.

Snickers, enjoying stretching her legs and running around in the openness of the pasture

I think she is slowly becoming one of them but Oreo, as sweet and as gentle as he is, still finds ways to let Snickers know he doesn’t really appreciate all the chaos she has brought to the pasture. I have observed him several times chasing her away from eating near where he was eating. As much as I don’t like this, I have come to realize it is part of how the calves establish the hierarchy of the pasture and I must allow them to work it out, as long as someone is still able to eat, drink and sleep without being bullied. Sometimes I wonder if somehow Oreo knows that Snickers is Caramel’s daughter and is paying her back for how Caramel bullied him when she was at the top of the heap in the pasture. If you remember, he was the one who broke through the fence and happily ate from the neighbor’s clover field when Caramel kept chasing him away from the hay. Guess what goes around comes around!

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.

Wellerism or Reality?

According to Wikipedia, “wellerisms are sayings of Sam Weller in Charles Dickens’ novel The Pickwick Papers that make fun of established clichés and proverbs by showing that they are wrong in certain situations, often when taken literally.” One wellerism I heard many times while I was growing up was ‘”Each to his own”, said the old woman as she kissed the cow.'” The official wording of this wellerism is “‘Everyone to his own taste,’ the old woman said when she kissed her cow.”, but the meaning is the same.

The funny thing is that for fifty-some years, it was just that…a funny saying. But in 2015, that wellerism became a reality for me at de Good Life Farm. In March of 2015, we brought home our first bovine. She was actually classified as a heifer at the time which is a female bovine over one year old who has not borne a calf or has borne only one calf. Mocha was fifteen months old and pregnant when she came to live with us. I had known her a since she was a couple of weeks old. She was a beautiful calf and I fell in love with her. I remember one time pulling in and I couldn’t find her…then saw her little tannish ears peaking out from the bean field. She had escaped the electric fence and was enjoying a little freedom! She was so adorable and quite proud of herself!

Each time I saw her, I tried to gain her confidence. I would stick my hand out toward her and talk sweetly to her, but she was pretty skittish and really wanted nothing to do with me. By the time we were ready to bring her home to the farm, I had only been able to coax her within twelve inches of my hand. She had no idea how much I loved her but soon she would!

Mocha’s life experiences had been pretty limited until we loaded her on the trailer to bring her home. She had been with her mama, Jersey, from the day of her birth. It’s all she had known. Not too long before she became ours, the farmer bought some jersey heifers. It was so comical to watch her assert herself over them. There were two of them and one of her and she ruled the roost, so to speak. The farmer would feed the heifers and she would chase them away from their feed. He would then put feed out for her and the heifers would go eat her feed since she was eating theirs…and when Mocha saw what they were doing (when she would eat, she would position herself so that she could keep her eye on the other heifers) and she would literally run (more like bound) over to them and push them away from the feed.

On the day that we brought her home, we loaded her up on the trailer and as we pulled away, she began mooing loudly…and I could hear Jersey mooing loudly back at her. Her baby was leaving in a trailer! Mocha mooed all the way through town. Every time we came to a stop, the sound of her mooing filled the air. It broke my heart.

We got her home and put her in the stall in the barn. Several times each day, I would go out and spend time with her in the stall, trying to gain her confidence. She had no idea how much I loved her. I brushed her, talked sweetly to her and just spent time with her so she would know she could trust me.

That is when I realized WHY the old woman in the wellerism kissed her cow. Mocha’s fur smelled like cinnamon! I kid you not!!! I would nestle my nose in her neck or back and the faint, sweet scent of cinnamon filled my nostrils. I began to realize that she liked it when I nuzzled her face or buried my face in her fur. She began to trust me and I grew to love her more and more.

Now, don’t get me wrong. She is still that stubborn, silly girl when she wants to be! But she knows I love her and I believe she loves me too! And, even when the barn doesn’t smell sweet, burying my nose in her fur still fills my nostrils with the sweet scent of cinnamon.

Tag: cows