Beyond Words

The summer rains have begun, the regular drenching each evening that turns the pastures into emerald green swards of luscious grass.  It's been so many months since I have really been rained on, I had almost forgotten the warm-but-wet-to-the skin feeling.

I was stuck in a good, drenching rain over the weekend, one of those storms that keeps you on your toes and lets you know you're alive.  I was walking up between the black cherry trees to the third line, looking for Matilda and Geranium, uncertain as to where they had been moved the evening before.

The green of the grass was unreal in the weird light of sunset and storm.  Lightening flashed around me, and for a few seconds I reflected on the sad spiritual uncertainty of a culture who has decided that god is merely a distant creator, something to seek and perhaps not find, as the ancient voice of Thor rolled and pealed and shook around the sky.  A blinding flash that came from everywhere at once, followed closely by a horrible crack that seemed to split the sky apart, a not-so-distant explosion, and I found I was huddled on the ground, soaking wet, and the thunder rolled around and around like a loud celestial ball game.  You can't help but think of the gods in that kind of a situation.

And suddenly ahead of me I saw the cows through a rain-hung plum thicket, all in a ruminating group of sleek chestnut browns.  Their calmness was relief, I could smell the warm, milky smell of their bodies.  Without a sound, Matilda and Geranium rose in turn, and walked along the fence line beside me until we reached the corner.  Silently I unrolled the electric fence, and they filed out, Matilda hurrying Geranium along, barging in front when she got the chance.  Sampson tried to come along, and I stamped at him.  One firm, strong stamp in the wet grass.  He lowered his horns and backed away.

The rain fell around us.  No words, only the tearing of grass as the cows grazed along the way, but we all knew what was meant.

Adopted

This story that I have at last decided to write about has some sad parts.  It also reveals how little we know about farming, and how gullible we were, unfortunately.  But I promise it has (at least for now) had a good ending.

Last fall we bought a new Jersey cow.  The man who sold her to us seemed really nice.  He had a whole story about it being his daughter's 4-H cow, and he was selling her now that she was in college.  We've always been so lucky with getting livestock - on the rare occasions we do buy new animals.  We couldn't get very close to the cow because there was another crazy cow in with her.  But she looked okay, and he was even going to drive her to our farm, which was so tempting because it is such a pain to rent a stock trailer.

So we did buy the cow.  We called her Freya.  She was pretty, one of the darker Jerseys.  A few months later, the same fellow stopped by with another Jersey cow.  He had some story about his brother having a micro-dairy, but he had all sorts of tragic things happen and now had to sell all his livestock.  He dropped the cow off and wanted us to send him a $1,000 check (it was a "drive-by cowing").  But that cow didn't really work out - I might get around to writing how we got him to pick her up again, but I still have the emotional scars (for the 18 hours she was at our farm, we called her Igor.  Don't worry, we didn't give him another $1,000 for her).

When he came back to (eventually) get Igor taken care of, I asked him a few questions about Freya, and he had totally different answers than when we came to buy her.  I realized then that he had totally lied to us.

I had mentioned before that a calf was born this spring.  That was Freya's calf.  Unfortunately, right after the calf was born, she became very ill, and lost a lot of condition very quickly.  The vet looked at her, and we thought perhaps it was a virus that dairy cows will get in the winter.  She was still up and eating, so we increased her ration, as per the vet's advice, and tried to get her to gain some weight.  It was hard to get her to eat enough.  After a month, she was getting better and better, and had gotten her appetite back.  Then we got a sudden cold rain storm, and she relapsed and ended up going down.  We called the vet and tried to get her back on her feet, but she was too weak to even hold her head up.

When the vet came to look at her, she said she had pneumonia and was struggling to breathe.  She looked in her mouth -  something we had not done (to our cost) before we bought her, and realized that she was a very old cow, and really should not have been bred.  The vet advised us to put her down, which we did.  It was a very, very sad day for us.

Her calf (Sampson) was a month old.  We put him out with the other cows.  He was glad to be among them, and Matilda was very glad to finally be able to give him a good kick.  Every time I took her down to be milked, she would stop and shake her horns at him through the fence, and he would be saucy back and kick his heels at her.  The first thing he did when he got out was to go try to nurse on Matilda.  She sure showed him.

Since then, we noticed he was following Flora around.  I've heard her mooing and mooing, not realizing it was because of him.

They will often get out of the electric fence together and go eat all the good stuff before the other cows get to it.  The other day I was watching him, and realized that she is treating him like her calf.  She's looking out for him and grooming him.  She's been mooing when he gets "lost."

I thought it was so sweet that she is so motherly towards him.  She's only 18 months, and has never had a calf of her own.  She was there when he was born, and I wonder if she had bonded with him then, because she was so upset when we moved her out away from him afterwards.

So he is not motherless after all!

Joining the Herds

Last week when we arrived we were greeted by Matilda, Isla, Geranium and Chestnut loafing around the feed bins and looking extremely pleased with themselves.  Isla made sure her lovely nose got in the picture.  We quickly shooed them in the pen with Mairie, which is next to the milking paddock where milking rations get served and therefore is the most exciting place to be, just to get them behind a fence again while we assessed the damage.

 The garden gate was open, although most things looked untouched at the time, I later discovered quite a few little plants that were trampled to death by suspiciously cow-shaped feet.  The oats and barley left to soak with cider vinegar had been broken into and were gone, they had devoured the small bit of rolled barley left and enormous cow pies littered the area we usually hang out around.

The result was that we introduced Mairie to the rest of the herd earlier than we had thought we would, since we had gotten there later than usual and didn't have time to walk out the whole fence line to find where they had escaped (we later found that it was because when Ethan moved the hay ring the night before he had left it tilted up and someone--probably Matilda--had rolled it over the strand of fencing and they all just stepped over it to get out).

It was nice, because Meathead got to be reunited with Geranium again now that he's weaned, but Mairie was not really pleased to be one of the smallest cows now (she was one of the largest at her previous home).  Matilda and Geranium wasted no time in establishing their superiority, and even Isla was pushing her around.  She didn't even try to vie for dominance with Chestnut, and I can't really blame her.

They only were together one day until we set up a new line for them and put them all out.  We even had enough fencing wire and posts to set up a non-electrified guide lane so we just walked them all up and avoided any more scenes like when we brought Richard back.  Unfortunately Mairie didn't really get the moving concept and stayed in the milking paddock with the brain trust--Butch and Meathead.
(Meathead still fails to follow the herd at all times.  I'm afraid he might be retarded.  Geranium had a really stressful pregnancy with him, being moved to three different farms, and it seems to have taken a toll).

We moved the boys up the next day, and they were shockingly well behaved.  Mairie wasn't trained to electric fencing at her previous farm, and although we had a hot line on the top of the paddock, she's not tall enough to notice it, so she just scoffed at the electric wire and walked through it.  We quickly caught her again and put her back in the old eaten-down paddock with some hay.  Then we moved Butch and Meathead up, who never looked back.  She has been regretting it ever since, so we set up some fencing in her paddock so we can move her out soon.  Every day when we get there she stands and stares at us reproachfully.

A New Cow

This is Mairie, our new cow.  She has proven to be as un-photogenic as the rest of our animals, so she already fits in.  This is a better picture of her:

Our friend, Karen Sherwood of Ochwilla Hill Farm, whose husband Ed so recently passed away, is needing to decrease her milking herd as soon as possible.  She raises Mini-Jerseys, but has a few larger ones that are only part mini, so we offered to buy one of her larger ones.  Karen said Mairie was a good milker, but is shy and doesn't do well with strangers, and she had to be sold because now different people are going to be taking over the milking responsibilities and she isn't going to be very cooperative.  She is only about as tall as Isla.  She was one of the largest cows there, but will be the smallest in our herd.

She looked like a good cow, although she is about as thin as Matilda, making me realize again that Matilda really isn't all that thin.  I've been comparing her to the sleek fat Jerseys I saw a couple of years ago on a Pennsylvania farm tour, but they have so much better soil there, it's not really a fair comparison.

It was really interesting going to Ochwilla Hill Farm to get Mairie, because I hadn't been there since Rose was a baby, and since we had our farm.  I found myself noticing completely different things this time.  The first time, I mostly noticed how things were laid out.  This time, the first thing I noticed was the soil.  Out there near Melrose is one of those ancient now-land-locked beaches from when Florida was underwater and it's all just drifts of white sugar sand.  Their pasture was growing out of what looked like a sand box.  My hat's off to them, I don't know how they've managed their herd so nicely with that kind of sand.  On our way back, I was looking at the sand on our driveway, which always looks so white and sandy to me, and realizing that it was actually grey sand, and feeling thankful.

Another thing that was really strange was how tiny her cows looked.  When we had stayed there years ago to milk the cows for them while they were out of town, the cows seemed so big.  The smallest ones seemed small, but the larger ones looked enormous and intimidating.  This time they all looked so miniature.  The tallest ones are only as tall as Isla.  I guess our herd is gigantic, and it's changed our perspective a lot!

The first day we milked Mairie we both had to catch her and lead her into the milking stand, and she was so afraid she was trembling.  She calmed down, though, and yesterday she went in to the milking stand all by herself, with only some coaxing and alfalfa.  I think she'll be a good cow.  She seems nice enough, just perhaps a little high-strung.  We really didn't need another cow this year, but this way we'll get milk when Matilda's dried off for calving and Mairie will have another good home.

The Crazy Day

I really wish I had some pictures to put up, because yesterday was a crazy day.  But we were too busy.  It's really too bad, because it would be so exciting to post pictures of Richard the Bull kicking up dirt, shaking his horns, charging and being a total jerk while we tried unsuccessfully to guide him into the trailer.  Or a picture of Matilda with all four feet off the ground, pronging as she charged wildly down the wrong grazing line.  Yes, it was that kind of a crazy day.  

We also had to take the baby chickies out.  They were getting crowded and the deep bedding had reached the point in which the waterer didn't fit anymore.  They grew so fast!  Of course it rained yesterday, and the weather changed, but we gave them some extra shelter, so hopefully they'll be fine.

The biggest thing we had to do yesterday was get Richard home.  He was so expensive to keep, eating an entire round bale himself each week.  Otherwise, he was extremely well-behaved until it came time to be put in the trailer.  He doesn't have a halter or anything to make it easy to catch and lead him.  Eventually, after much hassle and life-endangerment, we got him in.  It was such a relief to drop him off and drive away.  We are going to stick with AI next year.  I hope I'll be better at telling when the cows are in heat by then.

The next exciting thing was moving the cows out to the grazing lines.  We didn't have enough electric wire to put up a line to guide them all in, so we figured we would just lead them with a bucket.  While we were dealing with Richard, we had put Matilda, Isla and Geranium in the milking paddock, which is really too small for them, but we thought it would be quicker than it was.  They spent the whole time goring each other with their horns and fighting over who would eat all the leftover peanut hay.  Chestnut-case got out and ran half way around the 40 acres.

Once we got Richard in the trailer, we let them out and tried to get them excited about the bucket, which they didn't care about in the least.  Instead of following the bucket, they ran bucking and kicking around and around while we tried to catch them.  Ethan caught Geranium, who was by far the best-behaved (yes, that kind of a day), and started leading her up.  Isla started to follow and got distracted.  Matilda evaded me until I finally caught up with her around the feed area, where she was trying to savage the steam rolled barley container.  I caught her halter, but had to weigh her head down with all my weight while she went charging after Geranium, trying to rip away and gore my side with her horns the whole way.  Isla came up from behind us, not wanting to be left behind, and as she passed Matilda and me (kicking up her heels as she went) Matilda switched into stampede mode and I had to let go or be dragged through cactus and small oak trees.

Ethan got Geranium in easily enough, and we both shooed Isla in after, but Matilda went charging along the wrong grazing line to the far end of the property where she was just a little speck.  I was worried she was going to step in a gopher tortise hole an break a leg or something.  She's just too big to move like that (I'll bet she's stiff and sore today, too).  She made an about face and came running back at top speed, but I headed her off and we got her in.  We almost didn't care enough about Chestnut to go catch her, but I got a stick (not to hit her with, as tempting as that might be, to lengthen my arms for shooing), and headed her off over by the calves' paddock.  She went running back, shaking her horns, towards Mirin, who had ignored my dire warnings to stay in the back of the truck, had run up to "help."  From a distance I saw him stop, turn around and run away as fast as he could.  We did get Chestnut back in eventually, and Mirin later told me, "I almost fainted when Chestnut was charging at me!  I could feel her hoof beats thundering on the ground."

On the way to take Richard back we finished reading The Hound of Ulster, in which Cuchulain and his charioteer alone are holding off Queen Maeve's army at the North Gap so they can't steal the Brown Bull of Ulster.  I would have let Connact come and take the Brown Bull if they'd wanted too, only they'd have to get him in the trailer themselves.

Geranium

Well, we tried milking Geranium.  We weaned Meat-head (her July surprise calf) when we moved all the girls in the garden to be with Dennis's bull Richard.  We were excited to milk Geranium, since she's supposed to be from a milking line of Devons, and at the ACRES conference we went to years ago, Sarah Flack had said all sorts of nice things about Devons and high butterfat.  But not so for Geranium.  At the very most she made about 1/2 gallon of milk, with hardly any cream compared to Matilda, which might have still be worth it if it weren't for her personality.
After we bought her she quickly became known as "Geranium Insanium" around here, which has morphed into "Derangium."  She's not really mean, just crazy.  For example, about a week and a half into milking her, I had just petted her neck, scratched her head,  and fed her a treat of peanut hay after milking and I opened the gate so she could go back to her friends, saying kindly, "There you go, Geranium."
And Geranium bugged her eyes out, shook her head and charged through the gate, trying to kick me on the way out.
I recently looked over her papers again and realized that she had been sold from four other farms.  I think I might know why.

And her teats were really strange, almost more like a goat udder than a cow's.  You can't tell from looking at them at all.  So I had had to milk her like I would milk a goat.  And she would kick.  There's a cow-hoof impression on the milking bucket these days.
Her milk, although it wasn't as creamy as the Jersey milk, was very sweet and tasty.  My children preferred it.  We were speculating that perhaps it was because she might be an A2 cow, and Ethan said that for Geranium, A2 means Angry squared.
Not worth the half gallon.

The Littlest Milkmaid

Rose always likes to help me with the milking.  Sometimes she actually helps to milk, but usually she stands by my side and rubs Matilda's round belly, and laughs when we get whacked by Matilda's tail.

She always insists that I save a little for her in the milking pail to drink warm and fresh and very sweet.

Fresh milk is the best!