Meet Chuck!

When we went to do evening chores on May 31, we were greeted by this lovely little fellow. Beauty, our Jersey milk cow, gave birth sometime in the afternoon.

I immediately started to worry about the little guy because he didn't seem to know much about nursing. Beauty's udder was really full, and his tummy was really sunken. When I squeezed each of her teats, milk easily squirted out of three of them, meaning that he had at least nursed enough to get the milk plug out. The fourth one, however, still had the plug in it.

Since the pasture is huge, and the grass was so tall, we were worried he might get separated from Beauty and not be able to nurse enough. Plus, there was rain in the forecast, and we were worried about him not following her to the shelter -- if she even decided to go into the shelter when it started to rain -- so we took them into the barn for a few days of bonding. We also kept trying to show him the teat and get him to nurse. Gardener Sarah and I quickly agreed this was a big advantage of goats -- they are much easier to handle when you want to get them nursing.

I kept reminding myself that most calves get this thing figured out easily on their own, but still I was worried. Thankfully we did see him nurse a few times before we went to bed that night. And the next morning, we noticed he had a full tummy!

He is doing great, and we castrated him a week ago. Since Beauty's last calf Beau got so obnoxious when the testosterone kicked in, we decided that we should castrate this one so that he won't be so scary when he gets bigger. Yes, his ultimate destiny is the freezer, so I named him Chuck Roast, and we're just calling him Chuck for short.

Since Beauty is making way more milk than Chuck and us humans need, we are hoping to get a bottle calf to also raise for meat. Plus Chuck will have a playmate.

A couple of farmers went to a party ...

Beauty and Beau (one month old) on November 5

Why has it taken me so long to tell you about our new milk cow Beauty and her calf Beau? Maybe because I still have a hard time believing that the first Saturday in October we went to a party at another farm, and before the night was over, I had my heart set on this beautiful Jersey cow and her one-week-old bull calf. I've spent a lot of time thinking, I can't believe I bought a cow on impulse! and wondering if I'd made a huge mistake. So, here is the story ...

PrairiErth Farm in Atlanta, IL, was having a harvest festival on October 4, and Mike and I decided to go. We had to do chores before heading up there, so we arrived when the party was already in full swing. We parked our car and were walking past the barn on our way to the hoop house where all the food was set out on tables, and I heard a voice yell, "They're going to milk the cow. If anybody wants to see them milk the cow, come on over to the barn!"

I knew Dave the farmer had a couple of Jerseys, but you would have thought that I had never seen a cow in my life. I got so excited and told Mike that we had to go see the cow! We walked into the barn, and a few minutes later, Dave came into the barn with a bucket, and his 12-year-old son started to milk Beauty the Jersey while her sweet little calf walked around visiting with everyone. Then Dave asked if any of the children wanted to milk the cow, and I stood there watching in amazement as children walked up to the cow and were yanking on her teats while she just stood there quietly chewing her cud. I looked at Mike and squealed like a 5-year-old, "I want that cow!" Mike just smiled at me. "Really!" I said, "I want that cow! Can you believe that? She's letting those children try to milk her!" I went on and on as Mike simply smiled. Then I said, "Honey, you have to milk her!" And he just kept smiling, but he did eventually walk over there and squeeze her teats a few times while I said, "Isn't she easy to milk?" Mike just kept smiling and said, "Yes, she is."

Dave said that Beauty had been sold, but she calved about three weeks early, and the buyer backed out of the deal. The calf was perfectly healthy, but it was a bull calf, and Dave figures that the buyer had been hoping for a heifer calf. Anyway, Beauty and the calf were for sale. I was thrilled that the calf was a bull because we sold our cattle more than a year ago, and there is very little beef left in our freezer, and I've been wondering what I'd do when we ran out completely. I haven't purchased or eaten commercial beef since 1989, and I'm not going to start now.

October 11, the day after we brought them home

I talked to Dave about buying the cow and her calf, but I don't think he completely believed I was interested. But, seriously, how many people come to a party and decide to buy a cow? Mike was probably hoping I was just joking. But I had a terrible time falling asleep that night because I kept thinking about Beauty. I woke up early and went downstairs and made a list of pros and cons for buying Beauty. The "pro" list outnumbered the "con" list by a lot. One of the advantages of buying her would be that she would obviously be great for teaching people to milk. Another thing is that we could make cheese with cow milk. If she produced more milk than we needed, we could get a calf from a dairy and raise it for beef. We could also feed extra milk to the pigs. The only down side is that we'd have to milk her, but on the pro side, it would take less time to milk one cow than several goats. Of course, the goats are going nowhere because I do still love my goat cheese, but I have always loved Jersey cream and butter. I love goat milk, but it doesn't have that "buttery" flavor that Jersey milk does.

So, after a couple of days of deliberation and discussions with Mike, I called Dave and told him that we wanted to buy Beauty. He sounded surprised and happy. He said he had hoped she would become a family milk cow rather than going to a dairy.

It's been two and a half months now, and we are enjoying her and her calf. She has learned to go into the barn every night. In fact, she gets downright loud when the sun is going down and we are not there to let her in. She heads straight to her stall, as soon as we open the door for her. And then I give her a hug every night as she starts to munch on her hay. We are enjoying her milk, which are using for yogurt and cheddar.

Beau is growing up so fast, and he is starting to get darker like his mama. Here's a picture of him on Dec. 10. We separate him from Beauty every night and milk her in the morning. The two of them are together in the pasture during the day, so he can nurse as much as he wants during that time. He will probably become beef in late summer as the grass starts to slow down. And at some point, we'll have Beauty artificially inseminated so she'll have another calf.

A new goal

As we are making the transition from homestead to full-fledged working farm with a strong emphasis on education, I am attending a variety of business seminars, and a couple of days ago, I attended one on managing multiple priorities -- and boy, do I have multiple priorities! It seems like I go through every day doing whatever is urgently demanding my attention, whether it is a goat in heat that needs to be bred or milk that needs to be turned into cheese, which leaves little time for things that need to be done but are not urgent, such as finishing the staircase or putting tile around our bathtub. (Yeah, we moved in 10 years ago.)

"Goals" was one of the many topics covered in the six hour seminar, and although I am no stranger to goals, sometimes we need to be reminded to actually apply what we know! Even though something may be important, it may not get done because you don't have a goal. So, I've decided to set a goal of posting on here at least once a week. I'd spent so many years just posting as soon as something happened that I never thought I needed to set a goal to post on here. But as other things have taken over my life, I find that blogging on here gets pushed to the back burner.

I have a goal of posting on my Thrifty Homesteader blog three times a week, and I usually meet it. Because that is a "how to" kind of blog, I feel a commitment to produce information to help people learn to homestead or live a greener life. But, I've always looked at this blog as my homesteading journal, and feeling that no one really "needs" to read this stuff, it gets put off day after day. I suppose I think of this as my fun blog and Thrifty Homesteader as my work blog. Even if that is the case, I should still make a habit of blogging here regularly because we all need to remember to incorporate fun into our lives, right?

So, rather than thinking that I'm going to write lots of individual blog posts on all of the little things happening around the homestead, here are a few highlights. You see that rose up there? That was really taken on our farm two weeks ago! And the same bush is still blooming, even though we've had two nights with below freezing temperatures. There are currently three blooms on that bush!

I planted lettuce in August, so we now have lots of big, beautiful heads of lettuce!

And that means we can have lots of salad! I especially love an entirely homegrown and homemade Cobb salad made with our chicken, bacon, jack cheese, boiled eggs, and lettuce!

Here is a picture of the butter I made with the milk from our new Jersey cow, which we got in early October. I am still hoping to tell you how we got her because it's a funny story, but for now, you get to see the butter. We've also made yogurt and gouda with her milk so far. No verdict on the gouda yet because it has to age, but the yogurt was a lot thinner than my goat milk yogurt, which would be fine for smoothies, but when it comes to fresh eating, I prefer the goat milk yogurt.

We currently have the goats grazing around our house, so here's Lizzie! We do rotational grazing, and now is the end of the grazing season, so we're letting the goats have every last bit of greenery, including everything in our yard.

Next weekend I'm heading down to Texas for the Livestock Conservancy conference. If any of you are there, say hi!

So, there you have it ... what I've been up to the last few weeks and where I'm heading. And I now have a goal to post on here at least once a week. It may not be perfect, but it'll be something.

Hasta la vista, cattle

 Mama Cow Bridget and baby Ciara last summer

I finally did it. I really did eliminate a species from Antiquity Oaks. I know you didn't think I'd ever do it. I've been talking about selling the cattle or the sheep for the last two years, but I haven't really put any effort into it. And I still didn't put much effort into it, but it happened.

More than a month ago, I got an email from someone asking if I knew where they could buy a couple of feeder Irish Dexters -- feeders are cattle raised just for meat. I said that I didn't know anyone who sold feeder Dexters, but I was selling my two cows and the heifer. A few more emails and a month later, and we found ourselves loading up the cattle.

Molly with her little bull, which we called Sir Loin
last summer

We still had the little dun bull and the yearling bull that we had bought for breeding, and we wanted to take them to the locker for processing because we love our grassfed beef. I coordinated schedules so that we could take the bulls to the locker the same morning that the cows were leaving so that the boys would not have to deal with the stress of losing the girls before heading off to meet their destiny.

No one could remember how we had loaded up the bulls the year before, so we all came to the conclusion that it must have been easy and unremarkable. But no one really believed it could have been that easy. We knew we would have to move them all into a small pen and then get the bulls separated from the cows and loaded onto a tiny two-horse trailer.

My job was to keep the girls occupied with alfalfa while Mike and Jonathan lured the bulls into the trailer with alfalfa. And to our complete shock, it actually worked. And it worked quickly! Both bulls were loaded and ready to leave in less than ten minutes.

When the buyer came to get the girls a couple hours later, things did not go quite as smoothly. Bridget, being the most outgoing of the cows, was quick to follow whomever was offering her alfalfa, and she'd even follow him into the trailer ... but only her front half. As soon as her rear legs touched the trailer floor, she'd back out. This little dance went on for about half an hour, but finally she decided the lure of the alfalfa was stronger than her fear of lifting up those rear legs and putting her whole body into the trailer.

There is a part of me that really misses the cows, but there is a bigger part of me that is relieved. I will definitely miss the grassfed beef, but the bulls dressed out at 384 and 346 pounds, and we're keeping the 384 pounder, so we'll continue to enjoy the beef for another year or two. I am relieved, however, that we will never again discover that we have to retrieve cows from someone else's yard a mile away. And luckily, Mike and our children were always home when that happened. My big fear was that I would be home alone someday and get one of those phone calls. I really don't know how I would have ever brought the cows home if they had escaped when I was home alone.

I suppose it was hard for me to sell the cattle because it felt like admitting defeat. I had so wanted to milk them and make cheese and other dairy products from their milk as we do with the goats. But we never got set up to milk cows. We didn't have a head gate or stanchion for milking them, and we couldn't even keep the cows separated from their calves successfully overnight. Moving Bridget the horned black cow from pasture to barn and back again was scary, even though I'm sure she would never intentionally try to hurt us. It is unnerving to see two big swords moving towards your chest propelled by 800 pounds of muscle.

My youngest daughter who is home for a couple of days asked, "So, does this mean you'll never have cows again?"

"I never say never," I said with a smile.

Flooding woes

That's the top of a fence post in the lower right-hand corner.

Life just keeps getting more complicated. We've known for the past two days that we were going to get a flood today, but there was not a lot that we could do about it. I hate feeling helpless.

I woke up this morning at 6:30 after less than six hours of sleep. I told Mike he needed to get going because there was likely a lot of damage control that needed to be done before he went to work. In my mind, I was thinking about how much I wanted to catch another hour of sleep, but as soon as I looked out our bathroom window I was shocked into reality. There was water everywhere. I immediately knew there was no way I was going to fall back asleep as the adrenaline kicked in.

We put a pot of steel-cut oats on the stove and started coffee, and Mike and Sarah went out to do chores and whatever else needed to be done. I saw the horse in the pasture, blocked by the flood from getting to a shelter, so I went to the barn, grabbed a lead rope, and led him through the front yard to another pasture where he could get out of the rain. Then Jonathan came outside and told me that our turkey poults were at the post office.

I jumped in the car and headed towards town. The road next to the bridge to the west of our house was flooded, so I turned around to take a different route. I passed by Mike fixing a fence in the sheep pasture. I could see where the road had been flooded overnight in four places on my alternate route. Driving past other intersections I saw debris covered roads and a "Road Closed" sign. The intersection at the post office was completely flooded. I parked and went inside. As soon as the postmaster saw me, she knew I was there to pick up my poults, and I asked her if that intersection usually floods. She shook her head and said, "Not like that!" I told her that our road was flooded west of our farm, and she yelled back to our mail carrier who was sorting the day's mail. And then she said, "The worst is yet to come," which I had seen on weather.com, but it still make my throat feel tight to hear it.

Driving home with chirping turkey poults on the seat next to me, I alternated between crying and chuckling like a mad woman. I knew there wasn't anything that we could do other than simply deal with whatever happened to get thrown our way. I remembered my mother saying "if the good Lord is willing and the creek don't rise" sometimes, and it suddenly made sense to me. It was not just another cliche.

Mike and I spent most of the day organizing paperwork as I tried to distract myself from the constant rain. I had convinced him to not go to work. If we lost electricity, we'd need everyone at home to deal with the basement flooding because our generator didn't start the last time we tried to use it.

As the rain seemed to slow down and finally stop, I felt a little guilty about keeping him from work because nothing horrible had happened. And then the phone rang. It was our neighbor. Our cows were out. I immediately assumed it was because the electric fence had shorted out in the flood. But when we went to retrieve the cows, we realized that as the flood waters were receding, they were exposing large sections where fencing no longer existed.

Using hay, Sarah lured the cows to the section of pasture farthest away from the damaged fencing as Mike came to the conclusion that it couldn't be fixed before the sun went down. Luckily we have temporary electric fencing that is very easy to put up quickly. Still he had to make some adjustments to get electricity where he needed it, and I was really grateful that he had not gone to work today. Shortly after the last rays of light were gone from the sky, he came inside and said that the cows should stay put now.

Even though I no longer feel guilty about asking him to stay home from work today, I'd have been happier if there hadn't been so much fencing damage and the cows had stayed home.

Love is in the air

It's fall and that means one thing on the farm ... breeding season for the mammals. All of the goats are bred that I want to breed for January and February kiddings. The cows keep coming into heat, and we're working on finding them a boyfriend. Provided his DNA testing comes back negative for a nasty genetic disease, he'll be here soon. And now for the pigs --

I sold my boar last winter. I figured it was a no-lose idea. If I decided to stop breeding pigs, I'd have one less to sell, and if I decided to keep breeding pigs, I should buy a new boar anyway to breed to the former boar's daughters. Then as the months went on, I kept telling myself that I should sell all the pigs. Well, you know how my farm reduction plan has been going! So, I decided to borrow a boar from a friend.

Meet York --

He was slightly shy about hopping out of the trailer. I suppose he thought he should play it cool around the new ladies.

But in no time he was ambling around the pasture and checking things out, including the electric fence, which he had no experience with. He quickly learned to stay away from it. He also became a very quick fan of whey, which is a by-product of our cheesemaking.

The girls are not terribly fond of him, but I'm sure that will change when the hormones kick in at some point. York will be here for about a month or until we've seen him breed both girls. Pigs are pregnant for slightly less than four months, so hopefully we'll be seeing piglets at the end of March!

Bulls will be bulls

It's been a crazy day, and it's only noon. We started out with sheep shearing, and before that was done, we heard honking at the front gate. I went out there to find a neighbor telling me that our bull was flirting with his cows about a mile away. Mike and Katherine took a pan of alfalfa cubes and a lead rope, assuming they could just lead him home the way we did last summer when he got out.

Things didn't exactly go as planned. About twenty minutes later Mike called to say that Jaxon had sort of lost his mind, and they needed help. The sheep shearer had just finished, so I told Margaret and Jonathan to head over. I paid the shearer and decided to head out and see if they needed my help also. When I turned down the road I saw our truck slowly creeping towards me with a bull tied to a cattle chute that the truck was pulling.

According to Mike, this is what happened -- They walked right up to Jaxon when they arrived, and Jaxon started munching on the alfalfa cubes. Katherine snapped the lead rope onto his collar, and Mike started leading him down the road. When Jaxon realized that the goal was to take him away from the sexy cows, he got a little upset and took off. You don't have to have any experience with cattle to know that a man cannot stop a bull from running off if he really wants to run. That's when Mike called for reinforcements. They trapped Jaxon in a corner next to the chute, and Mike tied the end of the lead rope to the chute, then asked the neighbor if he could return it after bringing Jaxon home. He didn't want to risk trying to lead Jaxon to the pick-up and tying him to the bumper because they were thinking that Jaxon would just take off again.

When we got Jaxon home, I was taking pictures of him, saying that we needed to sell him. But then the obvious question arose -- where are we going to keep him so that he can't go visiting the neighbor's cows again? We had no idea. Obviously none of our fences are good enough. Our barn was originally built for racehorses, so that should hold him. But I am not feeding him hay and mucking out stalls forever. The option of turning him into beef was discussed, but we decided to just put him in the barn for now. I had the brilliant idea of putting a second lead rope on him so that two people could lead him into the barn. Do you think that worked?

Of course not. Obviously a bull is stronger than two men, and Jaxon knew it. I was really glad we have our entire property fenced, and as we watched him running around our front yard, we again started talking about butchering him. About twenty minutes passed as we tried to move him back to the barn, and then I told Mike to go inside and call the locker to find out how soon we could bring him in.  Shortly after he went inside, Jaxon got close to the fence that separates the front and backyard, and our herding dog Porter started to run along the other side of the fence. That pushed Jaxon to start running in the direction of the barn. And he kept running. After all of the drama of the past hour, could this really end so easily?

Yes! Well, almost. Jaxon ran into the barn, and we closed the door behind him. He ran all the way to the other end, and we opened the door of a stall. Jonathan picked up the lead rope, and I suppose since Jaxon realized he didn't have anywhere to run, he walked back towards the front of the barn. When he saw the open stall door, he went inside, and Jonathan slammed the stall door behind him.


As the four of us came walking out of the barn, Mike came out of the house and yelled across the yard, asking us where Jaxon was. We were all incredibly happy that the bull was finally locked up. And Jaxon has an appointment with destiny for Monday morning.

There is a part of me that feels guilty for butchering him, as if we've failed. But he is a meat animal, and it simply is not practical for him to stay here. There is a lot of liability involved in having a bull, especially if he escaped and ran into the road, causing an accident. And it probably isn't even practical to have him with only two cows, although we've been sharing him with someone else who has two cows. He is a nice bull, as far as bulls go, but they have a lot of testosterone running through their bodies, and that makes them a challenge to handle and to house.

I've been planning a blog post on testosterone and rams, which I hope to get posted in the next few days!

Worry, doubts, and hay in winter

You don't have to know me very well to know that I worry a lot -- probably far more than is good for me. I once read that worrying too much is just as bad for you as smoking a pack of cigarettes a day. That just gave me one more thing to worry about! I'm doing everything that is supposed to be good for me -- except this worrying thing! But I digress.

What I really want to write about today is the hay situation. Every year I worry about hay -- having enough hay to last until the pastures are growing again, as well as having good quality hay that will keep the animals well nourished and healthy. I wish I understood how hay that looked great in the middle of summer doesn't look so great in winter. I bought hay from two different farms this year, from three different cuttings. They all looked great when I bought them, but now I'm having my doubts about two of them. One is so stemmy that the goats won't eat it unless I feed them in a big group -- then, of course, they all want to get it so no one else does. I love it when goat peer pressure works for me. If there are only three or four goats in a group though, they look at me like, "You expect us to eat THIS?"

We only got 300 bales of the really good stuff, and the goats have already gone through half of that. I'm thinking we'll save the other half for when the does kid. In the meantime, we'll start feeding the stemmy stack. The other stuff smells kind of like pickles. The cattle are eating it though, so I suppose I'll continue to feed it to them. No, I have not sold any of them yet, in spite of what I said.

Every time I go out there to feed them, I tell myself I need to make an appointment at the locker to take in the two young bulls for processing. That would reduce the hay usage quite a bit. But that little red bull is just such a beautiful vibrant red, and he's polled. Honestly, I didn't try very hard to sell him as a bull. I only advertised in a couple of places. But if I sell a bull for breeding, it really should be his father. I'm not sure what kind of meat we'd get from an intact 2-year-old bull, even though I was mentally turning him into steaks the last time we had to bring him home from a neighbor's place a few months ago.

I go through this every winter, even though every summer I feel like I'm buying more hay than ever before. The increase in the cattle population is a big part of the problem. I really did buy more hay than ever before. The front of the big barn was full -- that's a 30-foot by 30-foot area -- as well as another area in the smaller barn. I think I wound up buying about 900 bales total. It's only December, and there is already an open area in the barn that is way bigger than it should be by now.

But the only smart thing to do is to butcher those two bull calves. It is not smart to buy hay in winter. It's always way more expensive than summertime because the hay men know that if you're buying in winter, you're desperate. And the other problem with the hay disappearing so fast is that we do have a lot more goats than normal. Since we were blessed with 29 bucklings this year, only about two-thirds of them were sold as bucks for breeding or wethers (castrated males) as pets. There are about a dozen wethers out there that are also eating a lot of hay.

A few years ago, I didn't think I could ever eat a goat, but that was a few years ago -- long before I found myself standing in the barn wondering how I was ever going to feed all these animals until next spring. Mike butchered one of the wethers a couple of months ago, and the meat was quite good. He really needs to butcher more of them. But we've been procrastinating.

When we first moved out here, I used to feel like the queen of some small country. Coming from a typical suburban lot, our 32 acres out here felt like a small kingdom, and I was suddenly responsible for the lives of a lot of animals. I didn't initially feel comfortable being the one who decided when an animal's life would end. I'm not sure I'll ever be completely comfortable with that idea, even knowing that I am making a responsible decision when it comes to allocating our resources, such as pasture space and hay. But goats and cows have to give birth if you want milk. And as good stewards of our land and caretakers of our animals, we have to have a plan for those babies. If they are not sold, the logical place for them is on the dinner table.

Cows and goats and PowerPoint

I should be working on my PowerPoint for the Mother Earth News Fair this weekend, but life has turned into quite the unexpected mess. And yes, I should be working on it now, but I haven't blogged in a week, and I'm not going to be able to write anything on here for the next few days, so I figured I'd let you all know what's been happening.

Yesterday I discovered that Pegasus, one of my ND bucks had a big problem with one of his eyes. At first I thought his eyeball was missing because I could only see pink tissue. But after closer inspection, I realized the eyeball was still in there, but you couldn't see it because the eyelid was so swollen. So, I called the university vet school. The man on the phone said someone would call me back in 15 minutes. So, I started working on one of my PowerPoints for the MEN Fair, and before I knew it, several hours had passed, and it was well past 5 p.m. when the vet school was closed. They have an emergency number, though, so I called back. An ophthalmologist talked to me and told me that it would be $300 for Pegasus to be seen! I was speechless. Normally the vet school is very reasonable.

So this morning, I started to call other vets to see if one of them could see him. The first one had a message saying she was out of town. The next one was busy. Then the phone rang. Our neighbor said our cows were in their yard, so Katherine and I ran out to get them. We brought them home but noticed that our bull was not with them. Katherine looked through our pastures and couldn't find him. Driving up and down the roads looking for him would have been a waste of time because it is very wooded around here, and he was probably deep in the woods where we would never see him from the road.

Then I got a phone call from the vet clinic. It was the technician that I normally speak with, and she said that the ophthalmologist was mistaken. It would be a normal office visit for the vet school, and the ophthalmologist consult would only be $35. Thank goodness she had heard about my phone call. Unfortunately, it was too late to bring in Pegasus today because it is a two-hour drive, so he has an appointment for tomorrow.

Then the intercom for the front gate ding-donged. It was a farmer from around the corner and a mile away. He said that our bull was in his barn. I was relieved to know where he was, but then the farmer started to complain that our cows were getting out "all the time," and he has 70 head of cattle, and "they never get out." Our bull has wound up in his barn twice, but he was also upset that another neighbor assumed our cattle belonged to him and had called him when our cattle got out a couple weeks ago. So, apparently once in March and two times in the last couple weeks is "all the time." But I had to really remember everything my mother ever said about being nice before I responded to his statement that his cattle "never get out." Before we put up a fence across our front yard, I found his cattle in my garden more than once. And I don't even know how many times I've called his brother to tell him that his cattle were in the road. I didn't even think about getting mad at him when someone called me and thought that his loose cattle were mine. I just said, nope, my cattle are in the pasture -- and I even called them to let them know that their cattle were loose.

I had always assumed that they didn't want their cattle running all over the county, and figured they'd realize I prefer mine stay home also. I don't understand why some people get so nasty about animals getting out. I certainly don't want my animals running all over the place. I appreciate it when people tell me they're out because I want them home where they'll be safe. Being mean to me isn't going to do anything to improve my fencing or my psychic ability to figure out how they're going to get out next. The problem is actually not the fencing. It's the creek. We had cattle before, and they never got out by walking down the creek bed or anywhere near there. Both times the cattle have gotten out before, we added additional fencing to the space where they got out, but then they go somewhere else next time. I didn't even attempt to figure out where they got out today because we're not putting them on the back twenty again.

One reason I wanted cattle is because they could utilize the pasture across the creek. Coyotes are thick back in there, so it's not safe for sheep and goats, even with the llamas. But this is not working with the cattle. I'm not happy about the idea of feeding them hay through another winter because they eat a lot. We ran out of hay the first winter we had them, which was not fun. Hay in February costs a lot more than hay during the summer because the sellers know you're desperate.

So, the cattle are now for sale. I already talked to one very clueless man who was interested in one of the cows. He mentioned breeding them to Scottish highlands or lowline Angus, and I immediately saw my sweet cows dieing trying to give birth to huge calves. So, scratch him off the list unless he educates himself a lot about Dexters, which are the smallest breed of cattle in the country. If the bull and the two calves don't sell within the next month or two, we'll turn them into beef and veal. If I have to feed hay to the two cows over the winter, I will.

As for how our day ended -- We had a fun time bringing Jaxon home. He was a mile from home, and the sun was going down. It was only Katherine and me at home, and the farmer made it clear he wasn't helping, which is fine. When Jaxon showed up at their place in March, his brother gave him a ride home in his trailer. Katherine and I took a lead rope and a pan of alfalfa cubes and hopped in the truck to drive over to the man's farm. We walked right up to Jaxon in the barn and started hand-feeding him the alfalfa cubes, and Katherine snapped the lead rope onto his collar. He walked out of the barn like a well-trained dog. I followed in the truck with my foot on the brake the whole time. I felt like I was driving in a parade, but watching Jaxon's back end for all that time, I started mentally drawing lines on him, figuring out how many roasts, steaks, and so on we'd get from him. The walk home went very well for the first half mile. Then Jaxon decided to start running, and Katherine dropped the lead rope. She runs for fun though, so she was able to keep up with him as he headed into the woods for a short while. The two re-emerged on the road a minute later with Katherine running closely behind him. Of course, the main thing on my mind was that if I had been home alone (like I will be in a year or two), I would not have been able to get him home by myself. I suppose that's why I started thinking about beef.

Now I have a PowerPoint to put together, and I have to take Pegasus to the vet clinic tomorrow, which will be a long day. Somewhere I need to get some sleep. I went to bed after midnight last night and woke up at 5:30 this morning and couldn't fall back asleep, worrying about Pegasus. Friday morning, I'm leaving for Pennsylvania and the Mother Earth News Fair. If you're there, be sure to say hi!

The annual panic post

If you've been around for awhile, you know that I generally panic this time of year. Husband-professor Mike is back at school, and the three now-adult children are all in college. Margaret will be graduating from University of Illinois this December. Katherine, my baby, is editor of her community college newspaper this year, and favorite son Jonathan is in theater and has already been cast in a play this semester. That leaves me home seven days a week to milk goats, make cheese, harvest vegetables, can, freeze, and deal with whatever emergency happens to be happening around here, which seems to be coyote related lately. Most days, I have one additional person here to help, and I hate to sound ungrateful, but that's not usually enough.

In past years, I've also freaked out about the fact that we still didn't get drain tiles in the ground around the house and barn, which means that we'll have to deal with continued flooding at random times. And no, we didn't get the drain tiles in this summer either. And the potting shed still is not done, although Mike did buy the lumber, so we are one step ahead of previous years. Maybe my dining room won't be taken over by seedlings next spring. And we got nothing done on the house -- you know, the one in which we live, the one we started building seven years ago. So we're still living with no tile around the master bathtub, few baseboards, and an open staircase. Someday this will be a beautiful house.

But this year, I have new things to add to my panic list -- I have a book coming out in a couple weeks, which means I'll be doing lots of speaking and book signings. So, I have speeches to write and Power Points to create. If you're in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, or Kansas, be sure to check out the events that are already scheduled there, as well as Illinois, where I live.

I also have to write my second book, which is due January 15. And I started two new blogs, which is one reason I don't post here quite as often. I've already introduced you to the Homegrown and Handmade blog, which is a supplement to the book and contains recipes and information on growing your own food and fiber. But I also decided to start a writer's blog -- a blog where I write about writing.

Does it surprise you to know that I've been thinking about selling the Irish dexter cattle and most of the Shetland sheep? I just haven't worked up the nerve to actually post any ads. Part of me keeps saying, what if it's a mistake? I'm not sure how it could be a mistake to reduce my workload around here, but fear of making a mistake paralyzes a lot of people.

Now the sun is low enough in the sky to be shining into the window next to my computer. It's my cue that it's time for evening chores.

Jaxon and Bridget's BIG adventure!

From the moment the neighbor called to say that our cattle were on his property around the corner, I knew I did not have a good plan for getting them home. They were apparently in his orchard, which is probably only a quarter mile as the crow flies (over the creek and through the woods), but traveling on the roads, it is a mile away. After we arrived at his place, he showed us where they were. Jaxon wears a collar, and I had brought a lead rope to attach. For Bridget, I had brought a two-gallon stainless steel pot with alfalfa cubes in it to lure her back. The pot was demoted to barnware after it sprang a leak during maple syrup season.

It became obvious fairly quickly that this was going to be a long ordeal. Jaxon didn't want to walk on the lead rope, and Bridget was only somewhat interested in the alfalfa cubes. And did I mention that her calf was also with them? I assumed he would follow the grown-ups. The neighbor said that his tenant had told him there was also a brown cow, but we couldn't see her anywhere.

Bridget is the cow with the big horns, and the whole time I was walking backwards down the neighbor's quarter mile driveway with an alfalfa cube in my hand, I kept hearing blogpal Miss Effie saying, "Girlfriend, did you see those horns?" I hear ya, Miss Eff, I see those horns, and I am so happy that the stainless steel pot was demoted to the barn because I think it is about as wide as Bridget's horns are long. Mind you, Bridget is as sweet as a cow can be, but if she were to get overly excited and come running and not be able to stop quickly enough . . . well, then I start hearing the voice of that hen in the animated movie, Chicken Run. "I saw me life flash before me eyes!" So, I made sure the pot was always between me and Bridget, just to be safe.

When we finally got to the road, I ran back up the driveway to get my car and drive it out to the road. It had become obvious that it would take both Jonathan and me to get everyone home. I drove the car a little past Jonathan and the cattle and pulled over to the side of the road, stopped the car, and got out to help him move everyone a little farther down the road. When Bridget saw her reflection in my car, she didn't want to walk past it, but I finally coaxed her around it. And Jaxon kept stopping, so I would get behind him and push his back end while Jonathan pulled on the lead rope.

Things went fairly well until we got to the neighbor's house on the corner. I don't know what was so enticing about their yard, but Bridget kept trying to go into their backyard. Although I managed to stop her from doing that, we did wind up cutting through their front yard. As we began heading down our road towards home, I suggested Jonathan go get my car. I took Jaxon's lead rope, and Jonathan took off running. I turned my back towards Jaxon, and leaned foward, putting all my weight into dragging him down the road. It went well. It's going too well, I thought. No, no, I argued with myself. Jaxon is just getting better at walking on lead. But with me focusing on Jaxon, Bridget started to wander off into the ditch and then behind weeds that were taller than she was. I called her name several times, but she was nowhere to be seen. Jaxon was trucking along at the best speed of our entire jaunt, so I did not want to stop. But I didn't feel like I had much choice. I had to find Bridget and get her back on track. I tied Jaxon's lead rope to a fence post on the side of the road and went running into the weeds to find Bridget just as Jonathan showed up. Then I realized that Bridget was going to a pond. Who knew when she last had a drink of water, so she was obviously thirsty. I told Jonathan to take Jaxon and head down the road with him.

Everything gets a little fuzzy at this point. There was lots of running, and I kept hearing that hen from Chicken Run! "I saw me life flash before me eyes!" I saw Jaxon come bolting out of the woods a few hundreds yards from where he was supposed to be. Then I see Jonathan still hanging on to the other end of the lead rope, running behind Jaxon. I started making that horrible noise -- you know the one that makes bystanders ask, "Are you laughing or crying?" Amazingly Jonathan got Jaxon under control again, but a few minutes later, the whole scene was repeated in reverse. Jaxon ran into the woods with Jonathan behind him. I realized that I didn't have my cell phone to call for help, and I would never be able to get Jonathan out of the woods if he got injured. Then I saw Jaxon come running out of the woods again with Jonathan still in tow. By the time Jonathan got Jaxon under control, we were so far from the road, it would have been a huge waste of time to go back the way we came. Jonathan, who had just been dragged through the woods three times, said that there was a four-wheeler trail that led straight to the road, so we agreed that he'd take the cows through there, and I'd go back to the car and drive it forward a bit more.

After driving the car past the other end of the trail, I walked back to the opening in the trees and waited for Jonathan and the cattle. After a few minutes, I called his name, and he yelled back, "I'm coming." I knew we had to come up with a new plan. Bridget was stuffed with alfalfa cubes, so they weren't working any longer, and she was only mildly interested in following Jaxon. I told Jonathan that next time we walked past the car, I would get in and drive very slowly behind him and hopefully that would push the cows to continue walking. We were within spitting distance of our western property line, but we were still about a tenth of a mile from the nearest gate, and across the road was a field full of soybeans and then corn. How would we ever get Bridget out of there? Then I realized that she has never had grain, and it is an acquired taste. So, if we're lucky, she'll just keep walking, I thought. Although Bridget kept walking, Jaxon stopped twice, so I had to get out of the car and push him to get him going again.

Finally, we could see our driveway ahead. I pushed the button to open the gate, and Jonathan led Jaxon through, and then after briefly hesitating, Bridget went through, and her calf followed. I pulled my car into the driveway and stopped as I waited for the gate to close -- just in case anyone had any second thoughts and turned around to head back out onto the road.

We still had to get everyone into a secure pasture, and I suddenly got the brilliant idea to use fly spray to make them move. It's just soapy water, but I think the cows hate the "psht" sound it makes when I spray. So I went and got my spray bottle and stood behind Jaxon. When Jonathan pulled on the lead rope, I started spraying, and Jaxon started walking. It worked brilliantly. We had to get them through the barn to get to the pasture, and as we were taking Jaxon through, Bridget came into the front of the barn. I went back and slipped behind her and started spraying and she started trotting through the barn. Worked like a charm.

The whole time we were heading towards home, we kept thinking about Molly. Where was she, and how would we find her, and how would we get her home? As soon as we had Jaxon, Bridget, and the calf in the pasture, we heard a moo coming from across the creek. It sounded close so Jonathan went to check it out, and it was Molly with her calf.

So, I can now say that the whole thing ended with no injuries to human or cattle, and we got an hour and a half of good exercise. I have no idea how they escaped because Mike just walked the fenceline yesterday and pronounced it perfectly sound. One thing that kept going through my head again and again was, what would I have done if I had been home alone?

Return of the bull

Lesson # 953: NEVER assume that a bull will stay in a trailer simply because you are standing in the open doorway.

Lesson # 954: Always wear blue jeans around cattle.

Because a bull really needs more than two girlfriends to stay happy, we share a bull with another person who also owns two cows. Jaxon spends three months here, then three months there, and so on. It works well because he gets our girls pregnant, then goes to get their girls pregnant, then stays here for another three months until our girls calve, then he goes back over to his other home to stay there until those girls calve. By then our girls are three months postpartum and ready to breed again. And so the cycle goes on.

Jaxon is the big guy in the middle, reunited with two of his girlfriends.
Bridget (left) is horned, and Molly (right) is polled like Jaxon.

Thursday I picked up Jaxon to bring him home so he could get our cows pregnant again. Jaxon is almost two years old, and he really is a good bull. (You have to know that before you read the rest of the story.) I decided to open the trailer door and snap the lead rope onto his collar. Simple enough, right? Never! As soon as I started to crack open the door, he calmly pushed his way out of trailer. I tried to block him with my body, and he lifted one leg and began to step out. My leg was in the way. Wow, those hooves are sharp! As the pain registered in my brain, I started to feel panicked and was expecting him to barrel out of the trailer and start running. But he didn't. He was as calm as could be, while I stumbled backwards and screamed, expecting to see a bone sticking out of my leg. But it quickly became apparent that my leg wasn't broken -- just a little bruised and bloody. Although I had not succeeded in getting the lead rope attached to Jaxon's collar, he just stood there right outside the trailer as Jonathan attached the rope and began leading him through the barn to the pasture. It was weird to feel so panicked while everyone around me seemed so calm, including the bull.

I used to think that I needed a friendly bull. Now I realize I need a well-trained bull -- as in a bull who understands "stay!" like my dog. Considering the odds of that happening, maybe I should give up on cattle and just be happy with my little goats.

Bridget's calf -- take two!

Yes, Bridget the Irish Dexter gave birth back in March, but Margaret just edited the video footage that I took. If you've ever wondered what a normal birth is like for a cow, here you go.

Milk anxiety

 Charlotte was pen bred, so I don't have an exact due date,
but her udder is big, and her ligaments are soft, so it should be soon.

For those of you who don't have your own milk supply, I can now say that I feel your pain. It's been a few years since we've run out of milk, and it was a terrible feeling. I scheduled the kiddings a little too tightly into a two-month period, and the last goat dried up in January before Athena kidded. And then my plans for starting to share milk with the babies was delayed, because I was worried about her little buckling nursing enough.

Giselle is due today, so she should kid this week.

My time without my own milk was a dark time. My children, who are accustomed to my rantings about commercially raised food, even got tired of listening to my angst, especially in the grocery store. I won't buy Horizon dairy products, because they're owned by Dean Foods, and they keep their cows inside, rather than letting them outside. And this isn't some animal rights propaganda. Dean/Horizon admits they keep the cows inside, as if there is nothing wrong with the practice. And since the class action lawsuit was filed against six different stores that were selling store-brand conventional milk labeled as organic, I'm worried about buying generic organic dairy. The label on organic creamer freaked me out because I had no idea what a couple of the ingredients were. Call me simplistic, but I think I should recognize all the ingredients in organic creamer.

Luckily, there is a local dairy that sells Jersey milk. I've been to their farm and seen their cows grazing in the pasture. I've asked the owner if they use rBGH, and he said no. Although their milk is pasteurized, it's not homogenized, so it is processed less than other milk. Although they don't feed organic grain, I understand because I can't get organic grain around here for my goats either. I'd rather have their milk than a certified organic milk that comes from a dairy across the country, where I have no idea how the cows are treated. The dairy world has become such a complicated maze, but I'm lucky that I have a good local option. I wish more people did.

This-n-that

I'm waiting for Athena to kid. She is at day 147, so seriously any day between now and Sunday, because Nigerians almost never go beyond 150 days. At least she is not doing anything to freak me out. Her udder is not very big. Her tail ligaments are still easy to feel. She hasn't "dropped," so I'm happy and warm in front of my computer working on the book.

The book? I'm at 63,312 words right now. The goal is 80,000. I've been writing around 10,000 words a week for the past month, so hopefully will be done by the end of next week. Then I will have time to make everyone -- I mean, ask everyone -- in the family to read it and make sure I didn't make some huge mistakes. And that will give me time to revise and edit and revise and edit, which I do every time I read something I wrote. Deadline is February 15. Today, I've been writing up cheese recipes, and now I'm starting on goat milk soap.

Although the chickens quit laying last month, they have already started again. We don't artificially light our hen house, which is how they get eggs year round in factory farms, so we expect to go two or three months without eggs in the middle of winter. The New Hampshire red hens are 16 months old now and quickly endearing themselves to me. This spring when we are knee deep in eggs, I'll fill up the incubator. The pullets will become replacement layers, and the cockerels will become dinner over the summer.

Unfortunately, we have no milk. It's been years since we did not have milk. I decided to have all the goats kid by March this year, so that by May when Mike is off for the summer, we can swing into full-scale, serious cheese production now that we finally have the aging thing under control. I had bred two goats for January, and one didn't get pregnant. Athena is the other one. In February and March, it's going to be goatapalooza around here with 16 goats kidding, including five on or near my birthday in February. But at the moment, I'm really looking forward to Athena kidding, because I miss my fresh goat milk.

Jaxon the bull came home a few days ago. We co-own him with a friend who has two Irish dexters heifers and lives an hour away. It didn't seem fair to have a bull for only our two heifers, so we decided to share him. He seemed happy to be home. His co-owner bought him a big, blue collar, which fits his personality perfectly because he's like a big puppy.

Molly and Bridget the heifers are as wide as houses, but they aren't due until early March. No udders yet, but they are still perfectly fine with us handling their teats, which sure makes us happy. We have to figure out where we are going to milk them, because they sure won't fit into the milking parlor that we use for the goats. I've been thinking about this for months, and I keep thinking we need a cow barn. But we can't exactly build one in the middle of winter.

Speaking of winter -- a pipe in the main barn busted yesterday. The break is underground, so we can't fix it until winter is over. Unfortunately, that means hauling a lot of water now.

And that's the way it is, in the middle of winter, on Antiquity Oaks.

Patently insane

If you think it's crazy that corporations can sue you for saving seeds, then sit down, because this one is going to really knock you out.

First, a little background -- as you may recall, we've added Irish Dexter cattle to our homestead to expand the types of cheese that we make. We currently make seven or eight different cheeses for ourselves using goat milk, but we thought it would be fun to add cow's milk to the mix. There has been a lot of talk lately on an Internet group about cows having A1 or A2 milk, referring to the beta casein content of the milk. It sounded like the A2 milk might make better cheese, which got my attention, so I started doing a little research.

I could have spent all day reading about this, because the information out there is overwhelming. There are lots of Internet articles, as well as a book, which claim that A1 beta casein is responsible for heart disease, diabetes, Crohn's, autism, and more. Sounds ominous. And the answer is to simply drink goat milk, which several sites claim is all A2 beta casein or drink milk from cows that have all A2. This is where it gets interesting.

A corporation, appropriately named the A2 Corporation, created a test to determine which gene your cows possess. UC Davis will run this test for you, so you can see whether your cattle have the A1 or A2 genes or one of each. However, after you've paid your money to get this test, what can you do with the information? Well, not much. This is where it gets interesting --

Any person who intends to form a herd of animals used to produce A2 MILK®, or milk free of beta casein A1, and/or produces and/or sells such milk, may be infringing A2 Corporation Limited's intellectual property rights.

Huh? So, if we send in our cow's milk and discover that she's got two A2 genes, and we use her to produce milk, we're infringing on your intellectual property rights? You're going to sue me for milking my cow because I used your test to determine that she has two A2 genes? I would say that this is crazy, except that I'd also say it's crazy that farmers get sued for saving their seed, so apparently the Patent Office doesn't care what I think. So, this corporation thinks (and the Patent Office agrees) that since they own the test for the genes, they have the sole right use those genes -- even though I own the cow, feed the cow, and take care of all her needs. From a legal perspective, it sounds a lot like the deal with using patented seeds -- you do all the work, but the big corporation gets to tell you what you can do with the end product.

From my perspective, however, it sounds like being told that I can't use the results of my milk tests that I send in monthly to the lab. I send in my goat milk every month to a lab in New York, and they test it for butterfat and protein. I can use that information for whatever -- put it in advertising, brag about it on Facebook, or use it to make breeding decisions in the hope that my offspring will produce higher butterfat. The lab doesn't claim to own the results, and they certainly don't tell me what I can do as far as production. Yeah, yeah, I know, but supposedly the A2 Corporation actually discovered all of this intellectual property about A2 beta casein, whereas the lab in New York just tests for butterfat and protein, which no one owns as intellectual property.

So, maybe this is where the real story begins. I was seriously starting to rethink my plan to milk cows as I was reading A1 Beta Casein: The Devil in Your Milk by Vin Miller, and then I read through the comments. The last comment really made me start asking questions. Supposedly all mammals had only A2 genes until a few thousand years ago, and then there was a mutation that caused some cows to start producing A1. I'd love to know how they figured out what was in cows milk a few thousand years ago, since this test was just developed. Anyway, if A1 is responsible for all those diseases, then why didn't the incidence of those diseases go up when cows started producing A1 thousands of years ago? Why have those diseases only sky-rocketed in the last generation? If those diseases have anything to do with dairy consumption, maybe it has more to do with how dairies have changed in the last generation.

And in case you decide to do a little reading, the college professor in me just has to point out Betacasein.org, which looks like this lovely, informative, unbiased website. And it's exactly the type of site that I would have jumped all over if a student had used it in a speech or paper when I was teaching. Many people incorrectly assume that all dot-org sites are non-profits. Although that was the original idea, those sites are often sponsored by corporations that want to get their info out there and make it look like an independent source. This site has no author, is sponsored by no one, and has no physical address, phone number, or email for providing feedback, which are all of the red flags for a corporate-sponsored site. Did I mention that the A2 Corporation sells A2 milk in New Zealand?

I'm glad I finally took a little time to do some reading on this topic, because I can now say that I won't be doing A2 testing, and I don't care which casein is in my cows' milk. If people have been consuming it for thousands of years already, I really don't think it's responsible for all of today's maladies. However, if I were a big corporation wanting to make some money off of a test that I'd created, I might feel differently.

Calves around March 6 next year?

Two Fridays ago on May 28, one of the cows was in heat. I checked a gestation calendar, and if we bred her, she would be due around March 6. We spent the whole day weighing pros and cons of an early March calving versus a late March calving. We could be in the midst of a snowstorm on March 6, but on the 27th, we could be in the midst of a snow storm or mud season. Tough choice. By late afternoon, the two bovine lovebirds wore down us down. All logic was thrown out the window after listening to the two of them calling to each other -- cow in the west pasture and bull in the east pasture and our house in the middle.

We went to get Jaxon. Mike snapped the lead rope onto his halter and started walking. To be precise, Mike started walking. Jaxon just stood there. Mike pulled, and I stood behind the bull to the side, where I hoped he couldn't kick me, and I pushed and patted his rump. He'd walk a few steps and stop. Of course, at this point, the cow was completely silent, so it was hard to convince him that he was going to like the new pasture better than his current one.

As we were passing the garden, I met up with a long, fat snake. I screamed. Jaxon looked unimpressed. Mike was disappointed that he didn't have time to catch the snake and check it out more closely.

Finally, we got Jaxon to the cows, who were still completely silent, which was rather frustrating, because it was their bawling that caused us to finally decide to bring Jaxon to their pasture. Even when we took Jaxon into their pasture, they stood there looking at him from a distance. Mike led Jaxon halfway to the girls. As soon as Jaxon realized they were girls, he wanted to get to work right away. In fact, Mike didn't even have a chance to get the lead rope off the halter. Jaxon's eagerness scared the girls a bit, and you can see in the top photo that they took off in opposite directions. Ultimately, though, they decided to give him a chance, and they started to play "ring around the rosie" with him.

Now you have to remember that Jaxon is only 10 months old. He is technically capable of doing the deed, however, his knowledge is lacking, and there is no formal education program for young bulls, so it's sadly a matter of trial and error. And Jaxon made every error imaginable. He knew he was supposed to mount Molly, but he wasn't sure which side or end he was supposed to mount. Wanting to be thorough and not let us down, he went about mounting her from every possible angle. It was funny the first dozen or so times, then it got kind of sad. He did find the right end a couple times, but either he's too short or didn't have enough energy left to give himself the lift that he needed to do the job.

After half an hour, we decided to leave him with the cows. It would be nice to know when calves are due, but we didn't have the heart to take him away from the girls after he'd tried so hard. And who knows -- maybe in the next couple of hours, after we left, everything just clicked and he got it figured out. I guess we'll know next March.

Coming next year: calves!

After many months of looking, we finally have a bullfriend for Molly and Bridget the Irish Dexter heifers. As you know, Bridget has been screaming like crazy every 21 days because like most adolescents, she thinks she needs a boyfriend. I've tried to explain to her that she's too young for such things, but you know teenagers. She doesn't listen!

I really did not think my requirements were that tough, but it took months to find a bull that satisfied me. All I wanted was, #1, a bull that was polled, meaning that he was born without the ability to grow horns. Personally, I don't want to have a testosterone-crazed male with two daggers on his head running around my farm. Sounds like a recipe for disaster to me. I know my limitations, and if I was an adrenaline junkie, I'd be getting paid as a bull rider in rodeos.

I also wanted a bull that was friendly and had been handled. We'll be sharing him with another farm, so he needs to be halter trained so we can get him on and off a trailer twice a year without feeling like we're in a rodeo.

Finally, I wanted a bull that tested negative for two genetic problems that can be found in Irish dexters -- PHA and chondro. I won't bore you with the details, but they can both result in abortions or dead calves, so why take that risk, right?

I was thrilled to finally find Jaxon. He'll be a year old in July, and he was born on a farm in Iowa where they have ten Irish dexter milk cows. Jaxon was tied up every morning while his mother was being milked for the first four months of his life, so he is well acquainted with how a lead rope works. He is extremely friendly. Today I introduced him to alfalfa cubes, and now he thinks my hands are made of alfalfa, and he sticks out his big, long tongue, and tries to pull my hand into his mouth when he sees me! Okay, we'll have to work on that, but it's not a big problem.

We don't want any February calves, so Jaxon can't stay with the girls just yet. Molly was certainly acting like she was in heat when we brought him home. We thought we'd hide him in the barn, but Molly started mooing, and he mooed back, so it's not much of a secret. The due date for calves would have been February 14, which is still a lot colder than I want for calving, so we're waiting until their next heat cycle to breed them.

And if you are really wondering why we don't want a bull with horns, just look at this picture -- Would you want a bull with horns?

Christmas flood, snow storm, and recalcitrant cows

Oh, the weather outside is frightful, but . . . there is no but. If you recall, I tried to sell our creek last spring, but I had no takers. So, I guess today's story starts a few days ago when the temperatures went above freezing, and it started raining. The Christmas Flood of '09 now joins the New Years Flood of '08, the 9/11 Flood of '06, the Mothers Day Flood of '02 and a dozen other floods that weren't lucky enough to happen on a holiday and get a name. I've pretty much given up on taking pictures of floods, because they pretty much all look the same. So, if you want to know what it looked like here on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, just click on the "flood" label, and you can check out pictures from previous floods.

Mike spent the end of Christmas Eve and the early part of Christmas Day shop-vaccing out the small barn. The pigs did some serious landscaping, creating a little pond, which caused water and mud to flow into the north side of the smaller barn. We never installed the drain tiles in the pasture or the yard this summer, so part of the bigger barn also flooded. Jonathan sat up with me until almost 1 a.m. Christmas Day, as I waited for Mike who was sucking the water out of the smaller barn. I felt guilty about sitting inside warm and dry, but it really was a one-person job since we only have one ShopVac. At 12:45 a.m., we talked Margaret into going out there to check on him. While she was outside, Jonathan told me that I could be waiting until 3 a.m. Then Margaret came in and said that when she asked her father if he'd be in tonight, he said he didn't know. So, I decided to go to bed close to 2 a.m.

On Christmas Day, the temperature dropped below freezing again, and the precipitation continued. In fact, it continues as I type, so we have a soft powdery snow on top of ice. I've only had lunch -- a late lunch -- and today has been far more exciting than I really enjoy. When I woke up this morning, I saw that the greenhouse had blown over, so Mike and I went out there to pick up all the pots and planting equipment that had blown around the garden, and he put it in one of the barns. I came inside to get warmed up, and I'd only taken off my boots for about five minutes when he came in and said the cows were out. Of course, they were out! The flood had shorted out the electric fence, and they just know when they can escape. They were across the road, so I took a pan of grain out there and lured them back home. We let them into the barn, and then decided it would be a bad idea to let them out the back door, because it swings on hinges, and we're in the middle of a snow storm, remember? I hate it when a 12-foot door gets yanked out of my hand by the wind. So, we decided to put halters on them and take them out the front door (which slides) and put them in the near pasture (which is woven wire). Sounds simple enough, right?

Getting a halter on Molly was not a big deal. However, Bridget has always been easy, and I made the mistake of assuming she would be easy today. Ha! After a couple tries, I realized I'd need help, so Mike put a lead rope around her neck to hold her while I put the halter on her. I was standing behind her head to the right and was planning to pull the halter up over her nose, and buckle it behind her neck. I leaned forward to put the halter over her nose, and just at that moment she jerked her head up. Smack! Mike heard it and said, "What was that?"

"My tooth. Her horn hit my tooth." Then I tasted something salty. Ah, yes, blood. And I realized my lower lip felt numb. I spit like one of those cowboys who'd just been punched in the face in an old western movie. Yep, blood. But I didn't smile the way cowboys do when they realize they're spitting blood. There really is no good place to stand when you're trying to put a halter on a horned cow, and right at that moment, I was thinking about how much I hated horns on cows. I'm definitely getting a polled bull -- genetically hornless -- so hopefully we'll have polled calves. If not, I'll probably dehorn them as calves before their horn buds even start to grow. But I digress. I moved as quickly as I could to get the halter on Bridget, and then we started leading the heifers out of the barn.

When I got to the gate, of course it had to be a challenge to get unlatched. And of course, there just had to be a turkey sitting on the fence next to it. And of course, the turkey just had to decide that she didn't like me invading her space. So, she flaps her two-foot long wings to fly off and smacks me in the face. At that moment, I decided that this was turning into a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. As we walked the cows into the pasture, Mike asks if I think they can get into the goat's stall through that cute little door that he made last month. I look at the heifers and look at the little door. I can barely fit through that door, but I take a good, long look at the heifers and the door again. Nope, no way -- and why would they? We put a flake of hay in the 3-sided shelter for them. What more could they want?

You know what happens next, don't you? I go into the house once again to try to warm up, and I barely have my boots off when I hear Mike scream. Molly has gone through the little goat door. By the time I look out the window, Bridget has followed her. I yell for Katherine to come downstairs and go help her dad get the cows out of the goat stall. I'm ready to warm up in front of the wood stove with a cup of hot cider.
. . . but the fire is so delightful. Let it snow! Let it snow! Let it snow!