Was it De Day?

What we saw at the house
while the boys were hunting on the hill Sunday

Yesterday we de-wormed the heifers. That was a simple matter of tossing the mineral salt block out of the yard while we were building electric fence and tossing in the SafeGuard block. They will do the rest themselves.

Then I de-grassed the rhubarb bed (reed canary grass is an acceptable cow feed, but it is terribly invasive in a garden. If let go it thinks nothing of growing feet and feet taller than my head! Roots are as thick as my pinky finger, woody and matted. I swear I could hear the rhubarb sighing with relief when I grubbed them out. I was the one sighing by the time I got done. I am out of shape after the long winter lack of garden work.) A wheel barrow load of well-composted horse manure and the job was done. Soon to be followed by rhubarb crisp....

The boss de-clumped the thorn apple tree field (so named because his dad once accidentally put half of one of that kind of tree through the hay mower there...not much fun to get it back out.) Actually he was chisel plowing but the end result was ground that was ready for the discs.

We de-moted the milk cows to the heifer pasture. They were de-lighted because it is a great, big, green field where they de-voured new green grass until they bulged. If I had time I would have taken a few "happy cow" pics as they really were. Happy that is.

I wish you could have seen them when old Zinnia and Etrain realized that the east gate was open instead of the south gate (which let them out into the field behind the barn, which is pretty chewed over.) Zinnia let out a mighty moo, apparently calling the clan to follow, stuck out her long, snakey neck, and shuffled through the puddles by the gate like a big, black duck. As soon as E saw what was happening she trotted on by and hustled up the lane like a magnet seeking north. The whole herd followed, grazed for a few minutes by the gate, and then took a walking tour of their new digs. Every time I looked out the kitchen window, the hillside was dotted with black, white, red and Jersey brown, as they ate or lay in the grass chewing the cud. It was nice.

What's up for today? I don't know yet...de-pends on the weather.

Oh, and as a bit of a post script, Liz's original Jersey cow, Dreamroad Extreme Heather, presented her with a lovely little heifer calf about half way through the afternoon. It is cute as a wagon-load of speckled puppies.