Deja Vu All Over Again

It was about 8:15 last night, I was setting up calf bottles for morning, Ralph was milking the bucket cows and Alan was up behind the barn getting feed with the skid steer. Down the farm road from the far back fields came four teen aged kids....dripping wet, freezing cold, covered in sloppy mud...and whatever else they had stepped in. We ran out to accost them, as most everybody that shows up trespassing is here for nefarious reasons.


They kept telling us how they got on our land from their friend's house and were walking the nature trails. After a while, we realized that they were well and truly lost, as they kept saying they came in from the west, when in fact they were from the housing development to the east...they were visiting from Albany and were on a "nature walk". They kept insisting there were laid out trails and mowed areas where they came onto the farm. Took us a while, but we finally realized they were talking about the farm roads and mowed hay fields.

They were terrified. We didn't mean to scare them, but as I said, we have never actually had benign trespassers before. Thank God they found the barn when they did, because they soon would have been blundering into temporary electric fence where the cows are. Had they not come down when they did they would have been hard to find out there, as although they had a cell phone, there is little signal up there. And there are lots of farm fields, ours and others, going south and west for quite some distance. Lots of wild brush land too.

Anyhow, it took a while to get them straightened out and waiting at the bottom of driveway for parental pick up. I suppose I should feel bad for laughing (even if I waited until after they were gone) as they were polite and really scared, but the manicured "nature trails" and mowed lawns were just too funny for words.

We finished the night by locking Foolish, who had the calf, in the barnyard for the night, as well as Mandy and her daughter Blitz. Blitz looks like calving tonight too and she will not stay in a fence with out her mommy.

When we came to the house Liz pointed out that this happened last year the night she calved.
However, these were the trespassers then. What a coincidence to have strangers show up during the same circumstances like that.