Chasing, Not Amy, Nor Rainbows

The week in review...so far anyhow..it is only Thursday. Cold but mostly clear. A few lake effect flurries mornings, soon gone when the sun comes up. Coyotes howling right nearby most nights or so it sounds. The dog hustles to get back in the house then I can tell you.

Liz passed her milk inspector test...good job kiddo.

The white-crowned sparrow is still here and waits in the lilacs for me to put down seed on an old platform feeder, then hurries right out to eat. Geese and ducks still filling the open water, although I heard very few yesterday. I hope they aren't leaving...they are good company. They sing my lullaby each night and I will miss them when the river locks down for the winter

Some big dairies selling out on the west coast. Milk are prices high world wide, with supplies tight, except here in the USA or so they are telling us. I think maybe two people in the world actually understand what is going on with milk pricing, but I am pretty sure we are being cheated by players a lot bigger than we are...

Chased heifers with the car Tuesday. The men took the stock trailer through the gate and left it open for the milk truck. Five springers there, but they stay up the hill at a feeder and never bother....until Tuesday.

I could see they were feeling riley and wild so, since it was noon and I had not had time to get breakfast, I hurried over to the house for a piece of corn bread, glass of milk, and my book (the new Kathy Reichs, which has a mistake in it...just ask Becky, our McDonald's guru) planning on taking all back to the barn and watching the gate until the milk truck came.

We don't like our driver to have to get out of the truck to open and close the gate.

Well, I just about got back to the fence when Monday, dang her midnight-spotted hide, threw up her head and raced down the hill through the gate. I set my breakfast in the driveway, grabbed my keys and ran for the car to go down the house drive and up the barn one to head her off.

I got there in time mostly because the little snake went up the old pasture lane instead of down the road. All the others followed her and one of the black ones was down on the ice and had trouble getting up.

I won't bore you with the details of how I got in front of them to get them past the car, while making them think I was behind them too, so they would go back up the hill, but I got it done.

They went up and lay down among their feed tires, happy as clams. I watched the barn cats from afar while they ate my breakfast, and listened to my stomach singing four part harmony as if I was a cow, until almost two. That was when the tanker left and I could close the gate.

Just about then the men came back and apologized for leaving me in that fix.

I was nice about it even though I had been planning on writing the Farm Side while the house was quiet. There was still some cornbread left and since it felt more like lunch time anyhow I had it with homemade vegetable beef soup. I am sure the reason it tasted so good had something to do with how late it was.

However, the word is out. On tanker day those five heifers either go in the barn or up in the hill pasture.

Period.