A Sunday that was Monday

 Sassenach left over from Sunday Stills

Worked my morning off yesterday because of green grass and our too-small, inch-and-a-half milk pipeline. The girls are working hard with all the lush new feed and they make so much milk that they flood that skinny little line.


All the milkers fall off, and the cows kick and jump on them, and you have to dump the vacuum trap, and milk runs all over the floor, and there is a mess. 


On and on and on. It can happen several times per milking.


However, if someone spends the whole milking in the milk house, thumb on the pump switch, turning on the transfer pump every time a new surge of milk gushes into the receiving jar, you can get through milking without any drop offs.


I appointed myself Sunday morning pump switch engineer in chief and, with the company of my iPod, spent a fairly peaceful morning. However, the rest of the day was pretty much a Monday, only dressed up nice for the weekend.

Lucky jumped the fence Saturday night and bruised her udder, requiring much treatment both morning and evening. Plus Velvet finally decided that she can walk, but not well enough to make it out to a stall to be milked by machine. Thus the kids put a halter on her and tried to get one of the bull calves to take care of the job. However, the calf wasn't hungry and didn't cooperate, so they haltered her and hand milked her.

She is such a pet that she just let them do it, but with all the doctoring and all, we didn't get out of the barn til after nine PM. The boss was grateful that we did all the work on Saturday while he was off being an auctioneer, so he was going to buy everybody pizza for Sunday supper. However, by 9 they all wanted to go home or go in the house and crash.


So I made tuna sandwiches. Maybe tonight we will get the pizza.


Pretties seen for Sunday: Boss and I walked up in the day pasture to bring down the cows for night milking. Sun was on its way down and glinting off the river to the north, surrounded by trees like a sapphire on a sea of green. In all the years I have worked here and all the trips up the hill I had never seen it like that. It was blindingly beautiful. The land will surprise you that way ....new lovelies every day.


Then Jade and I were holding gate while the boss brought in bales. A set of turkey vulture septuplets sailed down over the barnyard and the same setting sun gilded the lighter parts of their under wings with golden fire. Who would think that a close up of such ugly critters could be so stunning? We stopped to watch them teetering back and forth until they headed west to their roosts on the mountain.


All in all it was a normal day of up and down and good and bad.....that's farm life for you. Insane but beautiful.