The Cow Whisperer and Strawberry Shortcake

Liz and Strawberry

Our Liz. Walked right out, tossed a halter on Northstar the other night and brought her in to be milked. You don't normally do that with a first calf heifer. Norry walked in like an old show cow. It was pretty cute. She has been led a couple times before, but still.


 BTW, June named Norry in a name the calf contest a while back. Northstar baby pic

High comedy around the place yesterday morning. Norry had the tiniest little heifer the other day...so small we spent some time looking for a twin but didn't find one.

And a few weeks ago, Velvet also had a mini calf...a bull. Although the girl is red and the guy is black, they are brother and sister on the male side, both being sired by our Checkerboard Magnum's Promise bull of old.

At the moment the big heifer pen at the back of the barn is empty and Shortcake, as Liz named the bull, has been living there in splendor. We decided to put Strawberry, the heifer (aren't we cute?) in with him for her own safety. She had already been nearly drowned in the mud by the big heifers out in the barnyard, curious to see anything so tiny in their domain.

Is that my bottle...do you have my bottle, buck, buck, bunt, bunt, bunt

Well, just as we started to let the cows in for morning milking, Strawberry shot out of the pen like a blob of red toothpaste and began to bolt around the barn.


Liz grabbed her (she only weighs about thirty pounds) and stuffed her back in


She came back out


Lather, rinse, repeat.


Then Shortcake, deciding that this all looked like a lot of fun, hopped through the wall himself.


We were all laughing so hard we could barely catch them. (And isn't it just like a guy to not figure out for himself how to get in trouble but to embrace it so gleefully once somebody shows him how).
 

Since we did have to get some chores done rather than play with calves all morning, the boss put up some gates and plywood to keep the little miscreants in the pen...and so far Strawberry has only gotten out one more time when the big beef steer opened the gate, but who knows what we will find this morning.

Sun Sorcery

Came down stairs as the sun was rising, washing the grass in dew drenched light. Tried to get the pets fed fast enough to get a photo as it popped over the edge of the old horse pasture. Alas, too slow, too old, too mired in morning critter routine. It was up like a ruby orange before I got there.

It turned the mountains ghostly pink then lit them up all fiery bright. Sun plus dew turns  ordinary grass to silver thread.... alchemy, alchemy, where is the witch?

Two gold finches sat on asparagus threads, riding them right to the ground, then bouncing up again like kids on a good springy branch. They were eating something, God knows what.


Shakespeare couldn't write all the dawning drama in the trees and hedgerows, singing, loving, fighting, guarding eggs, stealing eggs, hummers dodging and darting like fighters. they sound like little boys with toy cars as they zip by my ear. I think they have accepted my presence on the porch....it can be disconcerting when they treat you like just another tree.


 It is loud out there at daybreak. Catbird, robin, red-winged black bird, yellow warbler, common yellow throat, indigo bunting, blue jay, gold finch, willow fly catcher, ruby-throated hummingbird, cardinal, killdeer, northern mockingbird, starling, common grackle, house sparrow (bah humbug) Nothing exciting this morning, but lots of commotion just the same.


Fun with birds, all day every day.

Storm Luck

I think that black spot is airborne leaves

Yesterday we had it. There were big thunderstorms, tornado warnings, high winds and huge, gigantic..... really big even....hail all around us yesterday.

The boss went out to try and bale a load of hay before it hit. He had wanted to get it in the morning but it wasn't quite dry. The storm was so close that Becky sent her cell phone out with him and we put a continuous weather update station on the TV and watched the weather updates and radar on Facebook and Weather Bug so we could call him if it got close.

Liz was calling from up west where she was working as well, letting us know what was actually happening there and how long it would probably take to get to us.


I'll tell you, with all that going on you just can't settle. Call or not. When to call. We wanted him to get the hay, but safety was more important.


Finally it started blowing the dust around in a wall and whirling leaves off the trees like crazy so we called. He said, "just one more windrow to go, then I'll tarp it and come down."


Well, he didn't get it tarped because the wind ripped a branch as thick as his arm off a box elder three and threw it right over his head...while he was on the tractor... so he left it and raced for the house. It is certainly wet now, but we are feeding quite a lot of hay in the barn so we will just feed it out before it spoils. Wish we could have at least got it tarped or better yet in the mow.


Oh, well. A lot of bad stuff went on all around us, while we didn't have any real damage that I have seen so far. With all the drownings the past couple of days, power outages etc. we are plumb lucky and I won't complain about a little hay. 


And you know how yesterday I mentioned how much is in bloom all at once? When the storm was over the mud puddles in the driveway were clogged with bright yellow-green pollen. No wonder the kids' allergies have been acting up. 

These two weren't the least bit concerned 
about wind, rain, thunder or lightning..
I took these during the storm

Blooming

 Orchard grass early in the day

Everything seems to  be blooming at once here. Virtually all the grasses except timothy, which shows its bristly heads a bit later. Brome is bloom, ditto orchard grass, plus a plethora of minor, weedy grasses everywhere. Orchard is usually about done before the brome shows up, but things are really mixed up this year.

Blackberries, black raspberries, locust trees, wild roses and river bank grapes are all in bloom. The valley smells like a perfume factory gone crazy. Longtime readers might remember how fond I am of the scent of those grape flowers....my favorite in the world.


The cottonwoods are shedding their downy fluff on every breeze. I like the way it drifts like snowflakes only without the cold and wet.


Sadly the hay is really scarce this summer, really, really short and thin, and not just ours either. Liz heard of someone taking off 30-some acres and only getting one dump wagon full and what the boss has been baling has been nice, but seriously lacking in volume. Maybe it will make it up with second cutting.

Memorial Day

Thank you!

Sunday Stills......Music Groups, Songs in Pictures

 Evidence, named after the Emerson Drive song of the same name

 Lemonade, also Emerson Drive song

 Moments, after the Emerson Drive song

 Liverpool from this song

Below, Lipstick, yet another song name cow. We have a barn full!

Bama Breeze, after the Jimmy Buffet song. Her dam was BeauSoleil, after the Cajun group

Trent Tomlinson concert and center bottom, Arlo Gilliam, who used to play bass with Emerson Drive. I have a ton of concert photos on here, but for some reason Blogger won't let me add them...


For more Sunday Stills......

Happy Birthday Liz

Our critter whisperer is 26. When she was three she could pick her cows (her grandpa gave her a couple) out of the herd in the barnyard....and she hasn't changed a bit.

Liz at 6, unloading her first show calf, Sonora, from the trailer

Love you Liz and hope your day just keeps getting better.

Rhubarb Crisp Recipe

I double or triple this for the mob around here.


Combine and place in greased 13X9" pan:


3 cups diced rhubarb
1cup sugar
3 tablespoons flour.
* Optional-Cinnamon to taste


Combine in a bowl:


1 cup brown sugar
1 cup oatmeal
1 1/2 cup flour


Cut in:


1/2 cup butter
1/2 cup shortening
*Optional-Cinnamon to taste


Sprinkle over rhubarb mixture


Bake 40 minutes at 375 (I bake a little longer at 350 as my oven is a little quirky)


Serve warm with vanilla ice cream or any old way you like it.

This one in fact is Liz's birthday cake for her birthday tomorrow

New Pasture

Frieland LF Bama Breeze, named by one of Florida's finest nature bloggers

one of my favorite ever cows, even though I gave her to Alan

Today, if the boss can find an electric fence handle. I am looking forward to the milk from new grass, but full of a certain dread just the same. This is a new place for the heifers. They don't know where the fence is......


I am using up all my Sunday Stills pics, but we have a LOT of cows named after songs.

See What I Mean

Losing Small Dairies

Are the days of small dairy farms over for most everyone but the Amish.....the answer is probably.

Barking Fox

Check out the gratuitous grackle

The boy called last night at just about dusk. I went out on the front porch to talk to him and was much entertained by a brace of sleepy male ruby-throated hummingbirds, which kept perching on the flower basket hooks. They would sit there waving their heads back and forth and occasionally flipping their wings like kids bopping to the music.


I was wondering if maybe they had little birdie iPods tucked in their feathers and ear buds too small to see. Eventually they took off for wherever they spend the night, but they were fun while they stayed.


After the boy hung up to get some rest, I went in to hang up our phone then went back out there just to enjoy the night. It feels like summer now and smells like summer too.


The cat bird kids didn't want to go to bed and were giving the old folks a hard time. They made quite a din down there in the mulberry tree. Then spring bird number 35 rowed slowly across the sky, heading down to the river I guess, a great blue heron, just catching the last rays as the sun went down.


I sat until it was almost full dark, then suddenly heard the strangest sound from the field in front of me. I came in and checked out YouTube and sure enough, it was a fox barking.


To call the noise a fox makes a bark is to call Air Force one a mosquito. What a big, eerie sound for such a small mammal. You can hear one here in all its glory. I would kind of enjoy having the things around if it weren't for their plagitty infatuation with all things chicken.

Lumpy Fog, Looming Clouds

Looks as if we are in for another whole week of ugly weather. If we weren't farming I wouldn't care. However, thanks to the weather we really aren't farming, just puttering and watching it rain....or in my case working on bookkeeping projects until I could holler.

Uncle, that is what I would holler. More of the same today.

Hezekiah on Tour

I hadn't seen Hezekiah, the itinerant garden gnome in a while (probably because I hid him under Alan's hard hat on the floor of the truck when he headed off to the city to work.)

It appears that Hezzie is on rumspringa and is down in the city up to who knows what. Alan snagged these photos of him riding around town checking out the scenery. 

Bird, Bird, Bird.....Oops, Not Bird

 Male Baltimore Oriole

 Eastern Kingbird above

Bird number 34 below, male rose-breasted grosbeak

Sylvilagus floridanus

nottabird

32

Species of spring birds so far seen from the house yard and walk to the barn, oops, 33, with the red-tailed hawk. And the boss has seen two pairs of Harriers up in the field. I'm not counting them because I haven't seen them myself from down here, but they are out there.


The boss baled a little hay yesterday while the girls and I got started on chores. It was SPARSE! I am hearing and seeing the same thing from a lot of folks. I think all the rain last year leached nutrients from the soil in a big way. All the big boys were going great guns when we went down to Coby to get groceries yesterday. Fields were full of tractors, racing around like ants on a marshmallow and hay was getting chopped at a mind-boggling rate.


We don't move that fast here at Northview, more of a slow plod with the whole two steps forward and one step back thing a lot. Still some hay got moved, so all is good. Jade mowed the lawn so I have my golf course back too.


And the boy got home for a few hours yesterday, which was good for his mom's heart.