More Blessed Bovine

If you're not familiar with the saga of the Blessed Bovine, click on the Blessed Bovine label over on the right to read all about it.

This is the Blessed Bovine herself. She looks fat and happy.

This is her newest calf. Pica, I think the name is.

This is Flower's (the calf featured in the BB saga)calf. Diddy. Or maybe the BB's calf is named Diddy, and Flower's calf is named Pica. I don't remember. No matter their names, they sure are cute.

The weekend was a mixed bag, but still a lot of fun. We would no sooner get the hay raked and maybe one load baled, and it would rain lightly, just enough that we couldn't bale anymore. We finally were able to finish up on Sunday, each with 180 or so bales in the barn. I say we, but really it was my friends and neighbors that did the finishing up. I managed to sprain my ankle on Sunday just as we were about to start picking up bales. The girls took me to the ER while the guys, with the help of the neighbor and her girls, stacked the hay.

I'm lucky it happened when it did, with friends still here, and Mom not. There ended up being an opening at the AD unit, so she was there for the weekend. She is able to stay there until Wednesday, then my sister will pick her up and bring her back here. My sister is trying to get Family Medical Leave for a couple of days, so she can come and take care of Mom during the day. I know I can't keep up with her right now. As difficult as it is for me to let happen, it is one of those cases where I have to let myself heal, so I can continue to take care of Mom.

Meanwhile, the neighbor is taking care of my animals. I'm doing ok on the level surfaces of the house, but the uneven ground outside is expressly forbidden. I keep thinking of all the things I could be doing outside since Mom isn't here, but I just need to stop. Easier said than done though.

The saga continues

Do you remember the blessed bovine? If you don't know what I'm talking about, click on the Blessed Bovine label over there on the right to read the whole story. Fair warning, it is a long one.

Here she is with her new calf, a boy named Pickles.

Remember her calf born in a blinding snowstorm last year? Here she is, a healthy young heifer.

I can't believe how much she has grown.

The neighbor came over yesterday, and we strung another temporary fence on the north side of the driveway, and moved the horses over there to mow. I will need to go in and mow down the weeds and stuff the horses wouldn't eat, but it is way less than I would have had to mow.

I like this organic mowing deal!

Blessed Bovine update

At long last, here they are, updated photos of the pair. Look how nicely they both have filled out. No more ribs showing. Their coats are shiny and glow in the fall sun. Downright purdy, they are.

I've been trying to figure out how to tell the rest of the story. Why I call her the blessed bovine. It's not just because she managed to survive the winter on her own, give birth and care for a healthy calf. It's what she has brought into my life. Warning, I am going to get really sappy here, but it's unavoidable.

I lived here on the farm for five years before Mom moved in, and always thought myself fairly independant. Never got lonely, was never afraid of living alone on the farm. (Which is what most people asked when they found out I lived in the country by myself...aren't you afraid?) Since Mom moved in, now I find myself feeling alone. Not lonely, mind you, just I've never been more aware of how alone I was. No safety net. Isolated. The caregivers out there know what I'm talking about, I'm sure, AD can be very isolating. I've never had someone dependant on me, either. It's downright scary, dammit!

The Blessed Bovine brought the neighbor family whom I had never met into my life. The woman close to my age who I now call a friend, her handy husband who shored up my barn so it won't collapse under the weight of the snow this winter, her strong teen-aged son who needed a service project, and did a lot of work for me as that service project, (and has another for confirmation class, so will be helping me out again!), her daughter who loves animals so now I have an experienced farm sitter when I need one, and her young son who is just so darned funny and always good for a laugh.

Her husband is an electrician and will be doing some work for me this spring. They helped me bury a llama that I lost this summer.

They have haying equipment, I had an empty field but no way to work it. A partnership was born. I bought the seed, they planted it and did all the work. They kept half of the hay we harvested, the other half went into my barn. Here's the all-female haying crew:

If that cow hadn't wandered into my yard, I probably wouldn't have met them. I don't feel alone anymore. I know that they are two minutes away.

"We cannot tell the precise moment when friendship is formed. As in filling a vessel drop by drop, there is at last a drop which makes it run over; so in a series of kindnesses there is at last one which makes the heart run over." James Boswell

Blessed Bovine Part 3

What a good mama she is. She gave birth during a raging blizzard, yet kept her baby warm and protected from the coyotes that inhabit the woods. She survived on basically nothing, yet produced enough milk to raise a healthy, strong, playful heifer calf.

The morning after what we call "the rodeo" of capturing her, the neighbor came over with hay and feed. She said that she wasn't real comfortable having the cow at their place, she has a five year old son to worry about. She thought maybe the cow would need to go to market, and they would bottle raise the calf.

My heart dropped to my knees. I knew I couldn't keep them. I would have had to completely redo the fencing, it would mean hauling even more water than I already did for the llamas, feeding out more hay, etc. I was at my limit of animals I could care for properly. There was already too much "outside work" that wasn't getting done.

Yet that cow that had been through so much! She was a survivor, a testament to her hearty Hereford breed. I hadn't let them capture her to take her to market. She deserved a life of steady meals of nice fresh hay and silage and clean water to drink.

I said I understood, I couldn't blame her etc, and she went home. I promptly bawled my eyes out. I'm a sap when it comes to animals, can you tell?

The next day, she brought over more hay and feed. She had spoken with a friend with a lot of beef cattle experience, who thought the cow might settle down once she was in a place she couldn't get out of. So they were going to try. They needed some time to reinforce their fence and cattle pens, but then they would come get the pair. My heart took back it's rightful place, I was so glad. In the meantime, they brought a whole stack of bales to make a wind break/shelter for the pair, and bedding straw for them.

They stayed here for about another week. Mama calmed down, and would even come close as we put new feed in her pen. I wasn't there when they came to get her, but apparently the transfer went fine, and she settled into her new place without incident.

This summer we found out where she came from. Her owner rented summer pasture 2-3 miles away. Apparently she goes absolutely crazy when it comes time to load her into the trailer to go back to their winter pasture grounds, and she escaped. She did a lot of damage to the neighboring fields that the owner had to pay for, and they couldn't catch her. He didn't want her back.

This just makes me crazy and absolutely livid. He didn't bother to look for her, didn't bother to check with the neighboring farms to let them know about this cow on the loose. He just left her to starve or get taken by predators. Look how skinny she is in the photo up there. Moron!

The good news: She is bred and due in May. The calf is huge! I just spoke to my neighbor, and she is going to send some recent photos. I will update when I get them.

There is still the story of how she earned the Blessed Bovine moniker. Next time.

The Story of the Blessed Bovine, Part 2

When we last saw her, she was heading over the rise, back to her comfort zone in the woods by the lake. She kept coming back though. We did this for about a week. One night we (the neighbor's 13 year old daughter and I) put the hay and corn silage in my front pasture, and opened up the fence where she would walk by. We hid by the house to see what she would do. She walked right in and began eating.

We slowly began making our way across my yard, over the driveway, through the garden, to get to the opening in the fence. Hint of the day: Barn boots, especially slightly large, ill-fitting barn boots, are not good for stealth, or speed.

In other words, she spotted us, and ran for the opening. Miracle of miracles, we got there first. She turned away, and began running the fenceline, looking for a way out. The calf followed, bawling.

Another hint of the day: Fencing which is perfectly adequate for llamas and alpacas, is not for very scared, half wild, used to fending for herself Herefords.

She half-jumped, half-tore down a section of fence. The calf however, could not jump it. So now we have a crazed Hereford on the outside, and a bawling calf on the inside. Holy crap, now what?

Luckily, the neighbor had arrived just in time to see our mad dash across the garden. We reconnoitered. We knew mama wasn't going to go anywhere without her baby. We knew baby couldn't get out, so figured we had some time. She went home, took down their round pen constructed of heavy cattle panels, loaded them in her truck, and came back, this time with husband, and a lasso and a small halter.

We reconstructed the round pen in the middle of my pasture. Then we herded the calf into the round pen, caught it, and haltered and tied it to the round pen. That makes it sound easy. Believe me, it wasn't. In the meantime, of course the calf was bawling like we were murdering it, mama was running the fenceline mooing back, outraged. The neighbor and I headed back to the opening in the fence, to re-open it so the cow could come back in the pasture. We needn't have bothered. She finally just jumped/barreled through the fence again. The husband and daughter sought safety by jumping up on the cattle panels.

Let's review the situation. We now had a calf tied on the inside of the round pen, a very angry cow on the outside, a 54 year old man and a 13 year old girl stranded on the cattle panels, and a 38 and a 41 year old woman standing 40 feet away by the fence, saying, nope, uh uh, no way are we going near that cow, and we couldn't get her to figure out where the opening to the round pen was so she could get to her calf.

I don't even remember how we managed to finally get her on the inside of the pen, but we did, swung the gate shut and untied the calf. We all high-fived each other, thinking, oh, piece of cake right?

Of course not! The cow set her head to those panels, and proceeded to push the whole thing! The whole round pen was moving, straightening out into a roughly rectangular shape as she kept pushing. We were afraid that the pins wouldn't hold as the angles changed, but they did. She just kept pushing until she ran into a corner of my fence, and then she pushed on another side until she ran into the other side of my fence, but she did manage to bend the heck out of the steel fence posts I had. Luckily I had a pile of fence posts and the post driver nearby, so we just pounded posts in all of the corners, (it was a rectangle now) and she finally understood that she couldn't get anywhere and stopped pushing. We brought her hay and silage and water, and just left her alone to settle down.

Whew! That's enough of the story for today. More next time. This saga isn't even half way done, I told you it was a long story!

First, a quick Mom story then some photos of the cow and calf.

Last night we were sitting on the couch, Mom on one side, me on the other, and a dog in the middle. I was weaving in the ends of the bag I have been working on, and had made a little pile of yarn snippets next to me, most two to three inches, but one several inches long. Mom reached over and grabbed them. She looked at them for a while, and then she threw them at me. They landed on my head, the long one sort of dangling down the front of my face. I slowly turned my head to her, so she could see the one dangling. She laughed so hard, which then set me off. I grabbed them off my head and threw them back at her, and so it went the rest of the night. Every time another end got snipped off, it would go flying at her. She would laugh and send it back my way. By the end of the night we had yarn everywhere, but who cares?

The Story of the Blessed Bovine

Yes, that's a Hereford cow and calf bedded down in my raspberry patch.


It all started last November, at or near the full moon, on a below-zero night. There was a scattering of snow, or maybe just hoarfrost, reflecting the moonlight, so it was easy to see without artificial light. The dogs woke me from a sound sleep, going crazy at something outside my window. I got up, expecting to see some deer meandering through the yard. It was a beef cow. Or steer, or bull, it wasn't that light out. As far as I knew, nobody close to me had beef cows. Hmmm. I bundled up and went outside to see if I could lure it into my vacant front pasture with some hay, but she spooked and ran off into the night. I went back to bed, and the next morning wondered if I had dreamt the whole thing.


A few months later, February, to be exact, just after dark, the dogs started going crazy again. I stepped out onto my porch, to make sure nothing was going after my animals. They were fine. Then I heard it. Something very large crashing through the brush and trees on the south side of my place. It was too dark to see anything, but I could hear it. I wasn't about to venture off the porch to see what it was though. Just a few days before, there had been a news story about a MN man killed by his bull. Nope, not going out there.



The next morning, I strapped on the snowshoes and went out to look at the tracks left behind by my visitor in the dark.









Yep, cow.



A couple of months later, early April, dusk, again the dogs went crazy. I looked out and saw her, but now she had a little sidekick! They were grazing the little grass that had just started to grow. I called the sheriff's office, to see if anybody had reported a cow/calf pair missing. Nobody had, but they took my information in case anybody did. Then I started calling a couple of neighbors, to see if they knew anybody in the area that had beef cattle. One neighbor gave me the name of another neighbor, and so it went down the line. Nobody knew of anybody missing a cow. Finally I called my nearest neighbor, and there I got the scoop. The cow had been hanging out in the woods by his lake all winter. He fed it corn every once in a while, and had advertised in the paper, but nobody had claimed her. He warned me that they had tried to corral her once, and it went crazy and sent a couple of men flying. He said that it had given birth to the calf last month, in that stretch of bad storms.



The one that did this.








And then this.

We don't really have open range land here in Minnesota. It was kind of cool to have the "free range cow" come visiting. The neighbor's warning of how she had sent a couple of men flying had me worried though. I can't keep Mom in the house in the summer, she likes to walk. A lot. I really didn't want an overly protective cow hanging around. So the next morning, when a neighbor that I had never met before called, returning my message from the night before, and offered to give her a home if she needed it, I agreed.

We concocted a plan. They would bring over some hay, and corn silage, and we would start feeding and watering her to get her used to coming back. Then we would gradually move the feed into my front pasture, and see if she would go in there.

It worked. Just before sundown, she would come up from the woods by the lake, cautiously cross the field, and hang out in my yard, eating.

She bedded down in various places in the yard, the raspberry patch being her favorite. After sunrise, when she would hear activity in the house, or I would come out to do chores, (and take pictures of her),

she would head back over the rise to the woods, her little one by her side.

I'm starting to bore myself, so congrats if you're still awake and with me thus far. Next time, the capture, and why she is called the Blessed Bovine.

What do you see?

Do you see anything sort of out of the ordinary in this photo? Click to enlarge, but it's really big. Please ignore the weeds in my garden, and the falling apart raised bed, ok? Oh, but you can see my almost free cold frame I made using an old window left by the former owner and some lumber that I knocked together. I was happy that I made the frame actually fit the window. Actually it's a hot frame, since there is chicken litter and alpaca manure composting in it. Next to it is the bed made out of cinder blocks I found behind my barn, also left the former owner. They're not pretty, but reuse, reduce, recycle, right? You can see a couple of the huge ancient maple trees that inspired my farm name too. But that's isn't what I want you to focus on.

Anything? Anything at all?

Does this help?

It is a very long story that I will tell in future posts.