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Charlie Is Back!

So Is The Cowboy.

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The Cattle In My Yard

I took this photo in early July and began writing this post back then, but then This Summer happened and I never finished! So now I shall. These are the cattle that spent the summer with me here at home. Sir Baby has since joined them, as of about a month ago. More on him, soon!

Here we have Daisy, of course, the matriarch, ring leader, cow princess. Frisco, her calf, is beside her; he melts me. And Ricardo the goose still thinks he’s a cow.

TR, the steer on the left, is a Farmily member I’ve not yet mentioned. He was born last summer to one of Mike’s very old cows that has since gone off to cow heaven after a very long and lovely life. Since he was born midsummer, much later than the rest of the calves who were born in March, he was not branded nor banded (castrated).

When all the cows and calves came home for the winter, this male calf had to be separated from the bunch as he would have bred all the heifer calves by spring, which would have been a disaster. We did castrate TR eventually, but in the meantime, he and Sir Baby hung out together with Houdini and Sunshine away from the girls.

He was Sir Baby’s first bovine friend (Baby was an only child with Daisy, his adopted mom, for the first summer and fall of his life), and I was so happy to have TR help socialize Baby in the ways of cattle. Playing, headbutting, all that normal stuff that Baby had never had opportunity to do. TR was much bolder yet much smaller than Sir Baby so I felt they were evenly matched. TR, I suppose I should mention, stands for The Runt.

After Sir Baby left to go spend the summer impregnating heifers, TR bonded with Frisco, who, at 5 months, had grown to about the same size as TR. And TR, after befriending Frisco and spending all his time with him and Daisy, BEGAN SUCKING DAISY!!! Even now, she is content to nurse two very large steers. It’s a truly ridiculous sight – Frisco and TR are nearly as tall as she but she stands patiently as they flank her, one on each side, suckling every drop of milk she has to offer. (I separate her from the boys at night so that I may get milk each morning; then they drink from her throughout the day.)

TR was meant to be sold to a neighbor for them to fatten and dine on but since my emotions govern my checkbook I bought TR from Mike instead and told the neighbors they had to find another steer to eat, this one was family. He can be a pain sometimes, he manages to get his head stuck everywhere and he’s still so runty and quite pathetic looking, but he’s a good little steer. He’s smart, he’s sweet, he is a friend to Sir Baby and Frisco, and he showed me when Daisy was cycling this summer – though he can no longer get the job done, he still has The Urge when a cow comes into heat. He’s important around here.

The other adult cow in this picture is 16. She was with the herd on the day we trailed to the mountain. There’s a short stretch of BLM from Mike’s back gate to the dirt road that goes up the mountain which should have taken us about 20 minutes to cross with the cows. They’d been that way before, and there’s a trail through the sagebrush and the yucca.

The blasted YUCCA.

Cows LOVE yucca flowers. It’s like dessert to them. And so, instead of trickling towards the mountain in a smooth, easy line, the cows scattered across the BLM, hiding in draws, running every which way to munch on yucca.

This is not what trailin’ cows are supposed to look like. They are supposed to look like THIS. But thanks to the yucca buffet, they were milling around, headed every direction, and were nearly impossible to move once they had latched onto stalk bursting with delicious blossoms.

Mike and I – it was just the two of us, which would have been fine if not for the yucca being in bloom – were going insane. We’d circle the scattered cattle from the back and, by the time we got them herded into the bunch, the cows in front had scattered. We raced around trying to gather the cows and get them moving forward, screaming at eachother, sweating, frustrated… it was not pretty. That 20-minute stretch took us three hours. Once we hit the dirt road and the yucca plants were behind us, the cows strung out in a perfect line and ambled straight up the mountain like angels.

The next day was 100 degrees by 10am. And there was a lone black cow standing at the back fence. I jogged up to her and opened the gate, knowing she’d be wanting water and hoping to get her locked in the corrals. She belonged on the mountain. I opened the gate and then circled around her on foot to run her in but she went crazy and ran back out into the BLM. Very odd behaviour. I chased her a bit, to no avail; it was too hot to try to herd a crazy cow on foot by myself, so I left the gate open for her and went home. I knew she’d come in eventually to get water. When Mike got home I had her held in the corral.

Her bag was very tight (ie, her udder was very, very full), which meant her calf was up on the mountain without her. We figured she was hiding in a draw eating yucca during the morning madness of the day before and we missed her, and meanwhile, her calf had traveled up the mountain with the herd. So we loaded her in the horse trailer and drove her up the mountain and dropped her off at the very top. That way, she’d have to walk through all the other cows and calves to get to the mountain spring for water, our hopes being that in doing so, she’d find her calf and all would be well.

The next morning, she was standing at the back gate again.

I couldn’t believe it. She’d walked all the way down the mountain, by herself, in the dark, and come back home. I went out to try to herd her in and again, she ran off like a crazed beast whenever I circled around her. So again, I left the gate open and left her. When Mike got back, she was still standing out beyond the fence so he went out on his 4-wheeler to bring her in, and we planned to load her in the trailer again and drive her up the mountain again to try to unite her with her missing calf again.

As Mike circled through the sagebrush just beyond the fenceline, he saw a tiny black baby calf nestled beneath a bush! The mystery explained! This cow had not lost her calf; she had HAD her calf the morning we trailed to the mountain. She had left the group when all the cows scattered for yucca, had gone off by herself to have her baby, and had stayed behind. Her udder was so full because her baby was a newborn and not drinking as much as she was producing.

When we drove her up the mountain, we were unknowingly taking her away from her baby. And this is one of the reasons I love cows so much. Generally speaking, they are incredible mothers. A cow will do anything for her baby. This cow hoofed it, quite literally, down a mountainside in the dark to get back to her hidden calf.

Ever since then, she and her calf have been here at the homestead with Daisy and Frisco and TR. And from that first day when we brought the new little calf in, Frisco has been IN LOVE with her. He dotes on her and sleeps next to her and she’s now a feisty little tomboy, with both Frisco and TR wrapped around her tiny hoof.

Reading, Recharging

My late grandfather was a track star in his youth and he used to say to me, “If you don’t throw up after a race, you weren’t running as fast as you could have.”

Well, to use this as a metaphor, I hit the puking stage now that this summer is finally over (a story for another time). I’m not actively vomiting, no, but for the last four days I felt like vomit. Wholly, totally, and completely spent. In fact, I didn’t move from my lying-down position for three solid days and yesterday I did so only to milk Daisy and water my tomatoes.

I couldn’t bear to stay inside because the weather was too gorgeous, so I commandeered Mike’s bedroll (so comfortable) and spent the daylight hours sprawled out with Charlie, Chloe, and Eli, getting up only to drag the bedroll into the ever-rotating patches of shade.

And I read. I read tons – I think I averaged about 300-400 pages a day. So here’s my book report:

The Girl Who Played With Fire: This is the sequel to The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. I liked Dragon Tattoo (I read it a while ago) and LOVED the Swedish film. This is the first instance ever where I prefer the film to the book; I even liked The Princess Bride (the book) more than the movie, and who doesn’t love that movie? So, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo: very good book, exquisite movie.

The Girl Who Played With Fire: an incredible book. I loooooved this book, thought it was so much better than the first – the plot was so much more dynamic, the author expertly juggled a number of characters, and Lisbeth…. god I love her. There’s a lot of Lisbeth in this book.

The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet’s Nest: The third book of the series. If you like courtroom dramas, you’ll love this book. I liked it but didn’t love it, mainly because there was not enough Lisbeth action. I am, however, devastated that the author is dead. I want ten more books from him :( heartbreak…….

Fair Game: This is a story worth knowing. Even if you don’t read the book (it’s also a movie), find a copy and flip through it. Chills!! Simon & Schuster and the author, Valerie Plame Wilson, actually went to court against the CIA in order to get this book published.

Autobiography of Red: In my opinion, this is one of the most spectacular books on the planet. You’ll either love it or hate it. Even the title gets me, still ~ Autobiography of Red ~ so brilliant.

What’s on your list?

share what you see

string on a windowsill. nyc, 2000.

Since my attentions are required elsewhere for the next few days and posting will be minimal if at all, I thought I’d open space up for you to share your windowlight portraits! Would love to see what you see. And by portrait, I mean human, animal, vegetable, running shoe, whatever. Windowlight is beautiful light, even when just shooting string on a windowsill (oh, what a meditation that was…)

Leave a link to your photo(s) in the comment section if you are so inclined!