New Year, Never Dull

The following is a compilation of my recent posts to Instagram & Twitter, in case you missed it….

Here’s Daisy following me to the house so I could put her in the front yard. Sir Baby broke out of his quarters on March 31 and bred Daisy when he WAS NOT SUPPOSED TO. Nine months from March 31 = now!!! Daisy’s in labor and I made a nest for her in the yard so I can keep a close eye on her.

I’ve tried to keep Daisy and Sir Baby apart the last few years because she’s had a lot of trouble with his calves. Nervous and hopeful. Emergency number of my vet on speed dial. Thankful for the mega moonlight but ughhh about the negative temps. Currently 12° and the sun just went down. Thinking of live tweeting since I’ll be up all night….

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Hauling drinking water for Daisy. Yard water is shut off during winter so I tote gallon after gallon from kitchen sink to a tub in the yard for her.

Moon is rising….

Currently 5°. Maybe it won’t get below zero tonight! Daisy is still standing up with her tail out. Early stages.

She’s lying down and chewing her cud and I’m making tea and it’s still 3º

So many stars even with the bright bright moon

Feeling sleepy so I went outside. Brisk! Nothing new to report.

Zero degrees, cold enough that it hurts to yawn outside. Daisy just wants to be brushed! “Brush my moonbody in the moonlight,” she says.

Charlie’s dancing for us. He doesn’t sleep if there’s activity outside. And he has SO much fur, the cold doesn’t faze him.

So Mike has this trick where he feeds his cows in the evening and then they don’t calve at night. It works surprisingly well. I gave Daisy a lot of hay this evening…Would not be mad if she waited until the sun came up, it would be so much easier on the calf. Still watching tho!

No news is…. no news. Took a few 40 minute cat naps and they were delectable

All the other cows are coming up to say hi to Daisy in the yard. They’re having a proper gossip sesh over the fence.

Daisy is still in a (somewhat frustrating) holding pattern btw but feeling quite good about herself and sunbathing.

Daisy Update: She was in labor, but never to the point where I saw hooves, and then the next day acted like she wasn’t in labor at all. But she didn’t show any desire to be with the other cows, wasn’t mooing to them, was happy to be by herself. Which is a labor sign – they like to go off alone to calve. But she was no longer showing the physical signs of labor. None this is how it’s supposed to go if it’s going right. So yesterday I took her in to have an ultrasound.

I’m very sad to report that her baby was dead inside her. She was fully dilated so the vet was able to deliver the calf. The calf wasn’t properly formed and its death triggered Daisy’s labor (versus labor issues causing its death). Daisy has a low fever (her body’s response to the dead calf inside her) but she is OK and will be OK. This makes me OK.

The saddest part is that Daisy loves being a mother…. she made the “Mommy moo” when she birthed the placenta and it totally broke my heart. But I’m milking her twice a day to keep her body producing milk and perhaps she will adopt an orphan calf when calving season begins. They say rural life, farming life, ranching life is the simple life. It’s not simple at all.

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I have a story for you!! Just as soon as my hands uncramp from milking four gallons twice a day….

Cowpies & Sunrise

Snippets ~ Early Autumn Edition

It’s dark at 9pm and it’s dark at 6am – the light changed while I was gone. It’s not summer anymore, equinox schwequinox.

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I’ve been home for a week since my final Star Brand Beef deliveries and, as always, it’s a little weird adjusting from my time as a turtle. My little red reefer truck was my home for three weeks, four delivery routes, 8181 miles – and I loved every second of it, despite the truck having issues every. single. day. (the truck kept me safe and all my beef safe, so, hooray for that). I absolutely love getting to spend time with my customers, long-time readers, email pals, and the opportunity to move beyond the veil of the internet into real life.

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I think it might be time to hire seasonal help next year, spring and summer. Maybe even sooner. More details on that as soon as I get logistics worked out in my head. I would love to give someone from “the outside world” a chance to come in and work in agriculture and be part of sustainable, ethical food production…… so much to figure out, though!

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Last night’s dinner: organic brown rice cooked in homemade bone broth, served with seared elk tenderloin. Does this sound like a special menu item at an elegant restaurant? Did I mention this was Charlie’s and Chloe’s dinner? Mike had a peanut butter sandwich and I had cereal.

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I’ve been home for a matter of days and have already dove head first into a giant new project, which will debut next year and which I know you will LOVE. It is a love project. After 2014 and 2015, when I was barely functioning and just trying to keep myself and my businesses alive, it feels SO GOOD to work hard!

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Farmily update: everyone is wonderful and happy and peaceful – Mike held down the fort while I was away, and, thanks to having my own truck, I got to spend time at home with the Farmily between each delivery trip. It made a world of difference for me and them!

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AND, since I’ve been getting emails about this already: the 2017 CHARLIE CALENDAR is coming! I would never break tradition! It will be ready to share mid-October….

Sid Has Two Mommies

Little Sid, kitchen calf, lap calf, my sweet little orphan, was a bottle baby the first month of his life, which made me “Mama.” He followed me anywhere and everywhere. If he was still hungry after draining the bottle I’d brought out to the pasture, he’d follow me back to the house, up the stairs of the deck (clip-clopping across the deck on his tiny hooves), in the front door and all the way to the kitchen, where he’d wait at my feet as I prepared another bottle. (It was such a bad habit, but so cute I couldn’t bring myself to break him of it.)

And then Daisy calved. Instead of milking into a bottle for Sid, I led Sid to Daisy’s udder, using the empty bottle as a lure and sticking one of her teats in his mouth. He caught on within two days, though Daisy was a less willing participant (as is normal – cows don’t like random calves stealing the milk that is meant for their baby). But Daisy has more than enough milk for all of us, and I knew she’d accept Sid eventually, as she has adopted orphans in the past. Exhibit A: Frisco and TR, way (WAY!) past the age of needing milk, but don’t they all look so content?

So, I helped Sid dine with Daisy a few times a day – while she was haltered after I’d milked her, while she was distracted as I brushed her, and, at times, using Maia’s super-effective blindfold technique. Meanwhile, Sid and Roxy became best pals – siblings, really. They are side by side every moment of the day. Sid learned to eat when Roxy ate, keeping Roxy closest to Daisy’s head, so when Daisy turned to look or sniff, she’d find Roxy and mellow out. And then one day I caught Daisy licking Sid, and answering his moos, which means she’s decided to be his mama, too.

MOAR BABIEZ!!

Daisy had a baby! So… this happened really all of a sudden, or as “all of a sudden” as something that takes nine months can happen.

Backing up: Daisy’s last calf was Leila, in 2014. Daisy is always a bit challenging to breed back, but in early 2015, when it would have been time to start trying to get Daisy pregnant again, I was in the midst of dealing with my health baloney and I didn’t want her to be pregnant. I had stopped milking her because I didn’t have the energy (Leila was big enough at that point to take care of Daisy’s milk output on her own) and I couldn’t deal with the responsibility of Daisy calving again until I got my health back on track and reached a more functional state of being.

Last summer, we brought our bull Billy in to breed the cows and heifers that spent the summer here at home. (The majority of cows and bulls spend the summer on the mountain.) Billy is daddy to all the calves I’ve shared here this spring – Ixchel, Sid, and the rest – and he also got Leila pregnant for her first time. It was possible that he had bred Daisy, too, but I wasn’t terribly confident that it happened. It usually takes Daisy several cycles to finally get pregnant, and after about three months of having Billy in with the cows, we had to move him out again. One of the neighbor’s cows showed up and climbed through our fence and Billy bred her (I watched it happen) and we moved him out that very day. Because cows can have STDs.

There’s a bovine STD called trichomoniasis (“trich” for short) which causes cows to spontaneously abort, and it was not worth the risk to keep Billy in with our cows until we had him tested again. Since it takes a couple of months of dormancy for trich to show up on tests, Billy was out of work for the season. Mike was convinced Daisy had been bred, but I was skeptical… until earlier this spring, when it became apparent she was making milk! I was overjoyed. And I guess I didn’t fully believe that she was actually, truly pregnant until quite close to the end of the term, because I was going to post about Daisy being pregnant, but she had her baby before I even could.

A week or so ago, I started obsessively checking on Daisy and Leila for signs of labor. With angus cows, it’s pretty easy to tell when the time is near just by looking at their udder, but Daisy’s udder keeps getting bigger and bigger and bigger and it’s not a great indicator. This happened to be the case with Leila, too – she has Daisy’s genetics in that department, more so than Fiona, and her udder also kept getting bigger and bigger. Fast forward to Friday night: the sun was setting and all the cows were eating near the house and Mike and I went outside and, at exactly the same time, we turned to each other and said “Where’s Daisy?!!”

I found her off by herself in a draw. This is what cows do when they are close to having their babies. I lured her all the up to the house with treats and put her in the yard for the night, so it would be easy to check on her – Daisy’s last two calves had been breach and I was not going to rest until I knew all was well. I checked on her hourly till midnight, then at 2am, then at 4am. Nothing was really going on through the night, but at 4am, I got the sense that I shouldn’t wait another two hours to check on her again. So I checked on her at 5am, and she had hooves sticking out – and they were the correct direction! And I rejoiced, because the calf was not breach. And not five minutes later, Daisy lay down and had her baby in the light of dawn.

And two hours later, within sight of the yard but off on her own, Leila had her baby, too! Perfectly and easily.

I named Leila’s baby Pixie because she is so little and cute. And I named Daisy’s baby Roxy, which is a variant of the English variant of the French variant of the Latin variant of the Persian word for dawn. And Sid might get his own happy cow family after all…. but that’s a story for another post.