Return

My teenage daughters and I had a wonderful trip together while dipping our toes into dominant western culture.  We discovered a new development — not only are plastic silverware used extensively, they now come wrapped in plastic.  More trash!

While we were gone, our 19-year-old son came every day to help with milking.  The first day, Christina put her foot forward so he couldn't get at either teet.  After my husband got her foot moved, she stared at our son as he milked.  She got used to the change, but her milk production was down a bit.  When I came out for the first milking after I got home, she watched me walk the whole way out and then headed to the stanchion with gusto.  Her production is back up to normal. What can I say, she's my cow.  :-)

It was forecast to rain all week, keeping us out of the garden, but today the sun came out.  I spent some time driving our baby tractor with the tow-behind rototiller.  It is so satisfying as it turns under the weeds and leaves dark fluffy soil.  

This time with machinery reminded us of our adage — I drive it and my husband fixes it.  The tiller ran out of gas and in an unusual gesture of self-sufficiency, I refilled the tank.  Afterward it wouldn't start.  It was close to dinner time so I drove it back to the barn.  I told my husband and he said, "are you sure it was gas?"  Suddenly I remembered a jug of water in the garage and ran to look at what I used.  ...yep, it was water...  Shesh.  So now my husband gets to spend some quality time cleaning water out of the tiller.  Dang.

While I was tilling, my husband was getting that stump out.  He hacked and sawed and pulled and got it all cleared out.  Here he is joyously displaying some roots he just ripped off.

When we got home I was greeted with, "we're almost out of hay."  What?  The kids feed the cows most of the time and it seemed like we had so much hay it would last forever.  Sure enough, we only have a few bales left.  I then discovered that buying hay in spring is a lot more difficult than buying it in the fall.  We found a source for enough to get us through May when the new crop of hay will be available.

We moved the cows to new pasture.  Christina spent all day today out on the pasture, ignoring her feeder with the hay.  Cleaning the shed was a breeze and she gave lots of milk.  There is nothing in the world like fresh pasture.

Jerky is a fully weaned calf now.  He's 18 weeks old, eight weeks older than jersey bull calves are typically weaned.