First escape of the year

Ah spring, when a cow's fancy turns lightly to thoughts of grass -- which (as you know) is always greener on the other side of the fence.

Yesterday afternoon I noted little Curly was out. He apparently had managed to push the bottom portion of a section of cattle panel away and slipped through, and was happily cropping the grass by the edge of the driveway. (You can see the pushed-aside panel behind him.)

This wasn't an urgent situation, so after mentioning the First Escape of the Year to Don (who agreed it wasn't urgent), I straightened up and re-tied the cattle panel, then walked down to close the driveway gate.

This is when I noticed Shadow/Sparky (I can't tell the difference between these two ladies, they're identical), who had also pushed under the fence. She was further down the driveway, meaning she had been the ringleader for The Great Escape and Curly was merely following her example.

Needless to say, the rest of the herd was very interested in this development.

Later we rounded up both the recalcitrant critters and put them back in the woods, with the peanut gallery in attendance.

Shortly thereafter, I caught Dusty looking mournfully through a gate. "Hey, I want to escape too!"

Fear not, dear, in a few weeks the pasture will be green and lush, and you'll be in paradise. Hang in there.

Friday Roundup

Time for our Friday Roundup, where we post what things we've accomplished (big or small) during the week that moves us incrementally toward being better prepared.

It's Friday night as I begin this post, and Saturday morning as I finish it. In fact, it's a long post, so bear with me as I summarize our week's activities.

Unlike a couple weeks ago when we accomplished precisely nothing, this week has been tremendously productive. Isn't it funny how some weeks are like that?

At any rate, here's our activities for the week:

• We had a new calf born to Rosy, a little girl. She looks so much like her mother that I've named her Minnie, as in Mini-Me (remember Austin Powers?).

I got photos of the birth from start to finish, so I'll put them up later as a separate blog post.

• We got a huge amount of work done in the garden. Here are last year's "viney tires" (where I grew sprawling things like melons, cucumbers, etc.). The tires were still weed-infested from the winter. Don and I weeded them clean and planted tomatoes rather than vines.

This year I (cough) cheated and bought seedlings from a local woman.

I planted one per tire...

...and mulched them.

• We dehorned little Adina, who was born last week.

Then we returned Dusty and Dina to the rest of the herd.

• The strawberries are just starting to ripen, so we've been picking. We're not yet getting the great gushing quantities we'll get in two weeks or so, and for the moment we're all greedily hungry for fresh ripe strawberries, so we're eating them as fast as we pick them. Delicious bliss.

• I finally got around to mulching the new blueberries.

The young plants are doing beautifully and some even have a few unripe blueberries on them.

• I'm still doing a lot of weeding, gradually working my way through all the tires to prep them for planting.

I came across this large mother wolf spider, her back furry with tiny babies.

I scooped her up and tossed her outside the garden so I wouldn't accidentally bury her in dirt as I pulled weeds.

Gradually the garden is taking shape.

• We (mostly Don) got the drip irrigation hoses reinstalled in the tires...

...and tested the system.

• I got out all the seed potatoes I've been saving all winter and got 16 tires' worth planted (about 320 or so). Because I had so many, I didn't bother cutting them up into pieces with one eye per piece.

This strange sight (I called it the "Medusa crate") is our one remaining crate of potatoes harvested from last fall. These were stored in the darkest, coolest part of the house, which the potatoes evidently took as a sign to sprout like crazy. Obviously we need a root cellar for optimal storage, which we don't have.

While they're too soft for eating, they're perfect for planting. Since I didn't need any more seed potatoes, I gave these to a neighbor who is just getting around to planting his garden.

• Don brought me up loads of compost from last year's awning-cleaning and dumped it on a tarp in the garden for easy access.

• I got some of the compost moved onto the corn tires.

Corn is a heavy feeder, so I put two wheelbarrows' worth of compost on each tire and worked it into the soil.

You can see the contrast between composted and un-composted tires.

I only got three (out of twenty) tires done, so I'll continue working on that this week.

• Don got the drip system laid out in the potato onions (planted last fall)...

...as well as the five other tires I had planned for carrots.

• Yesterday afternoon I got all the carrots planted, about 400 seeds (hopefully they'll all grow).

• Don started on a long-overdue project, removing some ratty falling-down fencing in order to replace it with sound, well-built fencing. It's an ongoing project but he got an excellent start.

Now it's your turn. What did you accomplish this week?

Another new calf

Friday was a hot, humid, thundery afternoon, but the storm clouds dodged around us (which is unfortunate, as we could use the rain).

Don and I decided to take a walk. On our way out, we noticed a calf chasing a raven in the field.

A few other animals got in on the chase as well.

But we didn't think much about it. On the way back from our walk, we noticed the raven being chased by a blackbird. The raven had something in its beak, and I remember commenting that I hoped it wasn't a baby blackbird.

As we came up the driveway, we noticed one of our young heifers, Dusty, off by herself in the corner of the pasture. When cows go solitary, it usually means one thing.

A calf.

So that's what the Raven was after, and presumably holding in its beak: not a baby blackbird, but part of the placenta. When I downloaded the photos, I was astounded to see that Dusty was in fact chasing away the raven with the placenta still being delivered.

Since the calf was born the farthest possible distance away from the house (of course), we were faced with the task of bringing mama and baby into the corral. We like newborns to be close to home so we can either castrate or dehorn as necessary. But how to haul a 30 or 40 pound baby from five acres away? We decided to use the tractor.

Periodically the rest of the herd came over to see the newborn (I brightened the photo to make things more visible).

Sure enough, here's the placenta. Bon appétit to the ravens.

I sincerely wish I could have gotten photos of what followed because (in retrospect) it was hilariously funny. Don drove the tractor to within a few yards of Dusty. I walked over and scooped up the calf and then sat in the bucket of the tractor with the calf in my lap. The baby struggled and the tractor bucket isn't exactly made for sitting, but I managed. Don crept the tractor backward and in fact backed the machine all the way back up the pasture, with me holding a heavy, struggling baby in my lap. (We figured going backward allowed Dusty to see where her calf was.)

Meanwhile the herd, excited at the novelty of not only the new baby but a tractor as well, literally thundered and stampeded all over the field and in wide circles around the tractor as it moved. My camera was jammed in my pocket and I didn't dare let go of the baby to fetch it, which is a shame because it was a splendid photographic opportunity.

By this point I was covered in meconium (baby poop) all across my lap, legs, and arms. We made it to within about fifty feet of the pasture gate when the baby started struggling so hard I was afraid it would hurt itself, so I yelled for Don to stop. Then I scooped it up and we trotted as fast as we could toward the gate. Don opened it and I deposited the baby on the other side.

Now we were tasked with getting Dusty out of the pasture. She was milling around with the other animals, understandably distressed about where her baby went. We couldn't single her out from the herd, so we fetched the girls and managed to get Dusty out of the pasture. But she still didn't "see" her baby (hormones and stress will do that to a cow), so in the end I scooped up the baby again (by this point we found it was a girl) and I put her in the barn, then we separately scooted Dusty into the corral and thereby reunited the two. Whew, what a rodeo!

The baby is a very pretty and unusual dusky color similar to her mother's when she was born. Younger Daughter named the baby Adina, so we'll call her Dina for short.

This is Dusty's first calf. She is settling in to be a good mother, though she's understandably suspicious of us at the moment (for stealing her baby!).

We left Dusty and Dina in the corral and went to fetch the tractor, which was still in the pasture...

...then I took a much-needed shower and consigned my clothes to the laundry.

We'll keep Dusty and Dina in the corral for a few days until Dina is old enough to dehorn, after which we'll return them to the pasture.

I tell ya, life is never dull around here.