Don't Have a Cow, Man.

Posted on Monday 18 June 2007 at 10:55

The cold, rainy weather continues, and has forced TYDOS not to begin this week. I'm starting to get paranoid. The crops are up, but our early items suffered damage from heavy rain and temperature fluctuations.

I have started to get the hang of the cow. I still hate morning milking, but I'm slowly starting to change my waking patterns. Dave continues to "rescue" me from the cow whenever he can. The kids have nicknamed Cow Patty the Jersey Devil. This may be because we had another fight Sunday morning.

She came into the barn with globs of wet cow patties all over her milking side. So I milked her from the wrong side, which is not completely foreign to her. But she's "high-strung." (Read: Brat.) She tried to inch away from me, and hit the end of her tail tie. Because we switched from twine to a sturdy piece of rope, she couldn't just pull away. This antagonized her. She swung back right on top of me and knocked me over, making me grateful we keep a pretty meticulous milking pen. However, I managed not to spill the pail. I put the fear of death in her and finished the milking. Me, one. Cow, zero.

As soon as I let her out of the head gate, she kept trying to turn her back end to me. Now, I grew up with horses. Hard-mouthed, badly-behaved ones. I know better than to be naive about that kind of behaviour, so I dodged the rear end with an eye to the kicking extensions. I grabbed the brush and started to brush the cow. She can't resist a nice scratch. I worked my way up to her head and got her halter. She tossed and fretted all the way out of the barn. Me, two. Cow, zero.

We had 11 gallons of milk sitting in our fridges today. We gave 4 to my dad for his orphan lambs; I made 2 gallons' worth of curds (quick cheese) from the evening milking; I made a good pound of butter; and I'm in the middle of making 2 gallons of yogurt. When I say, "Don't have a cow, man," I'm starting to mean it in the Bart Simpson sense, not the you're-gonna-be-hamburger sense.

Untitled Comment

Posted by a1health on Tuesday 19 June 2007 at 07:20 - Link

Cow pattie sounds like a stubborn cow. The good thing is that you seem to be more hardheaded than she. I hope you continue to win in your battles. Have y'all completely given up beekeeping?

you're doing better than us!

Posted by jackiebridgen on Wednesday 27 June 2007 at 04:58 - Link

we officially gave up the box scheme this week. We have been rained off for the year :0(
jackie