Barnyard Tales: So, I'm basically a cow version of La Llorona.

Sometimes I struggle with anxiety. I don’t know if you have ever seen the web comics of the heart and the brain arguing or the two Kermit the frogs, but that is almost always how mine manifests.

PSSST! There is an emergency.

No, there isn’t.

The beacons are lit. Gondor calls for aid.

WTF, I need to sleep. Nothing is wrong. Shut up.

Yes it. Is. There is something terribly wrong. The house is on fire.

No it isn’t. Go to sleep.

Okay, maybe this house isn’t on fire. I bet someone’s house is on fire. It might be the barn that’s on fire. I meant barn. The barn is on fire.

I call bullshit. Someone would see that and call me. Nothing is on fire, and even if it is what can I do about it? NOTHING. Go the F to sleep.

Hmm, good point. In that case the chickens are open. I bet raccoons are even now slaughtering them. They’re peeping their last peeps. Crying out for a savior that will never come!

… Ugh. Fine. I’ll go check.

YASSS.

The chickens were shut, b****. Can we go to sleep now?

So the other night when I tossed and turned and restlessly threw off the covers at 11 o’clock because I was *certain* that the cows were drowning because we had gotten a lot of rain and they were in the bottom paddock, and 29 was giving birth in a torrent of water and everyone was going to die if I didn’t go look at them; I was pretty sure my anxiety was just screwing with me. Eric, being the awesome husband he is, looked over at me with what I will politely dub "sleepy exasperation" and asked if I would be able to sleep if I didn’t go look. Knowing myself, I figured I would sleep faster if I just drove down to check them. Usually he just lets me go, but this time he sighed and got up to go with me.

So, here we are, driving to the pasture in our PJ’s. I was rocking flip flops and no bra. We have one flashlight between us because this is just my anxiety. We will be asleep in like 15 minutes and laughing about how dumb my brain is over tea in a few hours. HAH.

So, we drive down and glance at the river. It is going down. Perfect. I knew I was just crazy.

Then we look up and there is Harriet, in all her bald faced glory, standing in the middle of the f-ing blacktop. About the time my sleep addled brain registered her, here came 33 trotting out of the black. So Eric goes down to open the gate and get them back in. I pause my herding to fix a downed fence wire, because the water had risen enough to short it out. Joy. As I’m carefully guiding the wire back into the plastic jaws of the insulator I feel the wire tremble.

You know that scene in Jurassic Park where the ground starts to shake and the main character realizes that they’re royally screwed? The camera pans over their face and you see the dawning realization that they aren’t in control? Well, as the wire vibrated its’ way out of my numb fingers that was my face. Suddenly there was a swarm of cows running through the fence to the black top. What I sensed to be the entire herd, because it was dark and starting to rain and I wasn’t the one with the flashlight,  let themselves out of the fence to join Harriet and 33 and started heading down the roadway.

“Incoming! Incoming. You’ve got incoming!” I don’t think Eric could hear me over the wind at the hooves clacking down the road because the next thing I heard was a big ol’ “WTF?!” Miraculously he got them directed into the paddock across the road and safely contained without fuss.

But you know who we didn’t see? That’s right. Freaking 29, the cow who I was convinced was having a God damn water birth. So we started out across this incredibly muddy river bottom. My flip flops made it about five feet before becoming so encrusted with wet clay that every step was like walking on KY Jelly and I had to toss them. So we are wandering around a 25 acre field with one shitty flashlight, in the rain, and I’m barefoot. Every few feet I slip and sprawl like a 19 year old in a mud wrestling contest, and when I wasn’t slipping I was jamming sticks and particularly pokey bits of grass into my bare soles. Lovely.

We make it halfway around and see no evidence of 29. Maybe we just missed her? Then, as we are about to go to the next section we see two sets of eyes. Two calves bedded down away from the herd. Great. Lovely. Perfect! Naturally they run. Eric keeps the flashlight and continues looking for 29; while I try to track two calves in the dark, with only the light from his cellphone (which illuminates just enough of the ground around me to *hopefully* keep me from stepping on a snake). 

It is now almost one am. Screech owls are talking to each other and I am convinced they have killed and eaten the calves, also that they are not screech owls but probably some sort of Sasquatch creature. My world is mud. Nothing has been before, not shall be after. Just rain, and mud, and trying desperately to not impale myself of any wheat stubble. I am herding these calves by the sound of them splashing through puddles, which is getting more and more difficult as they get farther away and as it starts to rain harder. Eric eventually catches back up to me, as I have lost the calves and am now just wandering the pasture next to the river like some sort of parody of La Llorona, wearing incredibly muddy yoga pants instead of a white dress and cursed to search forever for these lost and presumably drowned calves instead of my children.

I slip and slide my way back up to the gate and we see the babies, but do they go in with the herd like good calves? Of F-ing course not. Because they are cows, and it is after one am and raining. So we chase them up and down the blacktop before they disappear into the black of the slightly larger paddock next door and we decide to say F it. We put the slinky gate up a little higher than usual and pray that they figure it out their own damn selves.

We are back over first thing in the morning, you know, when we can see and I have actual shoes; and what do we find? Twelve hundred pounds of beautiful black cow grazing alongside the blacktop. Somehow 29 eluded us on our jaunt around the pasture. We get her put in and a neighbor drives by, and then backs up to yell that we have a calf up the road. Yup. She hid her baby next to the blacktop about a quarter mile away. Did she give birth on it? Who knows. So we load the calf up in the good ole’ farm Fusion and get it reunited with mom, only to be incredibly relived and discover that our two babies from the night before have also made it back to their people.

Whew.

About that time another neighbor drives by and makes a comment about us getting our cow in. WTF dude, you saw we had a cow out and didn’t call? Thanks, bro.

Perfect fodder for my next bout of anxiety.

Your cows are out.

No they aren’t. The neighbor would call.

But would they though???

… Honey, grab the flashlight!!!

Ah, farm life!

Not pictured is Eric's face as he was tersely telling me to stop taking pictures and drive...

The walk of shame

I was getting married in three days. My nails were done. They looked so nice. My soon to be husband was feeding for me so that I could stay pristine (the struggle is REAL), and I just had to go and ruin it. How do you ask? Oh, let me tell you the tale:

I stopped by the farm to drop some wedding stuff off and glanced at the fencer. The tiny check mark that symbolizes a short was flashing with a vengeance. Tick, tick, #itch. You’ve got a problem. I walked around to see if the weaned calves had shorted the fence out again, a somewhat frequent occurrence given my substandard fence building skills. They hadn’t, but as I did a quick head count I noticed a problem, where oh where was lucky number 16? I walked around the fence, my capri pants and slip on shoes not giving me much protection from the weeds and mud. It had rained the night before and was looking to do so again, and soon. Because of course it was. Why the F not. This stuff never happens when it is 70 degrees and sunny.

I saw the heifer grazing by herself in the top rotational paddock, fortunately the main herd was on the other side of the rotation (which happens to be seven parallel paddocks that run perpendicular to an aisle down a hill – important later). With a heavy sigh, and a quick glance up at the oncoming clouds I entered the paddock and began to give chase. It should have been easy. She fell out of the fence, so she should jump right back in, right? Wrong. She ran to the corner and I gently urged her back with her friends. She ran past me, and I panicked thinking that she might run out to rejoin the herd (to become her future calf’s sister mom if her daddy had anything to say about it – she is starting to be “that age” when a bull starts to notice her sweet brown eyes… anyways…)

I ran to cut her off, and running is not my thing. We repeated the run about a hundred times. Back and forth. Back and forth. I got a stitch in my side. My aggravation with the situation started to ratchet up. She started bellering with all her considerable lung capacity – “Mrrrroooo MrrrrroooooOooo!” I started yelling back, “Go back to your new herd you stupid heifer!” It kept up. I got more pissed by the minute. Sweat was running down my back, weeds were cutting my legs, and the mother flipping sonnofabitching heifer was NOT cooperating. Ugh. 

The main herd started to pay attention. I panicked and yelled: “Stop calling for your mother! She doesn’t love you anymore! She has a new baby now!” I chased her back towards the fence. Hell, I even grabbed the fence and laid it down for her, but of course, she wouldn’t go through. The rest of the calves came up and thought about coming out, but this basic B would not cross the freaking fence.

I grabbed my phone as the thunder rolled. “Eric, we have a calf out.” “No I can’t get her in. Don’t you think I tried that?” Frustration gave me what I like to think was an edge to my voice like Liam Neeson in Taken or something, instead I am pretty sure it came off as hysteria. Which was not what I was going for. He said he was on his way, so I started out to try to find the short, at dusk with no flashlight and the rain starting to come down. My legs quickly became covered with seed heads as I wandered along the perimeter fence checking each insulator to see if it was off. I reached the paddock with the cows and my usually docile animals decided to channel their inner buffalo and started charging en masse at me. My inner voice mumbled, “This is it. I’m going to die here.” 

I plodded along, too pissed to care, as the herd milled around me with murder on their mind. I finished my perimeter check, still finding no short and no power to the fence and started walking along the top end of the paddock when Eric called. He was here, where was I? I started trudging up towards the gate. Surely if I wasn’t in the aisle the cows would just stay down here and eat like good cows. Oh, but no.

I was about halfway up the hill when I heard them start to come, hooves sucking in the slick clay as they headed for the top of the aisle, where their presence would cause the calf to break out of the paddock and rejoin them. I couldn’t let that happen. I fell to the ground and shimmied under the “dead” fence, only to have it light up the wet back of my shirt while I was on my belly in the mud and shock the ever loving muck out of me. Which of course caused me to spasm and throw myself out of my army crawl into an ungainly sprawl right in the middle of a couple piles of manure. I leapt to my feet, wiped God knows what off my face and sprinted for a slinky gate to hold the herd back. I made it just in time. I mean, just in time. I no sooner got the gate pulled taut than the herd skidded to an angry stop.

I slogged up the hill, my feet slipping out from under me with every other step. The rain wasn’t coming down hard enough to wash me off, just hard enough to turn everything into a God damned mess. I got to the top of the hill and glowered at Eric, who had the good grace not to laugh in my face as I explained what happened. Which was wise. I would have probably attacked. Frustration does not bring out the best in me. My grandma would be so ashamed.

We got to work with the heifer. Again we went back and forth, back and forth. I noticed that I wasn’t the only one frustrated now when I saw Eric’s iPhone “flashlight” spin off into the night as he winged it at the heifer when she ran past him. He started to yell obscenities. 

“I told her her mama doesn’t love her anymore.” I added to the string helpfully as he ran by. It was dark so I couldn’t see his look of what I am sure was appreciation. He jogged past me and the 50’ span of fence I had laid down so the heifer could go through. Her little calf friends were all lined up on their side of the fence, so I couldn’t leave my post or EVERYONE would be out. I watched the bouncing light run circles around the paddock after the heifer, and I patrolled my man made hole in the fence.

My phone rang; my buddy John had called. “Call you back. Cow out.” Click.

After another fifteen minutes, or years – it felt like years, we got her back in. Eric left to go finish feeding and I called John back and started relating my tale to him as I tried to make it down the giant slip and slide that was the aisle without falling down again  in order to release the herd from containment. His response? “Well, I had called to complain, but I can’t do that now.” Yeah, that’s right John. You ever want to feel better about your life choices? Call me. Call me when the cows are out and it is now ten o’clock at night and I have freshly manicured nails that are now shoved full of manure and clay and I haven’t had dinner, and I am covered in literal shit and have to drive home. In my freshly cleaned car. That I have to ride in in my wedding dress. Can we all just say muck with a capital F? Hmm?

So I of course do what anyone would do and strip down to my bra and underwear to drive home so I don’t get my car dirty. Which is fine, and a great plan until I get to the bottom of the driveway and see the gates. Which I have to close. That are next to a highway, with traffic.

And my bra and panties don’t even match…

So I wait for a lull in the traffic and run out to try to shut one gate, and dart back in the car so that I don’t get slapped with some sort of public indecency ticket; and the freaking gate falls off one hinge. So I am wrestling with a shitty gate, in the rain, half covered in mud and manure, in my bra, trying to not be seen by neighbors or oncoming traffic.

And THAT ladies and gentlemen, is how a farmer does a walk of shame.

A Farmer's Nightmare

I’m surrounded by towering cornstalks. Their bright green is just starting to fade into the gold of late summer, and they sway in the slight breeze. Their itchy leaves leave welts on my bare arms when I shove past, lost in their depths. The bright sun beats down from above making the welts sting with sweat, and my shirt plaster itself like a second skin across my body. I pause, trying desperately to get my bearings.

Rustle, rustle, rustle.

What was that? I spin in circles trying to find where the noise came from, but every time I think I find it, it comes from somewhere else.

Whuff. Rustle, rustle, rustle.

I raise my arms to protect my face and charge deeper into the corn field. I don’t know if I am running towards the noise, or away from it. Off to my right something snorts. Is it a deer, or something else? Something more sinister?

Rustle, rustle, rustle. CRASH! Mrrrrrrreeeeh. 

The sound is closer, so I run harder. Leaves whip through my hair and I stumble blindly forward. I trip in a divot of bare dirt and sprawl in the narrow gap between the rows. What was that? I think I see black figures darting at the very edge of my perception. I stand up and keep running, heedless of the itching. Heedless of the pain. All I know is the pounding panic of my heart.

I burst into an opening in the once tightly planted field, and there I see it. Shit, shit, shit! This can’t be happening! But it is. My worst nightmare.

The whole f-ing herd of cows is there, swirling together like a giant black snake ball of destruction. Trampled cornstalks peak their broken limbs up through churned mud and manure. Everywhere around me are half bitten corn cobs hanging sadly from once proud plants. If only it was a dream, but I know it isn’t as the itching and welts register. I am no longer filled with panic, nay; but with the righteous wrath of a long dead Greek hero. 

Rage brave Achilles. RAGE.

I grab a broken stalk and swing my weapon wide and the massive black vortex of devastation whirls on me. Their cries sound like those of dinosaurs, not soft moos, but angry ones reminiscent of noises that I have only heard from the Jurassic Park movies. “Mrrrrroooeeeehhhhh”

I summon what strength I have left and charge, my battle cry pierces the air with the power of a hunting hawk’s scream. “WHAT THE F DO YOU THINK YOU’RE DOING?!?! GET YOUR ASSES BACK IN THE FENCE!” The bull turns at me and bellows out a challenge, but I don’t care that he is nearly 3,000lbs and could easily kill me, this is about principle dammit. If I die this day it is with honor!

I bellow back at him and charge, “I SAID GOOOOO!” I brandish my cornstalk and swing it in one mighty stroke to fell the beast. It doesn’t work, but it does swat him across his massive black butt and breaks off in my hand. He leaps forward towards whatever twisted cattle path his herd created to escape the confines of the pasture, my prowess obviously intimidates him enough that he forgets all thoughts of challenge. The rest of the herd surges forward: a dark arrow that pours out of the field and twists towards a tiny path wending its way through a wood.

Not one to let my enemy away that easily I grab a stick and make a second charge. “Get back there! You don’t belong here! Go home! Go home!”

I chase them back through the hole they must have dug out to get out of the fence. It is most definitely not a new ditch just due to natural erosion, but was created by the herd in a devious and willful attempt to escape me and cause damage to the neighbor’s crops. 

Their reasoning? So that he would get pissed, and I don't know, destroy the rest of the fences to liberate them maybe? Take them into his cornfields so that they might not starve with their not so meager rations of grass and alfalfa hay? Call the DCFS (Department of Cow and Farm Services) on me for refusing to feed them grain? (Obviously I need an informant on the inside to discern their true motives here.) Their heinous plot very nearly went unnoticed until it was too late. 

I stab my stick down decisively into the soft earth as a barrier and stare at their retreating backs with my hands on my hips. I will reinforce this place, and they shall not escape again. No. Not this way...

I will hold the north fence until my dying breath, or until I get way too itchy from the massive quantities of seed ticks that I am now covered in and I have to go shower. Or a tree falls on it. That could happen too.

This is a fear we carry with us every day, a life with a constant battle of wills and wiles. A vigil that we must maintain. This is, a farmer's nightmare.

Rootbound

“Build a life you don’t need a vacation from.” That phrase haunts me from its whimsical background as I scroll through FaceBook. Sometimes it is plastered over a beach chair, sometimes it is in fake cursive over a mountain top. The meme sparkles in its simplicity, and I hate it.

I am a business person. I am a farmer. I am a woman with a Great Pyrenees that acts as a reverse Swiffer sweeper and deposits piles of dust throughout my house. Many times I am exhausted. I am brain dead; mentally checked out from a life of constant worry over water levels and pasture rotation, and do we have groceries for tonight, or laundry done for tomorrow? Did I get all the invoicing caught up this afternoon, what should I write in a blog for work’s website?

I think it is the story of the modern farmer to live and breathe a never ending checklist of important tasks in rotation. Most of us have to work a 8-5 job in addition to the farm to make ends meet. I would say that is doubly so as a woman farmer, but that could just be my perspective because Captain America could care less about the dirt on the floor and whether or not the counters are clean at nine o’clock when we roll in from feeding everyone after working our 8-5 jobs and start our dinner. I still care and will numbly fold laundry while the oven preheats or I’ll wash a couple dishes while the Keurig whirs. Given all this, you might think then that I crave vacations as a break from the constant stress, but I don’t.

I crave them for novelty.

I become root bound in my little pot of processes that I do day in and day out. I curl in on myself in a constant stream of chores that I try to perform more and more efficiently every day, until exhaustion and compassion fatigue obscure why I chose this life in the first place. I need to be uprooted. I need to be taken out of my tight little space and have myself gently stretched out into the wide world so that when I get planted again I have room to grow, room to appreciate everything again.

Image by Keith Williamson. Click here to learn more.

I went to the beach with girl friends for a few days, and while I was SUPER stressed about leaving everything I am SO glad that I did. I came back and I am rejuvenated.

Fence down? Eh, no problem. Have you seen how gorgeous the sky is today? Wow, just talk about blue.

Can’t find a new calf? Aren’t they great hiders? Man, it is so nice to wander around the woods looking in all these little hidey holes. This is such a cool tree! Hey, are those blackberries?

New calf was actually out in the yard? Aw! Isn’t he adorable? Breaking through fences already and he isn’t even 24 hours old! You’re a precocious little buddy, aren’t ya?

Folks, even hammering in fence posts becomes an enjoyable act when I have been away from it for a while. CA and I spent Sunday afternoon starting in on the fences for the rotational grazing program that we are implementing and I was humming, laughing, and turning it into a rousing game of “how many thumps of the t-post driver does it take” that I didn’t mind consistently losing. I loved every exhausting minute of it. 

God, it is good to be home!

Oh, and we did manage to get the new baby back in the fence with minimal bruising. (On CA's part, not the calf's.)