The Worst Cow Outing to Have Ever Outed

Monday night.

Goodness!

Rosie gave us SUCH a night!

Around 11, just as we’d said our final goodnights to the last straggling teens and settled into bed, we got a call from an anonymous tipster telling us they’d seen a cow they thought might be ours out on the road just north of us. (OK. Not an “anonymous tipster”. But it was an unknown number and an unfamiliar voice that asked, “Is this Mike Harris?”, so I figured “anonymous tipster” was a close enough description [though I imagine they did tell Mike who they were].)

The next three or four HOURS were full of searching in the dark (there are no street lights on our county roads and endless fields behind homes to potentially tempt a stray cow); prayers; me discovering Rosie and trying to get ahold of Mike who was off searching other roads on the dirt bike; failed attempts to get Rosie away from the other cows she’d discovered; Rosie somehow, of all things, making her way UNDER a fence and INTO the corral with our neighbor’s prize bull … our neighbor’s PRIZE BULL (apparently they made $250,000 off this bull’s “services” last year, and there we suddenly found ourselves, in the dead of night effectively STEALING his services [which he had less than zero hesitancy to bestow upon Rosie]); Mike lassoing Rosie and trying to get her to come back under the fence (since the only other option was undoing two strands of electric gate and trying to somehow get her into another connected pen without letting the cows from that pen in with the bull or the bull over with them, and then somehow leading her through the gates of two more corals with similarly separated cows and steers and then STILL being where we were when we first found her—needing to get her all the way back home); giving up and coming home at 1 in the morning only for Mike to decide he really could not leave her with that bull and heading out again—telling me to stay in bed, he’d “come up with something”; me lying in the dark and imagining Mike being mistaken for a prize-bull cattle rustler and getting shot by one of the neighbor’s hired employees; me imagining Mike getting trampled in the kerfuffle of panicking Rosie and bull and other cows; more praying; Mike magically getting Rosie through all the fore mentioned fences and gates without letting any prize bull or any other steer, cow or heifer through along with her (impossible that he managed this), getting her up to the road and halfway home; Rosie determining she would not go home after all and returning to the neighbor’s—trampling through flower beds and gardens as she went; Rosie having a freak out moment of panic as Mike tried to herd her back where she smashed into the side of the neighbor’s car—making a loud enough crash that said neighbor woke and came out in his underwear (now close to 2 am); Mike finally coming home (to my tremendous relief) to report that he and the neighbor (now clothed) had eventually gotten Rosie hemmed in with several other cows (far enough removed from the bull to keep him at bay) where they both agreed to leave her until we figured what to do.

For nearly two years now I have considered “cows out” a cry to be dreaded, but all previous loose-cow experiences paled to Monday night’s. It may have been thee pinnacle loose-cow experience. If only you could have witnessed it all. Every time I think of it, I just think, “How on earth could such craziness have actually been real?!” and “That was the most ridiculous thing to have ever happened.” and "The neighbor's champion bull???" (When I told my sister Megan, she said, “That’s the definition of a fiasco. Sometimes people say something was ‘a real fiasco’ when it wasn’t truly. But this? This was a fiasco.”)

(I could probably begin writing some good church talks about shoring up one’s fences. But it would be wiser, I suppose, to just actually shore up our fences rather than speak metaphorically about them. [Only … it isn’t as if we have small stretches of fence to consider! Weep.])

Anyway. Mike and I got to bed around 3 am and would have loved a good long rest, but Mike had to be out the door early for something at work the next morning and I had to take Anders to an early doctor’s appointment, and there was no going back to sleep after that appointment as the day was heating up fast and one million things needed watering. (Including the pumpkin plants that spontaneously generated in Pig’s pasture. [Actually, we threw a bunch of our old pumpkins in there for Pig to eat last year. Apparently, several of them … planted themselves.])

ANYWAY, I don’t consider myself a farmer. (Nor yet a farmer…ess. [Is there a feminine term for farmer one wonders?]) I mean … for goodness' sake, I shop at Costco and feed my kids bagel bites and cold cereal. There’s certainly no churning butter. There’s isn’t even any bottling of peaches or canning of preserves.

Nevertheless, I sure find myself doing a whole lot of … carrying hay, and carrying buckets of water (why do I carry so many buckets of water all the time??? a day doesn’t go by that I’m not carrying a bucket of water somewhere); and a whole lot of dealing with pigs (well, Pig singular), and dealing with goats, and dealing with stray cows!

Ah well. All of that is a small price to pay for getting to live up here. Well … Rosie and her Monday night was on the heavier end of the “price to pay” spectrum. But, if someone is going to live on a farm, I guess they shouldn’t be too surprised to find themselves doing farmy things—even if there isn’t an ounce of natural farmer in their blood.

And I do love living here. (I am in love with living on the farm.) The sunsets that somehow stretch far enough towards the north to be seen from the big window, the Sandhill cranes' ridiculous call, kids using 4-wheelers for chores and getting comfortable on dirt bikes, surprise pumpkins in the pig pasture, morning walks around the perimeter during the week after an alfalfa cutting (before it starts getting tall again) and the particular crunch the cut stalks make as you step on them, Rod’s cows (who never seem to get out by the by) looking in our front window, etc.

And look at Anders out driving the tractor to help Mike load giant hay bales over on Alma and Gayle’s Young Ward land.

Which reminds me of another something I love: the extra seasons I’ve become aware of; like haying season when tractors are out everywhere (including in our back field) cutting, and turning, and baling. 

Recently there was a Saturday with rain in the forecast. Mike was down in Young Ward meeting someone to pick up the hay bales he'd sold for his parents, and I kept seeing truckloads of hay driving past and large bales being loaded into barns—everyone eager to get them off of the fields before the rain. I felt this bond of camaraderie with them all.

Anyway, more from around the farm:

The pictures below are from a different time when Rosie got out. (At least she stayed near the house. And at least it was daylight.)

We bought a dirt bike. We have some very tiny, kid friendly ones. but this is the first adult-sized one. I admit it's a tiny bit more intimidating to drive than it looks. (On my first try I slowed down too much on a turn without putting the clutch in and killed it--which caused me to immediately tip over. But the older kids are starting to figure it out. It's probably the biggest deal for Anders as he has buddies who often stop by on their own dirt bikes.)

Daisy below:

Penny:

(I taught Penny how. I fancy myself a pretty good teacher--even if not the best rider.)

A picture Pen took of Mike. He's by far the more farmer/cowboy of the two of us. I love this picture. And him.

Stopping to buy ice cream on the night we bought the dirt bike.

The End.

Things We Must Have, Things I've Seen, and Things I Don't Like

I think we need a dinner bell. (A serious one. Like … one that must be hung or mounted.)

Though … there’s the almost certain risk that kids will wildly clang it when they aren’t supposed to (their own trouble-making version of the thing one is never supposed to do: cry wolf).

But you should have heard me the other day—standing on the front porch, yelling with all my might for Summer (who was by the barn) to come for violin lessons.

It will not do. 

I’ll be without a voice within the month.

We must have a bell!

Of course, what the top priority “must have” is changes from day-to-day. (According to my whim I suppose. Or whether I’m yelling for someone, or wanting a place to sit, or wishing for some privacy.)

We must have a bell!

We must have rugs!

We must have couches in the main area! (Though you’ll see from the attached pictures that we are managing with the two bean bags and two chairs we currently have.)

We must have blinds! (Perhaps at least for the bathroom for heaven’s sake!)

We must have a spice rack!

We must have a lawn!

We must have a towel rod in the master bathroom!

We must have more trees to improve our view in various spots! (Basically, anywhere I can see a house. Hahah.)

We must have a porch swing! (Oh! The porch swing! It’s warming up—well, no, the last three days have been quite cold!—but it will be warming up. And the other night I was surprised to step outside to a full chorus of frogs! [Maybe boreal chorus frogs? Maybe northern leopard frogs? I will report back.] I wasn’t expecting them so soon! I guess because the kids don’t catch them until all the little, new ones start hopping about. But the males get so loud during breeding season that you can hear them even just driving by any of the wetland areas out here. It’s such a delightful sound! Why is it delightful? I don’t actually know. You tell me. But! Maybe that is the #1 priority? A porch swing?)

We shall see what we manage to get first.

In the meantime there are wonderful things to love with or without spice racks and porch swings.

I walked the perimeter of the Pea-Viner property the other day. (Not all of it. Some barbed-wire fences had no gates for me to get through.)

In my walk I came across:

1. Two loudly bugling (bellowing? I don’t even know how to describe it) sandhill cranes. They have the most ridiculous call. Hahaha. They do. I love it. And I think the pair of them must be nesting somewhere about here. I keep seeing them. There even appeared to be some sort of leaping, flapping, mating dance going on outside my front window yesterday.

2. About 8 million red-winged blackbirds. Starlings too. But the red-winged blackbirds are … well they might be what I come to most associate the farm with! There are so many. And I have never gone outside—since living here—and not heard them chattering and calling and singing in a mighty chorus!

3. Cows. (Unsurprisingly.) The property across the canal houses maybe hundreds (?) of them. But it was extra fun on my perimeter walk because there are currently so many little calves running about.

4. Geese. Flying overhead in their V formation—crying as they went. And on my second lap, two of them in our field.

5. And! This wasn’t on my walk, but early the next morning, Jesse, Anders and I watched a fox with an injured paw make his way right past our front-room window. (I went out on the porch to try and get a picture, but he saw me, paused, and then, injured paw a footnote, fled at breakneck speed.)

Mind you!

It isn’t all magic and wonder.

Here are some things I don’t like:

1. Finding a completely smashed chicken egg in my coat pocket.

2. Hearing a lot of loud, clattering noises in my wood stove and trying to pretend I didn’t (in hopes that the sound would just go away), only to discover a poor starling in my stove. ("Birds in wood stove." The second thing I don’t like.)

Penny and I had quite the adventure trying to get it out. In the end our box plan failed us. Bird, and ash, and bird seed were everywhere as we screamed and tried to open doors. At last Penny clamped the box over it against a window and we slowly moved it upward while we opened the window and carefully pulled out the screen.

3. Mud. Mud season. Somewhere in my mind I have a faint, glowing memory/hope of a time with no mud. Or, at least, … less mud? And in theory the kids should wear mud boots every time they step outside. But they do not. And this picture doesn’t do it justice:

The bottom of 1 billion shoes around here, by every door, look just like this right now:

Our cats walk from one porch to the other through our muddy yard and then paw at the windows and doors. And one of them got in the other day and dashed up the stairs and then ran across two bedspreads.

(Cat paw marks on door.)

Pig’s pen (which is actually like an entire field) can’t be stepped in (you know, like in order to feed Pig) without squelching through mud.

4. And we still have six roosters (which is four or five too many).

So, it isn’t all sunshine and roses.

But a lot of it is!

And here, among other things, are a few pictures I’ve taken in our still mostly empty house. (Empty of furnishings. Not people. Thankfully!)

They've been unearthing all kinds of toys that were in storage. (To be honest I really thought I'd used the opportunity of our original move to get rid of all the kinetic sand. Apparently not.)

I'm still hoping for an even longer table!

An after-dinner Sunday walk at Trapper Park. (A lovely place that is forever trying to be closed.)

I have to keep reminding myself not to get so used to a pony or cow wandering past my window that I no longer find it worth noting! I keep reminding my kids too. "Just imagine if a cow had walked past our living room window in Pleasant View! We would have gone crazy!"

Rosie wandering past the porch.

Holly rushing to meet up with her. (They are good little friends--though Rosie is not interested in running and Holly often is.)

Shannon and Lila (Shan's youngest) sent the kids a fun "new house" package. So fun of them!

As I said, making do just fine with beanbags and a few chairs for now. (And we do have couches upstairs.)

Bundles of sleepy elementary kids gathered for scriptures before school. (We are going through the story of Joseph--a chapter a morning. Each time I end it's like a cliff-hanger when we are reading a good book. "One more chapter!" they shout. Haha.)

Anders and Penny inside (as I clean cat paw prints from the windows outside).

We had some carpet left over from the loft, so Mike had it bound into a big rug. It still needs a pad under it, and we might use it here or maybe in our bedroom. Just rolled it out to have a look.

I don't fully approve of all the jumping and window-ledge standing Starling has been up to.