Some more pictures of cows, and an update on Ace!

It was a rainy, low-key day at the farm today. In the morning I had to Move Heavy Crap in the spidery barn basement (darn, didn't escape it after all) until I had an epic allergy attack (the hay? the mold?) and was relegated to bottle washing duty. All the bottles for the CSA are washed by hand here. I don't know how many bottles it is, but it's about six hours of work a week. It's not so bad, though. I like washing things and the little room where we wash gets nice and toasty warm.

Here's a crappy picture of the room where all the bottles and milking equipment are cleaned, and where the milk is bottled (jarred? It comes in jars.)

Then this afternoon my job was to make mozzarella. I also made bread. It was great! Not the bread or the mozzarella--just the fact that that was my assigned afternoon task. The mozzarella is OK, it has a bit of a dense rubbery texture and I wish I knew how professionals do it to make the little balls all puffy and light. Perhaps I'll youtube it later.

In any case, to start more at the beginning of things, I got back to the farm Sunday night after having a nice weekend at home. Sounds like it was a stressful weekend though! They got a new, 8 month pregnant cow on Saturday named Ginger. She is half Jersey and half Guernsey and fully adorable. She is the cutest, in my opinion. Just look at her!

But notice her horns? The one on the right (her left) was "pulled" correctly, but the one of the left kind of sticks up all wonky-like. This is bad, as it means they are actually a danger (or, one of them is) and she actually gored Sparkle over the weekend. Just gave her a six-inch long cut on her hip. So the horns are a problem, but it would be too stressful at this point to remove them (because she's full grown) and especially too stressful because she's pregnant, so Sally glued tennis balls to them!

 

Getting her tennis balls

Not seeming to like this very much

But with totally adorable results. It's like she's being a bumble bee for Halloween!

Now she is very easily recognizable.

In addition to Ginger goring Sparkle, Sparkle kicking Sally in the shin during milking, there were a few other stressful cow-related events over the weekend. Dorie, one of the Brown Swiss, has a swollen hip again so she has trouble walking, and also her somatic cell count is up, which means she could be on the verge of getting an infection, which would be bad because her milk would be unusable during this time. Dorie is kind of the chronically injured one, and if she keeps at this rate it might not make economic sense to keep her as a dairy cow, but if she isn't a dairy cow, well....she would probably be sold to be a meat cow. Obviously nobody wants this to happen (Dorie least of all) so Sally is going to try really hard to get her healthy again.

To add to the drama, Mercy (the 1,400 lb lady) is in heat and is mounting the other cows, and she mounted Ginger, which made Sparkle jealous (I guess Sparkle is usually Mercy's special girl--apparently cows will mount cows when there are no bulls around, kind of like humans too?) so then Sparkle was being pissy and it's all really very immature.

And so it was a crazy weekend! Sally looked exhausted when I saw her Monday. But things have smoothed out to some extent. So far Ginger isn't really fitting in with the other cows. She is quite shy, shier than the other cows, she won't let me walk up to her. And she won't go in the barn, I don't know if it's because she doesn't want to or she feels intimidated by the other cows. They can be an intimidating bunch in there, though.

Cows like to stay inside when it rains, too!

Except Ginger had to stay outside. Her tennis balls got dirty overnight. Doesn't she look ridiculous?

Yesterday K and I spent most of the afternoon picking apples to be pressed for cider. They are ugly little things, as organic apples often are, and also quite sour as they are cider apples and not really for eating. Apparently the cider does come out with the right amount of sweetness, though. Anyway, a lot of what I saw yesterday when I was on the ladder was this:

 

and when I was holding the ladder for K, I saw this:

 

 

Later in the day, I also saw this:

It's Ace!

 He's doing a lot better since last I saw him, his walking isn't nearly so wobbly. But he is still quite shy and just kind of stands around awkwardly on his tall gangly legs and watches Kip canter (is it called this for cows too?) around with ease. In my mind it's like Vincent and Anton in Gattaca--the brawny, confident one and the sickly, shy one.

 But he is so freaking cute I can't handle it, I just want to snuggle with him. And he would even get excited and try a little canter here and there, just buck up his backside for a single stride and then catch his balance again. And today when they were out Ace even cantered for an extended period of time! He's getting his strength and spirit back after a crappy first three days on this earth! It is so lovely to see.

the boys going in after their afternoon exercise

future oxen!

 Kip and Ace are staying in the same stall with a wall two hay bales high to separate them and I hear they are getting along famously. Apparently they will touch noses over the top of it (gah! How do they come up with this stuff?) I will try to get a picture of that.

Sorry for the rambling nature of this post, I spent a lot of the time on the computer today and don't really feel like spending more to make it flawless. I always think of Abraham Lincoln's quote "I'm sorry I wrote such a long letter. I did not have the time to write a short one."

I'll leave you with this one.