Her First Calf

Her First Calf
Wendell Berry


Her fate seizes her and brings her
down. She is heavy with it. It
wrings her. The great weight
is heaved out of her. It eases.
She moves into what she has become,
sure in her fate now
as a fish free in the current.
She turns to the calf who has broken
out of the womb's water and its veil.
He breathes. She licks his wet hair.
He gathers his legs under him
and rises. He stands, and his legs
wobble. After the months
of his pursuit of her, now
they meet face to face.
From the beginnings of the world
his arrival and her welcome
have been prepared. They have always
known each other.

The Miracle of Birth

Last week, I was taking an early evening stroll when I happened upon a cow giving birth. Since I had my trusty Nikon with me, I got some very aww-worthy pictures of the mama cow welcoming her little calf into the world.

Puppy Play Time

On Sunday, Susan and Dean picked up our two newest additions to our farm...

They are Great Pyrenees puppies, and will soon be working as guard dogs. Right now, they're in a makeshift pen in the chicken area, where they can get to know the chickens and Ben, one of the other guard dogs.

Their names are Luke and Leia - my suggestion, incidentally. Thank you, thank you.

Leia is definitely the more adventuresome of the two, while Luke is calmer and more serious.

But both of them are pretty mouthy.

Anyways, I just thought some puppy pictures would help enliven everyone's day. Playing with them certainly made mine.

  

Introducing Fiona the Dexter Cow

Allow me to introduce the newest member of Brightwood Vineyard and Farm. Blog, please meet Fiona the Cow.

Her name is Fiona, and she's a Dexter cow. Dexters are a heritage breed of dairy cow from Ireland. They're quite a bit smaller than regular cows, and come in black and brown.

Fiona's still skittish and shy. Susan and Dean just picked her up yesterday, so it will probably be a little while before she's feeling comfortable enough to let us approach her.

She's next to the donkeys, where she is already a source of endless curiosity and amusement.

Mail Order Chickens

On Sunday, we recieved a box.

Whatever can it be?



Gasp! Baby Chicks!

Fifty-seven of them, to be precise - mostly Araucanas, which lay blue/green eggs, and Silver Laced Wyandottes. They all came from McMurray Hatchery, which is in Iowa, and were only one day old when they arrived.

Here is their new home, which I like to call the Chicky Red Light District:

The maroon ambiance comes from a heat lamp, incidentally, and is not actually an aura of illicitness resulting from their naughty night-time chicklet activities.

See? Totally innocent looking.

Nothing to see here. Move along.

Meanwhile, back on the ranch... er, farm.

Due to some unfortunate events at home, I was in Indiana all of last week. Thus the blogging moratorium.

Although I wasn't present to witness it, the farm kept operating. Plants grew, animals ate, people harvested. And despite my (relatively) short absence, I was faced with plenty of changes when I returned yesterday.

For starters, Juanita the Spanish Meat Goat had her baby - a single boy. I don't have any pictures of him yet.

Second: two of our remaining three ducks ran a-fowl (hee) of a predator in the night, and are now swimming in that big lake in the sky. The last duck has been put in the aviary for protection... where she will soon be joined by the cute little bevy of ducklings that arrived while I was gone. (The red light is from a heat lamp.)

Third: plants grow fast. Really fast. The potatoes, which were a few scant inches tall when I left, are now a foot at least. The buckwheat now reaches my hips, despite being merely knee-high a week ago. And the heirloom tomatoes I planted the other week? Take a look.

This must be what having children is like. One second they're seedlings... and before you know it, they're bearing fruit of their own. Where, oh where, does the time fly?

We also have strawberries now. They are delicious.

And, judging by the numbers of Kermit look-alikes leaping about, it is well into frog mating season.

Sadly, I will be leaving the farm again on Thursday, to return on Monday. Hopefully, there won't be too many more changes in my absence.

Baby Goats, Extra Fresh

Last Wednesday, Blanca finally had her kids!* Three of them, to be precise. No wonder she was so wide.

The next morning, we had to do the goat kid check in. You need to do this before they can walk enough to run away from you. It involves checking the sex of each kid, giving them a selenium injection (a trace mineral they need), and cleaning their umbilical cord type thing with iodine.

Since there were three kids and three interns, everyone got one.

Despite my innate hatred of putting up pictures of myself because I never like how I look, I posted these because the goat kids are just too darned cute. They are only twelve hours old in these pictures.

Just one pregnant goat left. It appears that each goat is a cycle apart - a goat estrus cycle is about three and a half weeks, and Juanita just does not look ready yet. So look for more baby goats in the future!




*I would have posted these much sooner, but due to the epic fail of Blogger for two days, I couldn't do a thing.

More Baby Goats

I got a video of the baby goats down at the farm house yesterday. Grumpy dads are apparently not restricted to the human race.

Still no sign of more baby goats... Blanca and Juanita are taking their sweet time.

Arrival of the Goat Kids

We have baby goats!

Florencia, one of our pregnant Spanish Meat Goats over at the Farm House, gave birth a couple days ago to two adorable little goat kids. Mostly they've been hiding behind the hay feeder when I go over there, but I did get a couple pictures yesterday.

The other two goats, Blanca and Juanita, haven't given birth yet, but Blanca looks just about ready to pop.

Let's Meet the McFuzzersons - Baby Chicks Galore

For the last few weeks, we've been keeping an eye on a chicken who was sitting on a nest in the pole barn, where the goat kids are located. The eggs started hatching the other day, but we waited until this morning to move them to a safer spot.

But look how fuzzy!

The nest had sixteen eggs, but seven didn't hatch, and two of the chicks didn't make it. So we ended up with seven fuzzy little chicklets running around and cheeping their heads off, in addition to their mama.

Mama Chicken was not pleased when we took her away from the nest. She pooped something quite smelly all over everything and made some very indignant noises. The chicks then freaked out and ran under some nearby machinery, so we spent about twenty minutes moving things around so we could catch them. We used a cardboard box with straw in the bottom to transport them to one of the apiaries, where we'll wait for the little ones to grow up.

Anyways, the McFuzzersons are now happily reunited, safe and sound and fuzzy and warm in the front yard. And here I am in the house, safe and sound and warm and dry, while it rains like the dickens outside. Or perhaps I should say... like the chickens?


UPDATE: Two more chicks were found in the pole barn this afternoon, and the McFuzzersons are now up to nine little peeplets.