Blogging

Ha ha! Made you look! 🙂

First, congratulations for all those who’ve made it 10 days! Nice job of keeping on yourself writing for the first week and a half! Now comes *insert dramatic music* another weekend! A bunch of my students got tripped up here, so keep that writing regiment going! 🙂

Now, we are NOT farmers, nor do we play ones on TV. When we moved out to our little piece of heaven 8 years ago. The idea of chickens and a garden were front and center. Other animals, a dog, some cats, yes, here were right there too. Cattle? Nope. Not. At. All.

S0, Wednesday night, my youngest daughter got home, cleaned out the pen, and we went up to our friend, Eric’s place, and came home with another Brown Swiss baby. She’s not named yet, but we are thinking of names that start with the letter A. Her mother was named Ashia, so with registered Brown Swiss, that’s the pattern to follow, naming the calf with the first letter of the mother’s name.

This will be our 8th heifer we’ve had over the years, and maybe our last. Our youngest daughter is a junior, and we know that senior year can get crazy. She’s involved in many activities, but loves her babies. All I know is, even though I didn’t sign up for this, I’ve loved having these animals at our place. They are playful and mischievous, looking for ways to get into trouble. Yet, they are very docile and, just like with kids, if you build the relationship, you can lead a 1,500 pound animal anywhere you want to go! Pretty dang cool!

Both of my daughters have benefited from working with their animals. Whether it’s the actual care of their animals, figuring out their feed, to the business end of seeing their babies sold because they’ve gotten too old or aren’t milking as much. That’s the sad part of this business, because in the end, it is Eric’s business.

I wasn’t raised around cows at all. My wife was the daughter of a dairy farmer, so she’s always been a bit more knowledgeable than I am. I do think my father-in-law would have gotten a kick out of seeing these animals on our place. A family friend came down to our place for graduation last year, came up, gave Melissa a hug, and said, “What’s with the Brown Swiss?” It was like Melissa’s dad, Don, was right there. It made us all laugh! 🙂

So, we have another baby again and while I never signed up for this, it’s been an awesome experience! 🙂