Did You MIss Me ?

Ta Da !!! I'm back. Sorry about the long break but duty called. Well, it was more like the hum of a 45 horsepower Romanian tractor pulling a 12 wheel hay rake but let's not split hairs.

I cannot express enough the bone deep weiriness I feel this time of the year. To bed around 11 pm and up at 5 am, outside most mornings by 6 am. an hour for lunch and again for supper. Bed feels very very good at the end of a day. But the crop is off and in the bin, the hay is nearly done and all the bales so far are hauled home, the calves are weaned and the cows are on some good second growth hay fields getting fat and sassy.

I had the gruesome task of doing a head count on one group of our cows two days ago. Robert reported that on his last check up north one of the cows had died. There was not enough left after the ravens, coyotes and bears had scavenged her to even tell which cow it was. Enter Cathy, my job was to make a list of all the cows in that group and then drive up there and walk through the herd and check each cow off the list when I visually ID her. It took about an hour and when I was done there was only one number on the list not checked off....Bingo. Can we please have a moment of silence for good ol' number 57N. Cut down in the prime of her life (having only given birth to two calves so far) We are not sure of the cause of death. There are a number of possibilities: struck by lightening (no storms recently though) or stalked and brought down by a predator( wolves or cougar we have both) or the most likely, she layed on a bit of a slope and rolled to her back, like a turtle on its back they rarely get turned right again(they do not last long, about 20 minutes, on thier backs, before they suffocate, the weight of thier stomachs prevents the lungs from taking in air.gas forms in thier stomachs and they bloat. Gruesome.


While I was up north checking the cows...I thought ahead enough to have taken my camera and went a bit crazy taking shots of the fall leaves. It worked as a bit of a stress releiver for me it seems.