As the temps drop and snow builds up I find myself heading to check on, feed, water and clean Star and Vanilla more often than in the nicer weather. It is beautiful these cold mornings. But Vanilla is now an older llama, approaching 20 years. Star is young and thankfully the cold does not bother…
The dashboard of my car had a tiny plastic cow sitting on it, a jersey cow. I knew right away Dick had set it there….. He had left some other days and I still keep one up in the bedroom. I met Dick in Ashfield, Mass after his new herd of jersey cows broke out…
And then I started a fire. I had set up the old hot plate with the double boiler in the room so that kids could do batik. I had carefully put down plastic around a couple dye buckets so that we could try the process. It was supposed to be simple and rewarding and the…
The wind swirled into the south window as my husband Dick and I stood in the upstairs of our old tenant house with my Mom and Dad. This house stood up the hill from our farmhouse and had been abandoned for years. Built in the 1800s, rumor had it that once it was a…
So after twenty something years I got to ride a horse. Star is the sixth horse I have come to own and how I have missed horses. I awaited my neighbor Monika to arrive with a light bridle and a small English jumping saddle. We brushed Star and fussed with her. She enjoys being brushed,…
As my good studio cat Singer left the earth I walked with her tiny body that had given me joy for close to sixteen years. Her purr was strong and her little body would vibrate filled with happiness and gratitude as she purred and curled up next to me over those years. Steppin had left…
It was yesterday April 23 that I had to say good bye to my old best cow Steppin Up. Cows have been a part of my life for about fifty years now and Steppin has been our last cow. The winter was a hard one and Steppin turned 15 years last September. A few other…
We had been on our farm but two years and there was little to report as profit. The book work was long and full of tiny details and big expenses. Each category of expense had many breakdowns with in it. Barn supply, milkroom supply, medical expenses, bedding, feed for cows, calves (what kind of feed,…
The chair lift stopped mid way up the mountain. Dick and I were at Stratton Mountain, Vermont. It was 21 below zero, but we had so looked forward to skiing on our anniversary we were out there anyway. The wind picked up rocking the chairs back and forth. We sat high in the frigid air…
Natasha lay very still, barely breathing. She looked dead. When an older cow calves, she can easily develop something called “milk fever” which is not a fever at all, more like a diabetic coma. The shock of coming into milk causes calcium levels in the cow to drop drastically, and she will become cold, muscles…