Each day brings something new

Portable gates are like socket sets. They’re an invaluable tool and you can’t have too many. We use them in countless ways: making extra calf pens when the influx of calves exceeds the current accommodations; setting up lanes for the hoof trimmer; creating pens for fair heifers; etc. I love everything about our gates except the pins. They disappear like Tupperware lids and right-handed gloves.

After making do with miscellaneous pieces of metal from the bucket in the shop for far too long, I finally asked Glen where we could get new pins. He called the machining shop in town and they had some ready for us that afternoon. You can’t beat small town service.

Daphne and I stopped in to pick them up and ended up chatting with the shop’s founder about the metal fabrication work they do there. He said the wide variety of projects and jobs that come in keeps work interesting. “It’s kind of like farming; you’re never sure what each day will bring.”

He’s 100% correct. No two days are ever alike on a dairy farm. There’s always something that keeps life interesting and there’s often something that makes you say, “Huh. Never seen that before.”

$1,000 hiding in the woods

Glen’s parents recently celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary. The morning of the party, Glen reported via our family group text that he had spotted a new beef calf in the little pasture where we keep the close-up dry cows. Usually, someone drops what they’re doing to retrieve the calf. But I was cutting the bars I made for the party so that they could be delivered before the set-up crew started. Glen was finishing milking. Dan was in Italy. Monika was at church. And Daphne was already getting ready for the party.

As soon as I finished the bars, I went out to start feeding bottle calves and told Glen to go fetch the calf. He decided to help me with some of the newborns first and only went to get the calf once I was feeding the older calves. He returned without a calf; it was nowhere to be found. I had déja vu from last summer. Except this time, there were no hoof prints in the corn field and no time for an extensive search if we didn’t want to be late for the party.

We looked for the calf that night and several times the next day, with no luck. Why do beef calves have to be the color of tree bark and shadows? Why couldn’t Charolais or British White been the breeds of choice for beef-on-dairy?

After another fruitless search, I told Monika, “There’s $1,000 hiding in our woods right now.”

“I hadn’t thought about it that way,” she said.

“How many people do you think would show up to help look for the calf if I offered to split the proceeds with the finder?” I wondered aloud. Monika laughed.

We ended up not needing to recruit a search party. That night, Monika suggested we try letting the calf’s dam back into the close-up pasture. We did and she led us right to the calf.

Frogs on the lawn

Our lawn mower broke. Of all the summers, this is not the summer to be without a mower for any amount of time. I haven’t seen a rainfall total for the season, but we must be approaching jungle- or rainforest-level precipitation.

It had already been nearly a week since the last lawn trim when we discovered the breakage. I had a couple hours on a dry day, but the mower wouldn’t start. It turns out a cable snapped. It took a week to get the mower running again.

Most summers, letting the lawn go for two weeks wouldn’t be a problem. By the time I was able to mow again this week, our lawn looked like it was better suited for grooming with a discbine.

As I mowed, I watched carefully for sticks and our new dog’s missing fetch toy. I didn’t find the toy, but I did find something else: frogs. Pass after pass with the mower, all over the yard, frogs hopped out of the way. There were dozens of them – mostly young leopard frogs, but I spotted a green tree frog by a flower bed and a couple western chorus frogs, too.

We have armies of leopard frogs in the pasture ponds, but I’ve never seen this many in our yard. Between all of the spring wet spots that never dried up and the abundance of insects, frogs must be having an incredibly productive year. I know there are certainly enough mosquitoes around to keep a colony of frogs fed.

I was almost a little disappointed when Daphne took over mowing for me. The frogs had been fun to watch and had helped me reflect on all of the ways we get to interact with the natural world while living on a dairy farm.