Not What I Intended

I was hoping to get some cute video footage of baby cows walking. But instead, I got this.


I call it

"Momma Cow Standing"

Or alternately:

"I just had a baby and it's still kinda hard to stand up"

One of these is not like the other

Along the one side of our cow pastures there is a whole row of small pine trees. Well, the used to be small. Now they are each about 5-6 feet tall. They still seem small, but they are growing pretty fast.

Most of them look like this:

But one of them, out of at least 30 or 40, looks like this.

It has pine cones.

It must be an overachiever.

Baby cows don't know any better

The grown up cows now that they are given one section of pasture every day, and they must stick to that one pasture. They have learned to be content with what they are given.

But for little cows, the grass is always greener on the other side of the piece of twine that divides the pasture into pieces.

So you will often find them like this:

They know that momma won't cross that line. But they aren't phased by it, and off they trot to take a nap free from mom's watchful eye. (Though momma is never very far - that is her closest to the twine, staring at me)
Mom let's him be; you got to let the kids make their own mistakes sometimes.

But that freedom comes to a screeching halt when danger is around. The danger this time would be me and my camera. I looked a little too interested, and suddenly momma cow starts moooing like crazy. I tried to get some on video, but I hit the wrong button. So for now, just envisions really angry mooing.

Baby cow pretends not to hear, and momma cow elevates the mooing. If baby cow continues to ignore it, other cows will join in.

Eventually, baby cow obeys.

He gets up on his wobbly legs and saunters back to momma who undoubtedly gives him a severe tongue lashing.

Protective Mothers

Given that the cows with names (Molly, Big Bird, Bert and Ernie) all have names because they were abandoned by their mothers, one might begin to think that cows make for lame mothers. But as a general rule, this is not true. They are actually quite protective.

Quite protective.
They get this look on their faces that means business.

See it here? Momma cow, with baby cow behind. I am standing quite a ways away, but she can tell that I have taken an interested in that cute little blob, and she put on her don't-even-think-about-it face.


They all do it. See:

Another momma cow, another sleeping baby cow, and another evil glare complete with ears folded back.

Here I got the evil glare from 4 mothers all at once.

If you push the limits, they start mooing. Intense mooing. Angry mooing. Very different from talking-to-other-cows-mooing.

Then there is the mooing at the baby cows mooing. But more on that tomorrow.

Cracker Barrel

Last weekend Mon Amour and I went to Cracker Barrel with my parents to celebrate dad's birthday.

These are my parents:

In this photo, dad is taking advantage of one of the many great reasons to go to Cracker Barrel: the little peg jumping game that you get on your table. Good times. There is also the over sized checkers boards scattered around, but our food came too quickly, so we were not able to take advantage of that one.

Cracker Barrel was a family vacation tradition for my family. I had not been for a long time and had forgotten why I liked it. There are many reasons...but here are 2 of the top reasons:

The Root Beer.

Stewart's. Yum



The biscuits.

Hands down, yummiest biscuits anywhere.
The onion rings are quite tasty too.

Additionally - they serve downright enormous portions. Dad had room for dessert, but that is because he works 20 hour days and tries to sleep the other 4, leaving no room for eating. So he has to make up for it at some point.

After dinner(once we could move again, which took a little while considering all the food), we went to a nearby park and walked around. Mon Amour took pictures, I chatted with the parents.

It was a beautiful evening.

Mon Amour took a bunch of cool "Artistic" photos - which may become the subject of a future post since they will be fun to edit. But for now, here is just a sample, un-edited.

We walked some more, talked some more. Then eventually it was time to call it a day. It was approaching 8pm, and given dads horrendous work schedule, he also has to catch up on sleep whenever he can. This means that 8pm is bed time. So we called it a day.

In fact, we called it a very enjoyable day.

Smith

Given the relative success of my previous edited photo, I tried it again. This time with a picture that I thought I liked straight out of the camera.....
Note: Yes, I know that I did a horrible job smudging out our mailbox number. But its ok, I am only 1/2 paranoid about revealing where I live. I.e. - I feel like I should be concerned, but I am not too much.

This is our mail box. It says Smith. That is not our name. But I think it is fitting some how. One day when we move, I am going to miss the fact that our mailbox says Smith.

Nice picture, yes? At least, I think so.



Then I did this:



Namely, turned the saturation WAAAAYYY up!

We call it super-vibrant.
It looks a little artificial. But I love it.

What do you think?

Barley

I learn something new about the farm every day...or at least every week.

This week I learned that we grow barley. I saw the farmer filling his planter with bags of seed - and later found these in the garbage:

Barley. Who knew.

I also didn't know that barley seed is a little pink in color. See:

How interesting.

It's always a new adventure around here.