Molly Moo

Sometimes, especially on a ranch, you do things a certain way because, well, you've always done them that way.  But then the neighbors try a new approach and well, you can't exactly change and copy them, because that's plagiarism, right?  But, man, it really seems like a better idea and then another neighbor starts doing it, and heck, if everyone's doing it there just might be something to it.  And that's why we bought a nurse cow.

And nurse cow is just a dairy cow that is used to raise bummer, or orphan, calves.  They're often pretty cheap, usually gentle, can raise 3-4 calves, and, best of all, those 2 or 3 a day bottle feedings I've been doing all winter long for the past 14 years?  No more.  All it took was a 3 hour drive with a trailer to meet Dale.

Dale didn't sell me a nurse cow.  Through no fault of his own, he somehow became a nurse cow middle man.  He doesn't do it for money, and he certainly doesn't do it for fame.  Dale is just a good guy.  He's a friend of a friend of a friend and is the kind of guy who always has a toothpick in his mouth and calls guys, "boss."  I drove to Dale's place and he hopped in my truck and guided me to the dairy.  In 15 minutes I had 2 cows in the trailer and was heading home.

Grafting calves onto new mothers can be a chore.  Mama cows often don't want calves that aren't their own so we do all sorts of tricks to convince them that the orphan is really theirs.  We've skinned out dead calves and had the orphan wear the hide so the nurse cow still catches a whiff of her original calf.  It's a lot like the scene in Silence of the Lambs when Anthony Hopkins wears the cop'
s face as a disguise.  Sometimes I'll pour molasses or maple syrup on the calf's back so the mother licks it and since she's licking this new calf and it tastes like candy, she might as well keep it.  Whatever we do, it's usually difficult.  Mothers will kick strange calves that are trying to nurse and it usually takes a lot of attempts in a squeeze chute to get them together.  But a dairy cow?  I put our new Jersey in a pen with 2 calves, said, "Congratulations! You just had twins!" and walked away.  In 10 minutes the 2 calves were nursing their new mommy and she was licking their backs like she'd just birthed them.  I only wish the neighbors had bought a nurse cow years ago; it would have saved me a lot of time.

Fire Starter

This summer was hot.  Miserably hot.  We were in the middle of raging wildfires, insanely high temperatures, low water reserves, and a shortage of above-ground pools at Walmart.  It was a perfect storm for a field fire.  And yet, I still thought that cutting drier than normal grain hay on a drier than normal Hartstrand field would be a good idea.  Spoiler alert: it wasn't.

To be fair (use your Letterkenny voice when you read that), A) this was the earliest I could even get to that field, B) it had a decent rain hit it 2 days prior, and C) I started cutting in the morning so it wouldn't be too hot or dry.  And mostly, things went well.

Until they didn't.  I'd cut all morning and had just one more pass to make before I was finished, but as I turned the swather around to make my final pass, I saw smoke.  Oh shit.  From that moment on, I went full Keystone Cops.  I was near Grant's house, so I spun the swather back around and raced into his driveway.  I started grabbing anything I could get my hands on that would put out a fire.  As I ran back and forth with shovels, coolers full of water, and rakes, I didn't notice that I had passed, several times, a literal pile of fire extinguishers.  I raced back out to the field on a 4-wheeler I saw the fire had expanded to the size of, say, the RV I'd soon be living in if I burned down all the homes on Hartstrand.  I dumped the cooler on the flames and extinguished 1/10th of the flames.  A young passerby in flip-flops stopped to help and tried stomping out the flames.  Bad idea.  

That's when I grabbed the fire extinguisher.  Those things are appropriately named.  Honestly, I don't think I'd ever used one before, but I've seen movies and I knew it was a lot like using a grenade (which I also have never used before).  And it worked.  I got about 90% of the fire out and the rest I smothered with my giant, broken grain shovel.  I finally breathed.

My brothers showed up with a water truck and I doused the area.  Neighbors showed up.  CalFire showed up.  I found the rock that the swather blades nicked and likely sparked the fire, so I saved it for my baby book.  I've been cutting hay for a lot of years and this was my first fire.  My dad, who also cut hay for a lot of years, started only one, but it was a big one.  Boray planes were deployed.  This one sufficiently spooked me.  I'm cutting now in a swather/fire truck.  I have shovels, fire extinguishers, piss-pumps, fire shelters, a helmet, and flashing lights.  It might be overkill, but if it happens again, I'll be ready.

Of course, I didn't have time to take a picture.  But here's a cool one of the day the smoke rolled in.