Month: February 2012

mint creek [mostly thoughts about cows]

/ thera / Leave a comment

at the present moment i have a 3 day old kid (his name is chicken as when he lays on the ground he greatly resembles a trussed chicken) resting in my lap–he hasn’t been doing well so he is in the house warming up and currently in a little milk-coma after a stomach tube feeding. but thats not what i’m here to type about–i’m here to type about cows today.

a few days ago i needed some extra quiet after lunch, so i went out to “check on the cows” on my own and ended up spending about an hour in a beautiful still silence with them. the heard is mostly black angus and around 45 or so head. upon my arrival i abandoned the truck and slowly moved down the hill towards the little creek. after a few moments i realized that i was being followed by the entire heard of cows. slowly i turned around and crouched down, willing the cows to come forward–to be closer.

after just a few moments they all took a collective yet ginger step towards me–heads down, carefully watching me with their big beautiful eyes. it was cold enough that i could see our breath–and we were all close enough that when we all breathed out together it looked like one collective sigh.

and then, coming into stillness, i waited. my breath became very shallow and i did my best to not move a single muscle–even blinking quite slowly.

finally one cow came forward. she did not hesitate once she made up her mind but boldly/gently came right up to me–sniffed at my hat–and moved her head so she could look into my eyes with one of her large brown eyes.

i noticed the length of her eyelashes.
saw my reflection in her eye.
and gently reached out a finger to stroke her cheek.

he let me do this twice before she took one step back–just enough to say “okay, that is enough for now.”

this is when i noticed her tag–4-25
of course we are linked–we share a birthday.

this morning intern-m and i went back out to the cows to replace the kelp and salt in their special feeder. after mixing and filling the trough we stayed crouched down and held out our hands full of kelp and salt, willing the cows to eat from our hands.

while our venture was unsuccessful in that no one came up to eat out of our hands, we were successful in that they came up very close to us. at one point i had a big cow nose in my side–sniffing me–probably wondering what kind of odd cow i am. there was also a moment when one brave young calf licked my wrist–totally missing the kelp/salt mix in my hand.

the cows are perhaps my favorite.

ejok, ngatuk.

 

no really, i can explain

/ thera / Leave a comment

so i have had some positive and negative feed back regarding the trusty ole blog as of late. some of you love the photos-only posts and some of you like them but would like for there to be some words every now and again. (however, need i remind you that i do post a letter EVERY single day? just saying.)

perhaps it is high time that i explain why this is the case.

my darling ibook G4 (faye) has finally taken her last start-up after a 6.5 year life with me. its difficult to write blog posts when one doesn’t have a computer…the letters and photo posts are coming from my smartypants phone. while i don’t mind writing a letter a day on my phone, and uploading photos taken with my phone from said phone (say phone one more time!) its just too tedious to be blogging that way as well.

so thats why there haven’t really been any farm-related reflections as of late.

(or a debriefing from my time with the texas annual conference board of ordained ministry regarding my commissioning interview. the short version is that it went well and i’ve been approved for commissioning in june! yay!)

i appreciate your emails of concern as well as the emails of dissent/complaint. keep communicating with me, i like that. (do keep in mind, however, that most of the time i’m reading and responding on my phone.)

sometimes (like right now) i’m able to borrow a laptop and type freely–so i will try to be handwriting some reflections that i’ll be prepared to type and share here. stick with me, i’ll figure this blogging thing out without my own computer.

more soon. promise.