February 23

Good morning! The sun is rising into a flurry. There is no way I could ever photograph this, the sun comes up pale yellow, spreading blue shadows across the yard. The flurry clouds, which look harmless enough, move back and forth in front of the sun turning it the color of butter. It has a huge halo of fluffy little snow puffs around it which give it the look of a candle in frosted glass, and its light is cool and liquid.

Ah, enough poetry. We caught the heifer that had been roaming the neighborhood! Saturday, Stan brought his feed trough with the catch gates attached up from where we keep dry cows in summer and heifers in fall and set it up with a moveable gate in front of the haymow door. He chained the whole thing to the barn to prevent her from pulling it down on herself and filled it with hay. We weren't sure she'd eat out of it, but the weather helped out by turning cold and nasty. She came up around 9pm and was very uneasy, we were watching for her and the house lights seemed to make her nervous, so we went to bed. In the morning, the hay was mostly gone and so was the heifer. Sunday night, Stan added some grain to the mix on the far side of the trough so she'd have to push in a little further and trip the catch. We watched and she came in around 9 again, walked up the barn bridge, stuck her head in and, big click, we had her. Stan went down to tell the neighbor and he said he couldn't come up for another hour - he was still milking, having started a little later than usual because his daughter's boyfriend had gotten stuck in their driveway as he was leaving (right at choretime - towny!). We watched surreptitiuously, just to make sure she didn't do herself any damage trying to get away. Mike brought his middle son and two men and a boy had all they could do to get a rope on her, feed it into the cattle trailer, turn her loose and get her in. She thrashed about something fierce, but neither heifer nor men nor boy sustained any injury. Mike came up yesterday to bring back Stan's rope and he said they had left her in the trailer all day Monday and yesterday, feeding her and watering her there, and she had calmed down quite nicely. He had the trailer backed up to the barn door and was going to go home and turn her into the freestall.

We have one of the extension agents and a guy from Cornell coming this afternoon to help Stan fill out an economic report concerning intensive pasture dairying. I need to get some of the clutter cleared away so there's some place for them to work. Have you ever noticed how kitchen and diningroom tables attracked books and papers and just about anything else that can be carried in the house in your hands?

editted to say that it is a headlock feeder, not a catch trough - apparently I was taking poetic liberties! Stan made it last year when it was raining. It was a good investment in time.

This message was edited Feb 23, 2005 11:31 AM