Nine years ago this week, I brought my first Jersey cow home to the farm. Not long after, she gave birth to a beautiful, mischievous heifer calf we named Rosalie. Our Rosie grew up and eventually replaced her mama as our family milker. She’s since gifted us with nine calves (including twins) and a whole
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Mother Nature has a sense of humor, doesn’t she?  All winter, she delivered lovely stretches of unseasonably warm weather. Then, the first weekend of spring, she dropped a load of winter upon us. The snow didn’t fall as deeply here at the farm as where I’d intended to spend this past weekend . . .
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When it snows, the four-legged barn children aren’t so very different than the two-legged little humans I raised.  Before the sun is high in the sky, they beg and complain and bounce about until given permission to race out the door  to play in the white stuff.   Baby, our newest calf, can barely restrain  her excitement as I finish
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Years ago, whoever farmed this land built a wall of sorts to protect the bank of this small, spring-fed creek and an old, stone lined farm well that once stood nearby.   In time, the stones tumbled and many washed away or were taken for use elsewhere. The section that still stands does its job well,
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Old fences of hedge posts and rusted barbed wire mark some of the pasture boundaries here at the farm.  We have newer fences, too, some with metal posts and wire that’s maybe a decade old.  Others have been repaired and partly replaced as needed through the years, as is common on farms like this in
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A year ago today, Tiny Bottle Lamb weighed about 7 pounds. She still slept indoors in the playpen and followed me around outdoors like a puppy. She still sucked fingers when she was hungry. She hadn’t yet learned how to cross a creek, even a very little one.