How it all Began

People frequently ask me how I ended up so interested in cows, so here is my story.

I was just about to turn seven when I started working in the barn with three of my best friends. All four of us were home schooled, and we were all lucky enough to have parents who were willing to help us work in the barn. We each had one calf to take care of; mine was named Tahiti, and she actually still lives on the farm.

We would come to the barn at five o'clock each night and clean our calves' stalls, feed them, clean their water, and of course walk and brush them. Every night as soon as we finished our chores, we would take the calves out and groom them. Some days we pretended that we were about to show the calves at the fair, other times we pretended that we were the vet and we had to give the calves a checkup, or cure a fictitious disease. Sometimes we even pretended that we were orphans who had nobody but their calves.

We had made up commands for everything that we wanted the calves to do. If we wanted them to turn, instead of using 'gee' or 'haw' we would say "churn like the butter." If a calf tried to reach down and snatch some hay off of the floor we would shout "hey no hay." 

Since we were so small, it took all four of us to move one hay bale, and it took two of us to move a bucket of water.

One day when we were feeding the bottles to our calves, one of my friends was standing next to her calf's water tub and the over-enthusiastic calf pushed her backwards and she fell in.

When our calves became too big to live in their small pens in the barn, and were ready to move outside, we held them a graduation ceremony.

After our first calves grew up, we took care of many more. In 2009, we took our calves to the fair for the first time. And in 2012, when the farm found itself short of workers, we began to work a lot more. That was when I learned to milk cows. It has been almost a year since then, and I have again found something new to try: training working steers. I had been thinking about oxen for some time, although, I had simply never had the motivation to start training them. When Beech had twins, however, I realized that this was my opportunity to have steers and I had to take it. Now as I start my way down a new path with Bright and Bold, all that I can hope is that it will be half as wonderful as my past eight years on the farm.

 Me feeding Tahiti, the first calf that i ever took care of.

Me and my three friends who did barn chores with out calves. From left to right, Marta and her calf Bora, me and Tahiti, Nora and avalanche, and Gretta and Morea.