Cow Bio - Leon

R.I.P.

My favorite calf goes to auction tomorrow morning.
When the calves were put out to pasture this spring Leon decided to befriend me. He's got a small problem with his hips that makes his back leg steps about half what the average cow steps. Rather than take more steps or speed his pace, Leon is just the last calf anywhere. He takes his sweet time. So I wait at the gate for him to saunter up. If he's hungry he'll walk on by. But more likely than not, he'll come up to me to wrestle. He usually wins. I pet him. He's my pet.

The present tense part of all that is a lie.




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Abortion is Murder and Other Facts From the Midwest.

The next storm on the 22nd didn’t miss us.


The previously sunny afternoon turned chill when a grey wall swung in from the west. It only lasted about twenty minutes, but they were a ferocious twenty. Eighty-ninety mile an hour winds destroyed the hay wagon and parts of two roofs on barns. The Quonset has destroyed all her moorings and has taken to walking around when the wind picks up. The power was out for 30+ hours.

Sitting on the front porch watching it, my mom asks, “What is going on?” The answer is us. After having a brief but frustrating conversation with a fellow farmer a couple of weeks ago on the topic, I had a half-formed idea to write a farmers review of An Inconvenient Truth. Put it in the local paper. Make the world a little less stupid. The next night I set out to see Al’s movie.
The movie only came out two weekends ago in Ohio. So it was rather disappointing to see only 15-20 people attending on a Friday night at 9pm. And a good half of those were the wierdos who last went to a cinemaplex to see Fahrenheit 9/11. It’s not a bad film, considering. But I could not in good conscience tell my rural neighbors that they will enjoy it. They won’t.
For those who really haven’t been paying attention, the movie is based on Al Gore’s slide show about global warming that he’s been giving for years upon years. It’s focus group polished which means it’s clean and shiny and dumb. Al gets hyper about things that, while the effects will impact us, we can’t see. Glacial ice melt will raise the water level. Whoopity fuck. I live in Ohio. We farmers need predictable rainfalls. Thaws and freezes at certain moments. Snow in winter as much as we need showers in April. It’s a complete ecosystem out here. For the most part, we get that. But it’s not what he talked about. Typhoons off the coast of Japan. Drought in china. Global CO2 charts.
My friend Chad had suggested that Inconvenient was preaching to the choir. I had kinda brushed that off, because, shit, this really affects us all. The naysayers need to be told to stop it with the sayings of nay. If there was ever an issue that should even need a larger choir, I can’t think of one. But, alas, he was right. Al went and made a movie that really tugs on the heartstrings of the people who were already the ones to care. All the Amnesty folks, greenpeacers, and adopters of AIDs orphans.

In the same way I can’t prove to my neighbors that gay people are ok by dragging them to a pride parade, I cannot ask them to see this movie to save their futures.
But you should.

Thunderstorms Are Swell.

The fireflies aren’t getting any tonight. Their feeble butts just can’t compete with the sodium glare of Zeus arc welder. We mid-Ohioians take our celebration of the Fourth very seriously. But I’m sorry Columbus, the Red, White and Boom will appear stunted and fake and oh so human. Hot Karl! The gods put on their dancing shoes tonight.

Have you ever seen the lightening storms that have strikes six and seven times a second? Have you ever seen that last for an hour plus, unabated? It’s far enough away that the only noise is local traffic and a distant muted timpani roll. Nothing but hazy clear in the twenty mile from the front to my fields. Nothing to obscure the view of towering stacks of clouds fighting frantic with their glowing spider arms.

No laser shows. No fireworks displays. No televised Shock and Awe can compare with Nature when she’s feeling frisky.

Brown Is The New Green.

Cows eat grass. Keep them out of certain fields. Once the fields have grown to a reasonable size, man goes in and hacks everything off a couple inches off the ground. Puts the grass in nature’s own food dehydrator. And takes the result. How cows ever found enough to eat in winter without us is beyond me.

Eight hay fields. Two corn fields. The calf pastures. The cow pastures. The bull field. A sliver of woods. With houses and outbuildings, that is Wotokahan Farm. As of Sunday four of the eight hay fields have been cut, baled and put away. Yay me.


Hay is time intensive. How all these hobby farmers manage to get it done is beyond me. We do our hay mostly old school. We wait for it to get really dry and then put it in round bales tied with twine and put those in the barn. Only mostly because the old school way is to do square bales that all need man-handled and stacked in the mow [pronounced like Mao. also a verb referring to the act of stacking in the mow.]. And the real old school haymakers use horses to do some of the tractor labor. And then even further thrown back are the Amish who don’t even make bales, but sheaves tied up with string. Don’t laugh, it’s still done.
There are ways to do it beyond how we do. Belt, not chain, balers wrap bales up super tight. There are various wraps and plastic bags that the bales can be put in, essentially weather-proofing them. No barns needed. When you’re wrapping them it’s not as important that you get the hay totally dry. Wet bales in a barn will produce enough heat to self combust and burn it all down. Wet bales in a wrap will mold.

Of the four fields, only one ended up being made properly. One was rained on and sat out far too long before it was baled. Most of the leaves were lost. The second field was not quite dry enough, but I didn’t catch it till Haley had already tedded and raked it for that day. So it was tedded back out and raked back up the next day. More lost leaves. The third field buggered the baler. So I only got it half done the day I first tried to bale it and it had to be turned over again the next day. The fourth field was done perfect excepting that I let it dry an extra day. But I had the forecast to allow for that.

WTF Volume Two

Bambi's Mother Does Not Die.

I was going to write a headline about hay fever, maybe include a reference to Peggy Lee, but I was looking at the word “fever” and I realized there is something not right about it. I don’t like it when words I had no beef with suddenly decide to look suspiciously spelled. f e v e r ? With the ver following the fe all casual like that? Not in my title.

And now for your regularly scheduled programming.
It’s hay time. Time for mowing. And tedding. And raking. And baling. And picking up bales. Oh, and cultivating the corn. Almost every machine has broken at least once. For instance: today the tire fell off the tedder and then the front wheel on the little tractor tried it’s damndest to wobble off and then the second of seven chains along the bottom of the round baler chewed it self up. To say anything more about these inconveniences would be boring, they don’t really matter. It’s just how it is.
Haley was driving the wobble-wheeled tractor when the tedder wheel came off. These things happen. Not her fault. This time. But, one of the great things about working with and for only yourself is that things only break in your presence, or when you notice them. When other people are there things will invariably keep on breaking, but it comes off completely different. Not only am I dealing with my problems, but with also with her incurred problems. I am not a team player. I hate teamwork. When carrying heavy furniture out of the house, I would rather lug something by myself then try to work with someone to get it out. Leave me alone. I’ll get it done. Remember group projects in high school? Yeah, I was that guy. On the day I was to start baling hay for the first time, my mom offered to call a neighbor friend to have his farm-smart and mechanically talented kids come help . I said hell no. There isn’t enough time in the day for me to do everything with the hay. So I have help. Brad comes back in a couple weeks. It’ll be nice to have the help, but he’s unintentionally going to be another creator of problems. And I have enough of my own to keep me content.

Mowing hay is satisfying. There are basically three machines for mowing hay (yeah, four if you count bush hogs). The newest, best designed way is to have a row of “turtles,” basically beefed-up lawn mower blades in a row. Mechanically simple. The next mower type has a long thin strip of toothed blades that move just a couple of inches back and forth real fast. These are sickle mowers. Our mower is the older, mostly ignored design for mowing. The flail. The cutditioner. The rotary scythe. No matter how you say it, it sounds badass. The PTO shaft spins a belt that spins a nine foot cylinder that is covered with swinging blades. It’s mostly unstoppable, but takes much more horsepower than the other two.
Now for the sad part, cover your inner child’s ears. There are too many deer in our county. Most of the natural predators have been driven off. The number of avid hunters is dwindling, as are the available spaces to hunt (see, for example, my dad). It’s an infestation. And around now, all the does drop their little Bambis. And, not to argue with the man, but this might be the cutest infestation ever. The little baby deers like to hide in the hay fields. I watched a couple do their little wobbly sprint away from the methodical advance of the scythe. And then I watched one not wobble away in time. It bogged down the mower for a couple of seconds.

What Utter Bull-Trap.

Bulls are supposed to be returned to the breeding herd around June 7th. June plus nine is equals to calving on time. It’s a shame that those two words rhyme. Franz and Ferdinand had been hanging out in the swank and exclusive bull pen all spring. Out of sight and out of mind. They liked it that way. My dad has always rounded them up all on his lonesome. Years of working cattle and a complete lack of fear made it a simple task. For him.

The first night Rusty, Haley, my mom and the helpful neighbor lady spent about an hour and a half alternating between herding them to the corner of the lot where the livestock trailer sat and jumping out of their way when they ran at us. It was a complete failure. I might have mentioned aloud something along the lines of the bull being wholly unable to make it through the high-tensile fence. My bad.

The second night I recruited some manly, testosterone-filled men to help with the chasing and to have a lesser occurrence of all that ‘jumping out of the way’ nonsense. After an hour of the futile yammering and running after them Ferdinand had had enough. And calmly walked through the fence. Turns out, two thousand pounds of bull flesh goes where it wants. With Ferdinand out of the field it was a cinch getting Franz loaded.

Much more running and chasing of calves and bull ensued. Hours worth. Finally a neighbor with experience showed up and helped me direct Ferdinand into a barnyard. That was days and days ago. He’s still out in the same barnyard. I’ve made a bull trap out of some rope and the aforementioned trailer. I’ve also repeatedly flubbed the capturing my bull. All I can say I’ve accomplished is that I can get him to eat hay out of my hand while I pet his head (it’s covered in thick curly hair). I give him two more days before he walks through one of the fences currently holding him and goes a-rampaging and raping and pillaging the around countryside.

Ceci N'est Pas Une Centaur.

So I sez to the guy, "Guy," I sez.

I don't really know this so-called William Ambrose. We have a number of mutual friends. His brother attended Drake. His living in Murderapolis overlapped a bit the my living in Murderapolis. I shook his hand twice.
His latest endeavor is to draw. He has found success. In spades. *

Click on one of the drawrings to take you to more drawrings.


*I'm told that the term 'in spades' refers to that fact that spades are the highest ranked suit in bridge. But this page tells me that might well be a load of hooey.

Six Six Oh Shit.

Up until I picked up the paper this evening, I had completely forgotten the date. *sigh* Now I understand. I had perhaps the worst day of my life today. I blame Satan.

The badness actually started last night, but I didn’t know it yet.
I had decided that since only one out of four forecasts for the next three days called for even a 20% chance of rain, it would be wise to cut down a second field of hay. Halfway through, my foot slipped off the clutch and KRRRPACK! the PTO spun the mower drive shaft in two. Took that in stride. I’ve broken my share of farm equipment and this could have happened to anyone. Called a friend with welding skills and called it a night.

The sixth day of the sixth month of the sixth year started off auspiciously. Sunny. Warm. But then I disassembled the PTO shaft and realized that welding it would be nigh impossible. I called my weldy friend to tell him to not come. Drove the shaft over to my local farm implement salvage yard to find a replacement. Under their advice, I cut my shaft in half to try to mate it to the one we had found. That didn’t work. So they sent me to find this Amish welder. All Amish live in BFE. The directions included finding a town called Nunda. It’s a mere eleven miles from my house yet I’ve never heard of it. That’s because Nunda consists of the following: an Amish horse farm, an intersection, and an Amish school (any Amish school you may be forgiven for mistaking for a dilapidated shed). After somehow missing the city limits I obtained new directions from a friendly young woman into whose van I had just driven my car. Her van was fine. My car was one half point (on the rusty’s uncle’s scale of junk car) away from becoming a beater Honda. Her split bumper grin hauls her across that line. It was my fault. I have excuses, but they are excuses. She drove away. My car didn’t even think about starting. As soon as I pop the hood to see just how screwed up she is a dirty pickup with two farm rednecks pulls up and asks, “car trouble?” After ten minutes and one pinched-in beer bottle cap I was on my way. I must admit, them rednecks have them some smarts. The girl with van’s directions were even worse. When I finally do find the Amish welder all he can do is grin helplessly and shrug. He didn’t have the collar I would need. Back to the salvage yard. The guy helping me had left to ted his hay. The owner told me that I was stupid to cut my shaft in half and showed me how I could have fixed it if’n I hadn’t. By now it’s getting late. I gave up on having a mower anytime soon and headed home.

Haley (sister, home from college, we’ll get to her later) had been waiting for an hour for me to come home to set my tractor and tedder up so she could ted while I plant corn. It’s been a while since she’s been shown how to drive a tractor. I set her up and sent her off with the warning, “Don’t hit anything.” She thought I was kidding and drove it straight KKKTHUNKKKK into a tree. I hadn’t even left the field. I stormed over and she says that she should probably learn to drive a tractor before being expected to do things on one. She’s probably right. I give her an hour to drive the tractor around.


And I go to plant my corn. The planter is all fixed. I’m proud of my handiwork, ready to get something accomplished. Drove it the half-mile back to the field. Noticed that the fuel gauge says I’m almost out. And then the chain slips off the drive. So I put it back. And then it slips off again. So I put it back. And then I drive the tractor and planter back to the fuel tank. I forgot the key to the diesel tank so I just chisel the lock off. Fuck it. I put the pump in the tank and walk down to get some water. I takes about 6-7 minutes for a tractor tank to fill by gravity. When I walk back three minutes later there is about $10 worth of diesel fuel spilling off the tractor. The gauge has busted. This is wonderful. I drove back to the field. The chain falls off. Again. Again. I drove back to the farm, fuming. I severely reinforced the piece that kept slipping and pile a bunch of tools on the tractor. As I walked into the shop to grind some rust off a bolt I think to myself, how could this day possibly get worse? Ten minutes later I heard a Thud and the grinder dies. I wandered outside to see if I could see the Thud. I could not.

My mom flags me down as I once again drive back to the field. Asks if I heard the explosion. Wha?? She was going on, something about blue smoke and the power going off and Haley walks up and says the electric line in the cow pasture fell into the swamp. The pole? No, just one strand of one line. Fell off the pole and went boom. Sure enough, my creek and the pasture the calves are supposed to be going to now are fully powered.Not my problem. Corn is my problem. Again I drive back to my field. The thoroughly reinforced piece lasted about ten minutes. I dismantled the gearing and rearranged the pieces. The chain only comes off one more time. My three hour job lasted seven. I will have nightmares of chains no longer moving.
When I got in to take my shower, my mom tells me that they changed the forecast to a 60% chance of rain tomorrow. So much for the hay.

For those of you who didn’t read the whole thing:

Broke my mower.
My idea to weld it doesn’t work.
Guy’s idea to cut it doesn’t work.
But now I’ve got to fix that.
Look for an Amishman who might help.
Get lost.
Crash my car.
Fix it with beer.
Find Amishman.
He’s no help.
Give up.
Show sister how to ted.
She runs the tedder into a tree.
I try to plant corn.
Repeatedly fix the same damn chain.
Pour fuel all over the ground.
Powerline falls down.
The hay will be wet.

As bad as my day was, it was nothing compared with Chucks day. He had his last testicle removed this afternoon. For him it, the music truly died today.

Man Up!

Father Abraham bore unto us a dead Jesus. (I just wanted to say that again, cause it’s fun. Go ahead, try it.) But she presented a quandary, because, as I believe in no God, I couldn’t really put much weight behind theory that the Holy Ghost was responsible for impregnating my heifer. And as of yet, no human-bovine cross has been carried to term, so I can hardly ask that the local wandering minstrels be held in custody.
The first thought was that we had a bull in among the herd, one that somehow slipped his nut free of his circumcising band, all Houdiniesque. The next day I had the herd run by me as single file as I could manage. The steers have a tuft of hair in the center of their stomach, whereas the heifers have a more smooth lump. The heifers have tiny little udders and the steers are strangely smooth and void where their testicles should be all a-dangle. And then there was one steer who didn’t have an obvious package, but was sporting more equipment than I found necessary. Ah ha! It was Chuck. Chuck was my bull survivor who may have compromised as many as 40 heifers. I could almost taste him then. Delicious chuck of Chuck.
But I did the math in my head; Chuck was the same age as Father Abraham. Nine months ago, while Father should have been too young to be fertile, there was absolutely no way that Chuck was virile at five months of age. This was not Jesus’ father.
He still needed taken out of the herd. And have his manhood taken. Again. Rusty and I managed to get him separated. Called a neighbor with more experience than I have (absolutely none) with circumcision. I held up Chuck’s tail while Mark checked to see if there was enough dangle to allow us to band his remaining nut. There wasn’t. The vet had told me that that if that were the case I could take a razor and slit the sack, pull out the nut and cut it off. Mark warned me that it would bleed in a way I probably wouldn’t be comfortable with. I wasn’t. The vet will be out next week to do the deed. It takes more than a man than I yet am to take someone else’s manhood so brutally. I think I’m ok with that.

Doing the math again at a later date, we decided that Father Abraham was bred by Franz or Ferdinand, the breeding herd bulls. She was still with her mother and the bulls until late October. So hopefully she’s just a freak of nature who matured too fast and was lucky to not be crushed under the massive weight of the bull.

Having my heifers preggo is bad. Everyone wants to know why having a bull in among the girls is a bad thing. So here you go.
1- They are beef. I can not send a pregnant cow in to be slaughtered. That’s a wee bit inhumane. Half of them, while being physically of an age where they are in heat, they are not big enough to pass a calf without help. Just think about the girls who get their periods at ages 10, 11, 12. Yeah. First time births usually need help without that added bonus.
2 - If they were impregnated by Chuck, it was within the last couple months. So the calves would be born in November, December, and January. It’s cold then. I will have enough food for everyone, but not enough for everyone plus their calves.
3 - Pregnant heifers eat to provide growth and sustenance for their baby, they stop growing. The point of calves is simply that, to grow.

Cow Bio - Mackenzie

ohio-made cohiba

The fine looking animal you see here is Mackenzie. Named for obvious enough reasons. If I could find a pair of giant 80's sunglasses, I would insist she wear them. Like her namesake, Honey Tree Evil Eye (Spuds was a stage name), she's a she. And she takes a damn fine picture.

Mackenzie would be a face lost among the herd if it weren't for her one difference. Even though she doesn't deign to being pet she is usually the first calf into the next pasture. The dairy herd I grew up with needed herded from place to place. You stood opposite where you wanted them to go and hollered your head off. They would slowly move directly away from you. My beefs will do no such thing. If you stand near them and threaten them with shouted soliloquies they will walk in circles. But if you don't do that, sometimes they will follow you. They have discovered that a human must appear for a new pasture to magically open itself to them. There are limits to things they will cross to get to a person. Creeks baffle them. Mackenzie, more than any other calf will cross these obsticles to come to me. And until I find a real working dog, I need her. Three cheers.

There is a rumor that Spot, the Target brand bull-terrier is one of Spuds Mackenzie's offspring.