Cow Bio - Maynard

It was a mistake to remove Mackenzie from the herd. All bovines gladly follow other cud chewers who are going anywhere. But when none move, all bovines will ever more gladly stand in a pack and moo merrily at you to tell you that they are hungry or thirsty or sweaty or bored with not mooing. The problem is encouraging that original mover to move. Mackenzie was the only cow in the herd that had processed the fact that when I was in the field with her, she must move from point A which was newly nude of grass to point B which was lush with the stuff. Everyone else had only picked up on the fact that my presence meant fresh grass, the moving to getting it part had them all totally waffled.

So for the last 7 weeks I've had a hell of a time training the new leader to fill Mac's shoes. The new mover and friend of me is Maynard.
There isn't anything to tell about Maynard. She's a she. She has a white spot on her forehead. She leads the herd.
I think Maynard is an abysmal name. Local Girl thinks it divine. I associate the name with a savory character from F'town, Maynard Knuckles. She associates the with a certain lead singer from Ravenna, Maynard James Keenan. So this cow was elected to carry the name to determine which of us has drawn the correct conclusion.

For All You Homophobes Out There.

Focus on the Family. Dr. James Dobson.
Bad stuff, that.

So it turns out that you can buy stuff on a page of theirs for a "donation." Here's how to donate nothing and receive such wonderful literature as The Parents Guide to Preventing Homosexuality and Defeating Darwinism by Opening Minds. My personal favorite is Strength For His People: A Ministry For Families of the Mentally Ill.

I stole the following how-to from childsizedhands at sensible erection:

Here's how to do it:

1. Go to family.org and you will see their home page.

2. Once you're at the home page, look for the "Resources" link in the blue bar on the left-hand side, right above the "Search" box, and click it.

3. Under the "Resource Category" menu on the left-hand side, you'll notice categories such as "Homosexuality." Go ahead and click that for shits and giggles.

4. It's time to start shopping! Scroll down a little bit and feel the homophobia flow. How about a nice copy of A Parent's Guide to Preventing Homosexuality? Go ahead and click the "Add to Cart" button.

5. Now comes a tough decision: Do you have the book sent to yourself so you can sell it on eBay for cash (my personal favorite) or do you keep it on your mantel as a high-larious conversation piece to point at and laugh when your friends and family come over? Or do you send it to a jerk? I always opt for sending it to myself. Yes, you may end up on the Focus on the Family mailing list (though I've been doing this for some time and have never received anything beyond what I ordered), but reading Focus on the Family's junk mail is a good way to keep tabs on their activities and it will cost them even more money in postage.

Please note: Focus on the Family won't send you more than $100 worth of materials for free in any given shopping trip, so be sure to keep it reasonable and return often.

6. Select "Add New Shipping Address" and click "Proceed to Checkout." Or, hell, continue to shop and pick up a box set of The Chronicles of Narnia on CD.

7. The next screen will ask you to sign up for an account and give your information. Don't worry, they don't ask for your credit-card number. Enter whatever name and address you like, because you won't be paying.

8. Once you've filled out all the required fields (you can also create a fake e-mail account if you're super paranoid), click "Proceed to Checkout" one more time. You'll now find yourself at the "Here Is Your Cart" field. Annoying thing alert: You may have to reenter your info again after this field to actually set up your account. But just keep going until you get to the "How Much Would You Like to Donate?" page.

9. So, how much would you like to donate? Zero dollars, obviously. Don't be fooled by the field in the lower-right-hand corner that shows you the suggested donation amounts. Simply select "Enter other total amount" and enter 0.00 as the amount you would like to pay. (Don't put in a dollar sign or it will ask you for credit-card information!) Proceed to checkout.

10. You'll now be led to a screen that will try to make you feel guilty about the amount you haven't donated. But don't feel bad! Just proceed to checkout again.

11. Jesus! Here you are on the twelfth step and you still don't have your self-hatred materials! And you thought preventing homosexuality was supposed to be easy! Click "Checkout Now" and you're done.

Congratulations!

You have just removed a few dollars from the coffers of a major anti-gay organization.

Drew On A Farm.

I never speak in third person. Too many Drews.
My roommate from freshman year Drake was named Drew. Still is. Came out to visit the farm a couple of weeks ago. Then he wrote the following post for you:

Stupid MapQuest. I was fairly confidant that Drew’s farm was within 15 miles of my position. But that didn’t mean I could get there. Lost on the back roads of Ohio, I finally cry “Uncle” and call Drew’s cell phone. No answer. Punk. So I drive back to Ye Olde McDonalds to wait for his return call. An hour later and I am on the farm, meeting the herd. There’s the McCoy herd and there’s the animal counterparts. McCoys: Drew, Mom, little sis. Four-legged folk: Father Abraham, Fat Joe, Darwin, etc.
I am told that Fat Joe is not named for his considerable size. Which is fairly immense. My typical interaction with such eatable creatures takes place in the chilled aisles of the local Cub Foods. Up close, one of these hulking creatures could feed me for a month. When approached, Fat Joe has a tendency to lean back. Hardy-har-har. Father Abraham managed to sire well after his supposed castration. The names provide levity to an already hilarious herding evening. Herding, as demonstrated by Drew, is a very loosely applied term. With an armful of hay, Drew enticed the herd to follow him across the pasture, over the creek (through the woods), and into the barn. Not exactly the smartest of hulking creatures. Darwin, the trusty herding dog, did far less herding than distracting, and Fat Joe decided to follow him to the right instead of trailing that tasty hay.
Eventually, Drew and I (mostly Drew) managed to get the cows to the edge of the creek. At which point there was the small matter of crossing the creek. Drew, with his long legs and nimble leaps, cleared that strip of gurgling water. I, on the other hand, grunted an attempt and managed to drag my back foot through a foot of brackish water, stumbling to a graceful 10 point landing on the opposite bank. I giggled. The cows did to. Just to prove his farmhand superiority, Drew hopped back over the creek to seduce the bovines and, once they started to mush across the creek bank, he sailed back over the water with them.
We squired the cows into the barn and Drew announced that we needed to pick out a big one. For slaughter the next morning. Awesome. This selection involved more than a little running around the shit-strewn barn floor trying to sequester a single cow in a separate pen. Mischief managed, with cow doo all over the rubber boots, I felt quite farm-y.
The next morning, I met the breeding herd. When I thought I met the big-uns the previous day, I was oh-so-wrong. Those couple a bulls are massive. The relatively small calves decided to throw hissy confusion fits and get themselves on the wrong side of an electric fence. So Drew and I participated in a little strategic boxing-in to convince the calves that they wanted to use the single access point into the pasture. Success. Later that day, Drew needed to ascertain the height of his silo. So I climbed that tall-ish iconic farm structure with a piece of twine looped through my belt.
For a change of pace, Drew and I bounded into town to buy an oil filter for my car and shop a bit at the local Goodwill for cheap, slightly used junk. Drew found an ancient American flag. The original box featured the advertisement, “Now! With 50 Stars!” I located a slightly less ancient cook book entitled, “Cooking for Two!” The inside cover featured the following catchy phrase, “ideal for the busy career girl or housewife.” I informed the dumpy but kindly checkout lady that I wasn’t sure which one I was yet. My tsunami of gayness sailed right over her coiffed head. Drew changed my oil. I stood around as the moral support and “grab the orange rubber thing” guy.
On the last night of my Ohio farm stay, the Knox County Fair beckoned any and all with its siren call of fried food goodness and mullet hunting. Together with Drew and Rusty, I toured the antique tractors, the 4H exhibition hall, and the Knox County Farm Museum. However, the real treat was the Tuff Truck competition. I’m not sure if it is technically call “Tuff” truck. But it’s “Tuff” truck to me. Suped up, or deconstructed down, trucks made their roaring ways around a dirt track to the exclamations and squeals of a crowd of hundreds…maybe even thousands. My favorite part of the course was “The Cave” – a sizable divot in the track that unwary drivers would dive into, bounce off the opposite side, and forcibly kill their engines. I purchased, and devoured, fried swiss cheese, a porkette, and a funnel cake. While munching, an extra special truck, with “I s(heart) Jesus” spray painted on the side, rolled up to the starting line, revved its engine, went careening around the track, and smacked its hot religious body smack into that Cave wall. Poor Jesus.

SoaP.

No one gets it. That includes you, Sammy J.

I wandered over to Google News the other day. Under entertainment I found the Snakes on a Plane had merited enough articles to make it onto the front page. I read a couple.

These people have no idea what they’ve created.
New Line Cinema thinks that they are responsible for the hype.
So many interviews with people associated with this film telling about what they did to make it the cultural phenomenon it became. The PR people think they did it. The director thinks he did it. Sammy J even thinks he’s partially responsible because he forced them to keep the working title. This guy thinks he did it. Well, he probably did.

You’re all wankers. It’s a meme. No one knows why some things slow burn into everyone’s mind. Stop pretending you had something to do with it. It was a ridiculous idea for a shit film. Perfectly ridiculous, it made some internet types smile. Smiling internet types like to spread the love. Hence the anticipation. That is all.

Trim Your Nails.

We kept one cow back after shuffling them all through cow jail. She'd been the last cow anywhere for a while because one of her hooves had spiraled upwards to form a sort of jester's boot, causing her a bit of pain. These things happen sometimes.
My dad had recommended that I secure her as well as I could and take a grinder to it. But I asked the vet while he was there and he offered me to borrow his toenail clippers:I opted for the clippers. It was still a bit discomforting. She's better now, but certainly not fixed.

Cow Jail.

Today was hard. As much work was accomplished on the farm as has been on any other day since I’ve been home.

Part One.
Wherein the steers outsmart me.

Wednesdays are auction days. Seeing as I have a shortage of hay to feed my cattle, I must artificially create a remarkably similar shortage in my cattle come fall. My trailer holds about five full grown beasties. Eight trips in one day is not possible, so on any given Wednesday I’ll try to take three or four to market. Yesterday Brad and I took a good bit of time to do what I had never before done. We took the biggest four steers from the entire herd. Usually it’s get as get can. If you stand too close to the holding area, your life may be forfeit. It was effort, but worthwhile knowing that the biggest would be going.

Calves can be taken to auction the night prior to the sale, but neither water nor feed are provided. 24 hours without water is too many. So I try to take them in on that morning, have them separated out the night before. When I got to the barn at 6:30 in the AM, I saw that the separate and not at all equal calves had decided to walk through a barn wall. Allowing the rest of the herd to be in the barn, allowing the four fatties to wander free.

Bah. I was not happy.

Part Two.
All you Global Warming naysayers can kiss my sweaty knee butter.

Thursdayish, I noticed that I had a momma cow with a bleary eye. About twenty minutes later I had discovered that a couple of calves were quite blind of eye infections too. I heaved a sigh. Pinkeye has an ugly head. It was rearing. I pretended that it would go away and didn’t do anything till Monday.

Called the Vet and said, “Hey, we’ve got pinkeye in the herd. One momma and maybe six or eight calves.” And he said, “Yeah? So does everybody, whatcha want me to do about it?” I said, “Fix it.”

So we set a date. Wednesday afternoon he would come and help me shoot my pinkeye’s beauts. This sounds simple. But, my herd is about 95ish head large now, Mommies and Toddlers. They live in the outsides. They are wild animals. You can’t walk up and stick a needle in their neck. They won’t allow it.

So, cow jail.
My dad built this beefy mother of a corral into the ground floor of the bank barn at my Aunts. Ten hinged gates made of actual 2x4s (actual in this sense meaning that the one dimension measures 2 inches and the other measures 4 inches) bolted together for separating and a chute that leads to two holding pens and a headgate that is approached only through a series of four vertically opening gates. Cow jail. It’s badass. But it’s also a hellish day to send 100 unwilling participants through it. Twice.

The little calves weigh now as much as me. The mothers are all over one thousand pounds. None of them is much smarter than your average smart oak tree.

Oh, and also, it turned out I didn’t have six or eight and one mother that was infected. It was more like FOURTY-ONE cows and calves (and one bull) that had become infected.

Everyone came out bruised. But it’s done. They’re shot. And now I owe a vet somewhere nears to a cool grand.

You’re all like, yeah, but what did global warming have to do with anything? Heat, humidity, flies, pinkeye. That is all.

.

Today Darwin died. It was my fault and all I have are excuses. No, I don't want to talk about it.

Lost Forever.

Our house receives many a farm publication. We have not looked for magazines that actually pertain to what we do. Instead we get crap like FarmJournal, which runs with the byline “production policy technology.”
In boredom, I sometimes flip through. The other day I ran across an article about long-term weather forecasting. The opening paragraph:

Farmers 100 years ago watched animal behavior as a sign of what was to come weatherwise, and for years, agriculturalists have trusted the Farmer’s Almanac which uses mathematical and astronomical formulas to make forecasts as far as two years in advance. Now, the science of predicting weather has undergone revolutionary changes, with advances in computer technology helping meteorologists fine-tune the probabilities of longer range forecasts.

Technology will save us all. <---sarcasm
What I wouldn’t give to have the pre-industrial knowledge of generational farming communities when it comes to things like the weather. The author compares this knowledge with that found in the estimable Farmer’s Almanac, that treasure trove of unadulterated made-up rube-colored bull shit. No no no no. People, when they live a certain way for a long time, learn things. Wisdom is gained. Not bits that can be fed into a database, not information, but wisdom. They could see things we don’t know to even look for. There was at one time known more about farming than there is now.

We only have the tiniest glimmers of what was known, mostly in the form of questionable at best wive’s tales and rural lore. The thickness of the band on a wolly-worm to predict the severity of the winter to come. Red sky at night. Knee high.

Steve Talbott was once my hero. He’s on my sidebar under goodness. He used to edit a (now defunct) newsletter. He opened my eyes to many a thing I had previously blissfully left unthunk. He started with contextual science and expanded from there. Here is one article that deals with the Bushmen and what and why they know it. Here is a second article from the same publication. Lowell Monk is the author. It’s less directly related to this issue, but is more generally a critical view of our unadulterated love of improving efficiencies through tweaking technology to serve our needs.

I want the Bushman’s understanding. I want a blind man’s sense of perception. I want to know what other before me took thousands of years to know. But those things are lost. We didn’t want them. Traded them in for shiny trinkets. Beads for Manhattan and all that. We’re the world-uninformed Indians in this trade.

What Is An Entendre Anyway?

Farming goes on. The heat makes things wither. But not dry out.

In the face of not having anything to say, here is an article making some commentary on advertising, for those of you my origional intended readers. I understand it's common to supply a small quote to intice you to read further, to click my link, so here:

To quote Gertrude Stein, "There is no there there." The ad requires all the cultural competence of a horny ninth grader.

That should do the trick.
Click This Link to Find the Above Quote in Context.