Hey Dads!

By Jason Weening

July 15/24-Did you see the last issue’s article all about eating “prairie oysters”?  If you didn’t you’ll have to hop over to the Springwater News website and get updated.  “Mmm, so good,” as the Costco sample lady says.  Since we were so excited about cows we decided to get a couple of our own.  Do you name hamburgers and steak before they’re hamburgers and steak?  We do.

We’ve named lots of hens, ducks and goats in the past but venturing into cattle is a whole new world for us.  I got to name the little steer and went with the highly popular and quite common name, Wenceslas.  Like the Good King from the Christmas carol.  True story.  You can google it.  We let our 3-year-old, Mabel, name the little heifer and she went with a more common name, Rose.

Since my patient and beautiful wife, Alli, successfully nursed 10 babies to become healthy, happy (mostly) people I thought she would be a good resource to help us bottle feed these two calves.  I’m pretty sure she told me the other day that she had some spare time and was looking for something else to do.  So now someone is out to the barn three times a day with giant bottles of milk for the calves.  Sometimes it’s me, sometimes it’s the kids, and sometimes it’s even Alli.  She’s a trooper.

Believe it or not, there’s more to calves than just bottle-feeding.  We got them unexpectedly so there was no suitable housing prepared for them.  We jerry-rigged a luxury stall for them in one of our out-buildings when someone told us that a pack of coyotes could take out a calf.  Don’t want any of the kids going out to feed the calves one morning and finding that!  We’re not actual farmers so we don’t have cow-friendly things like hay or straw…or fencing.  We did just buy a new grass trimmer so a crew of kids went around the yard raking up the recently trimmed grass, loading it into wheelbarrows, and barrowing it to the barn.  That long grass is a lot like straw.

Now Wenceslas and Rose can’t just sit around in the lap of luxury in the barn all day.  There’s more grass sitting around outside waiting to be eaten.  But us cow rookies don’t have a fenced in spot for them.  After asking some of the local experts, we went out and bought some halters.  Halters are fancy collars that sit nicely around the calves’ head.  We tied them up with a nice long rope outside the barn and they can munch grass all day until we get a pro fence put up.

So, our little homestead is growing little by little.  Chickens, ducks, cows and rumor has it that two piglets will make an appearance in a couple weeks.  Possible names are Bacon and Porkchop but we’ll see if that passes approval from the naming committee.  Time flies, dad!  Make every moment count!  Even the rookie ones.