Sunday, October 19, 2008

Taffy

I know, I know, I haven't been writing blog entries lately and I'm letting my committed readers, both of you, down. I'm sorry.

The problem is that all the decent stories of late are unbloggable, either because they hinge on the such a thorough immersion in farm life that they would never resonate with the general public, both of you, or they involve other people in way that I won't write about.

There haven't actually been that many good stories anyway. The current farm routine is for Earl to wake up and milk the cows, come back and help get the kids off to school, do farm stuff all day, except for lunch (or the occasional break, like yesterday when we took a decadent hour in the middle of the day to watch the last innings of that miraculous Game 6 that we were never going to stay awake to see, even if it hadn't seemed so hopeless for the Sox). He fixes machinery and gets it ready for the winter, builds and moves fences to get the cows out onto hayfields and to make the most of all the grass before the cows go on winter feed. Then he comes home around 4:00 or 5:00 in the afternoon and either helps me with supper or sits on the couch, depending on where I'm at and how completely whipped he is. For my part, I wake up and try to think if today is the day I'm finally going to get the onions, carrots, beets and potatoes out of the garden, or get the bills paid, or get the floor scrubbed. I get up and wake the kids and help with breakfast and pack lunchboxes and help the kids get dressed, hunting down socks and shoes and warm jackets, all of which have been tossed aside in the warmth of the previous afternoon. Should I go on? Aren't you bored? I feed and water all my different chicken projects and I talk on the phone and answer e-mails about business stuff, or the million things I keep trying not to volunteer for, or sometimes, even, to a friend. I take care of Oliver and try to make sure he has at least five minutes of laughter every day so he won't grow up to be a grumpy old man, and if Harley is home that day, we try to make cookies or do some project so he's not just constantly being schlepped around my work. Before I know it, it's dinner and bedtime and I fall asleep nursing my unweanable youngest child thinking maybe tomorrow will be the day that I finally get the garden in, pay the bills, or scrub the floor.

Yup. Sorry about that. I had tried to spare you.

Instead, I have decided to find some safe ground and do some cow profiles. I can slander the herd without hurting their feelings or disrupting my social future, and no one but Earl will know if I embellish.

I thought I would start with Taffy.

Taffy just turned nine, which is pretty old for a dairy cow. She looks great, though, and has the strong leg set and good body depth that are associated with bovine longevity. She makes a lot of milk and it's high in butterfat and very high in protein. Lifetime, she's 3.94 % fat and 3.45% protein, compared with national averages of around 3.3 and 3.0, respectively. It's not off the charts by any means, but spread out over her seven lactations, it's a solid performance.

Taffy wasn't born on the farm. Some of our favorite cows--Sweet Pea, Buelah, and Grushuna--have started their lives somewhere else. They happily joined the herd and understood that Earl was there for them and they, in turn, have been there for him. Taffy is a different story. She was born on Livewater Farm in Putney and apparently liked it a lot better than she likes it here. She was a few years old when she came here, and she's been here for almost five years, but she's still not over it. If you meet her gaze, which is hard to do because she mostly refuses to acknowledge our presence, her look is one of resigned contempt. She is not a favorite cow.

Taffy kicks. Not always, not even often, but sometimes, and there's no telling when that's going to be. Usually we say, and truly believe, that the cows are never the problem. If they are unhappy, it's because someone, or something has made them that way--an unpredictable action on the part of the humans, physical discomfort, or a disruption to their routine. Taffy, however, can come into the barn on the calmest, most routine day of the year, leaving one lovely pasture, about to return to one even lovelier, step into the parlor, wait for you to get close, and then try, with one swift, well-aimed shot, to smack you across the barn. Two seconds later, she acts like nothing happened. If she could, she'd be whistling.

Taffy is a Jersey and that may be part of the problem. We bought her at a time when we were very short of milk and saw an ad for organic cows for sale. Organic dairy cows are rather hard to come by, and Bill Acquaviva, of Livewater Farm, is known to take good care of his animals and to be a good guy. Organic Guernseys, our favorite cows in milk composition and temperament, are very hard to come by, so a Jersey like Taffy, who at least would have high butterfat, was very interesting to us. We worked out a fair price and Taffy has stayed healthy and milked well, so financially, she's been good for us.

From a having-fun-in-the-barn perspective, the only good thing about Taffy is that she looks a lot like Selma. Sometimes I'll milk Taffy and think I'm milking Selma and I won't realize until Selma comes in later that I was actually milking Taffy, only without the usual fear for my life.

Earl came back from the barn this morning and I told him I was writing about Taffy.

"Taffy is a bitch. Why do you want to write about her? he asked.

"Because she just calved and she's timely," I replied.

"Sylvia just calved and she's a sweetheart."

"Yeah? How many paragraphs could you write about Sylvia?"

"Um. Maybe one."

"How many could you write about Taffy?"

"Probably three. At least."

So there you go. Profile on Taffy.

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