Down on the Farm

We took the girls to a diary farm this weekend, using some free tickets from the university. While there were many aspects of the farm that could be more visitor-friendly, we did get a thorough look at how the farm operates and Leah got to see and touch all kinds of animals. They didn't have pigs or horses, but they had just about everything else. Leah's been to farms before and this time, she started to come out of her shell a bit more. She fed goats and geese, chased chickens, "mothered" some very patient kitties, pet one-week old calves, and even dared to milk a cow.

One of the highlights for me was seeing and hearing the flock of geese and ducks. The tall, "wine-bottles-with-legs" ducks in the background are Indian Runner Ducks. They were less vocal than the big, nosy (beak-y?) geese, but so cool looking. Our guide, a Four-H expert in fowl, said that they are used in rice patties to eat fallen grain so that mice don't have any reason to invade. I thought they looked like rocket ducks, waiting for mission control to give them the green light to blast off.

And yes, even I milked the cow. Throughout our guide's explanation of the milking process, I kept feeling a pang of empathy. They milk the cows twice a day, letting their milk ducts/veins swell between milkings. Yeowtch! There's no way I could last nursing only twice a day. And then there's the fact that the babies are bottle fed from day one. The calves were adorable, but I was saddened that they were separated from their mamas so soon. "It's so the mothers don't get mad later," our guide explained. Yeah, I'd be pissed too. But, thank goodness, I am not a diary cow, or worse (maybe?) a beef cow. Then again, a lot of diary cows get sold for beef when they get too old or too fill-in-the-blank to be bred. A double-whammy. *sigh*

I'll get off this depressing soap-box now and try to end on a brighter note. At the conclusion of our visit, we each picked out a pumpkin from the patch. (Leah picked out one for Natalie.) I kept laughing because Leah kept tripping over pumpkin vines. The overcast sky turned bright blue and the sun felt so good on our shoulders. It was hard to pick the perfect pumpkin, but in the end we came home with four pumpkins who now surround Hector by the front door. Despite my lifelong love of being a little bit different from everybody else, it feels good, deep-down good, to mentally cross off this autumn "task" from the list of trite things a family should do.