Saturday, March 6, 2010

END OF A SALUTE TO COWS


picture borrowed from Dairy Life magazine

There are two basic kinds of girl:  those who want to be a princess; and those who want to be a pioneer.


SOMETHING DIFFERENT

On a frozen winter evening
In a barn down at the dairy
Sits a maiden on a tall stool
Dressed in jeans and rubber boots.
In her hand she has a copy
Of a National Geographic
Which she reads in stolen moments
From her labors cold and wearing
Midst the smell of fresh manure,
And the pulsing sound of milkers
While the Holsteins chew their barley.

There between the yellow covers
Is the story of far travel:
Down a river called Zambezi
Sixteen hundred miles of water
From Zambia to Namibia
Round the corner to Botswana
Back to Zambia, past Zimbabwe
Over vast Victoria Falls.
Mozambique, then to the ocean
Rolls the river of Zambezi
Full of snorting, lumpy hippos.

There dwell baboons, snakes (black mambas)
Elephants, oxpeckers, catfish.
Crocodiles yawn in the shadows.
Cormorants fly overhead.
There the people fish the channels,
Paddle canoes full of cargo
As they have for generations
To the towns along the river
Where, “To travel is to dance.”

Soon the maiden at the dairy
Puts away her hasty reading,
Goes back to the heavy Holsteins;
Washes warm and steaming udders
While the motor of the milkers
And the country music station
Accompanies her wishing
To do something in her lifetime
That few women ever do.

First posted on my blog November 5, 2008

Friday, March 5, 2010

HOLSTEIN ART CARDS

The previous post may explain my fixation with black and white cows.  These are more watercolor Art Cards for the breast cancer awareness show this fall.  Actual size of each image is 2.5x3.5 inches.

Wednesday, March 3, 2010

RAISED BY HOLSTEINS

I was raised by Holsteins. Okay, not really. I had two loving, steady parents who started their farm with a few acres of dirt and a big black stray cow named Cora. By the time my folks retired to town many years later they owned their dairy farm; which included around two hundred acres, a fine milking barn and a big herd of black and white cattle. (They had also put four kids through college and contributed much to their community.)

When drought, frost, disease, grasshoppers and/or the bank threatened to put us in the homeless category; the Holsteins were a consistent source of income. We always had milk to drink and to sell.

Dad gave me a heifer to care for as a 4-H project. By the time I had her ready for the county fair that fall she was friendly, sleek and on her way to becoming part of our milking herd.

The night before the fair we gave her a show haircut, washed her, braided her tail and polished her hooves. We didn’t have a cattle trailer and the pickup was out for repairs so transportation the eight miles to the fairgrounds was our Chevrolet sedan. We took out the back seat and covered the floor with potato sacks. Since my baby was still a young animal she fit in the back of the car just fine. We rolled down the window and she put her head out to smell the hay fields as we passed.

You can’t see it very well in the photo, but I am holding a first place blue ribbon in my hand.

Tuesday, March 2, 2010

ADDICTED



Cartoon from the February Readers Digest

A year and a half ago I fell into the blog trap.  It is a sweet addiction.  I get to choose good friends and ignore those I don't like without guilt.  I can find those of similar interest and share my misery.  No need to wash up or comb my hair.  I can work over my stupid thoughts so everyone thinks I are am a smart brilliant talker conversationalist. I just have to remember to keep it real enough so when I have an opportunity to meet a bloggy friend in person (like the super cool Linda Sue) they won't be TOO disppointed.

More interesting than most of the people I have to deal with in the real world, anyway.

Sunday, February 28, 2010

MELTING! OH! WHAT A WORLD, WHAT A WORLD!

February 28, 2010
On the shady side of our house my rose garden looks like this:
Still over twelve inches of snow.  But on the sunny south side---

GOLD!

Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.
Robert Frost