The calf is two days old now. Jeremy and I call her Dummy only I spell it with two e's; Dummee. She's a very spry calf, very healthy too. On Sunday about four hours after she was born, she was already on her feet and decided to take a little trip under the hot wire (which was off) and up the driveway. Fortunately I saw her out the window and we caught the little escapee. That's when Jer and I started calling her Dummee. After that we put Strawberry and Dummee in a stall where they spent monday and this morning we put them out in a pasture with barbed wire fencing. Dummee won't want to try going through that, especially since Strawbee is a very attentive mother and always wants to know what her calf is doing and where she's going.

Dutchy is due in two days, but we have no idea when she'll have her calf. Strawbee was eight days late and since this is Dutchy's first calf, we have no idea what to expect. Of course, we didn't know what to expect with Strawberry either because she's had a few calves before we got her. It's kind of a long story of how we got Strawberry. But I'm game for a story, and I hope you are!

There was once a Jersey/Brown Swiss cow who was called Hepzebah. She was our milk cow for a number of years, but I don't remember exactly how many because I was pretty little when we got her so I didn't even do the milking. By the time my older sister, Erin, was off to college, I was one of the main milkers and Hepzy was my special pal. But ole' Heps was getting old. Her second to last calf was stillborn, at least that is what I suspect. It was born in the night and we'll never know exactly what happened. When we realized that she was going down hill, we bred her to have a dairy cow instead of beef in the hopes that the calf would be female and we'd have another milk cow. Alas, when the little dairy calf came, it was a male, and we named him Buddy. He was, of course, a bull by his breeding and we didn't want a bull, we wanted a milk cow to take over for ole' Hepzy. So we ate him. Buddy's birth was especially hard on Hepzebah because he was a big calf. For beef cows we generally breed Angus because they are born small and grow fast. Hepzebah was also a small cow and having a big dairy calf did her in so we had to say good bye to sweet little old Hepzy. Not long after Buddy was born, we'd bought a heifer from our garage door installer's daughter in Oregon. A Dutch Belted without a belt. Defective. We bred her, or thought we did, and waited. We had no milk that whole period and when this defective heifer was due, there was no calf, which means...no milk. So, we tried again. Somehow we got hooked up with a lady who runs a Shorthorn dairy somewhere in the Olympia area. Dad and I hopped in the truck with a borrowed trailer behind us, and drove hours and hours to a small, and amazingly dirty and smelly dairy where the lady showed us two ugly, scrawny beasts and asked us which one we wanted. Both had just freshened (had calves) and so had milk just waiting for us. Dad gave me the choice. I knew which one I wanted before he asked me. We took the scrawny and mucky beast that was more expensive. Her name was Bossy Acres Slammin' Strawberry and when we got her home she sure was Bossy Acres Slammin' Strawberry. It took us two hours two milk her because she kicked to hard. Not to mention she was covered from the tip of her nose to the end of her tail to the points of her huge hooves in dried, smelly, muck. Never, ever visit a dairy unless you don't want to have a pleasant time. It took weeks for the truck to quit smelling like the dairy and even longer for Strawberry to emerge from the inch thick coating. The Dutch Beltless was the same way. Anyway, we finally had the long waited for milk, oh, and what a blessing it was! It took a while for Strawberry's milk to take on some real flavor and her to produce cream, but it came slowly and surely. That's not the end of the story though. In order to keep producing milk, the cow needs to, at some point or other, have a calf. We tried breeding with the AI but we kept missing the heat cycles and neither cow would take. So we gave up with that too, and bought a bull for 1,000 bucks. His name is Wally and he is an Angus. Dutchy and Strawberry were bred within a month of getting Wally and now we have little Dummee and milk! thanks to Wally. Praise God! Well, we'll have milk soon. Strawberry's colostrum will last a few more days and then we will have a ton of milk. Then when Dutchy has her calf, we'll have even more. Oh, speaking of Dutchy, her name is a pure accident. When we got her from the dairy in Oregon she was called Hot Chocolate or something like that because her tongue is black. I absolutely hated that though and when everybody else refered to her as Hot Chocolate, I'd call her the "black cow". I got tired of that too, and one day, out of frustration because I was talking about her but didn't have a name for her, I called her Dutchy, cause she's Dutch Belted, or Beltless. So please don't refer to her as Hot Chocolate or Duchess, because neither one is her name. She's Dutchy or Dutch. Or sometimes Dope or Dummy. Strawberry is also refered to as Strawbrains when she isn't acting her best. Want to know how to insult a horse? Call it a cow.

That's the saga of how we ended up with two milk cows.

Anybody want some milk?

P.S. I'm reading my first Wodehouse book!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! YAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

1.
Soldiers of Christ arise,
and put your armor on,
strong in the strength which God supplies
thru his eternal Son;
strong in the Lord of Hosts,
and in his mighty power,
who in the strength of Jesus trusts
is more than conqueror.

2.
Stand then in his great might,
with all his strength endued,
but take to arm you for the fight
the panoply of God;
that having all things done,
and all your conflicts passed,
ye may o'ercome thru Christ alone
and stand entire at last.

3.
Pray without ceasing, pray,
(your Captain gives the word)
his summons cheerfully obey
and call upon the Lord;
to God your every want
in instant prayer display,
pray always, pray and never faint,
pray, without ceasing pray.

4.
From strength to strength go on,
wrestle and fight and pray,
tread all the powers of darkness down
and win the well-fought day.
Still let the Spirit cry
in all his soldiers, "Come!"
till Christ the Lord, descends from high
and takes the conquerors home.

~Charles Wesley~