The "Quiet" of a country morning...

I am sitting here having to giggle a bit this morning.

We had Bible study with our neighbors last night. One of the last things my friend said to me was how glad she was that she got to sleep in this morning. Now my friend is a city girl that is moving (VERY SLOWLY) toward the country. They bought 2 acres of our farm. Her husband and children do most if not all the animal type chores. When they first moved here they had a few chickens and their dog. They have since added more chickens, 2 goats, meat birds in a movable pen and a calf that they keep at our place with our calf. I keep telling her that she is turning into a farm wife. They have seen farm life up close and personal. I cannot tell you how many times her husband and children have helped me to round up an animal that got loose or other wonderful experiences. This year for the first time I had to help one of my Shetland sheep to have her babies. She had three ram lambs and they were all breech. She would not hold still for me. The man next door and his daughter came over to help me. He held the sheep still for me. My friend would walk over occasionally to help.

So back to this morning. Last night they were picturing a very leisurely morning of sleeping in. However, one of my heifer calves is in heat. She is a quite the trumpeter when in heat. A very loud trumpeter I might add. I doubt they are still asleep. She gets this from her mother, the darker one in the picture above. Our matriarch cow, Buttercup (the honey colored one above cleaning her nose), has silent heats that are very hard to detect. My husband will tell me... "Buttercup blinked at me today, write it on the calendar and lets watch again in 21 days." Then she had Molasses the calf. When Molasses was born I named her honey because she was also honey colored. I envisioned one day someone asking where my husband or son were and I would say, "He is out milkin' honey!" We call our farm Amazing Graze Farm, the land of milk and honey. Honey turned very dark and I changed her name to Molasses. I called her daughter (who is half beef) Sorghum, but should change it to Blackstrap as she is really black. Back to Molasses... We had a woman and her 6 children living in our apartment on the farm for a time. Men from the church came to put in a large clothes line for her. Molasses was in heat that day. Her movable fence was about 10 feet from where they were working. She serenaded them the entire time they worked, VERY LOUDLY. I don't know how they stood it. =)