Dairy Daze...and Now Beyond

In Portland, Oregon where I lived the past 12 or so years it is considered trendy, even necessary, to belong to a gym. When you consider that most people there, as I did, have to work office jobs and sit at a desk for 8 or more hours a day it makes sense. However after moving to rural Missouri going to a gym is something that most of the natives kind of sneer at as being sissy or citified. My husband is one of those natives so I have had to find other ways to burn calories. And really, living here on a dairy farm, even if you don't count chores, exercise is something that kind of happens to you, it isn’t necessary to go looking for it. For one thing there is the house and a real yard and garden to take care of and since I don’t have an outside job there isn’t any excuse to avoid certain things like mopping, vacuuming, picking up rocks and such like. Plus, seeing as how he doesn’t want me to have to join a gym my husband is always on the lookout for a good way for me to burn t...

Here is what I learned the first two months I was on the dairy: On dairy farming: (Most of this was told to me by the resident dairy expert. Some of it I learned by experience.) Never wrestle with 100 lb day old calves. They are incredibly strong and as stubborn as a mule. I made this mistake and it took two and a half weeks for my back to feel normal again.. When chopping a hole in the ice on the pond, angle the blade away from your face, otherwise you get ice chips in your eyes, hair and perhaps, if you have mistakenly aimed just right, up your nose. Cows on a dairy are not really in their natural habitat; they were meant to live in and roam the wild, not be put into the same field day after day in winter where they lay in their own crap, necessitating your having to clean their udders off. It’s not nice. They also were not meant to be crammed into the same lot before milking where they crap on each others sides and heads; and cows with green caps are not really attractive. Wh...

Welcome. Welcome to my blog. It has its beginning in the many emails I have sent to family and friends relating tales of my adventures on the dairy here. Some folks have been amused enough to say that I ought to send them in to some newspaper or periodical to be published. I am generally not good at shameless self promotion or else I might try, certainly our local newspaper could use some wit in the agricultural section, however I am not sure about my self discipline to do such. Therefore I am starting this blog to see if I can discipline myself to keep up with it. Certainly this cannot be daily blog as I am not daily on the computer, but I will try and keep it close to being weekly, perhaps; or twice monthly, or monthly…or whenever I get a chance. Ha. As to content; I plan on concentrating less on clinical dairy information and more on my own thoughts, experiences and various other happenings here on the dairy and in the country. At this point I have only been here on the dair...