Dairy Daze...and Now Beyond

 I spied it by the path as I walked by; The shell of a box turtle, Quite empty, but for a leaf Frost-frozen to the plastron. The carapace was chipped. A hungry predator had gnawed it But, foiled by ancient design, Had left it for an easier meal. And so the turtle had wandered on. And time had polished the sharp edges Of the shell that I picked up and wedged  In the burl of the tree.

 Once when I was young I was enchanted by our neighbor named Owl. His last name was Forrest! How perfect! He, his brother John, and sister Nellie All lived in a secluded house At the end of the lane. Such mundane names his siblings had. I spent my early years pondering The mystery of the man named Owl. I even asked my father one day. He laughed and said he wasn't sure How Owl got his name. It must have been my 13th or 14th year When my mother hooted her laughter at my question. "Owl? Owl?  Hahaha.... His name is Albert." My life lost a bit of color and romance that day;  Once when I was young.

This one would have been good for Mother's Day, but I didn't have it then. I found it in a copy of "The Budget." An anonymous person from Ohio sent it in. A Young Mother I saw a young mother With eyes full of laughter, And two little shadows Came following after; Whenever she moved They were always right there, Hanging on to her skirts, Holding on to her chair, Before her, behind her, An adhesive pair. “Don’t you ever get weary, As day after day Your two little tagalongs Get in your way?” She smiled as she shook Her pretty, young head, And I’ll always remember The words that she said; “It’s good to have shadows That run when you run, That laugh when you’re happy And hum when you hum, For you only have shadows When your life is full of sun." Anonymous

It isn't even halfway through the month yet and I have run out of lists or anything amusing to tell you about the dairy. So here is a poem I picked up on a homesteading forum. It does deal with ag issues, just of a different sort... Enjoy! The Oyster Baxter Black The sign upon the café wall said OYSTERS: fifty cents. "How quaint," the blue-eyed sweetheart said with some bewildermence, "I didn't know they served such fare out here upon the plain." "Oh, sure," her cowboy date replied, "We're really quite urbane." "I would guess they're Chesapeake or Blue Point, don't you think?" "No ma'am, they're mostly Hereford cross . . . and usually they're pink But I've been cold, so cold myself, what you say could be true And if a man looked close enough, their points could sure be blue!" She said, "I gather them myself out on the bay alone. I pluck them from the murky depths and smash them with a...

In tribute to what those in Oklahoma and other areas of the Mid-West are going through, here is a poem from one of the masters of poetry, along with a couple of photos I took from our ice storm back in January. I feel badly for those who are going through it now, I remember quite vividly how horrible it was to be without power. We were without power for 9 days and it was awful. We had to milk using a generator, and we went down to husband's mom's place to sleep. It stayed cold-well below freezing-for so long and the ice didn't melt and the limbs kept falling and we had to slip and slid around on the ice doing chores. A veritable nightmare. The first pic is a shot of husband's granddad's place and the damage to their shade oak tree. It has recovered a bit by now, but it's still sad. The second pic is some dogwood buds on ice. Robert Frost had it right; ice is great for destruction... Fire and Ice Some say the world will end in fire, Some say in ice. From what I’...