The Native Iowan

Diary of a hobby-farmer charter1, verse1:

640am. I am up and awake and have walked about a kilometer over rough ground. I am a hobby-farmer.

C1,V2: Have one cow down on her side. For those that know anything about bovines, a cow on her side is not a good thing. In Iowa a cow on her side is considered Mui-Bad.

C1,V3: #30 still-birthed on Saturday. On Sunday she was down on here side. We helped her as much as we could but could not get her up. So I called the vets. They did their magic and probably saved her life, then, but she is still down. Vets came out again Monday and did more magic, but she is still down today, Wednesday. I have named this one “PainintheArse”.

C1,V4: So the last few days has seen us move in as New Owners, deal immediately with a dying cow, get to know the herd and the land, and settle into the leisurely life of a Hobby-Farmer. 

C1,V5: Yesterday we cut what we thought were the pregnant cows from the herd and moved them into a paddock next to the house. One lied to us and we let here go back to the herd. She was lying, the bitch. We let the wrong one out and ended up last night with one  next to the house bellowing and receiving a responding bellow from the back field where the herd was.

C1,V6: So I was outside early. Let the bellowing mama out and walked her back to be with her calf. Both were happy.

C1,V7: Its 8c outside. No wind this morn and am thankful of that. I am wearing a pair of “Musto” sailing shorts, a cotton tshirt and my drizabone vest with my bamboo-tube-scarf. And my seaotter hat. Would be dying without my hat.

C1,V8: The fields are standard thick paddocks. Lovely green grass, covered in cow pies. Small hand-sized stones litter the ground. It makes for not too difficult but not too easy traveling. I find a loose-jointed gait is best to traverse the fields. I employ all my shock absorbers in each step. Much like a walk on the deck of a rolling ship covered in grass and shit.

C1,C9: It’s about 100 meters to the “back gate. So you open the gate and let the bellowing one out, walk with her to the back fence and let here out then walk the 100 meters from the hay shed to where the down cow is. Water for the down-cow is in the hay shed. A couple of trips from fence to fence to shed to down cow and you’ve done an easy half a klick. It’s easy to walk a klick and not really get very far.

C1,V10: Its 708am and the temp is dropping. We are inside having a coffee and waiting for the sun to come up a bit. We are in a valley and the sun don’t spend too much of its time on us. But the wind is down and the kookaburras are telling the world they are happy (or horny?). In a bit we’ll be out walking into the back-40 to see what the rest of the herd is doing. Check and see if there may have been a birth overnight. Make sure all is well in cattle-land… and walk another couple klicks.

And life is good.