We Decided on a Flower | Chickens in the Road

Jun
10

Simple. Understated. Don’t you think?

Beulah Petunia and I went over all sorts of wardrobe options and decided on just a flower behind her ear. It says, I’m happy to be here and this is special, without also saying, Over-eager and needy.

Or at least that’s what we thought.

BP started showing signs of heat yesterday morning.

By 5 p.m. we had her at the farm with the bull. It took a while to get her there. First, I had to call for help (52) then we had to walk her the long mile to the farm. Skip lives across the river and down the road in the house where my father grew up. He owns several hundred acres and has beef cattle. In an aside, I’ve been going to “Skip’s” farm all my life. From the time I was two years old, my father took me to West Virginia and to the farm where he grew up. Back in his day, it was part of his grandfather’s even larger farm that went all up and down the road across the river from where I live now. By the time I was in my 20s, Skip owned it, and together with my father and subsequently my own children when they were little, I’ve been visiting Skip for years when we took the “family history” tour on trips to West Virginia. One time, when my kids were little, Skip had a pet baby deer. Not sure what happened to it….. I’ll have to ask Skip sometime. When we were taking BP over there, I had this weird moment where I thought back to all the times I’d gone to Skip’s farm in the past and how I would never and I mean NEVER have imagined that I would one day live across the river and down the road from Skip and be taking my cow to his bull. I remember one time visiting Skip and my (crazy) father wanting to walk way, way up to a big open meadow on the hill above the house. Skip would always say, sure, go wherever you want, when we came calling. A bull came running in the meadow and we were all clambering down a steep cliff, hanging onto tree trunks not to fall, to the creek far, far below to get away from the bull. Yeah, and now I was there in search of a bull……

Anyway, it’s a mile by the road from our farm to Skip’s, but Skip said it would be shorter if we took her up the road to the family cemetery, over the hill, and across the river that way.

If it was shorter, it was maybe shorter by nothing. It felt like 20 miles.

But then, going a mile anywhere around here feels like 20 miles.

The only way to get BP out of BP-land and back around to the other side of the house is through the goat yard. This posed an interesting Glory Bee test. It’s been about 5-6 weeks that she’s been separated from her mommy. What would she do?

Well.

SHE’S NOT WEANED YET.

Oh, well. I had milked BP earlier, so she didn’t have that much milk, and we were planning to leave her at Skip’s farm till Saturday morning, so fine. Let Glory Bee take whatever she’d made in the meantime. At least she made sure the tank was empty. BP will be okay for the day and a half till we get her Saturday morning. (NOT going over there to milk. Unless we have to leave her longer.)

She put her head down on Glory Bee’s bottom while Glory Bee milked her and it was so sweet. We just stopped and let them have their time. Once we got BP out of the goat yard, it was down the driveway.

Out the road.

Past the fascinated donkeys who only look little when BP is around. (The dogs abandoned us when we left the road.)

Up the steep, rough road to the cemetery.

Out through a sunny field of daisies…..

….to a shady path of enchantment across the hill.

BP kept wanting to stop and eat and eat and EAT.

52 held her on the lead while I followed behind with a switch to keep her going. I don’t like to swat her, so that’s a bad job. I swat her really gently and she doesn’t really care so sometimes I had to push her on her rump.

We’ve never walked out that way, so it was interesting and pretty and exhausting and about 20 miles, I’m telling ya! We finally came down and out toward the river. Before I died.

And before BP got too mad because we wouldn’t let her stop and eat. I kept telling her Skip had a big farm with lots of tall grass. AND A BULL.

We found the crossing by Skip’s saw mill, so we knew we were in the right place. Across the river–

–and to the road! And by then I was thinking we should have just walked down the road to begin with because I swear we went 20 miles. BP was tired, too, and all foamy at the mouth and thirsty.

But then she heard cows, and cows heard her, so she was encouraged.

We found the paddock by the road.

Then took her on through to the farm, hundreds of acres of woods and open meadows, enclosed by electric fence. There’s a bull out there somewhere, waiting for BP!

She bawled and bawled, letting him know she had arrived.

She was thirsty after all that exercise and went straight for the creek.

Then she headed up the creek, into the shaded distance, and then……she was gone.

I could hardly stand it. MY COW!!! I didn’t want to leave. I wanted to go after her, camp out, watch over her, SEE THE ACTION. But it didn’t really seem practical. BP is a big girl. She knew where she was going and she wanted to go there. I will see her Saturday…………..

Late report last night was that the bull checked her out and didn’t mount her. She wasn’t yet in standing heat. We’ll see what happens today. DID HE NOT SEE HER FLOWER??