While DH was out of town for 4 days this past week, I had the grand opportunity to play cowgirl! I say that with all of the affection I can muster up considering I grew up in a suburb of Charles*on and really never considered that we would own cows one day. It's been about 3 weeks now that we've owned these 4 heffers and 2 nursing calves, so I thought they were pretty acclimated to their new surroundings, but something in them must have decided that, truly, the grass IS greener on the other side...and that decision had to come while Jason was half a country away in St. Lo*is. 
Here's the scenario. The pond where they drink water is low. Two brown cows (Herford cows or as some call "white faced cows")decide to venture out to the middle of the pond up against the barbed wire fence running through the middle of the pond. They are able to successfully cross the fence (or what's left of it in the middle of the pond). Farmer Wife decides the two calves need their mommas for milk (they are around 3 months old) and must go to the gap to let them in, coaxing with sweet feed, all the while in nice, dressy sandals and capri pants. Farmer Wife has trouble opening up said "gap" Dear Farmer Husband has created--when this has happened once before, I might add!!
Please picture for yourselves the nicely dressed woman loading up with a white bucket with a bare minimum of sweet feed heading out where the cows are peering at her across the gap. She is straining with all her might in battle with a rusty, big gate and finding out she has to untie a blue strap holding it to a tree. Then seeing the barbed wire going round and round the gate and attempting to untie the barbed wire with her B.A.R.E. hands!!! Not a nice picture once I was finished...bloody, bloody mess compounded with a rusty, rusty mess. And the gate still would not move to the right or the left (hence the shoulder pain now!). The left side of the gap/gate was wedged between two trees...when my husband does a job, he DOES IT WELL!
Please remember I was in nice sandals---not even sure that the area where I was stepping did not contain tons of poison ivy or poison oak. OH, yeah....back to the 3rd person story...
So Farmer Wife remembers Son up in the baby pool (he's 3) playing and calls with cell phone (thank you Lord I remembered that!) to the house to ask Daughter (who is 6) to go out and watch out for Son---that this is going to take longer than expected!! Ya think??!
Next call was to Papa Jeep next door (my FIL) to ask him to come down and see if he can help part the gap so these noses across the way can come through and make life LOTS easier. He arrives and cannot remove the pins from the middle of the gap either, so helps to lift and slide left gate out enough that the two mommas can come through to their nursing babies (who could not cross the pond like their silly mommas did then could not figure out how to get back to them!!). Then the worst part (in MY estimation) occurs:
Papa Jeep says the cows need more sweet feed. I wondered why but figured he had known cows a LOT longer than I, so I did what he said. FW runs, *literally runs*, to get some more and the cows both RUN after FW!!! Can I just tell you how scared I was?? Having lived all my life in the suburbs, I think the movie 8 Seconds (bull riding) is the only memory of knowing anything about cows (bulls--the male kind, which we only have one calf that is a bull). That and the fact that if you wave a red flag, they will come running. And all the pictures of the Spanish people running from the bulls in whatever town it is they do that silly thing. So I could just see myself getting trampled to death by two Herford Heffers!!
At any rate, Papa Jeep tells me to stop running and I DO and they start walking nicely beside me. I get the sweet feed, hand it over the fence to him to put in the feeding troughs and then all 4 heffers come running full speed at the troughs!!! It was quite an experience, let me tell you. I head to give the cows some water on the left side of the house in the watering troughs so maybe they'll stay away from the pond. Papa remarks that we all need to pray for rain so the cows can have some green grass.
Now, I am thinking all is well and can roll up the hose and head back to the house (15 min. later!). That's when I hear Dear Son screaming at the top of his lungs standing on the back deck! The screaming continues as I am reeling in the hose pipe madly. I get to him and he yells, "Sissy said she's gonna spank me with the metal spoon!!" Sissy tells me that he went out barefoot and got 2 splinters in his foot and she told him if he went outside barefoot she would spank him (not with metal spoon, she said, but with wooden spoon we discipline the children with---yeah, not sure if I believe that). I reassure both that grownups are the ONLY ones who will do any spanking of any sort.
Well, I wish that was the happily ever after ending to the story, but it isn't. As I receive a return call from my husband, now finding he is stuck at the St. L airport as his flight has been cancelled (now I see my duties as FW may continue yet another day---oh boy!), I share the whole story with him telling him I AM IN NO WAY CALLED TO BE A FARMER and I should have called Daniel (but it's Daniel's birthday--bless him--and he works out of town anyway, so probably couldn't have helped)!!! Dear Husband just laughs (AT ME and my antics!) and tells me he hopes he'll be home tonight...when....low and behold...looking out the window what do I see but the same two white-faced cows go RIGHT BACK ACROSS THE POND FENCE!! I've never! And they didn't even nurse their young!!!! BAD MOMMAS!!! I could not do that enticing and working and straining like before, knowing all the while they may cross over a 3rd time, so I left them over there where "the grass is greener on the other side"!!!
Ending to story: Daddy came home at 1:30am that night without any luggage and the cows were somehow all on our side of the fence that morning when Daddy woke up to see where they were. Five minutes later Daddy watched the two white-faced ones go back across and throughout that day they continued to cross over at will. Farmer Husband has since fixed the barbed wire in the pond and the cows cannot in any way cross over. Praise the Good Lord!
Now, who wants to care for the cows while we're gone to the beach next week??! Bibbi and Papa, you're up! :)
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