Cow Rollick

Is Overlook Farm a real farm? Yes, and No. If you brought in a commercial farmer (the real sustainable kind, of course) who had livestock and crops, he would rub his stomach and laugh heartily. Mostly at our animal husbandry. This is not against the livestock folk who work here at all. But, we're a farm of young volunteers who come and go every few months, who aren't working experts, who lack forty years of animal experience. It is a farm run by amateurs. Not to mention the random variety of animals here. Cows, pigs, goats, all standard. Then, there's a camel, water buffalo, alpacas. Where are the experts on those animals?

This came to mind today, as five of us tried to move six full grown cows. Big debacle. They get lose [switching to present tense], so we move them to some old pasture, but, Uh Oh, the bull is close by and looking ominously through the flimsy fence at the nice lady cows. So, we move them again, except Stephanie gets in the chicken pen and starts eating the chicken feed, and Clancy is over by the woods, and the rest of the cows are figuring out that the electric fencing isn't ON, so plow, plow, no more fencing, more loose cows. Thirty minutes later, we've got a bucket of feed to lure Stephanie, while the other volunteers, knee deep in manure, are yelling at the other cows to keep them at bay and trying to move fencing. Big mess. And it's raining.

Truth be told, however, it was an entertaining adventure. And, all in all, no harm was done, and we volunteers are laughing at our own misadventures.

Ok, this is a farm, sort of. You do have to consider that there are farmers/animal husbanders whose cattle obey verbal commands, who don't need to use buckets of feed to control their livestock, who run things more smoothly, who take things more seriously. I mean, they are trying to make a living. We, the Overlook Vols, are a lot more ragtag and haphazard, and the whole point of this farm is education, not production.

So, for the naive like me. When you own cows, teach them some damned obedience.