I've got your stimulus package right here!

Er... no wait...

Right here:

Yes, we got a cow.

Not the one we were looking at before. The timing just didn't work quite right. He needed to sell sooner than we could be ready to buy. So we moved on.

I've spent the last few weeks putting in several hundred feet of fencing to enclose some additional pasture and connect our barn to our existing fields. I also built a pen and a milking area in the barn.

Ok, I guess I should tell you about the cow. She's a Jersey, about three years old, hand-milked by an Amish family who lives about 75 miles from us. She may or may not be bred to a Holstein.

How did we find her, you ask? Craigslist, of course. Yes, really. The Amish don't use computers or most technology, but sometimes their neighbors do. This man's neighbor posted the listing for him, I saw it, and next thing I knew I was talking to an Amish farmer on a cell phone.

We all drove up to see the cow a couple weeks ago, and I ended up driving back a week or so later to try milking her. (They were selling because she was slightly awkward to milk. Well, any cow would be slightly awkward for me to milk, so...)

And now, here she is, settling into her new surroundings.


In 2005, this is where we lived:
...on three-tenths of an acre in suburban Cincinnati. Most days I don't think about how strange that is given where we are now. Today is not most days though.

As of today, we have a sweet Jersey cow to milk twice a day. Six gallons per day - an essentially unlimited supply of milk, butter, cream, yogurt, buttermilk, cheeses, ice cream... assuming we can figure out how to make them all. After our yogurt experience, I'm pretty confident we can figure it out. Then we just have to find ways to use the other 90% of it.

What about the baby, you ask? He's doing really well. Fabulously. I don't know that we'd be doing this if he wasn't settling in as well as he is. I think after having twins, one high needs and one special needs, with a couple hospital visits thrown in, this has been a cake walk. Sure he's still a baby and still needs time and attention. But we decided we could manage an hour or two a day between us to handle our Jersey girl.

Are you crazy?

In fact, I've already been using milking time every morning and every night to get the fencing and other work done. It's worked very well, and now that all that stuff is taken care of, I guess the fun can begin.

I should also mention the truck driver. He brought his pickup truck back to our barn, pulling a three-horse trailer, into an area that I can barely turn my pickup truck around in. There are four small apple trees along one side of the area, and two tiny Chinese chestnut saplings on the other side. He noticed them, pulled up within a foot of one of the saplings, backed to within inches of the apple tree, and then somehow cut sideways so that the other sapling passed through the gap between the truck and it's trailer. And before I knew it, he was turned 180 degrees and perfectly positioned to unload the cow. He did all this without stopping & starting, or even hesitating. It was about the most impressive piece of driving I've ever seen.

Now, in the middle of all this, I have let a couple things slide. The grass is getting very tall, which will hopefully yield us some usable hay, but there are a few areas that need a little more regular maintenance. And I know I've gotten a bit behind on a few things, but come on! A robin's nest in the tractor?!

I don't know if it'll do any good, but I relocated it to a slightly safer location. Not sure if it'll do any good, but it was done in full view of mama.

Anyway, off we go on another adventure. Stories of our incompetence to follow...

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