Chasing Cows

I think my title describes the type of workout that I got last night.

I'm staying on the farm by myself this week while my aunt and uncle and their family are at the Ag (Agriculture) Teacher's Conference. Uncle Gerrit left me with two phone number that I should call in case of a farm emergency. When we were talking about this on Saturday night, I asked the sarcastic question of, "So I should call them if there's cows running out on the road, right?" Not good to joke about such things.

One of my uncle's students is doing chores this week so my responsibilities extend to the two kittens on the porch, the dog, and the flowers...not cows. I came home yesterday afternoon after working on school stuff at Woods, my favorite coffeeshop, to a different pick-up in the driveway. I saw Brent in the cowyard and yelled hello. He asked what I had done to scare the cows. Wasn't sure what he was talking about. He came out to tell me that when he had come to do chores in the morning, the cows in the orchard had broke through 3 fences to get to the hay field. He had to bring in 2 other guys to round them up and put them back in the proper field. They got that done and left. Everything was a-okay.

I had dinner and wasted some time on facebook before my cousin Sheri called and asked me to go for a little walk. As I was walking out the door to go into town, my cousin Aaron calls. We talked about the cows breaking through the fences and he shared his story of his first day of work up here. He had just gotten hired, was supposed to start his first day, was staying by himself on the farm while my grandparents were traveling, walked out the door, and there was a cow in the garden. In his case, all of the cows were loose and he had to round them all up by himself. He was an hour and a half late for his very first day of work.

I went into town to go for a walk with my cousin, came back, called a friend in Indiana, talked for a long while before I saw another pick-up pull up the driveway. Hung up with Hannah, met the guy at the door, and he said, "Ma'am, you've got a beef on the road." Agh! Said thank you very much and started making my emergency phone calls. "Ah, Brent, I've got cows out on the road." "Ah, Rolf, I've got cows out on the road." Voicemail for both. Called my cousin Aaron, "Aaron, can you come and help me? I have cows out on the road." "I'll be there in 20 minutes." I slip on the closest shoes I can find. Flip-flops. Not really good for chasing cows.

As I ran out to the road, an SUV stops. An old man gets out and says, "I'm from the old country [Netherlands] and I don't speak much English but I'll try to help you catch the cow." We chased the cow from the road and onto the yard. I started running around the fenceline to see if I could find where this cow got out - in my flip flops. Avoiding cowpies at all costs. I made it about halfway around the fenceline before the cow leaves the yard and heads down the Trapline to the Hampton. Trapline is busy but the Hampton is even busier. It could be really bad if someone hit the cow. The cow gets spooked by the traffic and tears off into the neighbors field.

At this point, I really do not care about that cow. The old man has gotten back into the SUV and left. I can't do anything with the cow by myself and I'm very concerned that the fence is broken and the rest of the cows are all going to get out and I'm going to have a much bigger problem on my hands. My emergency people start pulling into the driveway. Brent, his brother, and his dad head into the neighbors field to see if they can find the cow. Rolf heads to the train tracks that run behind our farm to see if he can head off the cow. Aaron pulls up and asks how he can help. I go to get a half bucket of grain to see if we can coerce the cow back in with some food. I make my first call to my uncle Gerrit, "So how many head are you supposed to have in the orchard?...7?...I count 12...What does the cow look like?...I don't know - brown." I'm not so good at this whole identifying cows thing. I head back up the Trapline and find Rolf, Brent, Kelby with the cow on the train tracks. They're going to try to get the cow headed back down Trapline and into our yard and hopefully back into the orchard.

Much conversation ensues as we stand there on the train tracks. "Are we sure that this is Gerrit's cow?" The counts are all messed up because of the cows getting out earlier in the day so we have no idea how many cows we're actually supposed to have in that field. The cow gets scared and starts running again - the wrong way. He heads further north and there's no way we can follow him through this field. So we stand on the tracks and start trying to figure out whose field he's in. Calls start to the neighbors. I'm not calling any of them since I have no idea who the neighbors are. On the Nextel beeping, we hear someone say, "Yeah, I'm supposed to have 8 head in this field and I only count 7. Maybe that's my cow. You know, I think that cow got out earlier this week." Great. Thanks.

Too much excitement. My emergency people start heading out. Rolf has to go help pull a calf - I think that's farm-speak for helping a cow give birth. Brent and his family start to head out. Aaron and I kind of stand there. I guess there's nothing else that we can do. Much too much excitement. I think my uncle is starting to second-guess leaving me here by myself. I'm praying for much less excitement for the rest of the week.