The Escape Artist

One of our baby calves must be part vagabond.

"Are you missing a calf?" our neighbor, Gary, called Randy to ask. It was almost dark, and as we pulled into his driveway, the calf romped through one of Gary's cattle pens. Gary is in the midst of calving season, too, but none of the mamas seemed to want to claim this one. And, as we got out of the pickup, we could hear a cow bawling from the pasture about a quarter mile away.

Since Randy and I weren't ready for a rodeo at dark, we left the calf there overnight. The next day, we went back with an ear tagger.

Little 441 decided to get up and talk to us then. Or maybe he was calling for his mama.

One of Gary's calves watched the process as Randy got No. 441 moving in the right direction.

Randy had an audience as he helped the calf to the pickup.

Since Flat Aggie had enjoyed playing hide and seek with a calf at the pasture the day before, we brought him along for the ride. (Flat Aggie is visiting from a fourth grade classroom in California and is helping us out on the farm for a few days.)

Randy and the calf rode in the back of the pickup back to the pasture. Since Flat Aggie didn't have a coat, he rode up in the cab with me.

The mission was almost accomplished.

Randy and I lifted No. 441 out of the pickup and put him down behind a windbreak.

Flat Aggie needed one more photo op, so he'd remember his friend from Kansas when he travels back to California. 

One mama cow, 070, came up and check out No. 441.

She sniffed him all over.

 But she wasn't his mama.

Would the real mama show up? Yes, she did. It was Mama No. R22. They were reunited and the baby had to have a snack or two since he'd been away for awhile.

Thanks, Flat Aggie, for helping us round up the baby calf. It's always easier with three helpers than with two!

Flat Aggie Plays Hide and Seek

For the most part, I'd say that our Peace Creek pasture is aptly named. Even in the drab brown of winter, it's a fairly peaceful place.

On a snowy day, as we check the mamas and the babies, the silence is broken by the honk of geese and the chatter of sandhill cranes as they fly overhead. The mama cows in the pasture let out their deep-throated cries and their babies answer back in voices that seem bigger than their size.

Randy and I had a visitor to the Peace Creek pasture this past week, but he wasn't too talkative. Flat Aggie from a fourth grade classroom in California came to check out our Kansas farm. Flat Aggie is a project of my southeast Kansas blog friend, Nicole, and her Tales of a Kansas Farm Mom blog. (I'll be sharing more of Aggie's adventures in the days to come. Also, feel free to weigh in on my blog post yesterday and my dilemma about how much detail to share with fourth graders.)

Anyway, our Flat Aggie came dressed in jeans, which is a good thing when you are visiting a farm. He also had sturdy brown work shoes, which is good when you're working around cattle. He and Randy got along just great because they both like to wear caps.

Last week, Flat Aggie came with us to check the mamas and the babies at the Peace Creek pasture. He got to see a calf drinking some milk from his mama. Aggie thought that seemed pretty convenient.

(The little calf ran away, leaving Flat Aggie and Randy in the dust!)

Aggie also liked playing hide and seek with a different calf who decided to get in the feed trough. (The calf doesn't eat the food in the trough, but his mama and the other mother cows do. You can see what the feed looks like in the photo below, where you see it stacked on the wood.)

Then, we took Flat Aggie to look for another creature at Peace Creek - a beaver. I've never seen him, but we know he's there. I would love to share a photo of my own, but he is good at playing hide and seek, too.

(I got the photo from Wilderness Classroom.)

Our cattle drink water from the creek. This is what the creek looks like near the road.

Below, we showed Flat Aggie the creek further back in the pasture. The mama cow over Randy's shoulder seems to want an introduction to Aggie.

Even though we never see the beaver, we know he (and maybe some friends) are there because they've built a dam. They use their tails to build up dirt and plant material to hold back the water.

Randy gave Flat Aggie a closer look.

Back at the road, we saw more evidence that the beaver lives and works nearby. Beavers like to use their teeth on trees.

It looks like he's been working on this tree for awhile.

A few years ago, the beaver gnawed on one of the trees in our pasture and it fell over into the creek.

 

If Flat Aggie wants to see the beaver, he's going to have to be luckier than me and Randy. Maybe if he sneaks up to the beaver lodge, he'll be able to find him. But probably not.

Truth Hurts

As a kid, you're taught to always tell the truth. When you get older, you realize that truth sometimes needs to be tempered. Any husband can tell you that it's not necessarily wise to respond with absolute truth when a wife says, "Does this dress make me look fat?"

I have my own dilemma about truth.  For the past several days, we've been hosting a visitor named Flat Aggie. He's from Miss Holbrook's fourth grade class at a charter school, Walden Academy, in Willows, California.

He came to learn about life on our Kansas farm. Flat Aggie is a project of my southeast Kansas blog friend, Nicole, and her Tales of a Kansas Farm Mom blog.

Have you heard of Flat Stanley? It's a children's book by Jeff Brown about Stanley Lambchop, who is an ordinary boy until the night his bulletin board fell off the wall and flattened him. All of a sudden, Stanley can slide under doors, mail himself across the country in an envelope, and fly like a kite. Flat Stanley has his own website for all the adventures he's taken since he was created 50 years ago. (We actually had a Flat Dennis come visit us at harvest three years ago.)

Similarly, Flat Aggie goes to farms all across the country to learn about agriculture. Aggie then reports back to the class with a letter from the farm. Randy and I have been taking Aggie with us when we check cattle and do other things on the farm, so he's getting to experience life here in South Central Kansas.

But I now have to figure out how to handle a rather delicate issue. On Sunday, Flat Aggie went with us on repeated trips to the pasture south of our house as we attempted to care for a new baby calf in sub-zero wind chills.

The mama, R34, was out alone in the pasture during our welfare check around 1 PM Sunday. That's often a sign of a mama who is about to have a baby.

 

Randy tried to use the pickup to herd her back toward some straw and a windbreak, but she was not interested.

Randy, Aggie and I had just seen several babies nestled into hay by the feed bunks. But, after repeated attempts, we gave up with trying to get her to go somewhere she didn't want to and decided to check back in an hour. 

When we checked again, the calf had been born and got up on its wobbly legs.

 

The mama was licking off the baby, like she's supposed to do.

But the baby was obviously cold, so Randy got out one of the calf jackets we've been trying out this year and put it on under the watchful eye of the mama.

Then we put it in the pickup cab to try and warm it up and dry it off a bit.

It was a tight fit with Randy, Aggie, the calf and me all scrunched into the cab.  It's good Aggie didn't take up much room. The rest of us were getting warm, that's for sure.

With the calf in the cab, we tried to get the mama to follow up to the windbreak. She'd follow for a few feet, then she'd turn back around and go to the spot where she'd given birth, smelling the ground there.

We tried putting the calf in the bed of the truck so that she'd see the calf and follow. She still wouldn't budge from the middle of the pasture.

Finally, we put the calf back out with the mom and decided we'd come back and check in another hour. (Of course, the calf in all its newborn wobbliness immediately fell down in the snow.)

When we returned to the pasture, we brought a bottle to try to warm it up from the inside out.

The mama again watched as Randy fed the baby calf some warm milk.

Again, we tried to get the mama cow to follow us to shelter. But she wasn't interested, so Randy put a blue blanket down on the snow-covered ground and we left it there.

Aggie, Randy and I watched as the mama cow again tried to get the baby to get up. When Randy checked them at  6 PM, then at 11 Sunday night, the baby was still alive.

I was hoping that Aggie could report a happy ending to the classroom in California. I was already planning photos of the baby calf romping in the snow and and nursing its mama.

However, Monday morning, the baby calf was dead. Wind chills below 0 were too much for the baby to survive. So, I have a dilemma. Aggie is supposed to share what life is all about on a Kansas farm. The death happened, regardless of our best efforts. (It was actually the second death of a baby calf this past weekend in the cold, sleet and snow).

But, I am reluctant to share this much truth with a grade school class. We've been taking Aggie plenty of other places, too, so it's not as though this is the only story. However, it is part of our story. We've had more calf loss this winter than ever before. Besides being heart-wrenching, it's a blow to the pocketbook, too. At the cattle sale last week, baby calves were selling for $400.

So, what's your opinion? Tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth? Or only tell about the baby calf who did survive after getting similar treatment? I'd love your opinion. Let me know via the blog comments or weigh in on Facebook.

Flipping for Pancakes

It's Pancake Day today in Liberal, Kansas, and Olney, England. So I thought I'd celebrate with them.

For the past 65 years, the women of the two communities have raced down the streets of their respective communities, flipping pancakes and running against the clock and each other. The race is always on Shrove Tuesday, the day before Ash Wednesday. It's the only race of its kind in the world.

In Olney, the Pancake Race tradition dates back to 1445. Legend has it that a woman was busy making pancakes and using up cooking fats, which were forbidden during Lent at that time. Hearing the church bells ring to announce the Shrove Tuesday service, she grabbed her head scarf and ran to the church, with pancake-filled skillet in hand. In following years, neighbors joined the race to the church. The first to arrive collected a Kiss of Peace from the bell ringer.

The international race with Liberal began in 1950, when Liberal Jaycee President R.J. Leete saw a photo of the English race in Time magazine and then contacted Olney, challenging their women to race against the women of Liberal.

Racers must still wear a head scarf and apron. Each runner must flip her pancake at the starting signal and again as she crosses the finish line to prove she still has her pancake after running the 415-yard course. The overall record stands at 36 wins for Liberal to Olney's 27. (Liberal has lost the past two years, so it's time for a Kansas victory, don't you think?)

Image from International Pancake Day website,
2011 Liberal winner Nicole Schowengerdt

According to the book, America Celebrates! A Patchwork of Weird & Wonderful Holiday Lore, some superstitions have evolved among Liberal racers:

• It is considered good luck to carry a past winner's skillet in the race or wear a past winner's apron.
• One year, the stack of concrete pancakes marking the starting point of the race was stolen. This was considered a bad omen, but the stack was later returned.
• Although the women practice running 415 yards, it is considered bad luck to run the official race course during the practice sessions.

I flip for pancakes anytime, not just on International Pancake Day. So I decided to try out a new recipe for Coconut Pancakes and Coconut Syrup in honor of today's festivities, though I actually made the pancakes earlier to make sure they were blog worthy. They were.

I'm an advocate of breakfast-for-supper, so if you want to celebrate Shrove Tuesday in a way that's been a tradition since 1455, here's the recipe. And you don't even have to wear a head scarf or run a race to enjoy them!

Whether you make pancakes today or not, I'll leave you with the traditional blessing bestowed upon the winner - whether it be in Liberal or Olney:

The Peace of the Lord be always with you.

Coconut Pancakes

From She Wears Many Hats blog

1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
2 tbsp. sugar
1 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/4 tsp. salt
1/4 cup shredded coconut
1 egg, beaten
1/2 cup buttermilk
3/4 cup coconut milk (not coconut water)
1 tbsp. melted butter
Additional butter or cooking spray

Lightly mix together all dry ingredients. Mix all wet ingredients. Add wet ingredients to dry and stir just until incorporated. Don't overmix. In a skillet or on a griddle over medium-hot heat, drop rounds of batter (about 1/4 cup). Let cook until bubbles begin to pop in center of the pancake, about 2 minutes. Flip pancake and cook for an additional minute or so until golden brown. Test cook surface and temperature, and adjust cook time accordingly.

Serve with Coconut Syrup (or traditional syrup). I had fresh blueberries in the fridge, so we also used some of them on top.  And I sprinkled with toasted coconut, mainly for the picture, but it was pretty tasty, too.

Coconut Syrup

From Jamie Cooks It Up blog

1/2 cup butter
3/4 cup buttermilk
1 cup sugar
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1 to 2 tsp. coconut extract

Place butter in a medium-sized saucepan, and melt over medium high heat. Add buttermilk and sugar. Stir together. Bring to a boil, stirring constantly, and let it boil 1 minute.

Remove from heat and add baking soda and coconut extract. The syrup will start to foam up and bubble. (That's why it's important to use a medium pan and not a small one.) Let it sit for about 5 minutes. It will thicken slightly as it cools. However, it is still foamy (just FYI!).

Need some other ideas for pancakes (or waffles)? Try these:

  Lemon Ricotta Blueberry Pancakes  with Blueberry Sauce.

Pumpkin Pancakes with Cinnamon Brown Butter

 

Cinnamon Cream Syrup

Copycat from Nashville's Pancake Pantry

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I'm linked to Wichita blogger Ashley's Wake Up Wednesdays feature. Click on the link for loads of other tried and tested recipes.