Originally posted at www.herodogsblog.tumblr.com on 24 March, 2016.
Yesterday afternoon the boss called to say that the farm has finally been sold. We have just four weeks until we have to move back into the bus again.
It will be hard to leave. For six months we’ve worked here, taming cows, raising calves. I will miss my trained calf Alianovna, who I haven’t had time to walk since I got Skuggi and has now outgrown the halter I brought her for Christmas anyway (it was too big for her then!). I’ll miss the tamed milking cows Coconut Twist and One Fifty (AKA Dufflepud). I’ll miss having calves suck on top of my gumboots, miss the cows grabbing hay and grass from my hand with their ridiculously long tongues, miss riding the motorbike, morning walks to the mailbox, the dawn sky on fire. I’ll miss so much about living here.
But at the same time it’s been difficult. It’s calving season, and every day is a struggle. Broken bones, blood soaked into floorboards, dead eyes, tiny broken bodies. Every time a cow goes into labour there’s a 50/50 chance of something going wrong.
We pulled out a calf one night in the pouring rain, a big gold boy. Despite the downpour I still worked up a sweat under my rain jacket. He never took a breath. His mother lay exhausted on the concrete, oblivious to the loss of her baby, and I grieved for her.
Less than twenty-four hours later it was one hour of tension as a heifer took her time calving. Right about the time I thought it was going to be another loss, she got serious and within a few minutes, a wet bundle slid out into the windy world, wriggling and sneezing. It was a beautiful sight.
Dairy farming is both horror and happiness, grief and gratitude, separated only by the space of a second.
And at the end of the day, it will be both relief and regret I feel as we move on.
