A Day on the Farm

Brandon's sister and her husband live on a dairy farm. They lead a busy life with milkings, feedings, calving and other dairy farm goodness! I love to go visit and check out the cows, calves and kittens!

Last weekend we ran over to their house for a quick visit in the spring sunshine and I grabbed a few shots around the farm.

In the spring and summer the cows get to go romp around in the fields and enjoy the sunshine and green grass. Here is a field of "dry" cows (in English, cows that are about ready to deliver calves and have been taken out of the milk string so that they can rest and kick their feet up for their last few weeks of pregnancy...maternity leave, if you will) and heifers (in English, first time mama cows who have no idea what they are getting into). Don't you worry if that terminology doesn't make sense to you, I think it took me about four years of dating a dairy farmer's son to figure out just those two words and I probably still have them wrong! Just be warned if you call calves, "cavies" like me because it makes them sound so much cuter, you might get a few eye rolls from the dairy farmer folks! But have you ever tried to properly pronouce "calves"--it is quite tricky to actually get the "l" sound right next to the "v" sound...so I just skip it and move right to "cavies."

ANYWAYS...back to the pictures...

Here is a lovely cow--she is my favorite type of dairy cow, a red Holstein. If I owned a dairy farm (which is highly unlikely) I would want them all to be this color. This cow has a little too much white for my taste, but I won't hold it against her, she is still lovely.

As I was photographing this lovely cow, a teeny tiny bird came visiting. This little guy was particularily charming so I took a picture.

A few farm details

There is something about barbed wire that always fascinates me...

Here is a little poppy that just happened to pop up along the gate to the field...I love the bright colors of poppies!

Have a great day!