Here A Cow, There A Cow, Everywhere Cow, Cow (and a horse, of course)

We've been busy here at Pure Water Hollow with some brand new farm animal experiences, but I haven't yet recorded anything about it here on the blog.  On September 23rd we jumped head first into a grand bovine adventure! 

Lisa has always wanted a family milk cow, but we've never felt like we were ready.  I guess we still weren't ready in September, but the cows were, and the price was right!  We made the trek to near Mt. Sterling and brought home a 4 year old Jersey cow in milk with two bull calves and bred back to have another calf around June, as well as another 2 year old Jersey cow bred to calve in December!  We got them to Pure Water Hollow and introduced our horse Gracie to her 4 new room-mates.  We then hastily put up some new fence around our old barns and had to decide how to get a milking station ready.  Our "getting ready" process took several days.  The milk cows were patient and took to their new names as if they were born with them.  The 4 year old is named Violet and the the 2 year old is Dandelion.

We have been enjoying wonderful fresh milk and butter since October 1st!  None of us had ever milked a cow before, but we were quick learners!  We had a few rocky sessions at first, but soon things ironed out into a smooth routine and Violet seemed to forgive our inexperience.  We've been doing a system of once a day milking by keeping Violet up through the night, milking her in the morning, and then letting the calves have her milk throughout the day.  Most of the time Lisa and Christina have been the milk-maids, but Simon, Matthew and I have taken turns with the milking as well.  I mainly help on Saturdays and Sundays since I am home on those mornings.

Throughout October we worked on fencing in a good area of our pasture field down the road at our other property and also getting the barn in shape to house some animals.  There was much more work done there than I can do justice to with this writing, but suffice it to say, Pure Water Pastures has now been well christened!

We moved Gracie and Dandelion to the pasture some time ago, but kept Violet and the calves here, close to home, to keep the milking easier.  Today we decided to re-unite the entire gang and took Violet and the calves to the field.  Today I also finally took some pictures of the animals!  It was a cold, frosty, morning but things warmed up nicely with the sunny day.

Here is Violet with one of her calves in tow:

 The other calf is a twin, but a bit smaller:

Here's Gracie and Dandelion looking at the camera:

There they go!

Here is a closer picture of Violet.  She has a darker face than Dandelion and is a bigger cow:

All 5 animals in one picture:

I think Timothy is listening to Gracie's heartbeat:

Dandelion is wearing a red halter:

We also took a nice walk along the river below the pasture.  Here is a plant that we would like to identify:

A couple of good shots of Simon:

When we got finished with our little hike the sun was getting ready to set behind the mountains and we decided to put a bale of hay under our "in-progress" shelter.  Part of the field we fenced in is overgrown and this is where we are setting up the shelter.  So far, Matthew has been the carpenter on this project with Simon and Christina as helpers.

And now for the sunset.  Sunsets are a bit different here in eastern Kentucky compared to places where everything is flattened out too much.  I've seen some awesome sunsets on the Caribbean Sea, and hope to see some more, but I still like the way the sun sets here in the hills as well.  The sun goes down earlier here compared to at the ocean so these pictures were taken between 4:43pm and 4:46 pm in the afternoon!  Here is the sun saying farewell to us from behind the barn at Pure Water Pastures:

A different angle:

This one was taken from the house at 4:46 pm:

For some reason I hear a certain song in my head at the end of this post.  Maybe it's because of the horse and the sunset, but I'm hearing "Happy trails, to you, until we meet again...."