Dairy Farm Fun!

This past Sunday was great! I went up to a podunk town by Duchesne calles Altamont (Bluebell, Upalco, all the same). My best friend Felicity lives out there with her husband and brand new baby. It being the first Sunday of the month meant that the baby was blessed. They have been trying to have a baby for about 4-5 years, and it FINALLY happened after much prayer and fasting by everyone. Felicity and Kit are going to make GREAT parents. Kit is a true country bumkin, with the cowboy twain, bow-legged walk and everything, so it didn't surprise me that as soon as they found out it was going to be boy he ran out and bought a pony for him. On top of that their sonj is named Brody Bud....can you believe it?!! Little Brody is going to be just like his dad, I can see it now. It was great seeing Ficy, her new son, and all of her family. You see I grew up at Ficy's house. There were some weeks in the summer that I would stay at her house day in, day out. I love that girl and her family. It was a fabulous Sunday!!! (Hopefully I'll have a picture soon)

MOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!

On top of the great day with Ficy and the fam, I also got to go to my roomate Effie's house. She grew up with Ficy's husband and lives right around the corner from Kit and Fice (relatively speaking, considering it's all rugged rocks and plataus around there). Her family runs a small family dairy farm with a couple hundred cows. She took me on a tour and told me all about what they do there. It was fun since I've never really had a chance to walk around a real farm like that.

About 30 minutes before we got there one of the cows gave birth to a brand new baby calf. I got to see them take it away from the mom for weaning, it was kind of sad. You could tell the mom was upset and almost started charging the farmhands. I would have pet it, but it was still a bit slimey. Cute, but gross.

I also got to see how they feed the babies. They live in these small individual "houses." The farmers have to go to each one and feed it a bottle of milk. After a while they are moved to a pin with several other calves and are fed hay and water. Soon after that they move in with the rest of the cows in the field. The milking was pretty smelly. They are all hearded into the milking house and hooked up to the machines. They just stand there and poo and milk. So you can guess what the floor looked like. All in all, it was very interesting to see how it was all run. I had a GREAT time.