Surprise! Lil Gin Heifer Calf
July 24th ended up being The Day. Push had come to shove, and we decided enough was enough. It was time to stop talking about killing the mean rooster we got with our chicks in February and DO IT. And do it we did.
You can read more of that story here, but the short version of the story continues.
Robyn, Clancy’s Aunt, conveniently was coming over for a chicken dinner, so we decided to prank her by sending gruesome pictures of the dead rooster hanging and me plucking it. When she arrived, I was oiling and herbing up a beautiful chicken carcass for the oven.
We didn’t have the heart to keep playing the joke, it was a chicken from a farm in Northern California we were having that night, but we did pull out the fully dressed rooster carcass that would make it to our dinner table once it had been in the fridge for a few days to a week. That is supposed to help tenderize it.
While that bird cooked, it was chore time. We were proudly showing off our new baby goats and enjoying a rooster-attack-free visit with our hens when Nathaniel’s eagle eye spotted a little brown calf bounding amongst the cows grazing in the middle pasture.
Lil Gin, born here at Big Rock, had her second calf! We had been watching her, but the action did not seem at all imminent. These are the BEST births, really; so little anxiety involved, just a happy surprise!
We asked Clancy what he wanted to name the spicy little heifer calf. His response was, “Art.” So Nathaniel and Robyn spiced up that name suggestion by naming her Artemis. It is a big name to live up to, the Goddess of all living things, nature, the wild, the moon, and new life. Getting to know her and seeing how she fits into the cow herd will be interesting!
Artemis makes our cow herd ten strong, the most we have ever had! We have difficult decisions ahead of us as we plan to change our herd dynamic dramatically before it is time to start feeding hay in the late Fall. This summer, it will be fun to watch Artemis and Granger’s steer calf, Chico Maurice, play in the green pastures of Big Rock!
It has taken us weeks to find it in us to kill the rooster; the timing of killing an animal while another was born is not lost on me. The cycle of life could not be more tangible to us, to Clancy. In general, we are pretty removed from death, and these first-hand experiences with both new life and permanent death, while very hard, speak something to our souls. Something primitive.
Being an adult and experiencing these things next to Clancy, a young child, feels like we are part of an experiment. These things were not part of our childhood, but they are his. Will that help him cherish the fragility of life, process the permanence of death, and thrive because he innately his soul knows that it is life and he’s meant to live? Will this all be just a part of him? I feel like I am trying to grasp it all.
It is difficult stuff we face here, even the good stuff, like babies being born.
