An Early Morning Shower

On most mornings the alarm goes off a little past 5 am and Tricia and I make use of the ‘snooze’ feature on the alarm clocks.  In the past we used electric-powered alarm clocks, but in our rural area, the electricity goes on and off quite often and we discovered that it is best to use the old battery operated clocks that we each keep on the nightstand by the bed.

Now that we’re milking only two cows instead of three, we were able to set the alarm to give us an additional 15 minutes of sleep.  We have things timed perfectly where we know how long it will take us to get everything done in time to get me out of the door to work by 6:30 am.  That includes mixing up feed for cows, goats, and chickens, feeding the chickens, watering all the animals, calling in the cows, washing their udders, applying Vaseline, feeding and milking the cows and goat, switching the cows to a fresh paddock all in time to get me in to shower and dress and off to work.

Our regimen normally works to perfection, much like a well-oiled machine or a finely crafted Swiss watch.  And then things happen like this morning that throw a monkey wrench into the cogs of the intricate machine.  After the 15 inch deluge we posted about yesterday, overnight we received an additional half inch of the wet stuff as if we didn’t have enough mud already. 

Normally when we turn the lights on in the barn at 5:35, Daisy, ‘the matriarch of the herd,’ will arrive at the barn door first as she’s quite gluttonous and enjoys her breakfast immensely.  We opened the door and brought her in to her milking stall.  Rosie followed shortly thereafter.  All we could say was, “Oh, Rosie!”  While Daisy was as clean and shiny as a copper penny, Rosie had proceeded to lay down in a mud hole overnight and was muddier than a pig. 

When you are at the livestock arena, preparing for a livestock show, there are nice concrete-lined wash stalls to get your animal cleaned up and ready for the show.

The wash racks at the Jeff Davis Parish Livestock Arena - Much nicer than the one we have at Our Maker's Acres Family Farm!

We don’t have such nice facilities at our barn.  We do, however, have a water hose, so Tricia led Muddy Rosie out of the barn against her will as she was ready for breakfast.  I had to get behind her and push her big muddy, rear end out of the barn.  I fumbled for the spigot in the dark and we washed her up as quickly as we could.  Tick tock, tick tock.  Tricia had to turn her so that I could spray her down on both sides, underneath and behind.  We got her back inside, dried her off and got everything done.

Now we could keep the cows inside the barn on rainy nights, but experience has taught us that cows are horrible housekeepers.  It is not a pretty sight coming into a small barn inhabited overnight by cows.  They knock things over and pee and poop all over the place and then lay in it.  We learned early on that cows need to be outside.

I completed the rest of the morning chores and got inside and took my early morning shower and got out the door a little later than usual – maybe 10-12 minutes later than normal.  In hindsight, its mornings like these when I realize that I shouldn’t have hit the snooze button.  Then again, Rosie would certainly help things out by learning to keep herself clean like Daisy.