Last week we got a new cow. (Well, she’s not ours, really — she’s on loan from a friend in exchange for milk — and she’s a heifer, not a cow. But those two minor details aside, my opening statement is one hundred percent true.)

you can’t see her in the photo for all the people admiring her

Her name is Honey and she’s due the end of this month or the beginning of April. I’m not exactly sure what breed she is — a cross between Jersey and maybe Holstein and/or Normande? — and she’s super sweet.

Or at least she’s sweet with humans. With the other cows, she’s pretty much a holy terror, charging them with her horns and chasing them away from the food. It was so bad, in fact, that we got a little worried that Emma’s milk production would drop and wondered if we might have to feed them separately, but things are stabilizing now — i.e. Honey’s learning to share. She’s still somewhat territorial and stabby, but less so. 

We’ve been trying to spend time with her, getting a halter on her and coaxing her into the milking shed, turning on and off the vacuum pump (for the milker) so she gets used to it, etc.

She doesn’t like grain, but she’s a voracious hay-eater and goes nuts for alfalfa, so we bought her a few bales of that. 

thanks for the present, girlfriend

I thought she’d be delivering in April, but she’s looking close: swollen and hard udder, bits of mucus, leaking teats. I spent a lot of time yesterday staring out the window: Why is she stretched out like that? Is she straining? Is her back arched? Has she stopped eating?

I ran down to the field several times, too, to poke her udder, check her pins (the ligament between the pin bone and the tail bone that turns jello-y before birth), and give her lots of good brush-downs and neck scratches. Pro tip: always scratch a cow’s neck( instead of the top of the head) so they’re less likely to headbutt for attention.

checking the pins: they’re beginning to soften

At one point, the kids joined me in the field, and my older son taught my younger son how to ride motorcycle. There was lots of “Watch out for the poop!”

And then Honey got frisky from all the excitement and tossed her head at me, goring my boob with her horn. It was just a light poke but that was enough to make me turn tail and head back to the house, thank you very much.

P.S. Is anyone else getting a kick out of today’s date? Three-twenty-three-twenty-three, wheee!

This same time, years previous: the cheezer, the quotidian (3.23.20), almond cardamon tea cake, the solo, the tables are turning, the quotidian (3.23.15), the walk home, oatmeal toffee bars.

A few weeks back, my older daughter bought herself a sewing machine and now she stays up late at night teaching herself how to make linen skirts, coffee-dyed cotton petticoats, and corsets with zip ties for ribbing. (Next up, buttons, which have her positively buzzing.)

This sewing streak began when she was living in Massachusetts and made herself a Halloween costume based on a character from Outlander — lots of petticoats and a bustle — though, wait a sec. Hang on. Now that I think about it, she did take sewing lessons from a friend of mine years ago, and before that there was that “dress” she fashioned from an empty bag of dog food, the pair of slippers she made out of masking tape, and the doll quilt. So maybe she’s actually been into sewing a lot longer than I realize? Hm, I may have to rethink my narrative arc.

In any case, I find her fascination with sewing equal parts hilarious and curious. See, I dislike sewing with a vengence (just the thought of working with bobbins and fabric makes me feel almost nauseated) and yet here I am with a child who loves it, what the heck?

When I mentioned this bizarre turn of events to a friend, she pointed out that sewing isn’t that big of a jump from making cheese or baking a cake, which is true, yes, but still. I always find it a little startling when a child loves something I don’t — skydiving, horseback riding, motorcycling, chickens, coding, fantasy books, computers — and my surprise is usually greater with the girls, perhaps because I subconsciously expect them to be more like me. (I know better, of course, but this is how I feel.)

The other day after my daughter showed me one of her most recent seamstressing developments, I just shook my head and said to no one in particular, “Where in the world did you come from?”

Without missing a beat, she said, “Your hoo ha,” and we both busted up laughing. 

There’s no point to this post, really, except to say that it’s truly wild to watch the evolution of your children as they go from Helpless Blobs to Distinct Humans — quirky, curious, passionate, and driven. It’s so surprising, it’s almost funny. Like a cosmic joke but of the very best sort. 

I love it.

P.S. While I was working on this post, a box of fabric arrived in the mail for my daughter — yards upon yards of dark green, pinstriped wool — and now I’m beginning to think she may have been born in the wrong century…

This same time, years previous: any-cut-of-beef pot roast magic, beef tamales, from my sister-in-law in Hong Kong: Covid-19 at the two-month mark, spring hits, what did you eat for lunch?, the quotidian (3.21.16), a morning’s start, an accidental expert, over the moon, roasted vegetables.

The other night for supper, I made a pot of veggie soup — my attempt to replicate the soup we had at our small group gathering last weekend. Our group’s name is Stone Soup, and that’s often what we have for dinner when we get together: the host will set a pot of water to boiling and then we all bring stuff to toss in. That weekend, there’d been both white and sweet potatoes, broth, spinach, kale, tomatoes, beans, ground pork and onions, butternut squash, rice, and probably some other stuff I’m not remembering. 

It was delicious, so I had to make some for us, as well as garlic butter bread with smoked cheese, which was something else we ate at small group. The host had a baguette and, on the spur of the moment, someone grabbed a mortar and pestle and mashed a couple cloves of garlic and some salt into butter. “Eat the garlic bread and smoked cheese together,” someone suggested, so I did and it was so good my head about fell off.

So anyway, that’s what I made for supper the other night. It was just my husband and me, which is getting more and more common these days: the kids are still here, but they bounce in and out, and keeping up with their schedules is tricky so when the food is ready, we eat, never mind them. My younger son was getting a shower — he had choir rehearsal and wasn’t sure he’d have time to eat first (“Just put my soup in a to-go container,” he’d shouted as he pounded up the stairs to the bathroom) — and my girls had a dinner date with a girlfriend in town. 

We’d just sat down when my husband squinted at the stove. “Ugh,” he said. “I can’t stand looking at that dirt.” He jumped up, dug the vacuum out of the closet and, using the long, skinny attachment, vacuumed out under the stove. As soon as he sat back down, it was my turn to pop up, grab my camera, switch off the table light, and stand on my chair to photograph my soup. 

“Mmm, good,” I purred, shoveling more buttery garlic bread into into my mouth, at which point my husband had the audacity to tell me it had too much garlic and that maybe he’d like it better if the garlic wasn’t raw. And then I snorted and called him The Queen Elizabeth since she’d banned garlic from Buckingham Palace.

We were nearly done with our meal when my younger son plopped down beside me and began slurping soup. He took one bite of the bread before announcing he’d eat the bread when he got home. “I don’t want to breathe garlic on everyone.”

“Too late,” I said. “You already took a bite. Just eat it.”

“Later,” he repeated, wrapping his plate with plastic wrap.

And then he slammed out the door and my husband and I cleaned up the kitchen. The end.

This same time, years previous: spiced gouda divino, the milking parlor, the quotidian (3.16.20), pastry, expanded, fresh ginger cookies, good writing, wear a helmet!, the quotidian (3.16.15), smiling for dimples, warmth, cornmeal blueberry scones.