Loose Leaf Notes

When we were kids one of our favorite activities was going to the duck pond to feed the ducks with our uncle or our grandfather.  While apple picking over the weekend, Joe and I and our grandsons fed the cows.  Not because we wanted to but because they followed us through the open field, sometimes at a trot.  We threw apples at them to keep them from getting too close, too fast.

“I only like timid cows, not the bold bossy ones,” I told the kids, trying not to show my fear (while throwing in a vocabulary lesson).

Hopa Joe was fine with the cows but little Liam was not, so Joe carried him.  Bryce was braver, but I was not and felt protective of him.  I was also reliving a past trauma.

Many years ago in Texas when my sons were little, I was at a farm buying raw milk when a bull came running around the corner at the speed of a traveling car heading right for us.   I was carrying my youngest, pulling my niece by her arm and yelling to my older son (4) to run.  I’m not sure if the bull got spooked or if I willed him to stop, but he did, just a couple of yards in front of us in a cloud of dust.

There were no cows at the first tree we picked from and it was raining apples like cats and dogs.

Click on the video to see what I mean.

Liam thought this cow was a moose.

I call this shot, “Bryce, Run!” The bold and bossy ringleader cow looks too much like a black bear.

Once we were on the other side of the cow gate, we were all very brave and feeding the cows was fun.  Relieved, Liam spontaneously sang to the cows.

With all the apples we threw, the ones we ate, and the ones the cows chomped at the gate, our harvest supply had dwindled, but there was no way we were going back.

When my sons were little I used to sing them a song that I made up: I got two boys, and they’re bundles of joy.  Now I sing it to my grandsons and with them we make up other lines.  Like the cow song – We got two cows and they’re chasing us now – which we sang all together on the drive home (where I promptly made an apple crisp).  / Last year’s apple picking with the boys, and while speaking with an Irish lilt, is HERE. 

______Our World Tuesday