I am pleased to report that Larkspur Farm has re-entered the cattle business. After five years on the sidelines we are back in the game, with one head, a dollar calf from a dairy barn.
It was completely unplanned. We took in a young man named Luke last fall. Luke went to school with my sons and had been a frequent guest here for the last decade. But this is a minimum wage community for young people and rents are geared to skiers who have lots of cash in their pockets. A kid can’t expect to afford an apartment up here on restaurant wages so we invited him to crash with us for the winter.
Luke has no background in farming at all, in fact the subject is a total mystery to him. Imagine my surprise when he started running out to the barn at first light to let the sheep out and toss hay bales. One day he asked why I didn’t have any cows and I explained that they had been so expensive the last few years I gave up on them. But if he was interested we could find one.
He was. So we drove the truck up through the snow swept plains of Grey County to the old Keady Livestock Market. As we toured the pens Luke’s eyes widened at the sight of an acre of cows and calves. His eyes went even wider as we climbed up into the bleachers around the sales ring to find a seat in the crowd.
“Holy Cow!” he said. “This is like the Mos Eisley Spaceport for cows!”
“Indeed it is,” I said, trying to sound like Obi wan Kenobi. “I will do the talking, Luke.”
The first dollar calf that came out was a Holstein Angus cross that couldn’t have been more than a few days old. The bidding started at a $150, I waved twice and the auctioneer pointed to me.
“Sold… to Dan Needles,” he said.
Luke was astounded. “What? They know you?”
“Yes, little grasshopper. I have been coming here since 1962.”
We paid for the calf and loaded it into the crate on the back of the truck. It looked healthy enough, no snotty nose or yellow streaks on his tail. “The Force is strong in this one,” I said. “But we will take no chances. A lot can go wrong with a dollar calf.”
On the way home we stopped at the Walter’s Falls feed mill and bought a supply of milk replacer, boluses, tetracycline and syringes, electrolytes and a bottle of Vitamin A&E. Dan, the manager of the mill asked if I had a sick calf and I explained that we had just bought one and it appeared to be healthy. But you never know.
“I think he’s a pessimist,” said Luke.
“I believe that chance favours the prepared man.”
A funny thing happens when a boy gets his first calf. Luke weighed the milk replacer on a set of scales and mixed it into the bottle. Four times a day he trotted out to the barn to feed and check on his new charge. He learned to observe both ends of the calf for signs of pathology. Then he started making inquiries about hay and calf starter. By spring he was looking at the landscape in a completely different way. Every trip into town turned into a crop tour as he inquired about each passing field, its crop and the purpose of that crop. He’s out there planting a garden as I write and planning another trip to Keady Market this week to scout out laying hens. Keady is the Spaceport for poultry, too.
These days we are reminded by every farm spokesperson how important it is to educate the public about agriculture. The problem with that idea is that most people have no interest in being educated about anything. I watch Luke and I wonder if it might make more sense to distribute dollar calves to schoolchildren and let them discover the world for themselves and learn to look after the life around them.
I catch Luke every now and then in the barn with his calf. After he has fed and watered the calf and cleaned the pen, and he thinks I’m not looking, he hops up and down to make Hon romp around him. I watch their little dance and it occurs to me that this is how we are supposed to learn about agriculture. In wide-eyed and delighted amazement.