Sunday, February 21, 2010

From Ohio to Tennessee and Back Again

We didn't start out in a small town in Western Tennessee. No, we actually had started out on a small 10 acre lot 500 feet from where we live now.

In 1998, for Valentine's Day, my husband (then my fiancee) gave me a beautiful little holstein calf. She was almost all black, with four white socks and a perfect heart shaped white spot on her head. I named her Valentine, of course! LOL

Valentine was my first experience with a calf.

I suppose now would be a good time to confess that I am deathly afraid of cattle. You must respect them. I mean, anything that can grow to 1000 pounds (or sometimes more!) in their first year of life deserves respect, right?!

Horses, no problem. Saddle 'em up and toss me on their back, I'm good to go.

Cattle? Forget it.

Calves are a completely different story...they are small, they drink from a bottle....they can't stampede you to deat - yet.

Unfortunately, we lost Valentine within the week. I don't know what happened. I only know that we spent 3 days trying to pull her out of what we suspect was scours. My first calf experienced ended very badly, and with a lot of tears.

A few weeks later we acquired Gabe, who was a Limosine/Holstein cross. Lemme tell you, I love this cross! Big, beautiful, and gentle...that was our Gabe! Within the week we had managed to get a heifer of the same cross....We named her Gabby.

Later that same year, we traded for an Angora Pygmy Goat named Petey. He was solid white, had blue eyes, and was my pet.

He also fit the comical goaty sterotype of butting anyone who bent over. Learned that the hardway, when I was picking up his left over corn husks from the yard. Ooops.

Then things spiralled out of control for us, and we made the choice to move, due to some ugly circumstances. Gabe, Gabby, and Petey were all sold.

We moved to Tennessee in August 1998, just a mere two weeks after our wedding. Over the next 2 years we got jobs, had our first child, and attended my dad's funeral. Having not seen my father in 12 years and attending his funeral, and grieving his death, were a little surreal.

The realization that we both only had one living parent left, and we decided to move back to Ohio so that we could be close enough to see them - if we wanted.

Needless to say, we ended up living much closer to them than we had originally aniticpated.

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