Terry is enlarging the pasture
Working at it steady so the grass will grow big and strong and healthy before the heat of the summer arrives
The other four pastures are really looking rich and green…Terry says it really nice to have the time and the energy to work on some of the other parts of the farm.
Which brings me to this post I’ve wanted to do for a little spell.
Our cows back in the day
A long time blog friend writes for the local paper in her New York area, the Amsterdam Recorder, she took a wee trip and wrote about it for all her readers to enjoy. I asked her if I could reprint a bit of it for my farming blog and she said yes.
The grandchildren watching the cows being moved years and years ago
“And speaking of being, as opposed to seeing, green, we encountered evidence of recent hot “green” issues along the way. While waging our own battles on the leg of the trip south through Pennsylvania, dodging potholes with varied success, and heaping language not befitting ladies and gentlemen upon some of the drivers with whom we narrowly avoided close encounters of the crashing kind, I noticed something interesting.
While all of America frets and stews about flatulence from cattle, most of which live in the relatively clean, green, rural countryside, a little air freshening around urban backdoors might be in order.
As we wound down the mountains of the Keystone State, sometimes mistaking the potholes on 81 for valleys, the actual valleys were filled wall-to-wall with cities; houses, factories, malls and parking lots.
And every single one of them was shadowed under its own smoggy mantle of flatulence. The kind that emanates from cars and trucks and heating systems and all the things associated with large collections of people. I have never seen a miasma such as that over a barn, pasture or even the most crowded of feedlots.
Alas, because there aren’t many farmers left, the people who eat what they grow and who wear the products of those cotton fields, don’t understand them anymore. They blame them for something they are.”
Amsterdam Recorder
Our cows out on the pasture on the Back Forty,
I know that each and every one of you, gentle readers, are not the people who condemn farmers or farming as a way of life, but huge supporters, for often times I get emails saying “Thank a Farmer”.
Our cows coming in for breakfast years and years ago
But for those who are new to my blog, or new to anyone’s blog about farming…I thought what Marianne wrote was well said. Often times it’s the very thing we are condemning others for, which we are (also) guilty.
So too not preach or make anyone uncomfortable I leave you now.
From my humble heart to your world,
Linda
Life on a Colorado Farm 
Linda, you could never sound preachy. Farmers are the only reason so much land is healthy. Them, and the animals they run on that land. I respect the position of vegetarians, but find them sadly ignorant of practical farming economics when they tell me that cattle ‘cost the Earth’ more to produce than beans or corn and farmers should be growing vegetable foods, not meat. I’d like to show them some of the land our farmers graze their cattle on, with water only every 25 miles – if they’re lucky. How do you grow vegetable crops in the far outback, on poor, hard, rocky, hilly, bone dry soil, without clearing trees or the possibility of irrigation? Cattle, and the people who eat them, are not the only problem, not by a long chalk.
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No, sadly you are so right.
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Your friend wrote a very nice — and needed — article. Thanks for sharing it with us.
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You are most welcome.
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I recognized the inimitable writing style of Marianne right away and she is so right. Good post.
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She has a great way with words.
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Oh, what a grand topic. I didn’t grow up around cows but, farm life…there is nothing like it.
I’m sorry but, cow farts are not the reason our climate is changing. Cows have been farting for as long as cows have existed. Farts don’t accumulate like algae. 🙄😆
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🙂 No they don’t!
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Great article; we need more people pointing out that the emperor wears no clothes.
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Very true!
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What a smart article she has written and thank you for sharing it with us. I agree with Kate also. We are so quick to make judgements about things we know next to nothing about. Most are just repeating what someone else wants us to believe. If it wasn’t for farmers, none of us would have anything to eat. It’s hard, backbreaking work with little return. You have to have a vast knowledge in so many areas to be even remotely successful at farming. Who would be foolish enough to condemn cattle farming? Wait till the summer crops wash away this year and there is no one to pick what is there and see how they whistle. I’m not nearly as articulate as Kate but definitely feel the same way. I get a bit bristly on this subject.
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It’s really a sad sort of world anymore.
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I am so confused by the cow issue for exactly the reason she wrote.
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I so agree with you.
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Good God !
The writer is 100% correct.
Being a country ‘boy” at heart, I can’t fathom out some of these “city slickers” and their
so-called “LOGIC” on topics they have not comprehension of.
I say/write no more – getting to Mt. Etna stage of eruption – ha ha.
Cheers
Colin
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🙂
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Thanks for your kind words, Linda and everyone.
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🙂
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🙂 I know how you feel…some people are just not right in the head. Veggie burgers seem to be the “in thing” now…how sad. So few little farmers left…and everyone has gas…even people:)
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Yep….:)
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Great post Linda!
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She said it all so well.
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