In the winter the cows have the run of the whole farm, all the ditch banks, the shorn off crop fields, the fields we have not farmed in years because getting the irrigation water over to them is just too hard, and the ‘upper end’.   (This is what we call the back of our place.)

Come calving season the cows come to live in the corrals.  We have lost calves before to the coyotes, and our sheep raising neighbors and the dairy about three miles above us have lost animals to mountain lions.  (We sometimes see the mountain lion footprints on the ditch banks, but that is another story).

A cow in the middle of birthing a calf is a very vulnerable animal, and the calf is even more helpless. 

Then when farming starts and all the calves are born, several weeks old and able to run fast, the cattle get to go back to the upper end. 

The upper end, the old alfalfa field, all along the fence lines, we have wild animals.  Most of the time they live with us in harmony and the cows don’t seem to mind them at all.

Every year, we scatter corn seed for the whole slue of wild birds to eat (and stay away from the growing plants) and every year we see rows of corn becoming food for the deer and the skunks and the raccoons.  We try to make sure there is enough for them and us.

Still there are rules, the wild things stay out of the yard and we won’t bother their hidey holes.