Carrie,
I'm so over this title of these posts. I'm going to be back next week with a brand new title for it. I don't have anything witty today but I know I can do better.
I promise not to describe any inanimate objects in absurd detail today. I don't know what I was thinking sending that to you. I hope that no one in the pen happened to steal a glance at it. I imagine a person could get her tiny ass kicked for having letters like that. I can only imagine your horror. 4-Her's honor, I will be much let ridiculous today.
You strike me as someone who might once have been in 4-H. Am I correct in this assumption? Strange to think that I've spent countless hours talking with you and I don't think the subject ever came up. Let me go google you some basic info, including what the hell all the Hs stand for. BRB
From random Google Searching:
4-H is a community of young people across America who are learning leadership, citizenship, and life skills.
What is 4-H?............................................
There are over 7 million 4-Hers in the United States alone, making 4-H the largest out-of-school youth program. Everyone, ages eight through eighteen, can participate in the 4-H program. (Ages vary among states)
4-H is a part of the Cooperative Extension System, a non-profit program operated through each state's land grant university. The Extension System's staff operate 4-H offices throughout the counties of each state.
In 4-H, youth learn life skills they will benefit from forever. Most 4-H programs center around three areas, leadership, citizenship, and life skills.
The Pledge
I pledge my head to clearer thinking
my heart to greater loyalty
my hands to larger service
my health to better living
for my club, my community, my country, and my world.
The Motto
"To make the best, better"
Back to Me:
Fun Huh? How goody two shoes? So if you have not guessed Devin and I were Active members in the Paradise Dell 4H Club. We had meetings and stuff. I think there was even a singing contest one year.
The main reason for being in the Paradise Dell 4H club, was to participate to the fullest extent in the Russell County Fair. Let me go google the Russell County Fair, See what I can pull you. BRB
Shocking. I really expected some silly home page for the Russell County Fair, some cheesy little site with flashing text and a Ferris wheel GIF or two. Nope. Not that fair. The best I could come by was a listing on the Kansas Fair Association home page letting me know it's happening in August.
So 4H for me, was all about the Fair. 4Hers were allowed and encouraged to enter Multiple contests of all different varieties. I competed in several events during my time in 4H. The biggest one, and most challenging was raising a bucket calf. Bucket Calves, for those not raised on ranches or farms, are baby cows who for one reason or another are unable to nurse from the tit of their cow mother. The farmer then is left to the task of seeing to the nourishment of the bucket calf.
I don't recall the ins and outs of bucket calfery all that well, but I'll tell you, this was one part of the fair I did not really enjoy. Raising the thing was a pain in my young ass. The calf was born in the winter, as I seem to recall most of our cattle were.
My poor orphan calf lived in a pen with a small corrugated tin barn in one corner. The pen was a rectangle approximately 30 yards in length and 20 yards wide. In the corner opposite the barn was the gate which I had to climb over to feed the calf. The pen was a brisk 400 Yard walk from our tiny farm house.
During the months in which I nursed this dear calf my routine was this: I would awake, as I always did in those young farm days at the very plumber crack of dawn. Somedays I was allowed my morning cereal, other days I had to immediately dress and head out to the garage, across the yard from our house. Inside the garage we kept the empty bottles for feeding the calves. I would grab a bottle, they were about thed size of a 2 Liter soda bottle, but made from thick off white plastic, not unlike the plastic used to in human milk jugs. There was also a large 40 pound bag of milk powder, the equivalent of human formula. EW. This stuff has the most distinct, disgusting smell to it. Sadly I can not describe this reek, any attempt would end up like the coffee cup incident of yesterday, and neither you nor I want to go through that again. I do hear by make you this promise, I will one day next week write you a poem about this strange powder. I would take one cup of this powder and dump it, with my nose facing as far the opposite direction as my young boy arms and neck would allow, into the bottom of the bottle.
After the short skip back across the yard I would fill the bottle full of hot water in the sink. Next it was time to apply the nipple. This part was also very unpleasant. The only thing that smells as bad if not worse than the nasty powder substance is that very substance mixed with hot water. EW! The nipple was never easy to place over the top of this stinking bottle of hot white liquid. This action required a super human effort of a 10 year old child. I would often whine my mother into doing it for me. Bless her.
Having finally finagled this strange black rubber nipple onto the bottle of gross it was time to walk on over to the calf pen. Often the bottle would be a little too full, or the nipple would create extra suction which would draw the sides of the bottle in tight, forcing the liquid to squirt out it's rankness into a little stream with every step. The calf for it's part was hungry. Sometimes hungry enough to come running to the gate. On these occasions it was a breeze to stick the bottle through the fence and feed the cow from behind the safety zone of the fence. Unless of course the nipple fell off, as they often did.
These little cows really like this substance we feed them. They like it a lot. They will pull the bottle from your hands if your not paying attention. Or worse, suck the nipple off the bottle. In some cases when the nipple is pulled from the bottle all the liquid would spill out, forcing me to walk back home and start the entire process over. Other times the liquid could be saved, but then I would have to enter the pen in order to retrieve the nipple from the calfs mouth. Not a fun task.
All of these issues could be complicated on the years when my brother also had a calf in the same pen. This meant we would have to work together, and go feed them at the same time. Because feeding one calf with another in the same pen was essentially impossible. If you don't have a nipple for both mouths, these little guys will run you all over the pen. Did I mention it was really cold? Sucked.
As the months progressed the challenge grew a bit easier in that the calf was more adjusted to the process. At the same time the job took on a new degree of difficulty and danger, because cows grow fast. Much faster than small blonde farm boys.
I'm not sure at this point how long this whole process takes. I have not been on a farm in years. It seems like it was a six month process though, so you can give or take to that as your imagination sees fit. At the end of the process it was time for the fair! Yay! So we come back to 4H, where this whole thing began.
The Bucket Calf competition in 4h is a bit blurry to me. I recall not liking it at all. By this time I weighed in the neighborhood of 75 pounds, my calf on the other hand came in around 250 pounds*. At the beginning of the fair week we would load up the calf or calves, in the back of a stock trailer and drive them from our farm to the Russell County Fairgrounds. There we would unload the calf and set him up a little temporary home in a large barn building. A building for cattle which must be rather similar to the building you live in now. Hmm... Is this an allegory or a metaphor? Discuss...
The competition would come at the end of the week. The calf would be harnessed by a large rope around it's also large neck. My small hands, attached to my very small body, would grab the opposite end of the rope. There were always about 20 kids in a similar predicament involved in the competition. We would lead our calves into a show pen. A dusty dirty pen with a roof over the top and bleachers on the side. These creatures don't really like to go where you want them to, so each boy has a small fiber glass prod, which is used essentially into annoying the calf into going where you wish.
I never really new what the judges were judging. I think it had something to do with how well your calf looked, and how well you handled it. I was really just waiting for it all to be over. Eventually it was, and I would no doubt get a participation ribbon, nothing of higher honor. I never cared.
In all this I learned that orphan cows have it rough, as do the little boys who feed them and their mothers who have to help. My dad seemed to have a genuine love for cows. He once saved one that was born with it's leg wrapped around it's head. It was born dead, but had apparently not been dead long. My father gave the baby creature, still covered in after birth, mouth to mouth. Actually blew life back into this dead creature. I'll never forget that.
At the end of the fair the calf was old enough to join the other cows. He would be released into the pasture with them. Within a few more months they would all be sold. Then they would killed and butchered#. Then they are eaten.
*I make these figures up, there is a lot of giving and taking, the actually weights are lost to me now, what you are left with is how my memory felt about the event.
#Not sure about the order... Killed and then butchered or the other way around...
***
I'm enclosing some pictures, one of which is a birthday card. I was thrilled to receive your letter dated January 6th last night. I was unable to get the password for shelf indulgence to work. One of the letters seemed a bit jumbled. If you could re-send them I may be able to work it.
Rock on,
Brandon
Gotta go, it's snow 4:30. I may tell you more about the fair next week, and I owe you a poem.
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