Category: cows

Announcing Their Cowness

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There were a few dozen who occupied the field
across the road from where we lived,
stepping all day from tuft to tuft,
their big heads down in the soft grass,
though I would sometimes pass a window
and look out to see the field suddenly empty
as if they had taken wing, flown off to another country.

Then later, I would open the blue front door,
and again the field would be full of their munching
or they would be lying down
on the black-and-white maps of their sides,
facing in all directions, waiting for rain.
How mysterious, how patient and dumbfounded
they appear in the long quiet of the afternoon.

But every once in a while, one of them
would let out a sound so phenomenal
that I would put down the paper
or the knife I was cutting an apple with
and walk across the road to the stone wall
to see which one of them was being torched
or pierced through the side with a long spear.

Yes, it sounded like pain until I could see
the noisy one, anchored there on all fours,
her neck outstretched, her bellowing head
laboring upward as she gave voice
to the rising, full-bodied cry
that began in the darkness of her belly
and echoed up through her bowed ribs into her gaping mouth.

Then I knew that she was only announcing
the large, unadulterated cowness of herself,
pouring out the ancient apologia of her kind
to all the green fields and the gray clouds,
to the limestone hills and the inlet of the blue bay,
while she regarded my head and shoulders
above the wall with one wild, shocking eye.
~Billy Collins “Afternoon with Irish Cows”

In recognition of Cow Appreciation Day today:

Most of my life I have been surrounded by cows. I sat on their bony backs while my dad hand-milked our three Guernsey cows. I learned about their pastoral preferences by following their meandering paths through the fields and woods. I know all about their nosiness and their noisiness and their utter fascination with the antics of their humans.

Our family farm had Scottish Highland cattle and cross-breds for a time – raising calves meant monitoring our cows in heat. There isn’t anything else that sounds like a cow in heat. Nothing. Especially in the middle of the night.

During our farm stay travels in Ireland and Scotland a decade ago, we made a point to get to know the local bovines, just for comparison’s sake. Sure enough, the cows there were just as charming and curious as the ones at home, although a bit furrier with more interesting coloration.

We are currently providing temporary lodging for some young steers who need the run of some grassy acreage as they grow and fill out. They are quite content and not the least bit noisy. Having them here reminds me I’ve missed the sound of cows’ reassuring cud chewing, their soft flap of ear, their oval brown eyes, but most of all the acrobatics of a tongue that wraps itself around a clump of grass while grazing and can reach up and clean out a moist nose.

A wondrous creature: their cowness is the perfect combination of mystery and magnificence.

And I need to learn how to play the trombone…

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Thoughtful Dripping Muzzles

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Let the end of all bathtubs
be this putting out to pasture
of four Victorian bowlegs
anchored in grasses.

Let all longnecked browsers
come drink from the shallows
while faucets grow rusty
and porcelain yellows.

Where once our nude forebears
soaped up in this vessel
come, cows, and come, horses.

Bring burdock and thistle,
come slaver the scum of
timothy and clover
on the cast-iron lip that
our grandsires climbed over

and let there be always
green water for sipping
that muzzles may enter thoughtful
and rise dripping.
~Maxine Kumin “Watering Trough” from Selected Poems

photo by Emily Vander Haak

Farmers became the original recyclers before it was a word or an expectation — there isn’t anything that can’t be used twice or thrice for whatever is needed, wherever and whenever, especially far from the nearest retail outlet or farm supply store.

The water troughs on the farm where I grew up were cast-off four-legged bath tubs hauled home from the dump, exactly like the old tub I bathed in when staying overnight at my grandma’s farm house.  She needed her tub to stay put right in the bathroom, never considering an upgrade and remodel; she would never offer it up to her cows.

But there were people who could afford to install showers and molded tubs so out their tubs went to find new life and purpose on farms like ours.

When I was a kid, we kept goldfish in our bathtub water trough, to keep the algae at bay and for the amusement of the farm cats. The horses and cows would stand idle, drowsing by the tub, their muzzles dripping, mesmerized by flashes of orange circling the plugged drain.

I often wondered what they thought of sharing their drinking water with fish, but I suspect they had more weighty things to ponder: where the next lush patch of grass might be, how to reach that belly itch,  and finding the best shade with fewest flies for that summer afternoon nap.

When it comes to sharing a tub, maybe farm animals aren’t that different from their farmer keepers after all: they both stand dripping and thoughtful alongside the tub, contemplating what comes next. After a long hot summer day, it may well be a well-earned rest.

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Let Live

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Let us not with one stone kill one bird, 
much less two. Let us never put a cat 
in a bag nor skin them, regardless 
of how many ways there are to do so. 
And let us never take the bull, especially 
by his gorgeous horns. What I mean is 

we could watch our tongues or keep 
silent. What I mean is we could scrub 
the violence from our speech. And if we find
truth in a horse’s mouth, let us bless her

ground-down molars, no matter how 
old she is, especially if she was given 
as a gift. Again, let’s open her mouth——that of the horse, 
I mean——let us touch that interdental space where 
no teeth grow, where the cold bit was made to grip. 
Touch her there, gently now, touch that gentle 

empty between her incisors and molars, rub her 
aching, vulnerable gums. Don’t worry: doing so calms her. 
Besides, she’s old now; she’s what we call 
broken; she won’t bite. She’s lived through 
two thirteen-year emergences of cicadas

and thought their rising a god infestation, 
thought each insect roiling up an iteration 
of the many names of god, because god to her is 
the grasses so what comes up from grass is
god. She would not say it that way. Nor would she

say the word cicada——words are hindrances 
to what can be spoken through the body, are 
what she tolerates when straddled, 
giddy-up on one side then whoa on the other. After, 
it’s all good girl, Mable, good girl, 
before the saddle sweat is rinsed cool 
with water from the hose and a carrot is offered 
flat from the palm. Yes, words being 

generally useless she listens instead 
to the confused rooster stuttering when the sun
burns overhead, when it’s warm enough
for those time-keepers to tunnel up from the 
dark and fill their wings to make them 
stiff and capable of flight. To her, it is the sound 

of winter-coming in her mane 
or the sound of winter-leaving in her mane——
yes, that sound——a liquid shushing 
like the blood-fill of stallion desire she knew once 
but crisper, a dry crinkle of fall 
leaves. Yes, that sound, as they fill their new wings 
then lumber to the canopy to demand
come here, come here, come 
here, now come. 

If this is a parable you don’t understand, 
then, dear human, stop listening for words. 
Listen instead for mane, wind, wings, 
wind, mane, wings, wings, wings. 
The lesson here is of the mare 
and of the insects, even of the rooster 
puffed and strutting past. Because now, 
now there is only one thing worth hearing, 
and it is the plea of every living being in that field 
we call ours, is the two-word commandment 
trilling from the trees: let live, let live, let live. 
Can you hear it? Please, they say. Please.
Let us live.  
~Nickole Brown “Parable”

When a governor writes about her decision to shoot her wayward dog and stinky goat, our reaction is about the injustice perpetrated on the dog more than her decision to play god with any animal she has responsibility for. I feel a twinge of guilt at the accusation. Who among us can throw stones?

God is clear we are meant to be caretakers of His Creation. Yet I still swat flies and trap mice – there is no pleasure in doing so, so I still ask for forgiveness for my lack of charity and decision to make my own existence more comfortable at the expense of another living thing.

I admit I fail Creation in myriad ways.

I have owned animals whose behavior brought me to my knees, sometimes literally with my face in the muck. I have wept over the loss of a deformed stillbirth foal and a pond of koi frozen in a bitter winter storm. The stories abound of my helplessness in the face of sadness and loss and frustration but I never wanted to become executioner.

I don’t live with cycles of cicada population booms but have experienced their overwhelming din and understood we are mere witnesses and not in control. We are not “little g” gods on this earth. We are its stewards.

Let us live and thrive together.

Please let us live.

photo by Emily Vander Haak

This Was The Day

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Opening the book at a bright window
above a wide pasture after five years
I find I am still standing on a stone bridge
looking down with my mother at dusk into a river
hearing the current as hers in her lifetime

now it comes to me that that was the day
she told me of seeing my father alive for the last time
and he waved her back from the door as she was leaving
took her hand for a while and said
nothing

at some signal
in a band of sunlight all the black cows flow down the pasture together
to turn uphill and stand as the dark rain touches them.
~W.S. Merwin “Sun and Rain” from Flower & Hand.

All day the stars watch from long ago
my mother said I am going now
when you are alone you will be all right
whether or not you know you will know
look at the old house in the dawn rain
all the flowers are forms of water
the sun reminds them through a white cloud
touches the patchwork spread on the hill
the washed colors of the afterlife
that lived there long before you were born
see how they wake without a question
even though the whole world is burning
~W. S. Merwin “Rain Light” from The Shadow of Sirius 

We want so much to leave a legacy for our children that will carry them through their lives, long after we are gone. Then they pass that on to their children, and on and on, like the strands of DNA we leave behind in our descendants.

But words and rituals of faith and covenant can be lost so quickly from one generation to the next. Our DNA passed down is a given, but nothing surpasses the teaching about the eternal love of God and His purpose for His people.

This day, three of our young grandsons are baptized by their church, ushering them into a life in fulfillment of God’s promise within them. As children, they may not yet fully understand how this manifests in their lives, but with the love and guidance of their church, parents, extended family and godparents, they will know His Love as they witness it in His people.

The washing with water from God’s creation, like rain from heaven, gives me hope for the future.

Though the world may be burning, Jesus is right alongside us through it all – I know our children and grandchildren will be all right.

Been Gone So Long

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Just a piano playing plainly, not even for long,
and yet I suddenly think of fields of timothy
and how a cow and I once studied each other over a fence
while the car ticked and cooled behind me.
When I turned around I was surprised that it had not
sprouted tall grass from its hood, I had been gone
so long. Time passes in crooked ways in some tales,
and though the cow and I were relatively young
when we started our watching, we looked
a bit younger when I left. The cow had downed a good
steady meal and was full of milk for the barn.
I drove away convinced of nothing I had been
so sure of before, with arms full of splinters
from leaning on the fence. There was no music—
I was not even humming—but just now the piano
played the exact sound of that drive.
~Annie Lighthart “The Sound of It” from Iron String.

Our brains remember the past in odd ways – from a smell, a sound, a bit of music, a taste - it is as if we are teleported to another place.

Senses can distort time passage and slant the present moment:
Smelling cinnamon, I find myself in my grandmother’s kitchen with her apple pie.
Hearing the sad “cooing” of mourning doves, I’m waking up in my cousins’ farmhouse during a summer visit in the Palouse.
Listening to Joni Mitchell’s “River,” I’m deep in thick books in my study carrel at the library, melancholy and wishing myself to be anywhere else.

As our children were growing up on this farm, I wanted to intentionally “imprint” home on them in similar ways, with familiar smells and tastes and sounds, hoping they would mentally find their way back in myriad ways over the course of their lives. Now I find myself wanting to create the same brain memories for our visiting grandchildren. Perhaps this is why I invite them out to the barn with me as I clean stalls and throw hay and fill water buckets. I want them to never forget the smells and sounds and feelings of taking care of animals dependent on our care.

Which reminds me of long-ago sensations when I was four years old:
sitting on top of a bony Guernsey cow’s back as she chewed her grain,
listening to the shush shush shush of milk being squirted into a metal bucket as my dad milked her, the rich smell of the warm milk froth,
clucking hens searching the barn floor for dropped pieces of corn.

Every day, there is so much to see, to smell, to hear, to taste, to feel – all of which is worthy of space in our brain. I have been gone so long, thinking how much I’ve forgotten, yet it just takes a trick of time and sensation to bring it back and experience it anew.

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The Sunrise Shall Visit Us: They are on their Knees

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Christmas Eve, and twelve of the clock.
“Now they are all on their knees,”
An elder said as we sat in a flock
By the embers in hearthside ease.

We pictured the meek mild creatures where
They dwelt in their strawy pen,
Nor did it occur to one of us there
To doubt they were kneeling then.

So fair a fancy few would weave
In these years! Yet, I feel,
If someone said on Christmas Eve,
“Come; see the oxen kneel,

“In the lonely barton by yonder coomb
Our childhood used to know,”
I should go with him in the gloom,
Hoping it might be so.
~Thomas Hardy “The Oxen”

Says a country legend told every year:
Go to the barn on Christmas Eve and see
what the creatures do as that long night tips over.
Down on their knees they will go, the fire
of an old memory whistling through their minds!

So I went. Wrapped to my eyes against the cold
I creaked back the barn door and peered in.
From town the church bells spilled their midnight music,
and the beasts listened – yet they lay in their stalls like stone.

Oh the heretics!
Not to remember Bethlehem,
or the star as bright as a sun,
or the child born on a bed of straw!
To know only of the dissolving Now!

Still they drowsed on –
citizens of the pure, the physical world,
they loomed in the dark: powerful
of body, peaceful of mind, innocent of history.

Brothers! I whispered. It is Christmas!
And you are no heretics, but a miracle,
immaculate still as when you thundered forth
on the morning of creation!

As for Bethlehem, that blazing star
still sailed the dark, but only looked for me.
Caught in its light, listening again to its story,
I curled against some sleepy beast, who nuzzled
my hair as though I were a child, and warmed me
the best it could all night.
~Mary Oliver “Christmas Poem” from Goodness and Light

Growing up on my childhood farm,
remembering the magic of Christmas eve night,
I bundled myself up to stay warm
in our barn, to witness an unbelievable sight.

At midnight we knew the animals knelt down,
speaking words we could all understand,
to worship a Child born in Bethlehem town,
in a barn, long ago in a far away land.

They were there that night, to see and to hear,
the blessings that came from the sky.
They patiently stood watch at the manger near,
in a barn, while shepherds and kings stopped by.

My trips to the barn were always too late,
our cows would be chewing, our chickens asleep,
our horses breathing softly, cats climbing the gate,
in our barn, there was never a neigh, moo or peep.

But I knew they had done it, I just missed it again!
They were plainly so calm, well-fed and at peace
in the sweet smelling straw, all snug in their pens,
in a barn, a mystery, once more, took place.

Even now, I still bundle to go out Christmas eve,
in the hope I’ll catch them just once more this time.
Though I’m older and grayer, I still firmly believe
in the barn, a Birth happened amid cobwebs and grime.

Our horses sigh low as they hear me come near,
that tells me the time I hope for is now,
they will drop to their knees without any fear
in our barn, as worship, all living things bow.

I wonder anew at God’s immense trust
for His creatures so sheltered that darkening night –
the mystery of why of all places, His Son must
begin life in a barn: a welcoming most holy and right.
~ “In the Barn” (written Christmas Eve 1999)

I walk to the barn tonight as I do each year,
Counting my blessings, knowing my flaws,
Praying for family and friends so dear,
And for each precious creature with hooves or paws.

Each horse is content and a witness to peace,
And I wish every person could know,
Sadness and worry for a moment can cease,
While patting noses down a stall row.

For once I see the sky is clear
And stars are shining bright
The northeast wind is coming near
And briskly chills this special night.

For weeks stars hid behind a cloud
Of doubt, of fear, of weeping rain,
Explosions at once so horrid and loud
The whole world instantly felt the pain.

Like stars that glow through blackest dark
Good overwhelms bad with barely left trace
All owed to a Child who left His mark
By giving Himself in infinite grace.

(written Christmas Eve 2001)

Advent 2023 theme
…because of the tender mercy of our God,
whereby the sunrise shall visit us from on high 
to give light to those who sit in darkness
and in the shadow of death,
to guide our feet into the way of peace.
Luke 1: 78-79 from Zechariah’s Song

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Out of Imagination

barnstormingblog3 Comments

Sometimes the mind

is taken by surprise
as it speaks, are you
sure this is the right street?
for example—or just

cowpath—no more: a blurb,
a bleep, really, out of
the imagination, and then
once again everything is

perfectly still, save, perhaps,
a cow or two on the horizon,—

and the sound of cowbirds
in sudden excellence, where

formerly there were none.
~Jane Mead “Sometimes the Mind” From The Usable Field

photo by Bette Vander Haak
photo by Bette Vander Haak
photo by Bette Vander Haak

Many current roads started out as cowpaths decades ago. These meandering trails made sense to cows at the time. Subsequently, because people lack imagination, we tend to also follow those original twist and turns as we navigate life’s byways. Now paved with asphalt and good intentions, our roads accommodate more than a herd of cows giving hitchhiking cowbirds a free meal.

Cowbirds don’t lack imagination though; they are ready-made opportunists. They occupy any furry back that happens to attract tasty insects. The (horse?)birds happily set sail on a dinner cruise while doing their host a favor by gobbling irritating flies.

Imagine meandering through countryside pastures all day, unconcerned where the next meal will come from because it always comes to you.

Its easy if you try. You can say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one. I hope someday you’ll join us and the world (horses, cows, birds) will live as one…

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From Tuft to Tuft

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There were a few dozen who occupied the field
across the road from where we lived,
stepping all day from tuft to tuft,
their big heads down in the soft grass,
though I would sometimes pass a window
and look out to see the field suddenly empty
as if they had taken wing, flown off to another country.

Then later, I would open the blue front door,
and again the field would be full of their munching
or they would be lying down
on the black-and-white maps of their sides,
facing in all directions, waiting for rain.
How mysterious, how patient and dumbfounded
they appear in the long quiet of the afternoon.

But every once in a while, one of them
would let out a sound so phenomenal
that I would put down the paper
or the knife I was cutting an apple with
and walk across the road to the stone wall
to see which one of them was being torched
or pierced through the side with a long spear.

Yes, it sounded like pain until I could see
the noisy one, anchored there on all fours,
her neck outstretched, her bellowing head
laboring upward as she gave voice
to the rising, full-bodied cry
that began in the darkness of her belly
and echoed up through her bowed ribs into her gaping mouth.

Then I knew that she was only announcing
the large, unadulterated cowness of herself,
pouring out the ancient apologia of her kind
to all the green fields and the gray clouds,
to the limestone hills and the inlet of the blue bay,
while she regarded my head and shoulders
above the wall with one wild, shocking eye.
~Billy Collins “Afternoon with Irish Cows”

Most of my life I have lived surrounded by cows. I have great appreciation for their pastoral presence, and know well their nosiness and their noisiness.

There isn’t anything else that sounds like a cow in heat. Nothing.
Especially in the middle of the night.

There is the fascination of following a meandering cow path through a field –where there is no such thing as a straight line.

And there isn’t anything quite as riveting to a cow than a human approaching the gate.

During our farm stays in Ireland and Scotland a few years back, we made a point to get to know the local bovines, just for comparison’s sake. At home we raised Scottish Highland cattle, so we felt we could speak their language, even if they were Belted Galloways rather than Highlanders. Sure enough, we were just as riveting to them as they were to us.

We have talked about getting a couple of furry cows again for the farm. It’s been awhile since we hosted some here. I’m nostalgic for their reassuring cud chewing, their soft flap of ear, their round transparent eyes, but most of all watching the acrobatics of a tongue that wraps itself around a clump of grass while grazing and can reach up and clean out a moist nose.

A wondrous creature — the bovine – true magnificence and mystery in their cowishness.

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Landing Home

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I was feeling lonely so
I went outside to the wind
swept yard and beyond
that to the wind-tousled outer
yard and found where last
night in the moonlight we left
two sets of boot prints, when
you stopped on your way
through the darkness to bring a
lemon bar and a movie, and
beside ours the tracks of the
smallest thing with claws, which
must have followed sometime
later. And I chased its tiny prints
and our mud-wash indents to
the far back gate and through
the gate out to where the
land is still dirt and brush
and bushes and cow
pies, my hair pinned
to my head but still blowing,
blowing, and finally a hard
breath, and I could see
through lonely to the wide
open, long blue lines of sunset,
moonlit night, the airplanes trailing
one another
down to tarmac, all those
people landing home.
~Angela Janda “At Quarter to Five” from Small Rooms with Gods.

When I walk out on our farm’s hilly fields, I’ve recently noticed more jets passing overhead than I remember in past years. They aren’t as low as I would expect for take offs and landings from Vancouver (B.C.) International Airport an hour north of us or descending for an approach to SeaTac International 100 miles to the south. They are in mid-flight mode, at least 35,000-45,000 feet above us. So I found a website that shows real-time location of flights all over the world. I can literally stand on our hill looking at a flight overhead while checking my phone to see where it has come from and where it is going. In that way, I feel linked with those people so far above me in that plane, strangers though they be.

Most of these flights are bound for Japan or Korea, coming from the east coast or midwest United States. Apparently these flights are taking a longer circuit over the Pacific Ocean to avoid going too close to Russian air space. They have a long flight ahead as they pass the coastline here in northwest Washington and over Vancouver Island. My husband and I have made that trek over the Pacific to Japan a half dozen times. I can easily imagine myself seated in the economy section, trying to keep my legs from stiffening up over 10+ hours, distracting myself watching movies on the inflight channels.

Instead of having leg cramps, I am here with my dog and farm cat leaving a trail of footprints in a frosty winter field. Above me, a plane leaves a condensation trail which blurs, fades and disappears in the evening light. I stand on a hillside at home, someone living out my days in this spot; those flying above are in transit, each with an individual story of their own. Though we are miles apart, the passengers in the plane connect with me for a brief few minutes.

It makes sense for me to pray for these people I will never meet to fly safely to their destination.

We all find our way home eventually, leaving our transient and temporary trails behind us. Surely, that home will be breathtaking and beautiful – just exactly where we belong.

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Facing a Rainbow

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Harry in his backyard, admiring a rainbow he never forgot
Rainbow at 3R Farms
Harry (L) giving my husband Dan a driving lesson with stallion Midnight van de Edelweiss
photo by Harry Rodenberger
photo by Harry Rodenberger

Harry was at home in the house he and his wife Terry had built for his final retirement years, a house that had been encircled by a remarkable rainbow soon after they moved in. They both knew he lived on borrowed time thanks to a defibrillator in his chest that brought him back from the brink of death more times than his doctors could count. The rainbow brought a promise that Harry had not yet finished with his work here.

He was in that house last night when the Lord called him home, after so many near misses. Harry liked to say, “The Lord keeps taking the hook out and throwing me back in.”

This time the Lord kept hold and cradled him.

There is so much to say about a man who was a retired firefighter, a horse and beef farmer, a brother, a friend to scores of people, a father, grandfather and great-grandfather, and a husband to a loving and determined RN wife who single-handedly helped him reach nearly 82 years old.

Harry was always looking for the beautiful and the unusual in his field and garden and would send me photos to use on my blog – I gratefully have used his contributions many times and share them here with my deep appreciation for his eye for wonder in the ordinary. He also took great joy in being someone who would find faces in every-day objects – a skill called “facial pareidolia.”

I always wondered whose face he was seeking.

Now I know. Today he sees the face of God in all His glory, no longer hidden in common objects and no longer mysterious.

You no longer have to keep looking, dear friend. Fulfilling His rainbow promise of a few more years of life and love for you, God has brought you back home.

photo by Harry Rodenberger
photo by Harry Rodenberger
photo by Harry Rodenberger
photo of supermoon by Harry Rodenberger
photo by Harry Rodenberger
photo by Harry Rodenberger
photo by Harry Rodenberger
photo by Harry Rodenberger
photo by Harry Rodenberger
photo by Harry Rodenberger
video by Harry Rodenberger
“To love another person is to see the face of God…”