Rehoboth Farm

It was October of 1999, two months until Y2K, and we were in a pretty good position. We had our 40 acre rented farm, two pigs, numerous chickens and even some guinea hens. Most of all we had our Jersey milk cow Dilly who would freshen in a month or so, and, we had a Jersey bull calf that we would raise for beef. Or so we thought.

At first we kept the calf in the barn and bought a bottle and some milk replacer. Training him to drink from a bottle was a hilarious venture that left nearly the whole family drenched in milk. After he took to it, it became the choice job on the farm, everybody wanted to be the one to feed him. Our son Mike wanted to name him since he had taken on a special fondness for him. One day the calf laid down in a bed of pine straw and nearly disappeared, being almost the same color. Mike named him OlÂ’ Pine and it stuck.

Raising a calf from a bottle is much different than buying one fully grown. Dilly was cantankerous and snobby, while OlÂ’ Pine was a big baby. He would follow us around the yard like a puppy and mooo whenever he got bored with what we were doing. Later he developed the annoying trait of head-butting us when he wanted something, which of course was usually food. Several times I made the mistake of bending over while he was around only to be launched a few feet forward via his head. I would turn around and he would dance from one foot to another as if he just wanted to play.

At night we would put him in the same small pasture as Dilly which he loved; Dilly on the other hand did not appreciate his company. He would sneak around her trying to see if her udder was producing his favorite beverage or not. She would turn in circles so that her back was never to him. Once in a while he would be quiet enough to get his head up under her, where she would jerk and kick at him and then run away. He would stand there and moo, like an unwanted child, (which he wasnÂ’t), but it was pitiful anyway. The day came when we realized that there was no way OlÂ’ Pine was ever going to the butcher, so he became a part of the family. It was just as well since we could breed him back to Dilly if we wanted to.

By December we were looking for Dilly to calve any day now. Every morning before work I would go out and check on her, but to no avail. The whole month passed and no calf. I called Nathan and he told me that he might have gotten her mixed up with another cow and she might really be due in January. So we waited, and waited.

One day as we returned from taking our first pig to the butcher, (see One little piggy goes to market), I pulled the van and trailer into the barnyard to unhook it. Olivia yelled, "OlÂ’ Pine got into DillyÂ’s pasture!" I knew I had locked him in the barn, but looking over at Dilly she was standing over a Jersey calf and licking it. The whole van broke into a chorus of "She had her calf!!" Before I could bring the van to a full stop everyone was unbuckling as fast as they could to get out and see this wonderful new addition.

Everyone piled out, myself included, and ran to the fence. Where just that morning there was a stubborn and snobbish cow, now stood a loving mother, licking her new born who was lying on the grass. We just sat there and watched and smiled at each other for a while and then I entered the gate. I didnÂ’t know how Dilly would react to me being near her calf so I went slowly and gently. As I came to it and knealed down, she stopped licking it and looked at me with a very proud look on her face. Laying there on the grass was the most beautiful calf I had ever seen. It was a solid beige color from one end to the other and had perfect features. I lifted one leg and saw where one day an udder would be. "ItÂ’s a heifer!", I told Kim. "SheÂ’s a beautiful blessing from the Lord", she responded.

Nathan had told us that once she calved we would have to remove the calf from her and bottle feed her, or else she would be just as stubborn as her mom. Also because the calf would take too much milk and not leave any for us. We thought this was a shame but we put the calf in the barn the first night.

Dilly mooed and mooed at the barn the entire night. Once in a while the calf would moo back and Dilly would moo louder and longer with a desperate tone in her voice. The whole family was getting torn up listening to it. The next day OlÂ’ Pine joined in out of sympathy, or because he smelled fresh milk, and we had a chorus of three sad Jersey cows. I went out with some grain and attempted my first milking of Dilly. Not a successful attempt. She was so heartsick that she would have none of it. I had read that the calf needs the colostrum of the first few days so we decided to trust the Lord and put the calf back with her. You never saw such a joyous reuniting as that one. We watched as the calf fed from DillyÂ’s udder while OlÂ’ Pine stood and watched and cried at what he was missing.

After three days I went back out with my bucket of feed to the milking lean-to. Dilly would let me milk her until she lost sight of her calf, then she would promptly back up and stick her foot in the bucket, ruining all the milk. I learned to bring the calf over to the lean-to and keep her there so Dilly would stay still. We wanted a name for the calf that went with Dilly, so we named her Dumpling. For the next couple of months Dilly, Dumpling and I went through the milking ritual twice a day. How much milk we really ever used I donÂ’t remember, but it wasnÂ’t much. Between milking by hand, lack of experience and Dumpling getting her share, it was more an exercise in fun than utility. Most of the milk went to feed our other animals which they devoured quickly.

Sometimes good things come to an end. By February of 2000 our lease on the farm had expired and the owners were making changes to it that we could not agree to. After some struggling over what to do we ended up selling off all of the cows and chickens and moved back closer to town. Kim was going to have our fifth child as well, so being closer to a hospital was not such a bad thing. Now we were full fledged homesteaders who were living on, of all things, a golf-course and back in the subdivision life. However, we knew that one day we would be back on a farm of our own; which we are now. Now we have six children and another on the way, and all of us on our very own land with pasture, creeks and woods. We donÂ’t look back on our first homestead experience with sadness but with gladness that the Lord was preparing us for where we are now. The LordÂ’s timing is, indeed, always perfect.