If you haven’t noticed I’ve slowed down in my amazing post proliferations this past week. There is a reason to the drastic decline. I think this picture says it all. I left Milly’s smile on the picture as an indication to what we experienced last Thursday night. (I hope no one will be able to identify her based on those pearly whites.) Let me back up a bit and give you the whole story of how we acquired “Rosebud” the family milk cow. Milly was convinced that we were going to be a goat loving farm. She did a bunch of research and thought goats were a great alternative to a family milk cow. This was based on a few realities.

1. Goats are smaller
2. They give less milk
3. They are cheaper
4. We couldn’t find a Jersey cow

I spent a whole week gagging down goat milk while Milly tried to convince me the goat milk tastes the same as cow milk. She even made it a game to see if she could trick me into eating things with goat milk without me knowing. I was 100% on that game. She even made something and said “how did it taste?” Surprisingly I said “It actually tastes good. I don’t taste the goat milk at all.” Her muffled response was “That’s because I didn’t put goat milk in this one.” ha. I’m not a liar. I don’t like goat milk all that much. Ringo all but rioted. Molly and Polly happily lapped it down so I was thinking me and Ringo could just lose bone density for the rest of our lives. Just on a whim I looked on www.kijiji.com (craigslist type site for you yanks) and opened my search to all of Alberta. I found a few Jersey related posts but they were up near the North Pole so didn’t think there was a chance we’d be able to connect up. Then I came across a post titled “The perfect family milk cow.” The sellers were about 7 hours away but at that point I was thinking if I didn’t do something drastic I could be left milking goats the rest of my life. I mean, if I’m going to milk a critter I might as well get a cow. Think of how girly it would be for the neighbors to be walking by watching me yank on an itty bitty goat’s underside. I called up the seller and questioned him extensively. I was expecting to find out the animal was a beat up, worn out, disease infested, ill treated mess they were trying to get rid of. Amazingly enough all of our hoped for requirements were checked off. Then the tables turned. The seller started grilling me about my situation. I gave him a list of my extensive farming credentials (ha) but that didn’t seem to sell him on the deal. I promised we’d give the cow an allowance and offered visiting rights and that seemed to sway him a bit. Over the course of the next two weeks we went back and forth with the seller and his wife and I started to realize this was the perfect cow for us. They loved their cow. They treated her with respect and wanted her to go to a good home. We wanted a cow that was treated with respect and which we could give a good home. Hokey city thinking, I know. The sellers arranged to bring the cow down for us and showed up late Thursday night. We hit it off with them right away. They are really cool. We should give them a proper name for The Simple Farm they are so cool. How about Sunshine and Lightening (New addition to Who’s Who) I need to update you on our milking endeavors but that is going to be a lengthy post if I’m going to do it justice. But in the mean time everyone welcome Rosebud to The Simple Farm. Rosebud is a 6 year old Jersey cow.