In the Country? The Cows are Miffed

It is no secret I love living in the country. 
I love our new hometown of Orange, VA and everyday brings a new experience.

One thing Steven and I like to do is sit on the front porch at night, looking at the stars and listening to the quiet.

It IS quiet out here.  Such a change from the suburbs we came from. Eventhough we live in town, this is a very small town surrounded by farms.  Orange County is almost entirely agricultural and the miles and miles of farmland attest to exactly what our neighbors' livelihood is.

Which brings us to the cows.

The above pics were taken less than two miles from our home.

As I said, we like to listen to the quiet. The country quiet is occasionally punctuated by a train whistle or the mooing of a cow.  We love the trains, and can schedule our days around them rumbling through town.

The cows are even cooler.  Every evening, around dinner time, we can hear one of two cows mooing off in the distance.  When we first heard them they seemed so far away we weren't quite sure if we were hearing a cow because, as I said, we live IN town.  Sound travels out here evidently.

So yep, definitely a cow.  We still laugh everytime we hear nightfall's first moo and will sit, happily, for an hour listening to them let their farmer know "Hey! It's dinner time."

[At least we think that is what they are saying. Who speaks cow?]

Last night was different.  Last night was a cow cacophony. 

As we sat on the front porch chatting we heard the first sounds of our bovine friends.  I giggled at their perfect timing and continued talking about the day. Suddenly that one moo turned into four cows mooing, which multiplied into what sounded like six, ten, twelve?

It was a lot. 

Then it was the entire herd of [what sounded like] some pretty ticked off cows.

It went on for over an hour.  They sounded really upset and kept going on and on, voicing their displeasure.  It started to get a little sad because they sounded so unhappy.

Then I figured it out - this week the farmers were separating the calves from their Mommas to send them off to the livestock auction this weekend.

Bye Momma

Ah, such is the country life.

And just so you know - I lost a bet this week to our pal Joe over at These American Servers. We are both die hard baseball fans with Mr. Sixtop having the greater fortune of a much better team, the St. Louis Cards.  So if you like, pop over to Joe's and read up on an early restaurant memory of mine. The words "drunken" and "debauchery" come to mind. ::wink::

Take care Tadpoles. We'll see ya' on the flipside. xo Janine

[Disclaimer:   No, I am not sad about the "circle of life" or farming or anything else. I grew up around cows, calves, auctions and the local butcher. It's just a blog post, okay? No worries.]