It takes more than four straight days of rain to keep me from my pasture walks in the mornings. I pull on my Wellies, step out onto the patio and with the deepest breath I can muster I bask in the beauty of our farm. Balancing my piping hot cup of tea as I unhook Dixie, our over-hyper Border collie, we head out to check the stock. It is by far my favorite chore on the farm.
These days I head first for the maternity ward and Tea Cup ,not the one I’m balancing, but our very pregnant cow who should be dropping her calf any day. So far there has been no change in her udder, it’s just plain huge, so I know it should be any day.
Lately my favorite place to keep the pregnant cows is in our pasture called Narnia. It claimed that name the first time I walked through a thick layer of cedar branches and my eyes feasted on one of the most beautiful pastures/meadows I had ever seen. I felt that I had somehow stumbled through the back of a wardrobe and into a mystical land.
We’d had a good bit of rain and the ridge across the road released just the right amount of water to fill a small stream that ran the length of our new pasture. The pasture, the rocks and the stream are hemmed in by the row of cedars that concerned neighbors keep telling me to cut down. Narnia is just on the other side of the trees.
It has been a very special place for me ever since we moved here but lately there is a scent that completely envelopes you as you pass through the cedars. It feels like the scent of honeysuckle and roses even through they are both are utterly naked of flowers. Whatever it feels like, it feels alive and has filled me with life on more than a few dreary mornings.
And so, now, the cows get to give birth in Narnia and the stream and the meadow and the row of cedars and the renegade chickens who like to scratch there on the edge of the rocks will be the first things the babies will see. I can’t help but to think that the milk will be all the sweeter for it and their babies stronger and healthier. After all, it takes years of practice to be able to pass such a spectacle and remain unchanged.