This little calf does not want to be called Aida she wants to be called Del. She is so calm and so sweet, there is not one fussy bone in her body. She has no aspirations for the stage, and no interest in tragedy. She reminds me so intensely of my Aunty Del that I have called her Del. And then I ran into another problem. I could no sooner call my Great Aunty Del just plain Del than fly to the moon. So this wee calf will be Aunty Del. Aunty Del lived in the country is a small low ceilinged cottage and ate icecream at any meal she felt like. She often wore pink and purple and plaid and sometimes all at once. She was a treasure. 
So there it is. Sometimes names just turn out that way. One thing I know is that if you get the name wrong you must change it immediately. No time to waste. The name Aida belongs to someone else.
Here is Aunty Del. She sucked my thumb all the way home, standing just as calm as you please in the back of the cooking oil car.
So now we have a new heifer to be trained as another milk cow for when Daisy is ready to retire. Often a milk cow will work with a family for many years but with Daisy’s recurring mastitis she may have to go out to pasture earlier than expected. However that is still a few years away.
Godot got so excited about being able to fly that he flew straight into the mulberry tree. 
He is pretty hard to see up there but the view must have been wonderful as he was up there for hours. Later at dusk after he had found his way down and was intent on wandering down to the creek that is now a raging torrent, the dogs and I very very slowly herded him back to the barn. 
Yesterday Poppy and Tima got into a fight. I am not entirely sure why, no-one was talking, but it may have to do with the fact that Poppy does not want to share Sheila.
Tima was smacked on her very smackable bottom and was sent to bed.
And when she got to her bed she found a cat in it.
Marmalade is everyone’s friend though so no-one really cared.
The chicks and the ducks have been separated, (much to the chickens relief .. have you ever tried to live with a duck in a small space?) and moved upstairs. The chicks are feathering out and the ducks are huge. The chicks have graduated to the wood box on the verandah and the ducklings are in a bullet-proof pen beside Tima. No mink will get in there. The new meat chicks arrival is imminent (maybe tomorrow or the next day) so the brooder tub needs to be cleaned out and prepared for the next batch.
Thank goodness the weather has finally begun to warm up.
Good morning.
I hope you are all having a lovely day.
Now, off to work for us all!
Your friend on the farmy
celi
The Kitchen's Garden 
77 responses to “I got it wrong”
A lovely update!
Auntie Del is such a pretty girl! You’ve got an awful lot going on at the moment, particularly on the bird front. It always amazes me how fast ducklings grow. We’ve got 4 Muscovy nests on the go at the moment so we’ll soon be busy on the bird front too!
Christine
I need to talk to you about ducks, they do grow fast, I have them in a penned in pen, but they are so afeared of everything. c
Gently does it. The thing is, ducks move en masse so if one is a wee bit spooked and waddles off, the others will follow! Great for rounding them up though! Give them time, chat to them and I’m sure they’ll come around.
Christine
They actually waddled out to meet me this morning. So I think things are looking up.. c
They’ll be following you around next in a lovely, waddly gang!
Christine
You’ll have to put Aunty Del into a barn with a low ceiling. The car boot looked just right.
Poor Tima – Poppy won’t share Sheila so Tima got smacked! They look quite cute together on the opposite sides of the fence – I could almost imagine they were playing 🙂
What a beautiful little heifer love her name! Made me laugh the thought of Tima getting a smacked bottom . Have a lovely day x
what a beautiful addition to the farmy! welcome aunty del!!! growing weather has arrived.
Is Del an abbreviation for Delia or Delilah? Welcome to Aunty Del, she does look sweet. Laura
Edel, i think.. though now that i think about it I am not that sure, she was always great aunty del!
Love Aunty Del , and your real Aunt sounds like me! You get to a certain age and say “sod it, I’ll do what I want because I want to” and not worry any more what others may think!! Some call it being egocentric, I call it being free!
Hugs, Lyn
No no , eccentric that is all , eccentric is wonderful!
what a busy day for everyone, filled with adventures of one kind and another including discovering the exact right name for the new member of the farmy! Well done everyone, now y’all try and behave!
If I didn’t know it was a fight, I’d have thought Poppy and Tima were sharing some juicy gossip through the fence! You have all the makings of a sitcom on your little farmy! This weekend I saw a picture of a white peacock with his tail all spread out and he was beautiful!
That’s exactly what I thought, and I stole the picture to write a porcine conversational poem on it! I love the name Aunty Del, for whom that poem “When I am an old woman I shall wear purple, and a red hat that doesn’t suit me…” must have been written by Jenny Joseph. And it suits that sweet little heifer.
Our paradise weather is coming to an end this afternoon (I put most of my winter clothes away this morning) and the wind is swaying the big trees.
Your post is so pleasant to read I got the idea that it would be a fascinating subject for a children’s book, it would be educative it would give kids the incentive to real farming, to humane farming 🙂
Your blog has so inspired me that we went twice in two months visiting farms one non-organic and the other organic, they were amazing experiences but I have yet to find one like yours which is my ideal!
I won’t give up, I will go on searching 🙂
Thanks for sharing your farm-life with us…
Oh so wish you were closer, you could come and visit ME!! c
I would come running! It sounds totally like the place I dream of 🙂
The food I’d have to skip as I’m on a strictly macrobiotic food plan …
I will have to look that up, I have no idea what that is! I hope it is working for you that is the main thing.. c
It is indeed keeping at bay my asthma. It’s the origins of Japanese food culture which cured many of cancer & other ailments, it is mainly applying whole organic foods ( whole grains, vegetables & some seaweeds among others) as remedy according to each one’s symptoms.
You can check it out or here http://oawritingspoemspaintings.wordpress.com/2014/01/19/michio-kushi-documentary-feature-film-project-sample-reel-2-of-2-october-2008/
Enjoy your week!
Blessings 🙂
I shall check it out .. thank you.. You might have to bring your own seaweed (I love seaweed) but I grow heaps of vegetables!
Aunty Del is soooo young. I know nothing about raising cows – what will she eat for the next while? Is she weaned? Are cows weaned? She is precious and I’m not sure I could resist giving her a big squeeze.
She will drink milk for a good while yet, plus a little grain and as her rumen develops she will be eating grass in a few weeks too, but her main food will be milk from Daisy. c
I forgot to mention… A children’s book YOU could write 🙂
Thanks so much for the picture of Marmalade. You know how much I love that cat! 🙂 Looks like everyone is adjusting to spring !!!
I took a look at the pictures of Aunty Del and that young en sure looks like bull not a cow baby. Just based on what is hanging down under its tummy, that doesn’t look like a beginning bag. 🙂
Just saying.
Morning diann. That little fluffy area is where her umbilical cord came through. She is a little heifer, trust me. c
Aunty Del looks as though she has already mastered living “mindfully.” I love her. She exudes gentleness so it would be hard not to. Tima’s house makes me laugh. It looks like a ziggurat.