If Cows Were People

Dear Readers;

If cows were people I think that our Randall's would be Scottish warriors..of the William Wallace (Braveheart) days and our Jersey would be a feisty but delicate English lady...who liked being pushed around on occasion. I say this with the greatest respect and love for our dear cows. You see last week I just wanted a day to myself to browse the stores. We had just spent a very stressful eight days nursing one of my sweet calves back to health. Now that he was up and about...back to his ol' self I wanted to get away from the farm and do a little retail therapy.

I'm not very comfortable driving our stick shift car. I have this deathly fear that I am either going to stall on a hill and roll back into vehicles and everyone is going to toot and curse  me or I could just plain run over someone at a cross walk because I'll shift into the wrong gear. Point being Gaura Nitai does not want me wasting diesel by driving the truck so he volunteered to be my driver for the day. Booo! I say because just try and relax while your husband is outside waiting in the car! While he was waiting he was told that their were two cancellations at the Buyers Trade Show for the very next day.

 We have never done a Trade Show so we had no idea what to expect and worse yet was we had decided to change our packaging to something simpler. We we're up until one in the morning repackaging our product and coming up with a new display. Although we were both exhausted the following morning we enthusiastically headed out to the barn to do our chores...only to find Sachi on the wrong side of the partition wall...bloated..on her side with an injured eye and ear!!!!AHHHHH! Gaura Nitai ran into the house to phone our Vet. Doc Lister told him to put down the phone and sit her up immediately. We both pushed and pulled and finally had Sachi sitting properly. She was dazed but alive. Of course both of us could not go to the Show so I volunteered because I'm good at nursing animals and Gord is great at selling.(It's that Scottish accent...women love it!)

 I gave her some Homeopathic remedy to help her recover from the shock. I sat and chanted my japa and watched her. I observed the scene and realized that  there was nothing really wrong with her except  that she was shaken up. (We give Sachi her own pen with water...plenty of hay and a fluffy bed of straw. If she is not kept a little separate then she may not get enough to eat because the Randalls are quite the boisterous bunch and as I said...she is a delicate lady....mostly.)  Now that things had calmed down I realized that after Gaura Nitai had fed and watered her the night before she had jumped the three and a half foot partition wall...her front leg had not cleared the wall and the momentum had flipped her over into an awkward position to close to the wall. She had no room to rock herself up into a sitting position. It was my fault I did not make it clear to her that...Hey diddle diddle..the cat played the fiddle...while the cow jumped over the moon...was NOT a FACT!

 Fortunately by the afternoon Sachi was back to normal and I put her back with the herd.

 I then managed to make it to Day Two of the Trade Show. We did good for our first attempt and now Om Made Soap is on the mainland!

Mother Sachi...the white paint is my homemade milk paint made from her milk:)

Until next time.
Hare Krsna.
Lal

Dear Readers;

As promised here is the story of how we received the cow bells written my my eldest daughter Gaura-Gopala Devi Dasi.

Miracle of our Cow-"Belle" Barb 

 One evening I overhead my oldest daughter asking their Grandmother, Lal, what she would like as a gift? She answered "Anything homemade and I would love some cow bells!"

 My Mother and Father were going to be joining us for a Winter Solstice dinner, which we were celebrating on December 23 as well as Christmas. It was a special surprise to be able to have my parents over because not only do they live 1700 KM away, but they own "Govinda's Farm". Being away from the busy responsibility of cow milking and alpaca and calf care, soap making, renovation projects and all of the many tasks of caring for the farm in and of itself is a major challenge. Luckily my sister Lalana and her husband Tyrone were up for it and sacrificed a large chunk of their time off to tend to the farm full time in my parent's absence- I consider this Miracle number 1 within this story. 

 Buying gifts for my parents can be a bit challenging because they are minimalists who do not enjoy supporting consumerism. So when I heard about the wish for cow bells I recalled that my Mother had told me that she worries about her cows/calves getting out of the barn or pasture and heading into the road without being seen-so here was a gift with a purpose, perfect! I began my hunt for them locally, no luck other than some new and not very attractive ones that were at the music store. I than looked at various new and used websites that might sell them within the province of Ontario and still no real luck and what I did find was often new, kind of boring looking and very pricey. Knowing my Mother I thought that finding some vintage would be a better idea so I began to look for this and still was having trouble. Finally I turned to the great vast world of Ebay and found a  set of five vintage bells! There were quite a few people bidding on them, I watched the movement on them intently and noted that the time that the auction was going to end was at exactly the same time as my daughter Laxmi's dance class was also finished. I was nervous about the timing of driving her over to class and making it back on time. My daughter offered to take a taxi cab over so that I could stay home! Her words before taking her cell phone with her to the cab were "win Grandma's bell's for her Mom!" which I thought was very brave for her to do at age 12, Miracle number 2. 

  I entered the battle for the bells. There must have been about 30 or so bids...but I won! Since I had seen other cow bells on sales websites promoting them as home decor items, I wanted to let the Ebay seller know the background to where her bells were going, since maybe its a bit rare these days to have them used on real  cows living on an animal farm sanctuary? Well sure enough, the seller- named Barb, was very touched by my story and offered to donate them to the cause! I was shocked and touched by this gesture! She promised to have them over to us by Christmas morning and I promised to tell my Mother the story of how the bells came to be. Barb and I had a few back and forth emails and she let me know that she had sent them off after correcting my address from what she was expecting to be a Canadian address to the one that was in the Ebay system, this one was located in the U.S (a Kentucky Army base address no less??). I emailed her back to say, no I live in Ontario, Canada, but it was too late. We were now going to have to see if they would possibly be returned to Barb who was still going to kindly and generously cover shipping of getting them to us! This was only a week or so before Christmas so I thought for sure that they would not be back on time, if ever. Then amazingly I received a tracking number for something but I wasn't sure what. There were a few presents that I had ordered so I assumed it was for one of those...I followed the tracking number because secretly I was hoping that they were the bells and than lo' and behold on the 23rd the tracking number had the package arriving at my door.. 

I saw this little box, it had a handwritten address label written by Barb that was replaced by one generated by Ebay, I gave the box a shake and heard the faint sound of 'ding a ding a ding' I opened it and was shocked to see the cow bells!! and on time for Christmas morning gift opening! 

How Ebay corrected a wrong address sent by a seller is beyond me!? How it was corrected and the box navigated the busy Christmas mail service to arrive on time is also beyond me?! Miracle number 3!

We had other family members visiting us who were also there opening up gifts with us on Christmas morning and so between our visitors, my four children and all the rest of us there was quite a flurry of gifts being opened but it just so happened that the cow bells were the last box for my Mother to open. After I recounted to story to my parents they began to tear up, which made me tear up and we were all feeling so touched deep in our heart by how the Cow bells came to Govinda's Farm by our Cow-belle Barb from Missouri :)

The five vintage Christmas bells.

Miracle number 4 was hearing how challenging the drive to see us was for my parent's but they slugged through the bad weather and equally bad roads to come hold their newest grandbaby for the first time at our home and meet my husband's family- most wonderful Winter solstice ever :) 

Yrs,

Gaura-Gopal Devi Dasi 

Head calf Radhe sporting the largest bell.

Twin brother Gopal is sporting the bell which is just a little bit smaller.

Tis' The Season

Dear Readers;

 So sorry to have not written much in the past little while...but...we have been mega busy selling at the Craft Fairs...getting ready for our trip to Narnia...ummm...I meant Timmins, Ontario...driving to Timmins....meeting our new six month old grand-daughter for the first time....cooking a huge vegetarian prasadam feast for 25 or so new relatives..tobogganing (rez style) on a cardboard box...Xmas... revoing my daughters basement and then driving home again, 4300 Km through snowstorms...freezing rain..slush and whew!!! home in time to shovel our driveway and milk the cow.

Six month old Divya-Tarini Baby Dasi

Needless to say...we are bagged...tired...exhausted...but happy.

We missed the cows terribly and they must have missed us because when we went into the barn Mukta and her daughter Aruni started to jump around...doing a little dance and then Pita the bull let out such a bellow that my heart almost stopped! The calves and alpacas all came to nibble on my parka as I fed them apples.

I'll admit I'm not a big fan of commercialized Christmas and I'm not a Christian so I've been attempting to bow out of the entire deal for over thirty years but that is easier said than done. Gaura Nitai has some great memories of the season and loves it. Over the years I have tried to make the celebration more eco by sewing cotton bags for putting the gifts into but apparently everyone loves the idea of ripping paper and piling it into the middle of the floor...where at least one gift is lost every year! Anyways to make a long story short....we've compromised and I honor the sun on Winter Solstice and give gifts away.....and cook a prasadam feast for family and friends. I think that we all have to navigate the season the best way we can and remember to just love our family ....friends and call it what ever we want.

Note the bead bag in one hand and giant stocking in the other:) Who's a happy grandpa??

Here are a few pictures of my minimalist tree and my daughter Gaura-Gopals' maximalist tree.

I hope that you have had a wonderful holiday with family and friends. I also have a great story about how our calves received a Xmas gift of cow bells....but my daughter will have to write the story because it brought tears to our eyes.

Hare Krsna.
Lal

Our four grand-children Laxmi,Divya,Maitreya and Jaimie,Aunty Jane and her daughter Spot or Megwan

Crystal and lights

Lals' minimalist tree.