Crazy Cow

There were a couple things that made our farm look more like a non-profit organization than an enterprising venture - one of them was a painfully obvious lack of farm equipment. We didn't own a tractor. Of any kind. Whatsoever. In fact, the one thing that made regular appearances at our home that even closely resembled a tractor was the old Subaru that my dad drove for several years - only a close inspection would have revealed that such a homely looking car wasn't held together by super-glue and baling wire.

Without the use of a tractor, several of the tasks on the farm which would have been expedited by such an implement were drawn out over several tedious hours! One such task was that of fertilizing the pastures. While the animals provided ample amounts of "fertilizer," they could never seem to get it evenly distributed, or even in the areas where we wanted it to go. Our experiments in this regard resulted in a front yard of yellow-green grass, speckled with the occasional clump of dark-green extremely tall grass. That is probably a good explanation for why we didn't win Better Homes and Garden's "Best Front Lawn" award that year.

Short a tractor, and dismayed with the bovine blotches -- we had to turn to other technology. We had a seed/fertilizer disseminating devise that one would strap over your shoulder, with a sack that would hold about 20-30 lbs of fertilizer. You would walk around the area you intended to fertilize with that device digging the flesh of your hip, while cranking the lever that spun the spreader-wheel, flinging the seeds or fertilizer in all directions. Now, while we Taylors consider ourselves to be determined and intrepid, I don't think even one of us relished the opportunity to shoulder that contraption while fertilizing 2.5 acres of land.

One year in particular was memorable when this task was assigned to John, Quinn and I. We weren't interested in spending an entire day at the job. We sought a way to "speed things up" a little. Luck, and inspiration were with us that day - and it didn't take long for the light-bulb to turn on when we spied my parent's '92 hatch-back Ford Explorer. We could load the fertilizer bags in the back, one would drive, another would hold the spreader, and a third would crank the handle. Satisfied we had found a way to free up our entire afternoon, we drove the Explorer out into the pasture, loaded up with the fertilizer. The ride was bumpy, but bearable, as we knew that we were saving a great deal of time. The animals had never seen anything like the Ford in their pasture, and were keen to keep their distance -- all but one of them.

One of the heifers we kept (but never quite broke to a halter), was just curious enough to follow us at a safe distance. We paid little attention to her until as John was cornering to make another sweep down the pasture, he accidentally bump one of the knobs on the side of the steering wheel column, turning on the wind-shield wipers. As luck would have it, John's turn took us on a course directly for that heifer. Quinn and I were facing the rear and had lost site of her, but the next thing we knew John had stopped the Explorer in a fit of laughter - something neither of us expected while engaging in the drudgery of fertilizing. Our curiosity piqued - we both turned quickly to see what gave John such a good reason to laugh. Heaven knows what had gotten into the heifer's mind, but there she was, doing her best impression of a caffeinated and epileptic break-dancer trying to get away from the Explorer. Quinn and I both gave each other a look that said "Yup, now we've seen it all."

About 20 feet away, she stopped to have a look in our direction again. John wasted no time at all, he flipped on the wind-shield wipers again, and she was off again, busting moves that a contortionist would be proud to claim as intellectual property, leaving deposits all along the way that would soon become clumps of dark-green extremely tall grass.

Being taught by our father to use the scientific method, we had to see this hypothesis to it's conclusion. I forget how long we terrorized that poor heifer, but by the end of the day it was a toss up as to which set of muscles were the most sore -- my arms from lifting fertilizer bags and cranking that handle, or my abdominal muscles from uncontrollable laughter!

To this day, I am curious if our results can be duplicated by further experimentation. I don't know when I'll have the opportunity to drive a truck through pasture full of cows, but if I do... there will be no question what my first instinct will be!