Half way to Spring

Candles at church service known as Candlemas

February 2 is Ground Hog Day but in the Christian calendar it is Candlemas Day.  Candlemas is a Christianized version of an agent pagan observance of the beginning of spring. It marked the half way point between the winter solstice and the spring equinox.

If Candlemas Day be fair and bright
Winter will have another fight.
If Candlemas Day brings cloud and rain,
Winter won't come again. - an old saying

 

 

The faithful brought their year's supply of candles to Candlemas to be blessed.  In the Roman Catholic Church it became the day that Jesus was presented at the Temple and Mary was purified after giving birth to Jesus.

 

 

In the Celtic world it is also known as  Imbolc or St. Brighid or Brighid's day. When I Googled the term and asked for images I found all kinds of Imbolc greeting card images like this one.

 

Imbolc, part of the Celtic Calendar

 

The peasants were encouraged to turn the soil and plant some seeds on Candlemas day. Here in southern Ohio, even though we are now part of planting zone 6, its a good bet the ground is still frozen on February 2, or at least too cold and wet to plant anything. You can still participate in this ancient ritual by planting a pot of basil or some other herb and placing it in a sunny window. 

 

Sprouted broccoli and purple cabbage seedlings aka micro greens

For my part I am planting a flat of micro-greens and frost seeding my pastures. The micro greens will come from all my left over 2012 seeds.  I have loads of broccoli, radish and other seeds from last year. I might as well us them up and increase the nutritional value of my green salads by adding some sprouted veg. They are quick and easy to grow in  seed starter mix in a pot on a sunny window sill.

Frost seeding the pastures is a good way to get some additional nutrition into my cattle's diet.  Legumes are recommended, mostly clovers, though rye is also considered a good choice for frost seeding. With my hand cranked seeder I can walk the small pastures (less than 3 acres) and broadcast seed and let the freeze and thaw of the February weather along with the heavy hooves of the cattle, work the seeds into the soil.  The warmer weather in March and April will sprout the seeds and hopefully help to overcome annual weed seeds left over from last year.

 

 

 

 



Tea at Downton Abbey

Have you noticed that they never show anyone having afternoon tea at Downton Abbey?  You see one of the Crawley's asking Carter to bring tea when a guest arrives, and there are some afternoon visits with Violet where tea is served, but you don't get the impression that food is included. 

Lunch on the lawn at the back up estate.

But then again, we get very little story line that is about their day to day activities. When someone asks Mary what she will do if she goes to America to escape the scandal with the Turkish diplomat, she replies, "The same as I do here, pay calls and receive guests", or something to that effect. You get the impression that before and after the war the Crawleys live basically useless lives.  It's only through the downstairs staff that you get the impression of any one's day to day activities.

In England, afternoon tea was meant to stave off hunger between lunch and dinner. Dinner was served about 8:00 pm and lunch anytime from noon through 1:00 pm so afternoon tea developed in the 1840's as a snack between meals.  At first it was just tea and bread and butter. I would liken it to the after school snack mother's feed their children today.

  "The difference between a formal and an informal tea are the number of guests invited, the seating arrangements, and the menu", says Suzanne von Drachenfels.

Formal teas are given for large groups of people who are expected to stand while they consume tea and little nibbles that fit on the tea saucer. On occasion a formal tea may have an elaborate menu and then tea plates and forks are provided.  Formal teas are served at 4:00 pm and guests may stay until 6:00 pm but really are expected to stay just an hour. 

Informal teas are served between 2:00 pm and 3:00 pm, meant for small intimate groups in comfortable settings. The food is similar to a formal tea, light nibbles.

High tea is not, as Americans like to stage it, a fancy formal meal.  In England high tea is served at 6:00 pm, is more like our cocktail hour with liquor being served as the main drink. The term high tea comes from the meal being served at a time " high" in the day. High tea includes cold meats, breads and other leftovers.  It is a meal for shopkeepers and laborers from England's industrial midlands who worked until 8:00 pm and then had supper.

All Those Spoons at Downton Abbey

I loved the scene where Carson the butler is teaching the new footman all about the various spoons that could be used at table at Downton Abbey. Not only would Alfred have to know the spoon's identities, but also what spoons were proper for the menu being served. For example, there are three different types of soup spoons.

Bouillon Spoon

Carson has set out the bouillon spoon as one that Alfred should know. The bouillon spoon is used when clear or jellied soup is served and can be either formal or informal.  Bouillon is considered too light for any type of dinner, either formal or informal.


Oval Soup Spoon

The oval soup spoon is used for both formal and informal occasions and is meant for a soup that includes meats and/or vegetables, grains and pastas.  Modern flatware sets often include this type of soup spoon. Even today's stainless flatware will include this type of spoon.

Cream Soup Spoon - be careful not to slurp your soup!

Both the bouillon and the oval soup spoon should not be confused with the cream soup spoon. The cream soup spoon has a larger rounded bowl, too large to fit in your mouth, and is meant to be used to sip cream or pureed soup.  This spoon is not used at a formal dinner as cream soup is considered too rich rich and heavy to start such a meal. I have a couple of stainless steel spoons in this shape but they were listed as cereal spoons - something not listed in Downton Abbey's flatware inventory.

In the book, The Art of the Table by Suzanne Von Drachenfels, the author lists fourteen types of spoons still in use today. The list begins with the iced beverage spoon which I doubt they used at Downton Abbey as the English were not found of iced drinks at the time.

All About American Limousin Cattle

L to R:  BTAP Zooey and her mother GMEG Jealousy

I snapped this picture of my good Limousin cow GMEG Jealousy and her July 2012 heifer calf, BTAP Zooey.  This is a pretty good representation of the Limousin breed of cattle in the United States, that is to say black and red hided animals, both are part of the American Limousin breed.

The breed came from France in the late 1960's and early 1970's. They are one of the Continental breeds as apposed to the British beef breeds, and produce naturally lean meat. That is to say, their meat is not heavily marbled with fat.   They are traditionally red with cream colored accents.


BTAP Juliette, a 2010 daughter of GMEG Jealousy

This photo of BTAP Juliette, another GMEG Jealousy daughter, shows the traditional red hide with cream accents on the belly, inner legs, nose and around the eyes. 

You have probably heard of Certified Angus Beef.  CAB is one of the all time great marketing programs for selling beef.  Originally it was a program that was meant to reward farmers for producing a better beef animal. CAB set up carcass standards and if a black hided animal's carcass met those standards at slaughter, the producer received a premium price for the beef. Any black hided beef animal can qualify as Certified Angus Beef as long as the carcass meets the CAB requirements. 

Herefords, Charlois and other non-black cattle started loosing ground to Angus because of the CAB program.  The Limousin breed is known for its efficient feeding habits and pounds of meat per carcass. It's tag line in "The Carcass Breed".  To compete with the black Angus cattle, American Limousin breeders began breeding black color into their herds. After a time, the black genetics started changing the breed, so that today's American Limousin come in three types: full blood (the original horned, red with cream accented French Limousin), purebred (crossed with other breeds but still predominately Limousin and red or black) and Lim-Flex which is the cross of a registered Limousin to a registered black Angus. This cross produces a superior meat product that easily grades as Choice.

GMEG Jealousy, BTAP Juliette and BTAP Zooey are all three registered purebred Limousin cattle. BTAP Thor is the son of a Lim-Flex bull and a purebred Limousin cow. He is 88% Limousin and 12% black Angus.


BTAP Thor out of BTAP Locust Grove's Valentine by Logan's Tommy Boy

If you compare the pictures of these two bulls you get a fair idea of the difference between Limousin and black Angus .BTAP Thor has a longer body, a big rump and wide top (or back) and a tighter middle or less depth of rib. You still get plenty of good steaks from the Limousin, but you also get many more pounds of chuck roasts, round steak and ground beef. 

CEH Infocus is shorter bodied, slimmer flanked and deeper ribbed. Most of the meat on the Angus is in the rib section - well marbled steaks. You expect an Angus carcass to have a hanging weight between 500 and 575 pounds. The Limousin hanging weight in well over 650 pounds and most of mine hang in the 800 pound range

CEH InFocus, a registered black Angus bull.

Cross a Limi with an Angus and you get the best of both worlds - lots of meat that grades high - usually Choice.  The result is a strong market for Limousin bulls to breed Angus cows.  If you have ever purchased Laura's Lean Beef, you were probably buying Limousin beef as that is one of their preferred breeds for its naturally lean beef. Laura's pays a premium price for carasses that meet their requirements for lean, all natural beef and competes very well against Certified Angus Beef. 



All those birds

Starlings or grackles, not sure which, everywhere
 

I snapped the above picture at about 8:30 yesterday morning. Huge flocks of these birds - either starlings or grackles, not sure which - are a common site this winter.  One morning I counted a massive flock heavily dispersed in the tops of 10 trees in my yard.  The bunch in these pictures landed in the back yard and pecked away in the grass like they were at a feast.

It is common to see flocks of birds like this in the fall and spring, but I don't remember seeing them all winter.  Apparently flocks like this have become common all over the country.  Some of the beef cattle newsletters and magazines I read are reporting on the economic loss these birds are creating in feed lots.  They report the birds stealing the grain from the cattle - and not just a little bit here and there. Reports have them all but taking over the feed bunkers!  Is anyone else out there thinking Alfred Hitchcock!

Old Lebanon Ohio Photo

This photo is of my great grandfather George Emer Bradfield's grocery store on Broadway in Lebanon about 1910.  George Bradfield was my fathers maternal grandfather.  He is the second from the left with the black bow tie.  One of his sons, Glenn is also pictured. We don't know the other folks.  Great grandpa Bradfield had been a grocer in Clarksville, Ohio for many years. He and Minnie Gray Bradfield, our great grandmother, had six children over the span of 16 years. My grandmother Irene was the oldest, then Mabel, Glenn, Guy (died as an infant), Herschel and Neil.  They decided to move to Lebanon around 1910 to give the two youngest boys a better start in life.

It's hard to read, but the back of the card says;"Geo and Glenn Bradfield, standing in front of what is now the Golden Lamb dining room. It's signed  Mrs. Nellie Perrine. We are related to the Perrines some how, but I forget just how.

George Bradfield was not a very good businessman. As was the custom in those days, people bought their groceries on credit and paid once a month. (I remember when I was a kid Sherwoods Market on St. Rt. 42 going south did the same thing).  Problem was, people didn't pay George and he wasn't any good at collecting his debts.  By the early 1920'a, he had given up on Lebanon and moved on to Dayton.  His youngest son Neil went to Stivers High School there

Uncle Herschel told of playing basketball at Harmon Hall and my grandmother worked at the Tom Corwin canning factory in Lebanon to put my Aunt Mabel through secretarial school at Miami Jacobs in Dayton.  The family history is a common one - leave the once thriving Village of Clarksville to the larger town of Lebanon. Leave Lebanon to go to Dayton. Then the depression hit and Dayton was not such a good place to be. Herschel got a job in a factory. Neil ran away from home and was a hobo until World War II brought him home and into the army.  Aunt Mabel got a job at Wright Field and kept the whole family going through out the depression.  My grandmother married my grandfather in 1919, not long after she was fired from the Tom Corwin canning factory for being as she always said "too jolly".  She and my grandfather moved to Dayton where my Dad was born in 1923.

 My grandfather was a skilled wood worker and finish carpenter. He worked for a time turning wood golf clubs for the McGregor company. When the Depression hit Dayton, finish carpenters had no work.   The family might have weathered the Depression better if it had stayed in Lebanon, but Dayton looked like a much better opportunity in the early 20's. By the 1930's it was a bust! My grandfather didn't get steady work again until the post war housing boom and by then he was in his 60's.

More Family Photos

My brother's reclaimed log house.

You have seen this log house before on my posts. There are interior photos at the bottom of this page that I've kept up for over a year.  It's a really wonderful salvage of an historic Warren County building. However, it was not the first log cabin my brother built on the property. 


George Van Harlingen Jr, placing a log for the wall of the log cabin he and my Dad built around 1977
 

When we moved to our farm in 1955 there was an old fallen down house on the property. The farm had once been three small farms and around the 1920's the three farms were combined into one 136 acre farm with road frontage on two country roads.  I was four years old when we moved there and the first time we walked back through the property to the abandoned house site we all proclaimed that some day we would build a log cabin there. The site is now Locust Grove Farm and I built my house not on the foundation of the old house, but on the foundation of its barn.

In the mid 1970's my Dad and my brother decided finally to build the log cabin but to place it next to our big farm pond.  They spent several years cutting logs and building up the walls. Eventually my Dad built a big stone fireplace for the cabin from rocks he and my brother hauled up from the creek and we spent many happy afternoons and evenings cooking over the fireplace, listening to my sister play her violin  and having a family meal by candle light.

 

 

Pictures of the  cabin and my mother's fireplace cooking recipes were included in this cook book by Mary Emmerling. Mary Emmerling was the editor of House Beautiful magazine at the time and credited with starting the entire American country decorating movement of the 1970's and 80's.

The photos for the book were shot in April so Mom used some fresh items that were available from the garden. Our menu in the cook book included pan-fried bluegill fillets caught fresh from the pond, our family staple of creamed dried corn, wilted lettuce salad, skillet corn bread cooked over coals from the cabin's fire and rhubarb pie. Here is the recipe for the rhubarb pie, one of our very favorite things.

Patty's Rhubarb Pie

 

Pastry:  2  1/4 cups sifted all-purpose flour (sift the flour into the cup measure), 2 teaspoons salt, 3/4 cups vegetable shortening (Crisco) and sugar for sprinkling on top crust.

 

Filling:  3 cups diced fresh spring rhubarb, 1 1/2 cups sugar, 1/4 cup all purpose flour.

 

Preheat oven to 425 degrees.  Make the pastry by combining the flour and salt in a large bowl. Remove 1/3 cup of the mixture to a small bowl.  Add 1/2 cup cold water to the flour in the small bowl and stir well to make a smooth paste. Set aside.

 

To the large bowl of flour mixture add the shortening and cut it in with a pastry blender or two table knives, until it resembles coarse meal.  Add the paste and stir quickly with a fork to blend until the dough forms a ball.  Divide the dough in half. Wrap one piece in plastic and refrigerate. 

 

On a lightly floured surface roll out the remaining piece of dough to about 1/8 inch think. Fit the dough into a 9 inch pie pan and set it aside. 

 

Make the filling.  In a large bowl, combine the rhubarb, sugar and flour. Toss well to coat the rhubarb with the sugar and flour. turn the mixture into the pastry lined pie shell.  Roll out the remaining dough and place it over the rhubarb filling. Trim the edges and crimp them to seal the edges. Cut 4 or 5 small slits in the top crust for steam vents. Sprinkle all over with sugar. 

 

Place the pie on a baking sheet (it may leak some juice) and bake for 20 minutes, lower the oven temperature to 350 degrees and bake for 25 minutes or more until the crust is golden. Serve warm or at room temperature.

Bulls for Sale at the Farm

This is BTAP Thor last fall after a summer of breeding cows as a yearling. He's an intelligent, docile bull, 88% Limousin and 12% Black Angus. He's registered as  Limousin percentage bull. Thor was born January 30 2011, so he will be two years old the end of this month. He's for sale from the farm

It's mid January already and the Kentucky Beef Expo, the first of the spring beef expos in our area, is just six weeks away.  Cattlemen who have cow calf operations will be on the hunt for bulls for this years breeding season and I have two very nice bulls for sale! 

This is the late, great, Logan's Tommy Boy, father of BTAP Thor.
 

I've raised these two bulls myself and since I handle them a lot they are docile and easy to manage. They have also bred a lot of cows for me and I am looking forward to seeing their calves on the ground this spring.

This is CEH InFocus, a registered Black Angus bull better known as Bobby. He's by Mtty InFocus out of a very nice registered Black Angus cow.  I used Bobby on heifers this summer. He should be a calving ease bull. He's very gentle.  This picture was taken this past October. Bobby was born in March 2011.





 

Some Family Photos

As part of our family Monday night dessert get together we've decided to scan and identify family photos.  We kept my Dad busy going through a collection of photos from his father and mother.

Here's a picture of my Dad with his Dad and also my Dad with his Easter basket. Both circa 1925 or 1926. 

 

 

Here is Dad about 1944 in Luzon province of the Philippines. He was a medic in the US Army, was wounded twice while rescuing wounded soldiers, received two Purple Hearts and a Bronze Star. He came home from the war and went to work for National Cash Register, declaring that he'd seen enough of blood and death and declined to go to medical school.  His mother and Aunt Mabel hounded him into applying to Ohio State Medical School, which he did half heartedly.  Aunt Mabel, who worked as a secretary at Wright Patterson Air Force Base offered to type the application for him. In the process she rewrote the application making sure to include his war record.  He was admitted to Ohio State Medical School and graduated in June of 1950. He married my mother that same month. 

Good Date Pudding

It was my turn to bring dessert for the family get together last night, and since my AGA received its new burner and was working just fine again, I decided to try an old family recipe - one that I had written down years ago, but never made.  Everyone pronouced it a great hit, so I pass it on to you.

 

Edith Fitzgerald's Date Pudding

 

Into a medium saucepan put 1 cup brown sugar (packed into the cup), 2 cups water, 1 tablespoon of butter and a pinch of salt.  Bring the mixture to a boil, stirring now and then to dissovle the sugar and salt. Let it boil a minute or so. Pour the watery mixture into a well greased large baking dish. I used an 8 x 11 inch glass cassarole dish.

 

For the batter, place in a mixing bowl in this order:

1/2 cup granualted sugar

1 tablespoon butter

1/2 cup buttermilk or sour milk

1 cup all purpose unbleached white flour

1 cup chopped dates

1/2 cup chopped walnuts

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg

1 scant teaspoon baking soda dissolved in 1 teaspoon of hot water

 

Mix all the ingredients together. I used an electric mixer. Mix a couple of minutes until the batter is well combined.  Carefully drop the batter by serving spoon sized spoonfuls into the syrup mixture. Distribute the spoonsfuls throughout the pan.  Bake at 375 degrees for 50 minutes to an hour, or at 350 for a full hour.  The pudding will form a cake like top but the syrup will be liquid still. Set the dish on a rack to cool completely. The syrup will thicken into a sauce. Serve in bowls with fresh whipped cream on top.

 

Edith Fitzgerald was the sister of my mother's sister's first husband. We called him Uncle Fitz. His real name was Wilbur Jerome Fitzgerald.  Aunt Edith never married and we have no picture to share.

 

 

 

 



Death and Disease in the Chicken House

Hens headed out for the pasture on a nice summer day.

I lost a chicken last weekend. That's not a terribly unusual occurrence.  Over the years I've started many morning with the discovery of a dead hen in the chicken house. It's never a good thing but with all the wild birds around disease can come into the flock at any time.

This time was a little different however. Thinking the chicken lying flat on the floor (as apposed to sitting up on the floor or on a roost) was dead, I picked up the body and tucked it under my arm as I collected my watering can and  and left the chicken house headed for the garbage cans.

Surprisingly, even though her eyes were closed and her body appeared in rigor, the hen moved her head and made a tiny sound!  She was alive!  OK, I thought, I'll take her in the house and let her die in peace.  That was New Year's Day and the hen spent the day in a card box on my kitchen counter. By late afternoon she was still with me so I tried to get some water in her.  She wouldn't open her eyes or respond to the water, but I dipped her beak in it anyway.  An hour later I repeated the process. That evening I locked her up in the downtown stair bathroom with a little bowl of water and some tiny pieces of wheat bread.

 I figured she'd be dead by morning, but she wasn't of course. In fact, her eyes were open and she had obviously drunk some water. I had to go to work but the downstairs bathroom has no windows and I didn't want to leave her there all day with a light shining in her eyes. so I put her in her box in the bathtub in my upstairs bathroom - one that has a window for light. I also propped her head up with a rolled up hand towel so she could breathe better. She pecked at the bread and drank water, but her body was still flat and stiff like it was dead.

The hen lived on through the week, making no further progress toward recovery. She eliminated and the smell, even though I kept her clean, was not pleasant. I decided if she hadn't made significant progress with her legs by the end of the week I'd have her put down.  After all, she was a very old hen, about seven years at least.

A friend stopped by and I asked him if he would put her down for me. He took one look at her and said, "Ah, range paralysis.  You want to watch the rest of the flock, that could be very contagious". Fortunately, this was the hen that had been sequestered with Big Chicky to give him some company. But none the less, I've been keeping a close eye on the flock.  So far, no one is showing any signs of the disease. Bib Chicky is all alone, but shows no signs of disease, and the rest of flock, though unhappy about being confined to the chicken house, seems healthy.

Formal Dinner at Downton Abbey

If you remember the scene from last Sunday's Downton Abbey when Mary and her grandmother Violet are standing in the dining room admiring the table all set out for formal dining, and Violet says "Nothing succeeds like excess". That is a quote from Oscar Wilde by the way. The entire quote is:

"Moderation is a fatal thing. Nothing succeeds like excess.”

 Anyway, I was looking carefully at the table to see how it was set and noticed that there wasn't a lot of flat ware at each place setting. I'd expected to see about two feet worth lined up on either side of the plate.

I have a book my sister gave me from a box of cookbooks she bought at a house auction.  It's called The Art of the Table, A Complete Guide to Table Setting, Table Manners , and Tableware. It was published in 2000 by Suzanne Von Drachenfels who was a table consultant for Fitz & Floyd.   I can imagine this is the kind of book Carson the Butler might have kept in his butler's reference library to help him lay a proper table for any occasion.

 I paged through to the section on flatware and found that a formal dinner setting is really quite simple, depending on what is being served.  "At a formal dinner, a multi-course meal is served, but to relieve clutter, the place setting is laid with no more than three knives, three forks and a soup spoon." 

The Downton Abbey place setting I glimpsed in the show last week was correct.

Downton Abbey -Nothing is as It Should Be

Sybil, Mary and Edith

Downtown Abbey is back with their beautiful clothes and heart tugging story line.  I'm sure the historical background themes go over much better in England than in this country, but it seems that Fellows is pointedly showing  the characters of Robert, Violet and Mary as stupid and pointless in their determination to keep things just as they were before the war. The old order was - after all the elite who headed the army and senselessly slaughtered all those men in the the trenches. They proved all too well that their so called noble blood had no brains to back it up.

At the same time I'm very disappointed in the portrayal of Cora's mother played by Shirley McClain.  Cora is a lovely and charming woman and you get the feeling she married very young and was some how smart enough to learn how to behave as the Countess.  Shirley McClain's table manners in particular were atrocious and I thought very unrealistic. She was more a Brits cartoon version of a rich American.  But I still loved watching the show and will religiously turn in every week. 

Seed Catalogs Aimed at Market Growers

More seed catalogs arrived this week and I noticed that several of them lead with information for market gardeners.  I'm sure this is following the growing trend in farmer's markets and Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) growers.

Cover photo from John Scheepers catalog.
 

The + John Scheepers Kitchen Garden Seeds has a great color picture on the cover, but the inside is all text and little line drawings which is fine with me, as the text is very informative giving good growing and harvesting information. For example, after reading the instructions for growing Belgium Endive I felt certain I could be successful with that seed.  Scheepers also carries some items I've not seen before such as parsley root. The catalog says it is popular in Europe for soups and stews and it looks like a white carrot. This vegetable is not a parsnip (that item is listed just above the listing for parsley root. On the same page is listed salsify, turnips and rutabagas.  The description for rutabagas makes them sound delicious! His prices are reasonable as well.  A packet of 800 rutabaga seeds is just $2.95.

Some kind of new fangled greens harvesters for market gardeners from Johnny's

Johnny's Selected Seeds is one of the most respected growers in the business.  Their field trials are legendary and you can always count on their products to be top rate.  This year they are touted a new "innovation in lettuce" they call Salanova. Its a line of high yielding salad greens and the photos as fabulous.  The tag line says "42% more yield and revenue" so I've got to give them a try.

 

 

Weather Forecast

Weather map from the Old Farmer's Almanac

 

Fifteen degrees this morning at 7:00 am.  The best place to be on the farm, other than the house of course, is the chicken house. Those little guys produce a lot of heat!

The Old Farmer's Almanac and several of my farming magazines say we are in for three months of below average cold temperatures and lots of snow.  I really don't mind the snow if its going to be that cold because a snow layer will insulate the trees and perennial plants in my garden. Cold, bare, windy ground is hard on everyone. 

The cattle are eating hay twice as fast as they were two weeks ago. They keep warm by eating high carbohydrate foods like hay.  Corn doesn't give them as much warmth.   We are scrambling looking for more hay because it looks like we have enough to get through January and February, but nothing for March. The shortage is due in part because we fed early this year because of the drought and because of the stormy, cold, windy weather in December.

I managed to find a cashe of small round bales for $25 each.  They are about half the size of the $50 bales so I'm feeling good about the price.  Also, I can justify putting one out at the round bale feeder in the front pasture and one in the barn paddock which makes me sleep easier.  I have a heifer that's limping (probably slipped on something or has ice packed in her hoof) and an old crippled cow and my Buttercup who is going to be 14 years old this spring. They are always low cows on the totem pole so to speak and have to wait until the head cow and her daughters and friends get to eat. Now they are happy cows with hay and water right outside the barn door.