Milk Maid

We all need some excitement in our lives every once in a while, right?

How about some “holy cows?”

Early on Wednesday morning, my dad, three youngest siblings and a slug of 4-Hers from Lyon and Yellow Medicine counties hit the road to the Great Minnesota Get Together.

The kids were all in agreement, it was a great way to spend the first day of school! They will be gone until Sunday, which means for those of us at home, we are a little short staffed.

On top of the chaos, my cow Fire decided it was time to have her baby but it was three weeks earlier than we had planned.

So, we were all ready a little behind for morning chores.

I usually bring my dog Pixie with me to my uncle’s farm to feed calves and chickens. Because she apparently couldn’t remember seeing a school bus before, she barked like crazy for most of the morning.

Shortly after 8 a.m., Pixie starting barking even more than normal and I just brushed it off.

Then, a horn started going off like crazy and a guy hopped out of his mid-size SUV to tell me we had cows in the St. Edward Church Cemetery.

At first, I was not alarmed because our pasture goes up right next to the cemetery and I thought maybe they just looked like they were there but not really there.

When I looked out at the pasture, everyone seemed normal, but I called my brother Garrett to have him check it out. Sure enough, some bovines thought they were “holy cows” and they ventured out into the northeast corner of the cemetery.

Garrett had them all back in by the time my mom, uncle and I got out there. We found out a cemetery tree was on the fence. So we moved and fixed the fence.

My mom and I walked around and saw only one stone was knocked down.

It was a stone from 1917 and it turns out, it is one of our relatives. Of all the stones to knock down, at least it was one of ours.

My mom and I were able to get it back up and standing, but it will need to be fixed.

We did have to laugh though, they got close to the Moorse section and my grandpa must have scared them back!

He and Grandma chased cows a few times in their days. We had many people call or let us know cows were out, but only a couple offered to help us.

Thank you to those guys who offered to help.

Holy cows! Our renegade cows, they just thought we needed some more excitement!