A farm is truly a microcosm of life as a whole. Magnified and in your face all of the time. Things that some people only witness a few times in their whole lifetime can happen multiple times in one day on a farm. Birth. Life. Death. Birth…Life…Death. It is emotionally, mentally, and physically exhausting – often all at once.

This is the story of one week in March 2020.

On an unseasonably cold and windy weekend, we tended to our pregnant cow, Beauty around the clock. She wasn’t doing well.

Monday morning, goat babies were born from an uneventful delivery resulting in healthy, happy kids and momma goat – the best situation! Animals were fed and tended to morning and evening. Checked in the afternoon. As they are every day. Methodically, kindly.

Early Tuesday morning, we had a steer slaughtered. His life humanely extinguished to provide nourishment and life to others.

Early Tuesday afternoon, our large animal vet was called to the farm. Beauty was in immediate need of assistance beyond what we could provide. Among other treatments, we delivered a beautiful, perfect, and healthy heifer calf – promptly followed by uterine prolapse. It was successfully reinserted, but in her already weakened state, we knew Beauty may never raise again.

Beauty and the calf were stabilized, the vet packed up and left, and then it was time for the small animal vet to arrive. An appointment had been made for late Tuesday afternoon to have our little dog, Lady, euthanized at home, in the sunshine on our porch. It was Lady’s time to be set free and she went peacefully to Rainbow Bridge.

Beauty continued to be monitored through the day and into the evening and night. Beauty couldn’t stand up. She was weak, and painful, and tired despite all of the medicines and pain relievers we’d administered. Even in her weakened state, being the amazing mother she always is, she did her best to clean and care for her baby, a few tired licks at a time. Her heifer calf was fed with “liquid gold” from our freezer; colostrum, saved from our cow, Sola who lost her calf at birth in August. Colostrum is the initial milk a calf receives from its mother right after birth and it’s an essential and life giving food for a newborn.

At 3am Wednesday morning, the large animal vet was called to the farm again.

At 4:00 am, my Best Girl; my beautiful, kind, and gentle souled, Beauty. The one who’s given so much to our farm, willingly, sweetly, tenderly – who’s taught people to hand milk, surprised them with scratchy, sloppy, cow kisses, produced the richest, tastiest cream around, and raised every calf given to her as if it was her own… My Beauty, girl. Relieved of her earthly duties… and time marched on.

I fed her vibrant little heifer with the last of the frozen colostrum that Sola’s calf never tasted. Which sat in the freezer next to freshly packed beef bones from the steer who gave us the gift of his life only the morning before. I mixed it with goat milk, kindly shared by the bouncing, leaping baby goats, who’s mothers graze under the apple tree where the little dog, Lady, is freshly buried; next to the house where this farmer lives – exhausted.

Sitting here resting for a few moments, flanked by an old, snoring black dog. Lap draped by a fidgeting, warm kitten, and quietly reflecting – shedding tears for the blessings… For the losses… For the opportunity to experience life, and death, so richly, so intensely, so uniquely.