Farmer Ian & Farmeress Kathy

Yesterday Ian and I learned how to milk a cow! When Ronna asked if we'd like to help out Deanne, her oldest daughter, we jumped at the chance. After all, how hard can it be, and it's something we've never done before. What a great opportunity, we thought!

So, we mosied on down to the barn where Deanne handed Ian a pail, gave him a cow and a quick instruction. I posed my camera at him and his cow while he pulled and yanked on that teet until finally a thin stream of milky white fluid emerged. Ah-ha! He did it. He kept at it, quite proud of himself, and rightly so. Farmer Ian was born! We traded places so I could have a chance while he recorded history on the camera. It took a few tries, but finally the cow started cooperating. Between the two of us we got about an inch of milk in about half an hour, and we thought, hey, we're pretty good at this! Until Deanne showed us her full pail. I had noticed she had two teets going at a time, and I was sure we could graduate up to that. So, Ian took one side of the cow and I took the other, pulling, pulling, but only getting a thin stream again, and only from one teet each. Suddenly, without warning, the cow let loose like a race horse. No, not milk! Yukkk! All over my shoe and as I scooted back as quickly as I could react, it spashed on my pants. Now, why in the world had I put on clean clothes to go to the barn??? Obviously, the cow found this quite humorous, as if I could have read his mind at this point, he would have been thinking, "Ha, ha, you think that was bad? Wait - I feel an urge. Oh, yeah. Here it comes. You'd better move on back and hold your nose, 'cause here it comes." Sure enough, plop, plop. Yukkk again! That's when I decided there was a reason God made me a city girl. Ian, being the sport, and ofcourse having to prove he's the man, grabbed a shovel and proceeded to shovel the piles and throw them outside. Unfortunately, the smell remained. I decided at that point that I'd work in the kitchen, staining the milk and filling the jugs, but as I turned and took a step, one of the nearly 50 chickens mistook me for its perch and flew right at me! I felt like I was on the movie set of "The Birds." I'm sure I was shaking for a while, I just wanted out of that barn! I found the kitchen part much more my style and proceeded to strain the milk (twice) and pour it into glass jars. Ian actually continued to milk the cow, but we both agreed later that milking is not our forte!

We rewarded ourselves by driving to Homer in the afternoon. Homer sits on a spit of land south of Kenai-Soldotna, where we are, that juts into the Kachemak Bay. One of the young summer-hires from Florida (why do Floridians all come up here to work in the summer?) went with us, as she had been there years ago with her grandmother. Once again we were graced with the most beautiful soft blue colored water surrounded by bulbuous, snow covered mountains. I'm sure they must have been a good 20-30 miles away, but they are so large that they seem much closer - until you see a boat skimming across the water, and the boat seems so small that at first we're not sure it's a boat or a fish's fin. Alaska has made their roads very sight-seer friendly. There are areas for pulling over to take pictures every 1/4 mile or so. I'm sure they did this out of necessity, as before they were completed, I can only imagine the traffic back-ups caused by tourists gaping and gawking at the views.



There really wasn't much to the town of Homer, other than the views. It's a town with a harbor from which fishing boats leave, seeking the halibut and salmon. Other than that, there are seafood restaurants and souvinier shops, and lots of coffee/latte shops. But, the mountains beckon your eyes every time you turn around. And, the water. The color comes from the iceburg run-off, I'm told. It's a unique, serene blue, and it's really a shame you get distracted at all by the little shops. Who needs another tee-shirt when you just don't get tired of staring at the same mountains over and over? Mallory, the young lady who went with us, remembered a shop where she and her grandmother got the best hot chocolate ever. We asked several shop keepers about it, and finally found someone who directed us back to the other end of town. There, she got her hot chocolate and I got some of the hot chocolate powder for little Ian, and a CD of bear songs for Cadence and Cameron. It's funny, bears are the only wildlife we haven't seen here yet. I read in today's paper that the town of Kenai, just about 2-3 miles from the Ranch, has already had a few bears breaking into houses looking for food. They have a lot of strict rules about making your house bear-proof, but sometimes people just forget or neglect something, and the bears are waking up now and looking for easy food. We see quite a few moose, of all sizes, along side the roads, eating the fresh grasses coming up.



So, today Ian finished the lean-to, which I have to paint as soon as I'm done with the sign. I worked on that a bit today and will do some more tomorrow. Ian said he's going fishing tomorrow - his first fishing trip in Alaska! I hope he brings home dinner!