Good Bye Old Friend

Tractor has been with us since we moved here...she was inherited from the previous farm and they had gotten her from Camphill Copake long age. We figure her approximate age to be 29...pretty old for a cow. She gave birth to Surprise the first year we moved to the farm.. Her calf was...a surprise. And thus started our endeavors with beef cows. We soon took on additional animals with our neighbor, eventually bought her out of the beef business, and here we are manging our small 20-30 animal herd of grass fed organically managed cows.


Tractor was named by my nephew Nicholas...only a young boy could name a cow tractor!!!! She grazed the best views in Columbia County, she let our children sit on her and has always been the friendliest cow in the herd...as long as you were human. Dogs beware!!! Though it is hard to remember her as ever being aggressive, she chased our dog Snowy many a time riling up the entire herd into stampede formations through the fields. As he would run straight for Chris with all the cows following, Snowy was banned from the cow's pastures in summer.

Though she did not have another calf after Surprise, we decided that she would grow old and die here on the farm. She had a long retirement, eventually she had no teeth and stopped chasing dogs.

We told the kids that Tractor went to heaven, where she can chase Snowy again. She had a good life.