La Merde

July 20, 2018: The past two days have been all about the poop; or as the french call it, la merde! Weirdly, we love driving the poo-boni and had fun cleaning the area as best we could, all the while learning to drive a tractor. Today was an unusual day for us in many ways. We did the morning milking and some other small tasks but shortly thereafter Denis had to leave with his wife to see her mother who is in the hospital. Denis treats his cow's ailments with essential oils. He had us run an experiment to test which oil these two sick cows needed. We sat with the cows and did a sniff test. One at a time we held out 25-30 different oils and they would generally show no sign of interest or turn away, but for one or two oils they would get closer and sniff them more. Denis's theory is that this is the oil that they need. We were also left home to keep a sharp eye on the pregnant cow who was due to deliver today. We checked on her every 30 minutes but had to stand far away and look through binoculars, so as not to disturb her. She had gone off from the pack to be by herself which is a sure sign on impending labor. Denis wanted us to call him as soon as we saw anything happening so he could get home to be on hand in case anything went wrong. We watched her all morning and finally around 1:30 she started to have the baby. Denis got home in plenty of time because it took this first time mamma about 2 hours to deliver. Luckily we were all right there and had a much closer view. Because this is a dairy farm, and the calf was a boy, the baby will be sold in about 3 weeks. When evening came around we brought the rest of the cows in to feed and left the mom and new baby in the field. We brought them in later and the baby refused to walk so we had to bring him in in a wheelbarrow. Unfortunately, Collette's mother passed away today. We are going to leave first thing tomorrow instead of Sunday because of this. We tried to leave today as soon as we found out to give them privacy, but they asked us to stay tonight to essentially babysit/keep company with their 12 year old. Things have been off schedule today due to the family's business so we did not finish milking until after 11pm tonight. All the kids took part knowing it was the last one. It has been wonderful to spend the week on the farm with the Brevet family.