Janet Brien's photos with the keyword: cattle

(+7 insets!) (big is better for this pano! :) (Please scroll down to "Today's Pictures" to learn about the insets! :) Trip Talk: Cheese Snobs Who doesn't love cheese? I'm sure there are plenty out there but I've been a fan since I first tried it as a kid. As an adult, I've had my trials with it though, because most cheese is high in fat--for many years I was a fiend about keeping the fat in my diet at the lowest possible amount, so usually I'd pass on cheese. However, when Steve and I changed over to a ketogenic lifestyle, my whole outlook on fat changed. It took me a while to trust the concept that fat doesn't make you fat, but once I proved it to myself, suddenly foods like cheese and sausage were no longer evil and to be avoided at all costs! Hooray for CHEESE!! Steve and I have become huge fans of cheese and love trying out new types. Visiting Provence, France a couple of years back was like stepping into Cheese Heaven…Europe really has the market cornered in regards to specialty cheeses and we were just blown away by the incredible variety. We have lots of choices here in the US but it's maybe 10% of what you can find in Europe. Well-stocked specialty cheese shops here are really nice but still, they don't come close. Even though we've developed a pretty good understanding of what makes a good cheese, we are quite happy with non-gourmet cheese--honestly, the extremely minor difference isn't usually worth the high price in our book. Of course there are exceptions…just miles from our home is the Rogue Creamery, home to one of the best Blue Cheeses in the world! When we visit, we take home a wedge of their truly exceptional Rogue River Blue …it is in a class all by itself! Anyway, whenever we go to a creamery, we love to try the samples and load up all the cheeses that were wonderful. Of course this means we almost always get more cheese than we can possibly eat in the next six months but we can't resist! Alas, it was a huge disappointment when we entered Qualicum Cheesework's little shop and tried their few offerings. Bland, plain, boring, flavorless, unexceptional in all regards, there wasn't a single cheese that was even remotely special. Talk about feeling disappointed! After the fantastic farm tour and learning about their operation from A to Z, we couldn't wait to dump our coins on the counter and bring home piles of cheeses to remember this place by. They didn't even carry other company's cheeses--but perhaps it would embarrass them when all of the other cheeses sold out and none of theirs was touched? Steve and I were reminded of the must-miss, overpriced joke of a cheese "festival" we went to last year--organized by Rogue Creamery…they should be ashamed!!--that featured a paltry handful of creameries selling overpriced cheeses stuffed into a tiny tent with far too many people shoving and pushing for air space. Two of the perhaps ten cheeseries were just like Qualicum Cheeseworks and we couldn't understand why they were wasting their time on their horrible attempts at making cheese, especially when compared to the excellent--albeit overpriced--cheeseries right next to them. Truthfully, who am I to talk?--I've never made cheese!--but I have a developed palette and it's not hard to judge the quality of a cheese! We were also disappointed that Qualicum Cheeseworks didn't offer fresh cream for sale--we'd hoped to buy some for our lovely creamy espressos we have every day. However, their reasoning was fair--they don't pasteurize their cream and it would go bad too quickly to make it worthwhile to keep at their shop. *tears of sadness* They did, however, have a really cool offering! Fresh milk on tap where you can buy a bottle or bring your own and fill up at a reasonable price! Alas, we don't drink milk (not enough fat, lol!) so we could only watch people filling their bottles, but what a fun idea! If you take out their shop, Morningstar Farms was a total hit with us. It's the only time we've ever gotten the chance to tour a farm before and learn about the whole process. This was so much fun and one of the countless highlights of our trip! Today's Pictures My main picture today would have been perfect for Happy Fence Friday! Morningstar Farms had Holsteins as their majority in dairy cattle, though they had a few Jersey's too. It was wonderful to see them all, and what fine condition their stock was in. Happy, healthy, well-fed and with plenty of room to graze and relax. A total spa for moo-moos! :) The insets are quite the variety! The first one features a pair of cows, the left of which was mooing non-stop! Unfortunately the graininess of this image was really horrible and I nearly tossed the shot but I couldn't stop looking at this funny expressions on their faces! I decided it was worth the time so I played with filters until I was able to use the image…hopefully you guys find it to be fun and amusing too! :) (If only it was higher quality, I'd have made it my main image!) Insets 2 and 3 show a brand-new calf! We obviously arrived at the height of their calving season--THREE were born that day, two while we were there! What fun to see them all wet and wobbly, mom licking and nuzzling them towards the milk station! :) What a wonderful experience for us. We didn't actually see them being born but it was such a joy to see them minutes old and standing for the first time, shaking their heads and wagging their tails. Such dear babies. :) Inset 4--HOLY PSYCHEDELIC MADNESS, BATMAN!! :D LOL, ok, so they had a pair of pot-belly piggies in the petting area and of the two, only this one was illuminated well and standing. Unfortunately it was also a pale greyish-pink and covered in spiky, yellowy-anemic hair. There was absolutely no way to make that ugly pig look nice--and coming from a person who adores piggies, that's saying something. That being said, I couldn't leave this guy out of my lineup--it was time to break out the artistic filters! WHAT FUN! After going to town with layers and filtering, I must admit that I absolutely love this shot--from blah and ugly to fun and fantastic--just to be sure I wasn't crazy, I showed it to Steve, and I was glad to see that he loved it too! :) What do you think? Horrible or neato? :D The final three pictures show the darling Welsh ponies with a close-up of the chestnut's sleepy face. The final picture shows the interesting massive group of aqua/teal and white-wrapped, round hay bales that are stored next to the big cow barn. All of the ones up-front were just for the ponies and everything behind was for the cattle…and what you see wasn't the whole lot, which was pretty staggering in totality. Given that this area gets about 45 inches of snow during the winter months, it's understandable they have so much hay set aside! * * * Pam, it was fun to read about your experiences with farms as a youngster. There are few things as iconic or important in our history. I love that as we're getting older, more and more people are working to preserve aspects of our past farming history. Online resources abound to share past methods. Reenactment farms are located in many places for visiting and festivals revolving around how things once were are grand celebrations I'd love to visit if we're lucky enough some day! I have been rereading the Little House on the Prairie books and now, as a 55-yr old, it's been a great delight to be able to cross-reference on the internet to see and understand all of the aspects of farming and homesteading life back at the 1900's turn of the century. I hope life is treating you well these days, Pammy! :) Stay warm and cozy--it's a cold day here and I bet it is in OK too! *BIG HUGS* Explored on 3/2/20; highest placement #9.

(+2 insets!) Guess what we have sitting in front of our shop?! AHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!! WE HAVE OUR VERY OWN RV!!! Oh what an exciting day!! Steve and I met one of the owners in town late this morning to transfer money and ownership. Then we drove over to their place and painstakingly hooked our trailer to our truck. Steve showed me everything he did just so I know and finally we were ready to pull out. I was assigned the duty of making sure there were no cars coming and then I waited and watched. The previous owners live at the end of an extremely narrow road with a fairly tight turn. Normally this would be a non-issue but we have a long-bed truck with a full-sized cab--about 25 feet. The trailer is 30 feet long. To make it around the curve in their road, Steve had to creep forward, check the angle and back way up to get closer to being able to get around that turn. It took him about 10 minutes of back-and-forth before he was finally able to clear the turn without wiping out the entire side of our RV! Steve drove up the hill and all was clear...until just as Steve was pulling out into the road, a car came buzzing around the turn. And then two more. What are the odds? No cars for 10 minutes and then three in a row! Sheesh. Thankfully there were no problems...the cars waited and Steve was able to get onto the main road. I hopped in and off we went! We drove at a leisurely pace for the 30-minute trip home and when we got to our gate, Steve stopped a good distance away so I could open the gates all the way and he'd be able to make the wide swing onto our property. Maneuvering the trailer into position in front of our shop was quite a time-consuming and stressful challenge. The biggest problem was that our property is extremely muddy and the soil is very soft. This meant that the tires on both the truck and trailer sunk many inches in various places as Steve was angling the trailer but thankfully nothing got stuck. The truck's wheels occasionally spun in place, refusing to back the trailer up, so Steve would have to pull forward and try again at a different spot. Steve's handled long trailers and big rigs in the past but it's been a while. He also needed to retrain himself on the unique and confusing situation of backing a trailer up and turning it 45 degrees. I did my best to help direct him and as time goes on we'll perfect our directing—and we'll find our walkie-talkies too! Our 2016 Grey Wolf trailer is now leveled and hooked up to power! It's totally and utterly amazing to us that we actually own an RV! It's going to take time for us to get used to this huge change, but we are good with it! I didn't take pictures inside yet but I do have one inset of the truck and trailer as Steve finally had it backed into position. I'll post more pictures tomorrow so you can have a look inside! It is Thursday and so I'm posting my Happy Fence Friday picture...it's another one from our wonderful motorcycle trip we took a few years back with our buddy Andy. This picture was taken on a stretch of road between Alturas, California and Klamath, Oregon. There is are endless expanses of beautiful country along the way and I had a wonderful time clicking away from the back of the motorcycle! (By the way, I also included a panorama of today's lovely sky to celebrate RV DAY!) Pam, since my main picture features cattle, I took a peek on your stream for "cow" or "cattle". Instead of finding a bovine, I found FLICKA! I really love this picture of him sitting in the snow. Here's hoping you had a good day! *HUGGGGGSSSSSS*!!! What a doll. Explored on 3/08/19, highest placement, #8.

(1 inset, read below for explanation!) December 20…just one more day to go before the shortest day of the year! I'm so happy because of course that means that finally the days will begin getting longer again! Hooray!! I simply can't wait before it starts to get light earlier again! This morning I saw some familiar red envelopes on the counter that needed to be mailed so I grabbed them as I walked out the door for my daily exercise. Netflix. We love these guys. In fact, we've been loyal customers since 2001! In fact, the moment I found out about this new movie and tv service, I was on them like white on rice! Why the fervor? One word: commercials. I hate them. Wait, that's not quite right. I LOATHE commercials. But actually, that wasn't the straw that broke the camel's back. It was the ticker tapes and the pop-ups that began covering the screen during a show. All of this garbage made me so crazy that I stopped watching television entirely, in about 1998. I just couldn't stand it anymore. And you know what? I didn't miss a thing. And I was also much happier. Then I found out there was a new service that actually mailed dvds to you and included free return mailers. What?! Who?! Where?! I couldn't sign up fast enough! No more schlepping out to a video store and dealing with returns the next day? No more wasted time picking out a title? No more disappointment because the movie I wanted was rented? I was instantly in love with Netflix and remain blissfully happy all these years! I walked the envelopes down to our mail box and popped the red flag up to alert the postman that we have mail to pick up. Isn't that the coolest thing?! I just love the fact that I don't have to find a public mail box when I need to send something out! Having spent most of my life in San Francisco or a nearby city, I have always relied on public mail boxes. I know you can clip your mail to your mail slot and it will be picked up but I never liked the idea of a stranger noticing and possibly taking your mail. Of course it's possible that our outgoing mail could be stolen from this rural mailbox but the likelihood is very small. I turned to walk back through our gate when I stopped in my tracks and turned around. On the post that holds our mail box was a zip tie used to hold a sign in place. Somehow an Oak leaf had jammed itself onto the zip tie and was now stuck firmly against the post and the sign. I stared. I goggled. How does that even HAPPEN?! I returned a little while later and took a picture because you guys just have to see this!! (see the inset!) It's Thursday for me but Friday in Europe so I'm posting my HFF picture now! This one is from the five-day motorcycle trip that Steve and I went on a couple of years ago with our friend Andy. On Day 4 we rode up the eastern side of California with the spine of the Sierras to our left. We traveled from a town near eastern Yosemite called Bridgeport all the way up to a small town called Alturas. Along the way were mind-bendingly huge ranches littered with cattle. I took this picture while we rode along on this incredibly beautiful day! (The Sierras can be seen rising up in the distance.) Pam, I hope that you've been doing a little better lately! I have seen more of your comments on people's pictures and everyone is so happy for your visit! Here's a wish for a holiday gift from all of us, a healing present that will push you gently towards a happy, healthy you! Thinking of you every day! *HUGGGGGGGS*! Explored on 12/21/18, highest placement, #1.