Today I bought a cow.
I have never bought a cow before. I've never even owned a cow before. But this afternoon I stood looking in the trailer at this old, bred, black cow I'm going to call "Black Betty" and realized that we own her.
We've been talking about getting cows for a while, and finally a land lease option came open. We discussed which type of cows we'd like to buy.
Now, the lease isn't final. The fence on the lease land isn't fixed. However, today, Josh called me and announced that he was going to the sale barn because they had some bred cows going through. Well, you know I'm not really a sit back and watch kind of gal, so of course I hopped my happy butt down to Baton Rouge to go the sale as well.
Lunch at the sale barn- whoever invented that was a genius. That place was packed, and it was probably the best southern cooking I've had since that family that cooked and sold lunches out of their country home near Magnolia, AR when I was in college.
Now, this was only my second time to ever even set foot in a sale barn. The first was when I traveled to Pennsylvania in Amish country, and my friend Bethany thought I might just enjoy sitting and watching the cows sell. Boy, did I! I'll never forget how still that little 3-4 year old Amish boy sat through the whole sale with his daddy. But in my memory, that sale went at a much slower pace than this one today.
Today, as my son and I made our way to our seat by Josh, I felt like a big white bleach spot on a black sheet. I was one of three women in there, and let's just say I stood out. Everybody seemed to notice me in that square well-lit building, but I pretended not to notice them noticing me.
My nearly-four-year-old son was not quite as still as the Amish boy, as much as I tried to keep him that way. He kept pointing at things and waving his white paper around. I felt sure he was going to accidentally buy a cow himself. He's cute though, so everybody smiles at him. Everybody just stares at me, wondering what I'm going to do.
Josh, sitting just in front of my knee, handed me the number. I guess he understands that I'm not a sit back and watch girl after all. I scooted over by his buddy, John, so I could ask John questions, like "What does he mean, 67?" Or, "So, how much did that one just sell for, because I couldn't understand but every other word of the auctioneer's?" Or, "What the heck am I doing here buying cows when we don't even have a lease figured out yet?" I refrained from a few of my questions.
The bred cows start to go through, and I saw one I liked. I kicked Josh, and he elbowed me back. She sold pretty cheap to someone below us.
I saw another one and kicked my husband again. He elbowed me back again. She sold even cheaper. Then Josh and I had a short, quiet discussion to reveal that him elbowing me and me kicking him means that we both like that one.
After a couple crappy ones, here comes blackie, marked as a slick mouthed (no teeth, which means she's really old) and 7 months bred. Perfect. I bid. John starts waving his arm and pointing at me to make SURE the auctioneer (and everyone else in there I'm sure) saw me bidding. I got outbid. I bid again. And, then, SOLD- to ME. They sent her out and everything sort of blurred in my vision and I got butterflies in my stomach. I just bought A COW. My first of the bovine species to ever own.
Josh turn around and asked me how much she weighed, what was her number, how much did I pay total, etc. I. Do. Not. Know! Nobody told me to pay attention to all that. All I care about is I just bought a cow. A real cow.
We watched the rest of the bred cows,
the poor ones, some bulls, and some good looking young steers go through, and then it was time for me to go. I got Josh's checkbook and just strutted myself to the paying booth, pretended like I knew what I was doing, and by the time I got up there, I realized I'd forgotten my number. Luckily they had it under Josh's name. I paid $802 for that cow and brought the ticket back down to Josh so he could bring her home. Then, I put my little boy in his car seat and and headed to go get my kindergartner off the bus.
Just another day in my Louisiana Country Life.
P.S. John let us keep "Black Betty" in his pen for a little while, and I think we'll be fixing that fence and finalizing the lease on Wednesday.
P.P.S. My daughter, when she saw the cow, asked if she could milk it.
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