I was so proud of myself yesterday.  I was finally getting a hang of this farming and milking thing.  I got the kids ready for school, then fed the pigs, calves and goats.  Returned from dropping the kids off at school and walked to the barn.  I found Ruthy (she is the one with the long horns), our milking devon cow.

Ruthy                                     -picture taken by Marie-Anne Decourcy

I walked her into the barn, put her in her stanchion, then turned around and remembered to close the door behind her.  I cleaned her teats, and turned on the vacuum pump, and put on our old surge milker.  After several minutes, I checked to see if milk was still coming into the milk container by squeezing the tubes that attached the inflation tubes into the bucket.  After she was milked I removed the bucket, sprayed her teats, and let her back out of the barn onto pasture.  We had fresh milk that day, all was good.  First time milking by myself…not too bad.

Gallon and a half of fresh milk

TODAY, however, was bad.  I forgot to close the door behind Ruthy…

Immediately, three other cows followed Ruthy into the barn… And then one, the biggest thousand pound Charolais hiefer, named Elsa) walked right through the barn and escaped through the front door…into our yard and around the house.  Shoot!  If the boys were here, they would have remembered to close that door.  Now, I was by myself chasing the biggest heifer we have, who, by the way wanted to kick up her heels and prance around like a brand new calf all around the yard.  The other two, I was able to secure… but Elsa, well,  she went exploring.  Eventually, she would head back to the barn, but as soon as she saw me, she would run away.  I finally got smart (after trying to grab her collar, getting a lasso, getting a bucket of grain…which all didn’t work).  I opened one of the barn doors that they are used to going into, tried calling Dale on my cell phone from the car (which meant I was no longer by the barn) and Elsa finally pranced her body back into the open door. I ran like I was finishing a race, and closed that barn door. Whew.  Dale returned from his ER shift…Recounting how he nearly missed Elsa or Rosie (another large and definitely smart heifer) from walking right out the front door as well, and so now he makes sure that closes them… now he tells me…

Elsa, my least favorite running partner…

Moving from Virginia to Quebec to Africa, then from Africa to New York to Maine… It’s familiar territory for the active duty military and also for the occasional full time mi$$ion@ry… Therefore having both afflictions in our medical history, yes, we have moved. The good thing is we are not truly “wanderers.” We are not traveling aimlessly or without purpose. I think it is healthy to be flexible (learned that one from the Navy), but also to have a goal (probably the doctor talking now). Leaving the mi$$ion field was one of the hardest decisions of our lives. We left Africa tired, frustrated, burnt out. We stopped blogging, stopped dreaming, and stopped planning. We came back to “do medicine” (of all things), and to start healing. I think jumping back into medicine was a pivotal decision. You see, in order to go overseas, we stopped medicine to learn French, study the bible, raise our family, and raise support… Then we went overseas, had our months of orientation, then started learning a new language, living in a new culture, only never to be able to practice medicine. The proverbial doors kept closing… So, we returned to New York, got our feet back under us and into medicine. Finally, the doors didn’t seem so broken.
After an email, phone call, and two site visits, Dale and I are now serving/working/living in Northern Maine. They needed both an ER physician and pediatrician and Dale just happened to find the barn that he was looking for…that happened to be next to a covered bridge. We always wanted to have chickens in Africa… Now, not only do we have chickens in Maine, but also cows, pigs and goats.

Please join me in a new adventure/ blog updates here in Northern Maine. Maybe not as exotic? But certainly a journey.