They gotta suck mud before they can suck milk

The old-school beef farmers are a dying breed. I'm talking about the guys who run cow-calf operations on open pastures, not feedlots. Buddy who rents my fields was complaining the other day that he needs snow on the ground before he can do the hundred yard cattle drive to the barn on the other side of me. That's because without snow, the cattle will stop to eat all the grass en route. They've eaten down all the grass in my pastures and now rely on a daily delivery of round bales. Meanwhile, it's been a wet autumn, and the ground around the bale-feeder is turning into a mud hole. Buddy feels for the calves. "The cow's dragging her bag through the mud all day, and the poor calf gotta suck mud for two minutes before they suck milk." In other news from Hillbilly Acres, on our way back from the weekly shopping trip to Foodland and the liquor store, we spotted a couple of dozen blue herons just behind the Wiarton International Airport (yes, it really is an official international airport). Then a few dozen more in the distance... and along the runway a little further on, blue herons as far as the eye could see. There were hundred upon hundreds. The Farm Manager put this find on Facebook and in no time found out somebody had seen a great aglomeration of blue herons in the Tara area, maybe 30 miles south of here. They're all gathering for the great annual blue heron murmuration to points south. The birds from Wiarton and Tara will be joined by many other chapters of the blue heron gang and by the time they hit Florida they'll number in the hundreds of thousands.