The sound of 4000 cows

This morning I woke up to a cacophony of cow calls. well, actually cow MOOOOOs.

the funny thing is that leaving my house to make a 5 am breaky, a feat that could only be achieved by getting up at precisely 4 :16 am, meant that I couldn't actually SEE the 4000 cows in the yards in front of me because it was still dark....but I could sure hear them!

For me, a city girl, my face to face interaction with cows never surpassed one, maybe two at a time, and only country road drive by's (where you wouldn't hear'em any way), this means that I never actually realized just how loud their moos really are. or at least the collective volume of 4000, 300kg pieces of meat are....the on the theme of animal noises, the toads don't make a sound, they just hobble around, afraid of all humans....the frogs could deafen a small child with their deep burping-sound calls. The ghekops are just cute. We had a whole mama, papa and baby gheko family living in our bathroom a couple of night ago! oh, and the chickens are just funny. they run around in pairs squawking at one another, looking like they are playing tag (or better yet, because of the arc of their necks, it looks more like one is peppy la pew trying to give the other one a big kiss, while the other one extends their neck so far the mr. la pew cannot get his kiss...).

Back to the cows. Normally there are not 4000 cows in my front yard. Normally (well according to the baseline normalcy from the 2 weeks I've been here), only the baby calf's (called Potty's or Potties), and the cows who need a little extra TLC live in the paddocks and yards in front of me. But because our station has a too many cows at the moment, they've decided to muster a few thousand to sell before the rain comes. We are technically in the rain season now, but it (the rain) hasn't started yet. The spent the first day mustering using two helicopters and 6 cowboys on motorbikes, yesterday they went old school and used horses. I walked by the lot of them as they were leaving after breakfast. It was such a sight to see six wide-brimmed hatted cowboys ride off into the sunrise on their horses.......if I'd had my camera with me I would have taken a picture, it was THAT cool.

On the menu yesterday was meatballs and pasta. Of course, as there were 12 of them, I made enough to feed 500 and am now drowning in left overs......I also made a swirly white and chocolate cake which was divine. Most of the cowboys seem to live savory things though (which is a problem because I don't, and don't know how to bake 'savory' things). But, experimentation is the key to success, right? Move it along is a mantra here so for smoko I made sausage rolls with left overs from breaky and puff pastry (the only thing that comes ready made here). I also made muffins (which were not savory so were not gobbled up).