7/1/05

Recently, while on a vacation in Florida my cows escaped from my farm and created quite an uproar in my community. The following is a letter of apology that I ran in the local newspaper. Several people have asked for copies of the letter so I though I would just put it up on my website.

Here are four of my gals after the roundup. They are, from left, Rings, Beauty, Levi, and Floppsy.

AN OPEN LETTER TO THE GOOD FOLKS OF

RICHARDSON'S COVE COMMUNITY

By Marc Postlewaite

You may or may not know me, but you sure as heck know my cows. If not before, you no doubt met them when they held up church traffic at the end of Richardson’s Cove road last Sunday. Or maybe you met them when they, all ten of them, ran through your yard, or ate the beans from your garden, or slept in your barn, or many other things that I have not heard about yet. To all of you I would like to apologize for the bad behavior of my cows, and my inability to keep them contained.

Someone once told me that I should not raise Herefords because they are smarter than me, (at the time I thought they were joking).

This all started when I received a phone call in Florida, where I was attending a friends wedding, to inform me that my cows were grazing alongside the road and creating major traffic jams. My wife and I rushed back to find them hold up at Truman Weeks’ unused barn. He told me it was OK but that he was selling the property May 24th at auction. I would have taken any low bid on my cows right then, but since they looked content, I procrastinated and decided to get help and move them the next afternoon—bad decision!

On Wednesday morning, after being contacted and visited several times by neighbors and the Sheriff’s department, I along with my wife and a good neighbor began to round up the wayward bovines. It only took us an hour or so to shoo the cattle through several nice gardens and onto Richardson’s Cove road where we coached them with grain to follow my pick-up three miles to my farm and their “prison”. After a sigh of relief and a smug feeling of success, I received another phone call to inform me that instead of ten cows following my truck there were only nine and one was still enjoying garden peas. I rounded up some different friends, (by now I am losing friends fast), and we headed out in the rain to get the last escapee. She was not cooperative. We chased her for three rainy hours up and down the road, through gardens, through nicely kept yards, (which she promptly fertilized), up and down mountainsides, and of course through briar and poison ivy infested woods. Even with 604’s great speed and 4-leg drive, we were, after recruiting more people, finally able to convince this half-ton scared gal to head toward the barn. She was as happy as we were when she saw all her friends grazing in their pasture. We were all tired, dirty, wet, scratched up, and generally beat. What a day!

Since this experience I have come to a couple of realizations; firstly, a cow rancher (or parents for that matter), can’t always expect to enjoying a complete vacation, and secondly, I should not try to raise animals that are smarter than me, (maybe sheep, or rabbits, or maybe even red worms).

In any event, you will probably be happy to learn that I have decided to take all but four to the auction in Newport—that will teach them! And I have employed a professional fence company to put up five-strand high-tinsel electric fence around the farm. He said if they try to escape they would become “hamburger-on-the-hoof”—A little too descriptive for my taste.

I know for many of you this is not a joking matter, and I would like to seriously apologize to all of you who were inconvenienced by my cows, and to thank you for being so gracious and understanding. I would also like to thank my friends and neighbors who helped me with what may go down in history as the “Last Great Richardson’s Cove Cattle Round-up”, and last, but not least, I would like to thank the Sheriff’s department for being so understanding—But Firm.

I have several paintings of my cows. "My Cow Beauty", and "The Introduction" are two of my favoriates. You can view them through the search button.