Oreo Breakfast

There's a lady at the farmer's market who has been back twice to talk to me about cows. I'm not a dairy person, and in the beginning the only cow photo I had on display was the Jersey heiffer shot that you've seen before. But I repeated to her a couple of my uncle's favorite comments about how rich Jersey milk was in butterfat. He likes to claim he could get the same volume and butterfat as Holstein milk by running the garden hose into a bulk tank of Jersey milk. Then we started talking about brown cows and black cows and I told her about Belted Galloways, which are often called "oreo cows" - which is when she decided I was pulling her leg.

There's a farm not far from the high school with a small herd of Belted Galloways in a field near the road. I don't know the people who live there, but the cows are fairly easy to spot and I gave her directions on where to find them. She came back the next week to say she couldn't find them, and challenged me to bring her a photo of the oreo cows this Saturday.

I went out there that afternoon, but the cows were at the back of the field and not feeling photogenic. I tried a couple of times knocking on the door of the house to get permission to walk into the field and photograph the herd up close, but nobody was home either time. I considered inviting myself quickly over the fence, but I'm not sure about the temperament of the animals - besides, I'm allergic to bees and there were several hives set up in the field. I even asked my neighbor, whose family has been in the area for generations, if she could figure out who lived there and how best to get in touch with them.

Finally, I took one last drive by there before work on Thursday morning. I'm still not a fan of my telephoto lens, but hopefully I got something that will do.