Stevie had grabbed his shovel with the shorter handle, and he was clearing the pen of its manure. Although he often helped Jude with the livestock chores in the evening, the boy hadn’t shown any inclination to work with Leah—he had always remained on the fringe of her peripheral vision as she’d worked, watching the animals but preferring to avoid her attention or conversation. Some folks had hinted that Stevie was mentally and emotionally slow, but Leah sensed he was just shy and mourning his mother.
“Denki for your help, Stevie,” she said as she picked up her shovel and began clearing the opposite end of the goat pen. “Many hands make light work.”
Stevie’s lips curved. “Matches make the lights work, too,” he quipped.
Leah gaped. The boy had a quick sense of humor!
They finished mucking out the pen in companionable silence, because Leah wasn’t one to make chitchat—and she didn’t want to push her luck now that Stevie was feeling so much happier. Together they fed the ducks and chickens, and then Leah loaded the large pull cart with alfalfa pellets and a bag of calf feed supplement.
“How come you gotta give the calves extra feed?” Stevie asked as he walked beside her. “Aren’t they still gettin’ milk from their mamms?”
Leah considered his question. Nothing made her smile like the serene sight of the calves nursing from their mothers in the pasture she and the boy were entering. “I feed the babies extra vitamins so they’ll get enough nutrition now that we’re starting to wean them,” she explained. “And they won’t go through as much stress when we separate them from their mamms, so they’ll graze on grass like the adult cows. I’m giving the mama cows some supplements, too, because the grass isn’t as thick now that we’re coming out of winter.”
Stevie considered this. “Is that why Dat says we gotta seed the pastures again real soon?”
“Jah. The calves we’re raising to sell need a gut diet of grass and hay so they’ll grow big.”
As they approached the simple calf enclosure Jude had constructed—a fence with boards at a level that allowed the calves inside but not the adult cows—Leah was pleased to see that Stevie’s eyes were shining with excitement.
“Lookit!” he said eagerly. “Their ears are all perked up coz they know we’re comin’ with fresh feed. So how come you got a red-colored bull and some of the cows are black and the others are black with white faces and legs? Deacon Saul’s cows are all black.”
Gripping the wagon handle, Leah wondered how much information about reproduction and genetics a five-year-old boy needed. She decided to answer the questions he’d asked without adding a lot of details.
“Deacon Saul raises Black Angus—and so does Bishop Vernon in Cedar Creek—because they like that breed of cattle for producing beef. I think they also like the way those cattle look in a pasture,” she added with a chuckle. “My dat began breeding red bulls, which are Herefords, with Black Angus cows because he liked the crossbred calves they make. He believed that crossbred heifers become better mamms, and that crossbred cattle are gentler and easier to handle—and he thought their meat tasted better, too. So my herd is a mixture of a couple of Black Angus mama cows, Patsy and Erma, and the crossbred mama, Maisie, that’s black with a spotted white face like the calves are.”
After a moment, Stevie smiled. “It’s easier to tell your cows apart because they don’t all look alike, huh?” he observed. “There’s Maisie, with her two spotted calves, watchin’ us. Erma and Patsy are over on the other side of the fence.”
When Maisie mooed as though responding to Stevie, Leah laughed. “We have to be careful what we say,” she teased, “because the cows know when we’re gossiping about them.”
Stevie held her gaze before his serious expression brightened with a smile. “Nuh-uh! They don’t speak English. They speak in cow talk,” he insisted.
“Maybe so, but food is a language we all understand,” Leah pointed out. She grasped the handle on the gate, her pulse thrumming with the pleasure of bringing Stevie out of his shell and into her world. “You know how this works,” she said softly. “We’ll step inside nice and slow, and close the gate behind us. Then you can help me scoop the alfalfa pellets and supplement into the feed trough so the calves will get used to being around you.”
Stevie’s face lit up like Christmas. He nodded eagerly and did exactly as Leah had told him. He was too excited to talk as he used a metal scoop to fill the raised trough with the green alfalfa pellets. Leah opened the bag of supplement and walked behind Stevie, scooping the powder onto the alfalfa he’d spread. Immediately after they stepped through the gate, the four young calves walked under the board toward their feed while their mothers looked on from outside the fence.
Stevie was so excited that he gripped the board as he watched them. “They like it! Look how they’re diggin’ in!” he said in a husky whisper.
“They like you, too, Stevie,” Leah said fondly. “And see how the other cows are sticking around rather than skittering off? They know you won’t hurt them or make loud noises to scare them away.”
Grinning, the boy looked around at the small herd gathered near the enclosure. “So how come those cows don’t come inside? Coz they’re bigger?” he asked, pointing at them.
“They’re a year older,” Leah explained. “Those six steers are the ones we’re feeding to sell for their meat. We keep the heifers—the girls—so
