Fall & Cows

I love little country lanes (no matter that they;re only half a kilometer long)

It never ceases to amaze me how the seasons here shift according to the calendar. Like picture book magic: You turn the page, and when it says it should be fall, ‘kachingg’, fall starts. Temperatures drop overnight, the discoloration of leaves starts, and pumpkins suddenly turn orange.  In Holland, fall starts somewhere in summer, although sometimes summer can extend into fall, and you can have a spring with snow. The lines are ‘flou’, but not over here. The seasons are punctual, which is rather un-Lebanese, come to think of it.

Home on the Range: Rosa (seriously, that was her name) looking at her friends. 

I spent the last two days up in Laqlouq for work, and up in the mountains the change is even more pronounced. It’s long-sleeve weather in the evening, and nature is changing its hue.

I encountered some cows. You don’t see a lot of cows in Lebanon, other than the ones you see on the highway in trucks, being hauled from the port straight to the butcher. Lately I’ve been seeing a lot of Brahman cows being transported. I wonder where they get them from because we do not have them in Europe.

Nature changing her (its?) hue

Anyway, I encountered cows. Scrawny little fellas, they were. This is not exactly cow country, because a cow needs to eat about 3% a day in their body weight. These were about 550 kilos, so about 16 to 17 kilos of grass per cow. Except, there is no grass here because of the lack of rain.  You’ll need to feed them other things, which costs money, and so you end up making virtually no money. The cows in Laqlouq belong to a farm called La Vallee Banche, which is part of a touristic project, and I think they make more money giving cow milking & cheese making workshops then on the actual milk they produce. The Jesuit priests down in Tanaayel have a nice collection of cows as well.

Tete a tete with Rosa

But I come from cow country, and I like cows. Their smell, their warmth, their wet noses, the fact that they can stick their own tongue in their nostrils and lick their snot, I mean, what’s not to like about cows? 

Fall is in the air, my phone is (finally) fixed, and life is good. Now if only I can figure out why my Internet connection is sooooooooooo o o o o o o o o o o  incredibly slow. 

 

Not a sun set  but a 6:36 sun rise.