Day at the Dairy

This week's travel adventure for Nora and Sally was a trip to visit the McShane dairy farm in Kilkerly near Dundalk, county Louth. Lesley McShane is the sister of Linda Corey and the aunt of Lauren Corey, both of whom I worked with last year at Steinbeck Peninsula - Menlo Park. Lesley was nice enough to put me in touch with Lesley, and Lesley and her husband Stephen were nice enough to invite Sally and me up for the day!

Sally and I took the train from Dublin. Actually, we missed our first train because the first train was running just 5 minutes behind, so we missed the connection. Lesson learned. We killed two hours at a dreary playground and Starbucks near the Connolly Station and then arrived nice and early for our second train. It was one of those weird experiences in which is was also very difficult to verify that we were actually on the correct train (and I can only imagine how stressful that would have been had English not been our first language) but, sure enough, we were and all proceeded smoothly from there. The train ride up was quite rainy but it cleared up over the next hour or so, so perhaps our delayed arrival was actually fortuitous!

Lesley was waiting for us at the station and she drove us to the charming town (consisting of a school, church, and town hall) of Kilkerly and then on to the farm. Lesley and Stephen were incredibly gracious hosts. They set aside the afternoon to entertain us—when surely they have plenty to do (on a farm!)—and were delightful company all around. Lesley had even purchased cute little wellies for Sally in case she didn't have any!

After a delicious lunch including homemade apple pie with ice cream with headed out to explore the farm. We started first with the land down the road a bit that had gorgeous views of the mountains and housed the very late-term pregnant cows and weaned calves.

It was also fun to talk shop a bit with Stephen about the diseases and issues he deals with in Ireland. We also saw lots of ragwort (and its very specific caterpillars), which every vet knows is exciting!

From there we went back to the dairy to meet some very cute couple-day-old calves and see the cows currently in milk. They were very happy, out on grass that would make every horse in California just die with jealousy (and from the horrible colitis and laminitis they would get if they could get themselves to it...not funny); and I had to practically restrain myself from throwing my body down and rolling around in it because we just did NOT have grass like that in Cali.

On the way back to the train station, Lesley took us to the fabulous playground, where we sat in the warm sun and chatted while Sally played. The train ride home was clear and had beautiful views; and no missed connections!