I was at the Temple barn Saturday for a meeting with Ranaka, Jayaprabhupada, and Parampara. We were starting to build a projects list of improvements and maintenance that needs to be done /would be nice to do for the cows.
The idea would be to publicize this list and then let donors choose which ones they want to fund, like Sridhara took upon himself to raise the funds for painting the Winter Barn roof this summer.
One immediate thing would be to replace the electric fence along the entryway to the barn with a board fence. This has both practical and aesthetic purposes. I will post more about the list as it evolves.
While I was there, I snapped a shot of the two calves. Although Kesava and Madhava are still there, I don’t know if I would call them calves anymore — back home they are what we would have called yearlings.
That is Sanga, daughter of Surabhi on the left, and Nandini on the right, whose mother is Kamadenu.
Surabhi was the last cow in our pre-existing herd who was young enough to be bred. Kamadenu is one of those purchased for New Vrindaban by Sridhara.
I have trouble with names and since I don’t spend enough time at the barn, I had to ask Jaya Prabhupada to help me with a couple of them. I didn’t have any paper with me so I wrote them down on a paper bag. When I went to look for the bag this morning, I realized I had consumed the contents (which was a delicious vegetarian dairy based treat) and discarded the bag.
Hence my morning meditation was spent rummaging in the rubbish bin to retrieve it. An inferior alternative to many other possibilities I could have spent the same time doing, but I was too embarrassed to admit I didn’t remember their names so it had to be done.
I was appreciating very much the fact that we separate compost out and don’t merge it with the other trash while I was performing this piece by piece search. Of course the local raccoons, who rarely leave any compost left over for the crows the next morning, also appreciate this but for culinary rather than sanitary reasons.
