Meet Ms. Maple

I’d like to introduce you to one of our newest farm staff members, Maple.

Unfortunately, it’s not really possible for you to meet Ms. Maple unless you stop by our farm, but I’ll do my best with my limited skills of the written word.

Why would I be introducing you to one of our employees, you ask? Good question. First off, she’s adorable and has already made herself an asset to our farm store by greeting customers in a less-than-professional way but has received much praise for how good of a girl she is.

If anyone needs a companion while driving the Kubota to do chores or while in the truck to haul cattle, she happily volunteers to join them. She has been training hard or is hard to train, depending on the situation, availability of treats and time of day.

If you haven’t figured it out yet, we got a puppy at the beginning of June. My college friends, Nathan and Jenna Kromann, live just a couple of miles from our farm and had an unexpected litter of puppies born earlier this year. Emily saw pictures of cute fluffballs on Facebook and decided we had to go “look” at the puppies. I asked her if she was ready to have a constant companion who wanted to chew on everything in sight, and she was certain it was time to get a dog.

I’m glad she was certain, because I’m pretty sure it’s impossible to just go look at puppies. If you go to someone’s house and play with cuddly little puppies, I’m fairly certain chances are somewhere between 99.9% and 100% that you will be taking one home.

We didn’t take Maple home that day as she wasn’t weaned yet, but we did claim her for when the puppies were ready to leave their mother. I think their mother, a pretty Australian Shepard named Rosie, was already quite sick of them, but she had to endure the tumbling pile of eight pups for another couple of weeks.

We’ve had farm dogs for my whole life, but Emily and I have never had our own dog. It didn’t make much sense to have a dog when we lived in town and had small children to care for as well as hundreds of cattle, pigs and chickens at the farm.

Our two farm dogs, Lily and Riley, are getting old and slow and seem to spend more time in my parents’ house or the garage per day than they spend at the barn all week. Due to their retirement from farm duties to the cushy life on their dog beds, it was time for a younger dog to join the operation.

Maple hasn’t started training to work cattle but is comfortable around them. She has a passion for herding guinea hens that seem to think it’s a fun game — or else they are just really stupid and unintentionally wander around our yard, waiting for her to chase them off daily.

She is great at picking up any paper towels that don’t make it in the manure or trash can at the barn. Unfortunately, she doesn’t throw them away where they belong. She usually shreds them into confetti-sized pieces that plug the drain covers in the parlor pit and milkhouse.

She seems to be a very intelligent dog, so I’m hopeful that, when she gets bigger, we can train her to work cattle with us. If that’s not her calling, there are always customers to greet and poultry to protect. Like our human employees, there is such a wide variety of tasks that need to be done at the farm that there is sure to be something that fits someone’s natural skills.

Until next time, keep living the dream and give that farm dog in your life a treat or two. They’re working hard too and are probably doing their best to keep all things in their proper place, especially those pesky all-terrain vehicles and utility terrain vehicles that never seem to herd like they want them to.

Tim Zweber farms with his wife, Emily, their three children and his parents, Jon and Lisa, near Elko, Minnesota.