Yes, these are locations found in the “Lord of the Rings” movies…  My THREE boys, LOVE these movies!  (Not-so-much for me, though…I am just not big on movies – especially fantasy types…)  But I DO like naming things!  🙂  So, we have named all the fields on our farm after locations found in these movies.  This way, as long as we tell one another what field we’re working in, we can find each other quickly, if we need to.

In the winter, we keep our cows in a “sacrifice field”.  This is a field that has lots of trees for shelter & is too rough for us to make hay in.  (Years ago, it was covered in pine trees when the farm was leased to grow Christmas trees on.)  When you are “grass-farmers”, the grass is the base of your farm.  Therefore, you don’t want your animals ruining your nicest fields, which is what happens in the winter/spring with snow/thawing/mud.  Since there is no fresh grass for the cows to graze on in the winter here, we feed them our hay – either square bales or round bales that Mike unrolls for them.  We’ve named this “sacrifice field” Mordor, because it is not the prettiest.  The cows LOVE to scratch on all the trees, so most branches are missing on the underparts of the trees, and the ground is pretty “pocky” from their hooves digging into the mud.

We keep the cows in Mordor until the other fields are growing nicely & ready for grazing.  Yesterday was the day to let the cows out to begin full-grazing for 2012.  They were so excited! 🙂

In this pic, I am in the truck, driving out of Mordor, and the cows are following me out…

Next, they are about halfway to their new field, Gondor.  They are getting sidetracked by all the yummy green grass along the way, lol! 🙂

Now I’ve pulled into Rohan and I’m waiting for them to catch up.  Mike and the boys were behind them all to keep them moving.  Can you tell the cows are running?! 🙂

They made it into Gondor.  Look how their heads are all down to EAT… 🙂