I. MILKED. A. COW.

I will forever remember this past weekend as the one when I got to do all of the things I believe are quintessential Irish farming activities.  My supervisor lives on farm and I went to spend Easter weekend with her.  It was an excellent weekend filled with activities that I found to be very exciting, which I think amused everyone :)  First we went to visit New Grange, a passage tomb that is older than Stonehenge and the Egyptian pyramids.

New Grange!

the tri-spiral

Then we picked up her granny, who taught me how to make brown bread.  Here are some photos of that (by the way, it's delicious).

Then her brother went with us to find sheep that I could pet.  We may or may not have ventured into a neighbour's field to pet his sheep, which ended without a successful sheep petting.  So we went to another family friend who told us we could go to the field where his lambs were and pet them.  IT WAS SO CUTE AND LIGHT AND I JUST WANTED TO HOLD IT ALL DAY!!! I was also able to pet an adult sheep.  Petting sheep/holding a lamb was on my Irish bucket list, so I was really happy to have accomplished it!

Milking a cow was also on my Irish bucket list, which is what happened next!  My classmates asked me to get a video of me milking a cow, but for some reason it isn't loading on this.  I will try again later (or if we're Facebook friends, check Facebook!)  It should be noted that they are milked by machine now and not hand ;)  Since the video won't load on this blog, here is just a picture of me milking a cow by hand.

This weekend my supervisor let me practice driving her car.  It was comical because I cannot drive stick and also kept veering to the wrong side of the road.  Easter dinner was great and I was happy to have had a place to go, as Easter is one of my favourite family holidays and I think I would have been very homesick if I had been alone.  It was a fantastic weekend filled with mundane Irish living, exactly what I wanted to experience!