Sunday Morning Coming Down ....
This man, encountered on my morning walk, is bringing home a huge sheaf of tall grasses to feed his cow. In Indonesia subsistence farmers and otdinary householders often keep a cow or two in their front yards. In a radical departure from our traditional cow-raising techniques in North America, here there is no pasture land, so people bring the pasture to the cows, cutting these sheaves by the roadside twice a day and transporting them back home by bicycle or motorbike, or sometimes carrying them on their heads.
Young cakves may be walked to a village trough for a communal feed and a little socializing ((see the comment box below), but most of the feeding and milking happens right in the tiny front yard, along with raising chickens and sometimes goats, growing a few vegetables, and the all-important tasks of cooking, eating, laundry, and motorcycle maintenance. By 6 am, the backroads and gardens are alive with people visiting, sweeping their yards, washing clothes and tending to children and animals. (Quite a difference from early morning walks around my neighborhood in Florida where cow-raising in the front yard is probably frowned upon.)
Sunday Morning Coming Down ....
This man, encountered on my morning walk, is bringing home a huge sheaf of tall grasses to feed his cow. In Indonesia subsistence farmers and otdinary householders often keep a cow or two in their front yards. In a radical departure from our traditional cow-raising techniques in North America, here there is no pasture land, so people bring the pasture to the cows, cutting these sheaves by the roadside twice a day and transporting them back home by bicycle or motorbike, or sometimes carrying them on their heads.
Young cakves may be walked to a village trough for a communal feed and a little socializing ((see the comment box below), but most of the feeding and milking happens right in the tiny front yard, along with raising chickens and sometimes goats, growing a few vegetables, and the all-important tasks of cooking, eating, laundry, and motorcycle maintenance. By 6 am, the backroads and gardens are alive with people visiting, sweeping their yards, washing clothes and tending to children and animals. (Quite a difference from early morning walks around my neighborhood in Florida where cow-raising in the front yard is probably frowned upon.)