Meet Mater

 My years in the burbs have taken me away from my farming roots, but I got a tiny taste of it this weekend when my family and I worked to nurse a young baby calf back to health.

This is Mater, named by Jack and I after his favorite Cars movie character. He was blind and nearly dead when we found him and I'll go ahead and tell you this story ends realistically. I'm telling it because it's one of the first times my boys cared for a calf, something I want them to experience in their lifetime.

I learned this past weekend that you can buy colostrum replacement for baby calves. Colostrum is the milk that mammals produce just before birth and it contains antibodies to protect newborns against disease. And so, when my uncle found Mater in a field, abandoned by his mother, we set out to find some colostrum. My brother Charlie manages the dairy herd at the University of Tennessee, so he knows a thing or two about caring for calves. He had an audience for Mater's first feeding.

Mater only lived a couple of days after we found him, but my boys kept a close watch on him while we were there. When he did die, my uncle buried him. And Jack asked where Mater was one afternoon, Papaw just told him he'd gone out to the field. That answer was sufficient for Jack.