‘She’s on the Beltway’: Farmer races from welcoming newborn to wrangling cow on I-695

As a farmer and co-owner of Hidden Waters Regenerative Farm in Pikesville, Joe Shaffer has learned to expect the unexpected.

Shaffer and his staff raise animals and sell meat, organic produce and honey. What he loves most about the job is how different every day looks.

Wednesday, though, even Shaffer was taken aback when he learned that a young calf had escaped from their farm and made its way onto Interstate 695, where it trotted in the right lane alongside cars and trucks.

Shaffer’s wife, McKenzie, and their now-day-old baby girl, Josie, were getting ready to be discharged from the hospital around 2 p.m. when a farmhand called to tell him the news about the 8-month-old calf getting loose.

“I just heard him say, ‘She’s on Old Court,’ and when he said that, I just ran out of the room,” said Shaffer, 31.

He stayed on the phone with his employee until he got to the farm. They hopped into a side-by-side vehicle and called Baltimore County Police, letting them know the cow was theirs and asking where they last saw her so they could rein her in.

The cow had gone behind their farm, closer to I-695, police said. Eyeing the slowing traffic along the highway, Shaffer had an idea that’s where the animal was.

“I got a random phone number calling. So I picked up, and it was dispatch, and they’re like, ‘Mr. Shaffer, she’s on the [Baltimore] Beltway,’” he said.

Officers raced toward the Beltway, and Shaffer followed suit. After being stuck at a traffic signal at Greenspring Avenue and Old Court Road, Shaffer drove east to find slowing traffic on the highway. He knew she was still there.

“We just started weaving through traffic, and I tried to get in front of her to turn around and head her back to the farm,” he said. “She just had that tunnel vision.”

Shaffer cornered the cow with the side-by-side while his farmhand grabbed hold of her from the vehicle. Shaffer parked on the side of the highway, hopped out and “bear-hugged” the roughly 500-pound cow, holding her down until officers came with rope and his business partner arrived with the truck and trailer.

“They were ecstatic, all the county cops. They were like, ‘You got her! You got her,’” Shaffer said. “I just couldn’t believe we were able to do that.”

Shaffer and his team brought the cow to a neighboring facility to prevent this from happening again. The team is working to put up a better fence to prevent any cattle, chickens or pigs on the 100-acre farm from escaping in the future.

With the cow back on the farm, Shaffer went to the hospital to pick up his wife — who got a chuckle out of telling nurses what her husband had run off to tend to — and baby girl, the couple’s second child. The cow stole Josie’s spotlight, he said, but at least they’ll have a heck of a story to tell every year around her birthday.