Real Cowgirls Drive Ford Tauruses

Kirby 2 Bruckners 0


We have a cow/calf pair in the corral that we have been having a hard time keeping in. They don’t seem to realize why we keep putting them back in there, when all they have to do is jump, or break, the fence and be quickly reunited with their old herd. We have Rosie back in, but have yet to convince Kirby to go through the gate and stay with his mom.

Saturday we decided to see if we could just chase Kirby over to our side, and see if we could trick him through.

D askes: “You wanna go out and see if you can get him up here while I stay by the gate?”

”Sure….in the car?”

”Why not?”

“Ok”

Now, a little history. These are not OUR cows, but a friend of ours who have the cattle on my parents pasture. They probably are really sweet cows, and are a lot of fun…when you are dealing with them through a fence. There is this one cow out there who gives me the creeps. She is black, has eyes that seem to follow you wherever you are at, and has horns that must be some sort of record. Personally I believe she is some sort of evil mutated longhorn. She scares me. A lot. I'll refer to her "Killer Cow."

So T and I head out in my car. We could have taken the jeep, but the jeep and I do not have a good relationship. The top is not on it right now, which would not be good when dealing with Killer Cow, and the last time I drove it I went straight through a wooden gate.

So there we are, out in the pasture, where I am sure truckers are having a good chuckle seeing this little car out herding…er…make that attempting to herd…these cows. All we were really doing was going around and around their grass bale. They didn’t really seem to concerned about me and defiantly not enough to leave their bale full of wonderfulness.

I drive off about 40 feet and stop to think what my next plan of action would be. About this time, T rolls his window down and starts to shake his Tic-Tac container.

“T, do you think if I just start honking they will follow?

”Uh….Mom?”

“Well, I wonder if I go at them from the other side if they will run this way?”

”UH…MOM???”

“Hang on T, I am thinking.”

”GO MOM!! GO!!!!!”

T is still shaking his Tic-Tac container, and I look in the side mirror. You know where it says “objects in mirror may be closer than they appear? Well, Killer Cow was in my mirror and I could see in it was her nose and eyes..and she was RUNNING! I take off in the car, and call D, trying really hard not to be all girly and scream and stuff, all while these cows think T has a container of cow cake..and they want it…BAD!!

D’s griping, because all he wants me to bring was Kirby, and all I can think about is getting the main gate open and getting out so I don’t get ran over. D got me through the gate and got it closed just as Killer Cow rounds the corner.

I’m safe.

The cows are pissed they have been fooled.

And Kirby never did get close enough for us to round up.

We REALLY need to buy a pickup.

I felt sorry for them and threw some cake out for them anyway.

D, very lovingly, made some sort of comment about me operating the gate next time, while he gets some “guys” to help him.

Sounds ok to me.

Dreaming Of The Beach!!!

Just as I tell myself that our lives can not get any crazier, it just does. I remember thinking, when my boys were very little, that life would get so much easier as they got older. HAHA I mean, they can now wipe their own bottoms and noses and can whip up something to eat if they are hungry, but along with age has come more activities-sports, school work, rabbit shows, 4-H, youth group.... I’d much rather have children who are involved than children who are not, but sometimes it would be nice to just have a break from everything. I'm starting to think I must have told myself it would be easier when they got older just to get me through the sleepless nights and the days I walked around with doo-doo on my shirt without even knowing it. Now my new thought is: It will get easier when they CAN DRIVE THEMSELVES to their OWN activities! HAHA I'll stop whining now, but the boys seriously have something planned EVERY DAY this week, except for Monday, when football practice was canceled due to illness. Not every week is as bad as this one...thank goodness...but I hate that feeling when all of us are running in 4 different directions.

I think I have mentioned this before but we are taking a vacation to South Carolina this summer. The thought of this trip and sitting on the beach for a week consumes most of my thoughts these days. I am not sure how I am going to survive this very long winter. I got even more excited when F found a townhouse for all of us to rent that week a block from the beach with a hotel with a pool and lazy river a block the other way that we have full rights to. I literally jumped up and down while talking with my friend, seriously feeling like I was 5 years old ago for a few seconds.
I am having a hard time imagining what life will be like for week with nothing to do but sit in the sand and sun, with no where to be or go if we don’t want to. I think the weeks leading up to our trip are going to be crazy, as we have told our boys that their fair projects WILL be done BEFORE we leave.

The boys play their last football games of the season this weekend, and this will J’s last pee-wee game EVER—next year he can play JR HIGH ball. They play a tournament Sunday, and the 5th/6th graders get to play at the Red Demon college stadium. It’s really awesome for them because they turn the music on through the system between plays and quarters…just like the big dogs! ;-)
Last weekend, D was in Pratt for the day, so the boys and I loaded up and went to the football field and took some pictures in their football gear. We had a lot of fun, and I tinkered around with some of the pictures on Photo Shop. I was so excited when I figured out how to pop the color on the photos. Its something I’ve always loved and wanted to do, but could never figure it out.

Danny’s Flemish Giant, Yeti, had 3 babies this morning! She was the one we were SURE probably wasn’t pregnant due to the buck having not seemed to have things figured out. I guess he did after all. Anyway, she was a couple of days overdue, and given that and the fact that she only had 3, these are some BIG babies!! I tend to humanize animals with thoughts and feelings, and felt really bad her for this morning frantically running around pulling out fur, not really sure what was happening. She had 2 white ones, and a dark (black?) one. Not sure if the black one is true black or if will be gray.
J’s Cal is due in a day or two and we are pretty sure she IS pregnant. We also bred the Hotot’s but never did see any “action” so I seriously doubt there will be babies from her.




In chicken news, 16 of the 19 babies are out in the coop with the big ladies. This is a scary new world for them. They run away if any of the big girls come into the coop, and you will find them sometimes with their beaks facing the corners and their eyes shut, as if hoping everything scary will somehow all go away. They do not venture out of the coop yet, but considering they’ve spent the past 5 weeks of their life in a brooder box, the coop probably feels like an entire planet all of their own. It won’t be long, I am sure, before we see them out scratching along side the ladies. I have noticed they are all very plump and full in the evening time, so they are enjoying the scratch we throw out as well as the crickets that live in there.
I still have 3 inside the brooder. Two haven’t fully gotten all of their feathers, one has something wrong with his hips or joints, as he walks like an 80 year old man, but gets along just fine. He’s just a bit slower and behind the others so I’ll give him a bit more time. Any other person probably would have culled this guy, but the “mama’ in me wanted to see what he would do. I call him Tiny Tim, but I think he’s is actually a hen…we will see. I hope he does ok when he gets out to the coop. I should take pictures soon, but they are honestly really ugly at this stage!! They are all each different, with the Easter Eggs all being different colors. Very fun!

Red Leaves and Pumpkins

Fall is here in full force, I believe. I’ve dug out my warm pj’s and we’ve turned our heater on. I didn’t want to do it, but it barely got over 65 degrees in the house yesterday. T was thrilled and took his blanket, laid over the top of the vent and says “It feels just like Christmas!”


J has been super busy. He has had something going on every night this week. He finally got over that weird bug he had, but continued to run a fever at least once a day for 4 days.


T visited a pumpkin patch in Turon yesterday with his class. He got off the bus and ran to tell me he had bought me a Halloween present. I thought he had probably bought one of those warty gourds, because we had just been talking about them that morning, when he pulled out a candle. He spent most of his money to bring his mom home a candle!! My eyes filled up a little bit and I had to give him a big squeeze!! He was very proud of himself, and I think I am going to start having T help his Dad out when it come to shopping for gifts for me. T just knew I would love this candle because it’s homemade and smelled like cinnamon.

We’ve expanded our little wanna be cow herd. We bought a cow/calf from a friend of ours. The cow is named Rosie, and her calf we named Kirby…get it?...as in Kirby Meat? He will be being shipped off probably right after we get back from our vacation in the summer. Rosie has been with a bull for a couple of months and we are hoping she will give us a calf in the springtime. She is an escape artist and doesn’t seem to realize what exactly those fences are for, so this weekend we will be re-doing fence. Chewy doesn’t seem to know what to think about these big animals we’ve thrown in with him. We are not sure what it is he thinks he is, but it’s defiantly not a cow. (I think he really thinks he is a four legged human. He rubs D and I like the calves do their mamas) He ran through the fence and got out the first day we had them in there because they scared him so bad. He’s slowly got a bit more tolerant of them, but they can’t come anywhere near him or he bolts.
I added a picture of the newbie cows...and Chewy in the background doing what he does the best...eating!!

We have 3 does that are due to have babies with in 2 weeks. Two of the three we are not holding our breath on. But we are hoping all of them took. Fall is an “iffy” time to breed because if the rabbits do not get enough light during the day they will not breed. (This is a trait from the wild…they do not want to have babies when it is cold.) This is D’s second attempt to breed his flemish giants, and if his buck didn’t “score” this time, I believe this is his last strike and he will try to find him a new home. (This poor buck seems to understand the game, he just can’t “slid home”” to put it nicely.) Time will tell, I guess. This will be our last attempt for babies until spring.

It’s supposed to really get cold this weekend, so I am going to go pick all my green tomatoes and see what I can get done with them. And I was informed we are running low on Cherry Jam so I need to get some more of that made.

Sunday my family drug me to the city wide last chance sale. I hate going to those as it seems my family always seem to have the need to bring home more junk into our house that I find 6 months later and toss in the dumpster. However, I was happy I went this year. I found an awesome basket, a case and a half of canning jars, as well as 2 really cute antique canning jars that just look fabulous on my kitchen shelf. I also learned something at this sale…there are a bunch of freaks in our county. I saw a lady with 2 trash bags and a toilet paper box full of junk heading to her car.

I do, however, love to garage sale. Nothing thrills me more than finding a bargain. I like to do this alone, or with a friend…never EVER with the husband or children. ;-) We were at a football game in Dodge this year and I didn’t get to go to any of them.

Enjoy this beautiful, colorful, fall! Soon it will all be gone!

GOBBLE GOBBLE

Since we started feeding bucket calves this summer we’ve seen a “pack” of wild turkeys out at the farm just about every day. They like to hang out by an old tree that is out by the lot the calf is in, and when we first started watching them, there where just a handful, with about 8 to 10 cute little fuzzy babies that would follow their mama, all in a row, when they ran away. Yesterday evening when we were out there, they were all on top of Chewy’s bale, eating seeds, and perched on the water tank. I bet there were 30 turkeys! It was an awesome sight when they all flew/ran away when they saw us coming. Dan keeps joking about Thanksgiving dinner……!!

Week before last I was starting to do dishes when my daycare kids were sleeping, when I looked out my window and got a shock. Maybe spending my days with 2 and 3 year olds is starting to take its toll, because for about 10 seconds I couldn’t figure out what the heck OSTRICHES were doing in my backyard. Oh….those are TURKEYS!!! (I don’t know why I thought they were ostriches. They just looked HUGE when I first saw them. Yes, I felt REALLY smart that day!) We have a small group on this side of town that has been around for years, but I’ve never seen them in my back yard. They were digging through the rabbit poop, eating bugs and leftover pellets. Our poor chickens were all lined up at the fence, staring at these monster birds, not making ANY sound. Mike McMoran told me one time they come and eat at an apple tree he has in his back yard, and we see them alot crossing the road over by Bud Louthan's.

It's really neat to see them and they seem to be everywhere at moment!!