Fall Farm & Dog Update

Spent a good majority of the weekend driving the diesel around, shuffling people and seed and fertilizer tanks. Helping hook up to this or unhook from that. It isn't the most exciting job on the farm, but it helps keep the tractors and combines rolling efficiently if they will get me involved doing the little things so they don't have to stop so much. We're about halfway done with the wheat planting. The last of the beans will be cut this afternoon if the little shot of rain in the forecast holds off a little longer!

I had a few minutes here before I have to go pick up the farmer man again, so I came home and gave the dog a bath. He found a glob of grease while we were unhooking from this and re-hooking to that...and smeared it all over everywhere. So he's clean now so I figured he was worth a few quick pictures with my new little point and shoot camera. I think he's about as big as he's gonna get now. He's got a strong protector personality when he's on his home turf (and once in awhile on someone else's turf), he talks a lot of talk, but he's a lover underneath all the barking and growling. He'll put his ears and tail down and come to you all crouched down and excited to be loved on!

The baby calves are here!!!

Wow - didn't realize I hadn't posted all summer since we made it through harvest at the beginning of July! The last few weeks of August have been spent enjoying the sunsets and green pastures while carefully watching the herd for signs of impending births. We have 5 baby calves on the ground now in our fall herd. Lost a 6th. It's always sad, but it's part of having animals. Had 14 cows/heifers that were possibly bred, so hopefully we have a little ways to go yet before the fall calving season is over for us!

We had a strange occurrence happen tonight - normally we leave the gate open while we check the cows. The wind was out of the north today so we headed to the northwest corner of the pasture searching for the cows. 7 of the 10 were together in a valley and the other 3 were just over the hill. We took our time (ok well I took my time taking photos and making Jarrod stop here and stop there), but when we popped over the hill to check the last 3, they were clear down by the gate!!!!! So we hauled some major a** over the gopher holes and when we got close, Jarrod hopped over the fence and walked around from the road to the gate so we didn't spook them right on out the gate with the 4wheeler! And it worked! Jarrod said it was a good thing they were the heifers and didn't know where the gate was at yet! If it had been the cows, they'd been long gone and we'd been having ourselves a roundup tonight!

We've been training the Tuff dog to load and ride on the 4wheeler so I haven't taken the camera along as much as I usually do. It's just too hard to drive AND hold the dog AND do the camera too. Tuff is starting to get better so I tried it tonight as a passenger while Jarrod did the driving. But then of course, he was always driving the opposite way of the way of a good picture, or blocking my view, or the dog was popping onto the view...I did get a few good ones though!