Isn't it nice when you wake up in the morning and can hear birds singing? I love that, but when I wake up to 400 chickens squawking and cows mooing all at the same time, that isn't so nice! With Gary rotating the animals in the pastures, sometimes they are closer to our house than other times. Right now they are close to our house and my bedroom window!! Why is their idea of morning and mine two different times?
Our ewe's are having baby lambs now. I was wondering when our cows told the baby lambs about California? We were sitting at the table the other night and this van pulls up and says that they had a baby lamb chasing their van and it's ambiblical cord was still hanging down. Now not only are the lambs trying to escape our farm at an early age, but they are doing it by hitchhiking! Do they have California lambs?
The other day, we decided we better walk around the pasture to make sure all the lambs were okay. As we were walking through the pasture checking on them, I came across this one lamb, all by itself. I picked it up and it was so soft and had had the sweetest little baaing sound. It's usually hard to catch lambs they run away from you with their mothers. We couldn't figure out who this little guys mom was, so we steered all the sheep towards it and still nobody owned up to this little lamb. It started following me around the pasture, it even took its nose and nuzzled it against my leg. I hope he doesn't think I am his mom! Poor guy, I guess he was disowned! Ethan took it up to the barn and is now bottle feeding him, and he is doing very good on a bottle. I think I will have to name him! Actually, I better ask Ethan if it's a boy or girl first!
One of our cows just had a hefier calf. Mom and calf are both doing fine! We have another cow that is expecting very soon. The poor girl looks miserable, if you can say a pregnant cow can look miserable! Her utter is so big she can barely walk. When she walks her legs are spread way apart and her legs rub along her utter. When she lays down on her side her one leg sticks up! Infact, I thought she was dead when she was laying there, between her huge belly and utter and her leg sticking straight up in the air! Having had 6 children and 2 of them both being over 10 pounds I can remember feeling like a cow myself! I remember my dad saying "Becky, I think you need a wheelbarrel to carry that belly around"! I sure hope she has that calf soon, I might have to find a wheelbarrel for her! ha
So life on the farm is growing right now with baby lambs, calves, chicks, turkeys, and by the end of May baby pigs! Life is good.
Blessings,
Rebecca
Thursday, April 22, 2010
Friday, April 2, 2010
From Rebecca's Kitchen Window
A couple days ago, I was working in the kitchen and looked out the window to see Ethan trying to encourage a baby calf to go with him. The calf wasn't going to have anything to do with that and put his brakes on. So Ethan's pulling him along and the calf's legs are all stretched out. With some tugging, Ethan won the battle between man and bovine! I wonder if there were skid marks across the driveway?
I had to laugh at myself a couple of nights ago, I had just hopped into bed for the night, I was laying there and I kept hearing a click, click, click sound. So I hopped back out of the bed to see what that noise was. Gary was fast asleep so I didn't want to ask him. So I am looking around and trying to follow the sound, it took me by our bedroom window. Which I had opened a little to let some fresh air in. Well, silly me, I forgot that Ethan had electrified the chicken fence! That was the clicking sound! I guess I can put up with that if it will keep those chickens from escaping into my front yard!
Yesterday, I became a true farm wife! Or should I say ranch wife? When I was a little girl, my mom liked watching westerns like , Rawhide. I remember how the cows would all be mooing as they lead them with their horses to a new pasture. I had no idea that one day I would be doing that too, without the horse! (Thank goodness) Gary decided yesterday that it would be alot easier to put up fence down the field, across the road, down another road, to the next pasture. Instead of loading them up on a trailer and making multiple trips to get that done.
Luckily, there were four of us to help, it took us all to make it work. Ethan was on the Kubota with a bale of hay on the back to coax them. (hey, it worked before, might as well try that again!) Jacob was behind the cattle coaxing them on. I was in the ditch making sure they didn't decide to go for a swim, and Gary was up by the road, so they didn't get run over by a car, while crossing the road! It was going really quite well, except for one younger calf that just thought this was not a good idea! All the other cattle were already headed down the road and this guy was still back in the field. Here comes 2 cars down the road, so Gary had to move his truck, take down the fencing and let them through. Jacob was hoping that the calf wouldn't decide to make a mad dash for the road. The cars went by and up went the fencing again. With Gary's help, the calf gives in and catches up with the others. Ethan is now leading the pack with the Kubota and Jacob, Gary and I are all walking behind the cows as they head to a new pasture, mooing all the way. I think they were excited to go to their new pasture. We finally got them there. We turned on the fence and now we have happy cows (from Pandora!) eating some green grass! It worked out pretty good! Other than one stubborn calf! So that was my first official cow round up!
After we finished with that, I helped Gary take down the fencing. To me it was rather scary! Gary had a spool on the back of the tractor to wrap the wire around and my job was to sit on the tractor and start the spool up while Gary held the wire in his hands and let it wrap around the spool. But, he also wanted me to yell out every time there was some wire that had been spliced together coming his way, so he wouldn't get his hands cut! (Which is especially not something you want to happen to Gary, when he is on blood thinner!) It would also get caught on some corn stubble's sometimes and so I had to stop it like right away. We probably took down around 2 miles of fencing! That is alot of fencing!! Whee, I was glad when we got that job done. It was a good day and I enjoyed helping Gary. Not to mention it was 80 degrees and sunny outside!
Today, I helped Gary take down more fencing at a farm we used to keep the cattle at. It took longer taking the fencing down because we didn't have the Kubota with us so we had to walk it and poor Gary he didn't have small enough gloves for me to wear, so he had to carry all the fiberglass post himself. So that took like 3 hours and we still have post at that farm to pick up. We won't be using that farm anymore. We are trying to keep all the cattle on the home farm. That will help with our time management!! Glad we got that finished today. I enjoyed another day with warm weather and sunny skies.
Well, I was going to try and keep the blogs shorter, (so much for that) but sometimes there is just alot to talk about!
Please join me again to hear about any new adventures out my kitchen window and some of my outdoor adventures as well!
Blessings,
Rebecca
I had to laugh at myself a couple of nights ago, I had just hopped into bed for the night, I was laying there and I kept hearing a click, click, click sound. So I hopped back out of the bed to see what that noise was. Gary was fast asleep so I didn't want to ask him. So I am looking around and trying to follow the sound, it took me by our bedroom window. Which I had opened a little to let some fresh air in. Well, silly me, I forgot that Ethan had electrified the chicken fence! That was the clicking sound! I guess I can put up with that if it will keep those chickens from escaping into my front yard!
Yesterday, I became a true farm wife! Or should I say ranch wife? When I was a little girl, my mom liked watching westerns like , Rawhide. I remember how the cows would all be mooing as they lead them with their horses to a new pasture. I had no idea that one day I would be doing that too, without the horse! (Thank goodness) Gary decided yesterday that it would be alot easier to put up fence down the field, across the road, down another road, to the next pasture. Instead of loading them up on a trailer and making multiple trips to get that done.
Luckily, there were four of us to help, it took us all to make it work. Ethan was on the Kubota with a bale of hay on the back to coax them. (hey, it worked before, might as well try that again!) Jacob was behind the cattle coaxing them on. I was in the ditch making sure they didn't decide to go for a swim, and Gary was up by the road, so they didn't get run over by a car, while crossing the road! It was going really quite well, except for one younger calf that just thought this was not a good idea! All the other cattle were already headed down the road and this guy was still back in the field. Here comes 2 cars down the road, so Gary had to move his truck, take down the fencing and let them through. Jacob was hoping that the calf wouldn't decide to make a mad dash for the road. The cars went by and up went the fencing again. With Gary's help, the calf gives in and catches up with the others. Ethan is now leading the pack with the Kubota and Jacob, Gary and I are all walking behind the cows as they head to a new pasture, mooing all the way. I think they were excited to go to their new pasture. We finally got them there. We turned on the fence and now we have happy cows (from Pandora!) eating some green grass! It worked out pretty good! Other than one stubborn calf! So that was my first official cow round up!
After we finished with that, I helped Gary take down the fencing. To me it was rather scary! Gary had a spool on the back of the tractor to wrap the wire around and my job was to sit on the tractor and start the spool up while Gary held the wire in his hands and let it wrap around the spool. But, he also wanted me to yell out every time there was some wire that had been spliced together coming his way, so he wouldn't get his hands cut! (Which is especially not something you want to happen to Gary, when he is on blood thinner!) It would also get caught on some corn stubble's sometimes and so I had to stop it like right away. We probably took down around 2 miles of fencing! That is alot of fencing!! Whee, I was glad when we got that job done. It was a good day and I enjoyed helping Gary. Not to mention it was 80 degrees and sunny outside!
Today, I helped Gary take down more fencing at a farm we used to keep the cattle at. It took longer taking the fencing down because we didn't have the Kubota with us so we had to walk it and poor Gary he didn't have small enough gloves for me to wear, so he had to carry all the fiberglass post himself. So that took like 3 hours and we still have post at that farm to pick up. We won't be using that farm anymore. We are trying to keep all the cattle on the home farm. That will help with our time management!! Glad we got that finished today. I enjoyed another day with warm weather and sunny skies.
Well, I was going to try and keep the blogs shorter, (so much for that) but sometimes there is just alot to talk about!
Please join me again to hear about any new adventures out my kitchen window and some of my outdoor adventures as well!
Blessings,
Rebecca
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)