Nov. 5th

After so many chilly days it was nice to get outside today.  I typed on my laptop some in the fall air and later Dad had us go move cattle.

When we had penned the cattle, Dad stood at two gates and Big J. and I pushed presorted cattle to him.  All the cows, calves, and older heifers went in one gate which lead to the pasture.  The yearling heifers and a bull or two went in the other pasture.  The sorting went super well! 

We 3 had finished in just a few minutes and then we walked the heifers down the fence, through a gate, and into another pasture. 

It's been a lovely evening and now I believe stew is going to be on tonight's menu.  Looking forward to a warm bowl of that stuff.   : )

I'm on a Roll

Wow, 3rd post in one day... 
Here's a post focused on what we do after purchasing new cattle.  We have to brand them.
First the cattle (in this case, heifers) are pushed into the alley running to the chute.  In the picture below two heifers are walking through the alley.

 
See the blue metal thing?  That's the chute and its job is to catch the heifers when they walk into it.

  
The first heifer to walk into the chute gets closed in when the back gate shuts.  She will have to walk forward to the front gate, and then the chute operator closes the gate right as she sticks her head out.  In this picture the heifer is caught by the neck, the proper way.  She does not choke, though, so no worries.
 

 
Then Dad--or whoever's job it is-- gets the ear notcher and puts the ear tag in the heifer's ear.
  

 
She's then branded with the very hot branding iron.

 
And turned out through the front gate.  She'll now continue her life as though nothing happened and if she happens to escape, other people will know who to contact. 

 
We only had four heifers to do this time, so it went really quick.

Big J. is preparing the ear notcher for Dad, Little J. in the back pushing up another heifer

 

This is after Dad gave the heifer her ear tag

 

And if you were a heifer, this would be your view.  Lovely, isn't it?

 When we had finished, the sun was just about to set and I got a few pictures of how lovely the evening was.

 

Stacy, the goat

So now you learned a little more about what my family does.  : )

Evening Fun

This morning's sunrise

Last evening was gorgeous!  I spent some bit of the afternoon/evening painting this cow skull and listening to music from my laptop.  Outside is the best office, you know.  

 

Little J.'s cat, Stanly

A little later, the rest of the family came out and played football or watered trees.  I let Minnie and Pearl out again and took pictures this time, while both the animals and ourselves were content enjoying the stillness of fall.  : )

Paprika and her chicks 



Minnie and Rooster Doodle

Oversize Load Coming Through

 
Here it was, up close and in person.  Maybe you've heard about it, or maybe not, so here are some pictures.
  

 
This was an massive oversized load which was the talk of the area for a while.  Radios were announcing it, Facebook had links to it, and word of mouth got the news around, too.

 
We found out this load was coming right by our drive way, so we kept track of it, via Facebook, and got to see it yesterday.

 

 

 

 

 

Here's a post from Northwest Logistics Heavy Haul on Facebook, posted Oct. 21:
 

Some numbers on the load:
0 Incidents and Accidents
1 Traffic Signal Removed
2 Full time Trailer Operators
4 600 HP Trucks
4 Full time Highway Patrol Escorts
5 Full Time Civilian Escorts
6 month of planning
6 MPH Average Speed so far
8 Railroad crossings...
10 Turns Model and Analyzed by Engineers
18 feet Tall and Wide
21 MPH max speed
28 Inches of Vertical Travel on the Trailer
44 trailer axles
60 Total Axles
224 Tires
430 feet Long
5,000 lbs per trailer tire (same load per tire as regular tractor trailer load)
Trailer axles spread load out over 2 lanes wide on bridges.
1,192,000 Lbs of Weight total

Day 1: 22 Miles
Day 2: 43 Miles
Day 3: 64 Miles

Day 1 Ave Speed: 3.7 MPH
Day 2 Ave Speed: 6 MPH
Day 3 Ave Speed: 7.8 MPH

Routed Miles in each state:
OK miles: 420
KS miles: 194
CO miles:298
Total miles: 912
Distance if legal load: 719miles

...

 

I really don't know all that much about the load, so please go to https://www.facebook.com/pages/Northwest-Logistics-Heavy-Haul/163327987018786 for more information.  There are videos and more pictures on the site.

Thought you would enjoy.  : )

The Post Without a Real Name

I do believe it's time for another post. 

Yesterday evening around 6:30, I let Minnie and Pearl, the pigs, out of their pen so they could graze.  With a little container of grain in hand, I walked around our house while leading two pigs, some cats, and ten+ chickens behind me.

As we came to the elm trees, the pigs ran ahead of us and began burrowing in the damp dirt surrounding the trunks.  After some time of up turning the dirt, the chickens came behind and ate earthworms and scratched in the soil. 

Today we three kids got up around 7 and went with Dad to gather some cow/calf pairs.  It was a hair chilly this morning and everything felt good so we got to lope the horses some while trying to maintain control on the cattle.  Once the cattle were penned, we waited for a truck to come and haul them away to their new home.

Fall is really starting to show itself now as the pastures are losing what little green they had, the trees' leaves are turning to that pretty orange, and the temperatures are dropping.  And...whoa!  October is almost over?  Well, I guess you can't slow down time.

Maybe this post will tide you till the next, and I hope it does.  Thanks.  : )      

 

Post Number 73

I was rereading some of my old blog posts and saw that I posted whatever I wanted, thought was interesting, or anything.  I realized I'm not doing that any more.  Part of that's fine with me.  I thought some of the old posts weren't written very well, but then again I was younger.  But at the same time, I was telling more about ranch life. 

Well, I'm doing a post now, for no real reason other than I haven't done one for a while and yesterday was pretty eventful.  So, here goes post number 73.

 

 As you can see in the pictures, I painted yet another cow skull.  Big J.'s birthday was on the 6th and I hadn't gotten him anything.  He had picked up this skull months ago, but it was sitting outside, turning pink somehow, and I saw an opportunity.  With his permission, I bleached it to get rid of the pink, then painted it.  I did all this yesterday and gave him his 14th birthday present...a little late, but it was worth it.    

 
Below are the other two cow skulls I painted this summer.  The yellow flower one was my first one and the personalized one was second. 

 

 

A week and a half ago we had an adventure with Big J.'s dog, Lightning (a.k.a. Buggy).  She tumbled out of our pickup and broke her hind leg.  As it turned out, if anyone wanted a broken bone in a dog, this would be the bone.  So, we got her to a vet, she got surgery, and is now living a kennel.  Here is a picture of her leg.   

 

I now have a pet boarding business.  It's starting slow, I knew it would, but I'm ready to board critters.  I'm really looking forward to business picking up.

 

 

The weather's getting right chilly out here.  The last few days have been cloudy, drizzly, and cold, but we still went to a football game last night.  A near town was playing the #1 team in the state and as it turned out we lost...but played an excellent game!  We were ahead for a while, and lost 26 to 28.  After we got home--shivering and numb--we lit our furnace. 

 

I guess colder weather is here. 

 

All for now!  : )  

The Wait is Over

Well, after a couple of years (yes...literally 2 years this month) of waiting, we now have a brand new floor in our house!  It looks wonderful, trust me.

So, if you read my post (A Night to Remember) back in Oct. of '12, you can see that we started taking out the kitchen and bathroom floor.  That was a very happy day, for I thought we were starting the process of getting a new floor.  And it did get the ball rolling.

A while back in this year, Dad and Mom started looking for flooring a little harder and finally decided on some kinds while I was gone to my grandparents' house.  Makes you wonder if I make things take longer...I'm joking...I think.  Anyway, with the flooring picked out, it was just the installing away from being done.  And October 3rd of this year was that day.

The floor men came out, after having made a bunch of other trips for measuring and looking it over.  They got right to work and began pulling up the old carpet.

Fact: the carpet was the original carpet from when this house was built in 1978, so just imagine how dirty it got.  Sorry, no pictures of the dirt piles they swept up.  It was nasty.

After the carpet was pulled off the concrete floor, they finished scraping and began laying the glue.  We decided to make the living room into two rooms so to speak, so the new floor--which looks like wood planks; however, it's made of vinyl--only lays in front of our fireplace.  It looks impressive.

Since we had pulled up the kitchen floor in '12 they just put down the glue and laid the rock-looking vinyl.  That floor looked a little too busy, but we couldn't change now.  We also put our brand (what we mark our cattle with to show ownership) in the kitchen floor.

They left for the day and came back the next morning.  The rest of the carpet came out of the living room and "library."  They laid new carpet (brownish; it changes with different lights) in the living room and library.  Thankfully, the carpet mellowed out the busyness of the kitchen floor.

I must say, we couldn't have had better floor laying men.  Those two guys were funny, though they spoke Spanish so we couldn't understand any jokes, they were gentle with our belongings, and seemed to know what they were doing. 

Now, we have a very homey house and just sitting here looking at the new couches and floor, with the orange glow from the lamps, makes it all feel wonderful.  Our living room could go in a magazine--really!  : )