Farm Fresh Blog

Do you know what farming people do with their tax checks? 

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They take the dogs to Petsmart!  (Yep! We're big spenders!)

This week we packed up Thing 1 and Thing 2 and took them to the big city!  Now I don't know about Thing 2, since he's a rescue, but Thing 1 has NEVER been inside a Petsmart.  (she shops at the feedstore) Needless to say, she was ga-ga over Petsmart. Imagine a teenage girl's first trip to the mall.

Thing 1 took an olfactory tour of everything!  She had never SEEN so much cool stuff!

 Toys!

 Bones!

 "Clothes????  Dogs wear clothes??"

 This stopped her in her tracks. "A rat?"

  "This place has RATS???!!!"

Thing 2 came over to see for himself.   They decided that this giant barn must not have any cats.

(disclaimer: no rats were terrorize while these pictures were taken!)

Border Collie REALLY enjoyed her trip to the big city! She loved Petsmart except for one thing:

  "They gots rats, but they don't gots GOATS!"

Spring brings flowers and baby goats!

I never get tired of watching these little dudes!

  They are sooo cute!

But occasionally they do something to remind me that even at this age, they are goats!

 Classic example!

In Search Of . . .

     I knew it was coming. I knew it the moment I saw his eyes light up. Other Half sat across the table and listened to another agent describe the gi-normous rattlesnake he'd seen in a federal preserve as he flew over it in a helicopter. I saw that gleam and I knew. I knew that sometime in the near future we would find ourselves in that preserve. 

     Flash forward to Sunday morning.  We had plenty of chores we could have been doing, but after a hard week of work that actually earns a paycheck, we were ready for a break. I suggested going to the Sporting Goods store for some new running shoes.  (That's normally as far down the Getting Healthy path I tend to travel.) Other Half suggested that we take the Border collies (Thing 1 & Thing 2) out in the jeep. He and the dogs could wait outside while I bought shoes. Sounded good. Like tripping over a barbed wire fence, I fell right into it.

     "Ok!  Let's take the Border collies out in the jeep!"

     But once we got rolling, the plan changed. In his defense, I changed it first.  While slow-rolling down the road, I changed the game plan because  I really loathe the idea of going into the city on my day off.

     "Hey, instead of going into the city, let's just drive around out here for a while," I said.

     Oh that sounded good to him! (I bet it did.)

     As soon as he suggested heading to the preserve, I remembered the gi-normous rattlesnake. He didn't even mention the snake. Okie Dokie, Smokie. The Border Collies were NOT getting out of the jeep. I was NOT getting out of the jeep either.  But that lasted until I saw the wildflowers.

     I had to get out and photograph this.

This made me get back in the jeep.

We saw lots of alligators . . . lots and lots and lots of alligators.  (The Border Collies were NOT getting out of the jeep!)

Cowdog had a blast.  He loves riding in the jeep. 

Because he is a Border Collie, he has to have a least one bizarre quirky behavior.  Cowdog snaps at passing cars as he goes down the road. Lily finds this habit most annoying. So while he bounced and snapped his way down the highway, Lily glared at him, angry that she was strapped into the back seat with an idiot.

After a while she just gave up and went to sleep. 

Despite lots of looking, we never saw a gi-normous rattlesnake.  Trust me, I did LOTS and LOTS of looking for snakes. Finding snakes was VERY important to me! I think Other Half was a little disappointed that he didn't find a giant rattlesnake. I was okay with it though.

And that's why I didn't get field fencing put up in the big pasture this weekend!

This is why a certain Miniature Horse is worth his weight in gold:

and this:

and this:

and this:

and this:

and this too:

I wanted to take this child home with me!

I wonder if her mother would notice if I just loaded her in the horse trailer and took her home with the pony. Hmmmm. . . probably so. What a pity.  This one even comes with cute overalls too!

All this pony riding was because it was The Supervisor's first birthday!!!

 Look at those cakes!!!!  Farm animals!!!   (a cow, a pig, a sheep, a chick, and a bunny!) The Supervisor has a real cake baker for a grandma!  What a lucky kid!

But unfortunately The Supervisor was so excited about the Birthday Happenings that she refused to take her nap.  Thus . . .

 While in the past, this child has had to be forcibly extracted from the back of this pony, today she was having none of it! (I will blackmail her with this photo later!)

Now let's take another look at those cakes!

Late again . . .

This is why I was late for work yesterday:

I was headed for work on time. (I really was!)  I stepped out the back gate and found this little guy. Brand spankin' new baby goat. Screech! Took one look at him and knew I was gonna be late for work . . . again.

We checked him out.  He seemed healthy. Found the afterbirth.  It looked okay . . . but it wouldn't go in the bag. That afterbirth had a life of its own.  It oozed across the shovel and like an octopus, wriggling away and escaping before I could stuff it in the bag. Why me?  No one else is late for work because they can't get their afterbirth in the trash bag!  I'm cursed! 

This post is courtesy of my work buddy, Fergus Fernandez, who, upon hearing my excuse, said "You have GOT to put THAT on the blog."  Here it is, Fergus!

Dog & Water Hoses

Some of us get it . . .

 . . . some of us don't.

 ???

I am a child of the Starbucks generation. I am that woman standing in front of the microwave, wishing it would "hurry up!" But over the years, I've come to realize that faster and cheaper isn't always better.  It's easy to be seduced by Fast & Cheap. Millions of dollars are spent trying to convince me that I simply MUST HAVE the latest and greatest widget that will undoubtedly make my life easier. I've spent years working to pay for widgets that I had to have because they would make my world a happier place, and ya know what?  They didn't. And what did I do with the time the widget supposedly saved me?  I worked, so I could buy more widgets!

Farms and ranches change that kind of thinking. They force you to slow down. Nature works in its own time. No matter how long I watch a pregnant goat, she won't have that baby until she's damned good and ready. And no manner of widgets will make it rain, or stop it from raining. It is what it is. There's a lot of wisdom to be gained on a farm.

I have a co-worker who once made a most bizarre statement, one which I shall never forget. Ours is a high-stress job and I was urging him to take more time off. He told me, and I quote, "I wouldn't have anything to do."

"Excuse me???"  (My mind struggled with this idea.)

"I live in a subdivision.  My wife and kids aren't home during the day, so I wouldn't really have anything to do."

I was still in a hazy fog somewhere. The very concept boggled my mind. I tried to hire him to work on my fences but alas, he had no repressed rancher-type tendencies lurking under the surface, desperate to be released by the feel of unrolling heavy bundles of wire. More's the pity.

But my point is . . . when did Americans run out of things to do?  Is technology so much better that we can now just "Live to Work?"  And can we trust it? That job that pays for all your widgets can disappear tomorrow. Then where will you be? Call me crazy, but the older I get, the less trusting I become.  One good hurricane can show you just exactly how puny your techonology is. Want to know who does just fine in the wake of a hurricane? A redneck!

After the last big hurricane, Son made the comment that "Everyone makes fun of the Redneck until you need him."

He said this as he was driving around in his 4wheeler with his chain-saw, helping out his neighbors. Our community did just fine.  We were a community of farmers, ranchers, and rednecks.

While many people in the Big City stood by and waited for the government to help them, the rednecks cleaned their own roads. They took down their own trees and made it easier for the power crews to come into their community. They fed each other. They took care of each other. Now you can argue that they still used gasoline, and they did all this so electricity could be restored, but the point is, they had the SKILLS to survive.  It wasn't always comfortable, but it sure beat the heck out of waiting for the government to do it for us.

When Other Half and I went to a historical reenactment last weekend, it got me to thinking about technology. We watched a blacksmith at work. He had dozens of school children fascinated, (and Other Half). While he puttered, he talked about how valuable the village blacksmith used to be. The blacksmith made the tools for every other craftsman in town.  As I watched the old man work, I realized he was one of a dying breed, a true craftsman.

If you look up the word "technology" in a thesaurus, along with the words, "science," "mechanics," and "automation," you will also see words like, "craft" and "skill." When did we lose the craft and skill in our world?  When did blacksmiths become an endangered species? 

At the same reenactment, we found a Dutch Oven Society that showed us how to cook darned near everything you'd ever want in cast iron.  No electricity.  I was captivated. These people made better food than I could make in an oven. (That isn't saying much. I have the attention span of a butterfly when I cook!) I understand cooking over coals is much more demanding than flipping on the gas and burning your food, but I'm tired of being a slave to technology and am more than willing to learn.

Some friends of ours down the street have draft horses. It never fails to make my heart smile when I see that big team of percherons walking down the highway.  I know another old man who drives his mule team to the feed store. It's certainly not faster than using a pick-up, but it always starts on a cold morning.

Faster and cheaper isn't always better, but it certainly builds a better cage. A friend of mine sent me an e-mail about "catching pigs" that really stuck with me.  It talked about how the way to catch wild hogs is to start feeding them in the forest.  Then you can build part of a fence around the feed.  They are suspicious at first, but are soon seduced by the fast and easy meal, so in time, they ignore the partial fence.  Then you can add another section of fence. The hogs are suspicious, but still come to the food.  After a while, you can close the fence and have captured the pigs. Friends & Neighbors, that fence is closing in on us.

Vacations for us are often "working vacations." We tend to end up looking at cattle, sheep, or goats, or . . .  we look at horses and dogs that we can use to work cattle, sheep or goats.

This vacation was no exception. We took some time off to go look at sheep, but still ended up at several cattle auctions. (Go figure!  Other Half can NOT pass up a cattle auction.)

We came away from our vacation with several points of wisdom:

* Cattle prices vary greatly across the state.  (and bulls are bringing more than steers per pound now so we can save ourselves the headache of castration this spring)

* A vacation is not a good time to cut out caffeine. There is nowhere for your spouse to hide.

* If you are using a TomTom navigational system, there is a big difference between Abilene State Park and Alilene State Park.  Hmpphf! Whodathunkit?

* The goat and sheep capital of Texas is Goldthwaite.  No, I still don't know how to pronounce it, but the people are nice.

* The people of Goldthwaite do not get angry when you cause a traffic jam by stopping in the road to help a goat get her head out of the fence. (and it's a nice way to meet the local ranchers)

* Hunting up old friends that you haven't seen in years is a good thing. It's like finding a sparkly treasure in your dresser drawer that you forgot you had.

* Even if you already have two dogs stuffed into the cab of an F350 pickup truck, you can still manage to fit in a third if he has a hard-luck story and sad brown eyes.

* If you have been waiting for weeks for a goat to give birth, she will most certainly do so when you leave on vacation.

* Other Half can move pretty fast when he sneaks into the woods to pee and finds a snake at his feet.  This is especially true after you have been to Sweetwater, home of the Rattlesnake Round-Up!(The mental image of that man coming out of the forest with his pants un-done still has me in stitches!)

* There are no schedules when Other Half finds a cattle auction, a giant tack store, or a state park that just happens to be hosting a historical reenactment complete with period costumes, soldiers, blacksmithing, dutch oven cooking, and God help us, CANNONS!

Quote for the trip:
 
When I asked why he was capable of walking all over the giant expanse of parade grounds to view the many historical booths when he gripes about walking to the back of our pasture, he replied,

"There isn't a cannon in the back pasture."

Touche'

We got in last night about 2 AM (that's a whole 'nuther story!) and spent the day catching up on farm chores, but unfortunately I still have a mountain of e-mail to wade through.  Another baby goat was born while we were gone.  (will post cute pics later!)  Since so many of you wrote about Cowdog the Border Collie, I figured you'd want an update. 

He is one happy pooch!

We took him with us to feed cows today.  (fear not, the dogs are only allowed to ride in the back when we are driving in the pasture!)

He was a good boy, so we let him out of the truck to get an idea of how he'd be with the stock. He has some promise. 

He was quiet but firm with the calves . . . .

but didn't take crap off the really aggressive cows . . .

Most importantly, he listened and paid attention to what we were trying to do, and that is really all we can ask of him. 

Thing 1 and Thing 2

Do you recall what happened when Other Half put Border Collie on his cattle?  (She did a splendid job!) I, however, freaked when I saw how close to death she came each time a cow's foot lashed out at her head. So I told him, (and now those words are coming back to haunt me!) "If you want to work cows with a Border Collie, you're gonna have to get yer own damned Border Collie!"

Friends & Neighbors, he did.

Meet Cowdog.  (Yes, that's really his name before he landed in our stock trailer.)

We are on vacation - Looking at sheep. Looking at goats. Going to cattle sales.  (What?  You expected Disney World???)

Border Collie and Blue Heeler are riding shotgun with us. While in the Ranger Station at the Abilene State Park, Other Half saw a poster.  Someone found a Border Collie. Uh oh!

He came back to the truck bubbling with enthusiasm. I was not amused.  He called the number anyway.  He was certain this dog needed to be with Border Collie people if the owner couldn't be found.  I was REALLY not amused. He plowed onward.

It appears that Cowdog is a criminal.  He sneaks off to work livestock on surrounding ranches and although he is lovable, he is wearing out his welcome with local ranchers. The woman who originally owned the dog wouldn't take him back. The rancher who paid his vet bills when he tangled with a donkey couldn't keep him. He was desperate to find a stock dog home for this sweet dog.

 (Don't mess with donkeys!)

"He'll soon get hit by a car," said the rancher.

The town Fire Chief said, "He's gonna die of lead poisoning."

Other Half looked at me . . .

The rancher looked at me . . .

Cowdog looked at me . . .

So now Other Half has his own Border Collie.