Quilly

Today was full of odds and ends.

When I went out for chores this morning I had more in store for me than I thought. As I went to feed the calves I noticed something quite unpleasant. One of the poor bucket calves had gajillions of porcupine quills in his front leg. Fist of all, how the heck did it manage to get them in a front leg, and secondly- how painful! Just as I finished feeding up Merle was pulling up. He had found a dead bull snake all wrapped up in some net in a tree, and he thought this was the excitement for the morning...just kidding. We went out and he grabbed a leg and I grabbed the other and flipped the little calf over. Merle sat on him and held him down while I pulled quills with a plier...more than 30 of them. But, they weren't in too far and he had some tough hyde so it wasn't terrible- just funny lookin. We got that done just as Jeff and Tina were pulling in. We finished up chores and then decided where we were all headed for the day. Jeff went and stacked bales, and Tina and Merle were going to hay. Merle took me out to show me a couple bottom fields he wanted disked up and then dropped me off at the tractor. I serviced it with no grease gun explosions...and went to farming. I later found out that during this time Merle went and got the locked box of rattle snakes out of my cellar (they were supposed to go to some guys who wanted live snakes but it never worked out) and killed all ten or twelve of them. He said he didn't want to gross me out, but I think it would have been cool to see someone catch them one by one in the box and then try to get em'! Not to mention he got rid of the snapping turtle too, but i kinda like turtles- not gunna lie- so it's ok that I missed that one. But, when he got done killing things he went out to bale. But, he didn't get started right away there either becuase of some servicing and other problems with the baler...but eventually they got going.

When I finished farming I started in on odds and ends. I filled up the oats barrels in the grainery and worked on my yard, then went in for dinner. While I was inside I noticed Connor pulling up to hook onto a rake. So, I went out and helped him do that for a few minutes- then headed in and finished my dinner. After dinner I went out and started weeding flower beds so that I can plant the flowers that have been on my kitchen table for two weeks! This took forever...adn ever. I soaked the ground and pulled weed after weed, until it looked halfway decent. Somewhere in the middle of my weeding I also had to stop and go pick up Bill (Delbert's hired man) and bring him back to his pickup sprayer. So, that took some time out of the day too. But, finally I got the flower beds weeded just in time for the wind to come up and the rain to come down...so much for planting flowers. So, I opted to go and sweep out the shed. I spent a good five minutes trying to find the master switch to move the fire truck- but finally I found it directly in front of my face and moved it out of the way. I got about half the shed swept before it rained much. Merle showed back up about this time too and was wondering if I had done chores. Most logically thinking people would have done chores as soon as it looked like the rain was gunna come down, but nope, not me I would rather get soaked and feed animals that aren't going to come out and eat anyway! We headed down to do chores and stood in the shed for quite a few minutes waiting for it to quit enough to go out and feed, and after all the shed is tin roofed...sounds a little worse than it really is in there. But, we made it out and fed everyone, this time with no porcupine quills. After chores I went in and ate and showered for the fireman's meeting this evening. We were cleaning the fire hall out and getting fireworks ready for the fourth. I am pretty excited to get to help with the firework stuff! oooo, cool. We got everything moved around and cleaned out there in just a little over an hour. But, I really enjoyed it because I got to spend time around new people and meet some more! After that, we came home and I am now headed to bed.

I really didn't get that much done today- but hopefully I will make up for it. Sounds like tomorrow we will need to move a bull and string salt and mineral. There is some kind of fireworks display and dance in Phillip, I might head up to that, we'll see. Night!