ReD SkIn

Today was long. There is no way around that.

It rained so much (34 hundreths is all appraently) that I had lots of trouble getting up the driveway this morning- I had to try the big hill twice and get out and lock the hubs in! But, I eventually made it down for chores. We weaned all the bucket calves but five thsi morning. It wasn't nearly as traumatic as I thought it would be, but tonight they sure were upset about it.

After morning chores we tried to work on the water pressure down at the well and then Ross and Dean adn I hopped on four wheelers to try to find our missing heifers and bull down by Dicks from the other day. We took off for the hills and checked that leaky well that I talked about a coupld weeks agao along the way. We found out that the tire tank is leaking in the middle of the tire section and we'll have to brink some mortar out it fix it. After we got out of there we all took a section of the pasture we took the red heifers out of and scoured it for anything we saw. AFter lots of running around and going up and down cayons we came out with on bull and one heifer. They pushed right to the gate and then we started counting again to see if our original count was six off or so.

Somewhere durnig this time I was flying down a trail at about 35mph when (I swear) what looked like a boulder with wings hit me square in the eyeball and about knocke dme out. My eye is still sore from that ridiculous sized bug! So, back to the hefiers. As we went through the psture and counted we noticed more and more problems. We found six heifers on the wong side of the fence in Merchant's pasture and then we saw a red bull of ours in with Ireland's black cows. We had a heck of a time getting him out becaus of the creek and an old fenceline that ran throught eh pasture. But after a coupld tries adn some creek hops with the four wheeler we got him back in. As we were chasing him and a couple hefiers upt he draw, Ross managed to get stuck. So, we took a second and stopped and I pulld him out. The whole process took less than five minutes, but in that thime we lost our bull. After riding around amilessly looking for him I finally came across him- stading at the let down we pushed him in trhough. AFter fighting with and chasing him around for quite a while, I just gave up- he needed to see some heifers to keep him in the pasture and from tearing out the fence. I ran over tot he small pasture that the six head of hefiers were out of and Ross and Dean had just finished sending htem back into the right pasture.

Then, we tried to count again and still came up short on hefiers but had all the bulls. We moved the big group of heifers over by our bull and chased him up the thme to hopefully keep him happy and with our herd. By this time, I knew that we were only four- if any short on heifers so we just decided to go home for lunch at 2ish.

After some fabulous grilled cheese and apple sauce, I went down to the shop and started in with the afternoon work. Dean wen't out to fix the super bad fence on both sides of that pasture we spent teh morning in. I took Ross back out to his farming tractor and got him all set down and ready to go- then came home and serviced the rake tractor with Merle all afternoon. It's good that we are getting the tractors all ready- but we can't hay anyway if it never stops raining!

Finally, I decided to call it quits on the tractore and got everything put away for the night. I even put my car in tonight becasue the weather isnt' supposed to be nice! Even if it is beautiful I would rather be safe than sorry. Afternoon chores were slightly traumatic today because only 5 calves got milk adn the others watched in disgust! But, I thnk they will survive:) Other than that, I just did some odds and ends and came home to shower.

I got some pretty good sunburn today since we didn't think we would have been out there near as long as we were! Guess, I'll just have to use a lots l aloe vera to keep it from burning up~
I got achance to talk on the phone with some friends tonight but now i am going to bet rather than falling asleep on teh couch.