Hot Irons

Whew- another day done.



This morning was pretty normal- we finished chores and I went out and caught horses. Applarently the neighbors went and fished our red bulls and heifer out of their black cows that I was talking about yesterday. But, Dean and I had to saddle up and ride Scott's pasture along the road to find a cow that had somehow managed to escapte and winter over there. For some reason, Tanner must have had too many oats or just decided it was a day to be excited because he was sure wound up and spooking at anything and everything...Regardless, we found her pretty easily and sent her in to stay with Merle's dry cows until we move them. Hopefully she stays there. We got all that done before 9am! I thought that was pretty good.


Dean headed out to fence, and I hopped in the flatbed pickup (with the broken clutch pedal). The deal was if I got it started to get going to town- the Ford dealership is going to fix it tomorrow morning. I managed to free shift it for town and thought I had the stoplight planned but it turned to quick so I whipped it into the coop parking lot and drove across it and cheated a little. But, I made it there. Remember how I was so upset I couldn't fix it- well I don't feel too bad now because Merle said the last time that happened (after he looked at it) they had to take the E-brake and some of the dash out he thought. There was a clip in there holding it rather temporarily anyway becasue the same thing happened last summer (after thinking on it we both remembered this) and they just put in a clip to hold it rather than tearing the entire dash out. Well, this time I'm not sure what's gunna happen.

So, after he picked me up we headed out to the farm field where Ross had left the tractor. He had finished disking the field twice the day before and now it was time to take the whole unit home for a while. He dropped me off at the field and went to run through the cows of Irelands where we found the bull in yesterday while I took off for home. It took me about an hour, with a few stops for cars that I met, but I made it. When I got home, I parked it and set it down on the pins to start cleaning it off. I ran in for some lasagna for lunch and then headed back out to keep on cleaning out the disk. In just a short hour or so we were saddled back up and ready to head to Mike's for branding. We took off at about 2:30 and went out to round up when we got there. Tanner was a complete nut again...I should have known better than to take him out again haha! He must just be excited about life ;) The cattle came in pretty good. Tanner and I got stuck with a bum calf and finally had to have Connor come and rope it and lead it up to the corral until they came and picked it up with the trailer. While they sorted and worked cattle I got teh prestigious job of counting! I ended up with one more cow than Mike thought he had so that turned out to be a good deal! They worked pretty well and then it was time for the branding!

There were probably about 90ish calves with quite a few wrastlers so it didn't take much more than an hour. I had some trouble here and there for one reason or another but not near as bad as some of the people there! haha- I didn't feel so bad after watching a couple people grab the rope instead of teh tail! We had a pretty good time joking around with Delbert and trying not to get into too much trouble! By the end we were able to load everything back up and sent the tub chute back home with Dean. Merle and I were going to stop by Dante's 4th birthday party but it was getting late so we gave his gift to Delbert and headed back towards home to do chores. We got them done and noticed that it was a little bit easier to feed our new bottle calves as well. By that time it was fairly late and I headed home. I worked for way too long tryign to get my internet to work and when it finally did it crashed...hence the late posting.

Hopefully I didn't leave out too much- my memory isn't really all that good from day to day..that's pretty sad for someone who is only 21. The branding was fun- even though we missed the after party (which was probably pretty interesting) I still had a good time:) It's probaby the only real one I'll do this year so I'm glad it went pretty smoothly.

"We herd sheep, we drive cattle, we lead people. Lead me, follow me, or get out of my way." -General George S. Patton