You have no idea...

how relieved we are this week. You know those times when you feel helpless? Like you see someone that needs lifesaving help and your hands are tied and you can't do anything about it? Well, this might not be exactly like that, but it is close.

All summer long we have worried and fretted about whether we can keep our cattle herd or will have to sell them. Seeing our cattle hunting for food and trying to supplement them with whatever they need has been time consuming and frustrating. Many of our friends and neighbors have sold all or at least a lot of their herd because they simply had no food to feed them and no grass for them to graze. Drought is a slow, but incredibly powerful event to battle.

We have gotten small rains on and off this summer, but this week was such an answer to prayer. We have had over 3 inches in the past two days. Some people south of Wallace received over 8 inches just last night and all throughout the county farms and families were blessed with abundant rain. Usually if we received half an inch or so we hated to celebrate because we knew so many others that didn't get any rain at all and vice versa. It's hard to celebrate for others when you just see your grass and crops continuing to die. This time the whole county is celebrating! Woohoo!!!!

Here are some pictures in addition to what I already posted on Facebook this morning.

Rain might bring some added labor such as repairing our fence line that was washed out from the river...but I don't care at all!

You can see how high the water was during the height of it by looking at the water line on the tree above. Crazy to think it was four feet higher at one point!

Trees collect a lot of trash since our river rarely runs. It might run once every 2 or three years and a lot of branches, trees, leaves, etc., fall into the river bottom during that time. It creates a lot of debris for the water to redirect itself around when it gets bunched up and once the water level goes down it is deposited in big bunches.

I know it wasn't much for posts, but hope you enjoyed it! As for us, we're gonna be dancing around for quite some time celebrating our rain ;-) Praise God!

Farm Laughter

Seriously? I just barely got out of school for the summer...and now I'm getting ready for inservice next week! Wow. It flew by. Having dad recovering from 8 broken ribs along with planning and preparing for a wedding left me without much free time. Here are a few photos I took throughout the summer and never got blogged.

Hope you enjoy them like I do!

This is true love. She laid on the dirty shop floor in 100 degree weather petting Rusty for about 10 minutes.

Tired and bored on a windy, cool, rainy day on the farm? No worries. Plenty of spots to rest...such as the bale fork on a tractor.

Rusty found another spot. His lip apparently needs aired out. That's it on the edge of the bed of the mule. This is just one of the humorous ways we see him relaxing.

Lesson learned: Never leave our high school hired hand and my injured father alone to clean out the drills. Can't find the attachment for the end of the Shop Vac? No worries, my dad just happened to have the mouthpiece off of one of his breathing apparatuses from the hospital handy. I have to admit, it probably worked better than the actual attachment ;)

Not always pretty, but always blessed

Saturday was branding day. I didn't take any pictures this times so I'll try to paint a picture with words.

I look forward to this day all year long. We bring all of our cows and calves in, along with my uncle's cattle, and brand, vaccinate, and castrate the bull calves while also working their mothers in the corrals next to them.

Everything was going pretty smoothly and we were on our last pen of calves for the morning. I had saddled up our new horse (Blaze) earlier and then dad finally got the chance to get away from his other duties to try roping calves off of her. He had already roped and dragged in at least 5 calves and she had been working beautifully. She was calm as could be and was handling all of the chaos beautifully.

For those of you who have never been around it, there is a lot going on when we work these calves. Picture this: We had over 8 guys waiting to sit or already sitting on the calves (2 people per calf) after they had been roped and dragged in, three different men on horses swinging ropes to rope the calves, around 20 to 30 little calves running around, a propane tank with a hose hooked to a metal stand with fire and at least four different branding irons in the fire, two different people walking around with syringes and sometimes exposed needles rushing to give each calf two different vaccination shots, about 5 or 6 little kids running around with paint sticks to mark the calves that have already been worked, one or two men walking around with knives and buckets of disinfectant to castrate the bull calves, another young boy with spray to keep the calves from getting infected after being castrated and at least three to four other people taking pictures, etc.

Phew! Hopefully that sets the scene for you. At any given time there could be as many as four calves on the ground with all of these things going on around them, so it is a lot for a horse to deal with. That's why it was encouraging that Blaze was handling it so calmly.

Well, there were three to four calves on the ground with people sitting on them while they were all waiting for me to get more vaccine loaded into my syringe (we were having problems getting the transfer needle to work properly to mix up the vaccine.) I heard some commotion and when I turned around, dad was dragging a calf he had roped and Blaze had started to jump around. He held on really well until she kept going and was bucking/rearing up even higher. He lost his balance and fell off to the left side. He landed really hard on his left side.

As everyone cleared off of the fences they had jumped up on (while grabbing little kids and jumping up from sitting on calves) at least five people rushed over to help my dad. He stayed knelt down on the ground for what seemed forever. When he finally stood up he was extremely pale, could barely talk and then almost passed out.

Being the true cowboy he is, he refused any more help other than to make it over to the fence so he could stand against it and clear his head. Eventually he made the decision that he needed my mom to take him to the emergency room nearly an hour away. While I drove him slowly over to my parents' house and discussed with him how to break the news to my mom, he was insistent on the fact that Blaze is still a good horse.

As mom and dad went on their way, I had cousins kick into gear and take over for my mom to finish preparing the lunch for the hungry workers who would soon be arriving. I tried to pitch in the best that I could and no one missed a beat. It was just natural for them to do what needed to be done. Meanwhile, my uncles, cousins and life-long friends had everything under control over at the corrals to get everything under control and finished before lunch.

After lunch, my cousins once again took over and cleaned up all of the food and dishes while I went over and called my sister before heading back to working the last set of calves.

We finished things up relatively quickly and then we used horses to take all of the cows/calves back to two different pastures while they used people on foot and small UTV's to take the remaining ones back to the closer pastures. During this whole process we finally heard that my dad had broken 6 ribs, one of them in two different places and also had a lung that was 15 percent underinflated. People were genuinely shocked and saddened to hear the news.

One of the neatest things about the types of people my family is surrounded by is the fact that even in the sadness for my dad's injury, person after person went out of their way to offer support in the form of work. I know these people, and as much as I complain about being busy, many of them are even busier than me. I KNOW the sacrifice they are making to help us out, I KNOW that they won't even think twice about it, and I KNOW my dad would do the exact same thing for them.

I want to be like these people. People that don't have to speak the love of Christ. They SHOW it in their actions. I'm trying to do some things for dad in terms of coordinating people to help out since I'm unable to do some of the jobs. But the silly girl emotions keep coming out and I get a shaky voice while I'm talking to them because I'm tearing up when I hear the tone of their voice. You can't fake being genuine. You just can't.

I love my family, I love my neighbors, I love this community of people my parents have carefully formed relationships with because in times like these we will rely on them so much. Thank you for all you have done and if you are still reading, I hope that you now have seen a hint of the wonderful area I live in.

P.S.
Blaze is still staying on our ranch. Dad was very firm on that fact today. My cousin rode her for the rest of the day and dragged in calf after calf with not a single problem after she had bucked off dad. After watching her work and asking for advice, I determined it was safe to ride her out as we took the cattle back to pasture. She was the calmest horse out of the four horses in our group. The only thing we can figure out is that something on the saddle pinched her and she reacted by rearing up.

Identity Crisis

Although my heart and mind tell me it's spring, it's April 23rd...and guess who has a snow day!

I'm never going to complain about having another day at home to get some things done. Today it is even more welcome as I'm in the middle of wedding planning and also doing some remodeling of things in the house to make room for a certain handsome young man that will be living in the same house after our wedding ;-)

In preparation for this summer, we have been doing a lot of work on our garden. Since the weather has basically been below freezing at least once every week for the past 3 weeks we haven't planted much.

However, we have planted our strawberries, asparagus, potatoes and onions. The soil at my place is a little out of whack, so we are trying to get certain types of fertilizer into the soil so the garden can be more productive.

It's nice to live on a farm and have fertilizer whenever you need it. I was one that loaded the tractor scoop. Can you tell? I don't use it very often and the picture above might explain why.

Dad help me spread it out in the strawberry bed.

Now we just have to wait for the weather to warm up so we can see if we'll actually have a good garden or not.

But while we are waiting, our ranch has a welcome addition. Meet Blaze!

I'm pretty excited about her. I haven't ridden horses much lately even though I grew up riding. I've ridden maybe 3 or 4 times in the past 5-10 years. We just don't have a good one to ride. I think that has finally changed! I like very calm, very gentle horses and I think she is going to fit the bill. Because of my schedule and the weather, I've only been able to ride her once. She is a fast walker and was very distracted with the scenery so I had problems getting her to steer straight ;-) She is extremely gentle though and I'm having a lot of fun just being able to walk out and pet her. She almost fell asleep the other day when I was petting her.

She's a beautiful horse and we're pretty happy we got her. So I'll let you feast your eyes on her to finish out my blog this time.

Breaking Spring

I have been gone from here for a while, but rest assured, we have been busy around the farm. This past week I was on spring break. So, along with the help of two sturdy teenage boys, we cleared out a lot of dead trees and branches on the farm.

This task is always a big one. Our farm is surrounded by elm trees and the drought has done a number on them, along with the cedar trees my grandpa planted. We used tractors, chainsaws and just a lot of elbow grease to move trees all week.

The highlight of the week was while my dad was gone. None of us were supposed to use the chainsaw if he wasn't there so we used a tractor to do some damage ;-) There has been a big dead branch that hangs over my driveway for the past year. We decided to use the tractor scoop to break it off. Little did we know that 2/3 of the tree would break off with it! We ran out of time that day to just push the rest of the tree over with the tractor so we planned on doing it the next morning...and then the tractor broke the next morning while feeding cattle. So, 1/3 of the tree still stands!

As you can tell from the above pictures, winter is still trying to hang on here. Because of the snow, we didn't do any tree clearing on Saturday. Instead, I thought you might be like my family and get a kick out of watching the new calves enjoying their morning.

The calves are always very curious around new things and the dogs are the same way. It was pretty fun watching the patience and curiosity of both as they checked each other out.

We continue to be thankful for any moisture we receive and pray for more. It still remains to be seen what will happen with our wheat, but until then, we'll enjoy the little things in life that bring us joy on a daily basis here on the farm.

Praise God! No explanation needed.

Snow Day!

I got the call around 6:30 this morning that school had been canceled. I thought it was funny at the time because it looked normal as can be, but as I look at the conditions outside now, I'm glad they called it off.

Here is some of what a snow day consists of for me.

#1: Get the fireplace going. We aren't ever quite sure when we will lose electricity out here in the country, so it's a good idea to already have the fireplace going. It can keep my house warm and I can cook with it if I need to (my house has no gas appliances, so if the electricity goes out I have no way to cook).

Notice the black 5 gallon bucket to the right of the fireplace.

Any good farm kid should have one of those to store the kindling for the fireplace ;-)

#2: Help with chores. We have to make sure the cattle are safe and as warm as can be. This is especially true now that it is calving season. Thankfully we already have all of our cattle in the pastures close to the houses.

This is where we keep the ground up corn we mix into the feed for the cattle. It is loaded into buckets and then dumped into the scoop of the tractor. Next it is dumped into the feed truck. The feed truck has an auger inside that tumbles the corn, silage and roughage around to mix them together.

 

The darker pile in front off the tractor is silage. It is ground up corn that was cut while it was still wet. It has to be cut at a certain time to make sure there is enough moisture and also to make sure the nitrate levels are safe for consumption by the cattle. It is packed tightly together which causes it is start the process of fermentation. This creates heat and when it is scooped up, you can usually see steam coming off of it. Dad has always referred to this as the "hot cereal." Sometimes we load the truck the day before, but we have to remember to not put silage in it if the temperatures will be below freezing during the night. It isn't much fun or much good on the truck to try to mix a big mass of frozen silage.

The lighter pile behind the tractor is what we call roughage. It is simply ground up bales. It is ground up beforehand so it can be mixed in the truck. 

While my dad and uncle were doing all of that, I was given the task of using the pick-up and bale bed to pick up two bales to feed the cattle.

The are the controls for the bale bed. Seems easy enough. But dad has done it hundreds, if not thousands of times. I have done it enough to know what I am doing, but I still have to stop and read the instructions for each movement I want the arms to perform...and I still usually do the wrong one.

You are supposed to grab the bale in the middle...I missed.

My second try was a little better.

After you have the first bale loaded, you can no longer cheat and just look behind you to back up. I'm really bad about cheating.

I've never been a huge fan of trying to use the mirrors. Dad always gives me grief about that. It has something to do with the fact that everything is backwards and I never know which way I need to go...it confuses me greatly.

After we had all of the feed loaded up, we headed out to feed the cattle. Dad had to catch a couple of new calves to give them their new jewelry while we were out there as well. Have to get them ear tagged so we know which mom they are supposed to go with.

By this point it was really starting to snow.

The little calf is trying to figure this food thing out. But since it is so young, it didn't really know what to do with the bale other than stand in the middle of it.

Since chores are done, we are gonna take some tips from the cattle. We are going to hunker down for a while and try to stay warm. I'm sure there will be multiple checks throughout the day to make sure there are no new arrivals. And if there are, I'm sure we'll have to make some decisions about where they should be housed for the remainder of the day. A new, wet calf is no match for winter weather.

Have a great snow day, rejoice in the moisture and stay warm!

Realities of Raising Cattle

In terms of cattle, dad had a rough past 24 hours. Remember that little calf in the previous post? The one that the mama left behind when she went to go get some food? Well, apparently something wasn't quite right with the little guy and it passed away yesterday.

This happens far more often than we would like. I know we have to look at our ranch as a business. But if there is a single person that looks at a newborn calf and doesn't have it pull on their heartstrings, then there is something wrong. I still take it hard when a calf I have had a personal connection with later dies. I might not take it as hard as I did as a kid, but it still is a little heartbreaking.

The heifer, as far as we can tell, was a good mother. Something just wasn't right with the calf and it wouldn't eat like it was supposed to. So, as we do at least once or twice every calving season, we "grafted" a calf onto the mother. We have older cows each year that have gotten bred but we will no longer be keeping them after they calve. They are cows that might be losing their teeth so it is hard for them to eat or they have some other sort of health issue partially due to their age. Those cows have served us well over the years, but they won't be ones we keep for another year. So, if one of our younger heifers loses a calf, we often take a calf off of the older cow and put it on the younger heifer.

This is the calf as it is introduced to its new mother.

Also, in the early morning hours, my dad was EXTREMELY nice and did not call me when he needed to pull a calf at 3 in the morning. We try to breed the first-calf heifers with a bull that will produce a smaller calf so it is easier for them to calve. Sometimes it doesn't quite work out that way though and they need help to get the calf out because it is so big. The little guy below was the one that was pulled. When I say "pulled" I literally mean "pulled." We have to connect a chain to their front legs and pull while the cow pushes. We try to let it occur as naturally as possible and just keep pressure applied so the cow's pushing is a little more effective.

Might be walking on my tippy-toes for a while ;-)

This calf is walking a little funny today. The cable has made his poor front feet pretty sore since he was so big and really hard to pull, but dad said it should clear up and the swelling will go down in the next few days.

So, even as we sadly said goodbye to one little calf, my dad helped another calf make its arrival into the world. It doesn't mean we don't get sad, it just means we have to put aside the sadness to help protect the lives of those calves still living.

New Arrivals Daily

Calving season is here!

It is the season that might be one of the most anticipated events on our farm/ranch. Although it also comes without a lot of sleep for my dad.

First things first, we joined together to load up the heifers (the cows having calves for the first year) and transfer them from a pasture further away to one right next to my parents' house.

Dad doesn't get much sleep because day and night his job is to watch over the cattle to take care of them and their newborns. Since these cows have not had calves before, everything is new to them. Sometimes they don't claim their own calf, sometimes they have difficult calving, or sometimes they just up and forget they have a calf for a little bit.

Saturday a heifer had calved earlier that day while we were pulling posts from fence we had set up around CRP this summer. 

Ok...so maybe he was pulling posts and I was driving and taking pictures ;-)

Well, apparently later that day when the heifers were fed, the mom forgot that she had a new calf to take along with her. She ran to the food and left her calf alone to fend for itself in the dirt and wind. So dad called us for some help and we loaded up the adorable little guy and took her baby to her (and the food).

Hey, mom, you left me behind...where are you?

This last picture is one of the many reasons prairie dogs are horrible for us to have in our pastures. I actually hadn't ever seen this before, but had to take a picture when I saw a one-day old calf about to lose its front legs down in a prairie dog hole. If its legs did fall all of the way down in there it would be very hard for it to get out.

I'll keep ya posted on the calving progress and hope that all of you are hanging in there with all of the crazy weather around these days...be it snow, or rain, or hail, or tornadoes, or blizzards, or wind....hopefully it covers it all ;-)



God Made a Farmer

Sorry the embedding of the video isn't working...or at least it isn't for me. Here's the link to the commercial. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AMpZ0TGjbWE

I'll be the first to admit that I often watch the Super Bowl mostly for the commercials. In past years I have become disenchanted with those commercials. Many times I was watching with teenage students or young children and I was extremely uncomfortable, sometimes even disgusted, with how companies felt they needed to use more and more sexual content to "lure" the viewers. So much for teaching values all day long...hard to fight against what they were being bombarded with during those 4 hours.

Finally, finally, I had that feeling completely changed this year. While sitting and watching with my fiance and his dad, a commercial came on that immediately had all of us spellbound. We watched in silence as the voice of Paul Harvey came over the air. Just his voice alone has a huge impact on me and my connection with farming. As a child, I would hear his voice nearly every morning or afternoon during the school year. I can't remember if it was before or after school, possibly both, but it was one of the most vivid memories I have from riding the bus for nearly an hour. I usually listened with great interest at the story he was telling, and many times was more than a little irritated when my stop arrived and I didn't get to hear "the rest of the story."

This time I got to hear the whole story. And I soon realized it was one I already knew. It was MY story. As he talked about the dedication and heartache (along with triumphs) of a farmer, I sat there and KNEW what he was talking about. I can't say every single one of them applied to me personally, but it applied to my dad and so many other farmers I know. I almost cried as I listened to Paul Harvey tell what is required of a farmer.

He emphasized things I already knew. However, as I thought about the ad the next day and read and heard many people discussing how wonderful the ad was, I started thinking about why it left such a huge impact. Unfortunately I was disappointed with my conclusion.

I concluded two things. #1: It left such a huge impact because it talked openly about God and used His name many times in the very short ad during one of, if not THE largest television event of the year. In our day and age, we are shunned for talking about our God openly. We are told to keep our opinions to ourselves while being force fed someone else's religion, politics, etc. I'm ashamed to say that I have many times withheld talking about God in a very natural conversation because I didn't want someone to think that I was "forcing" Him on them.

#2: It left an impact because no one ever defends farmers these days...actually, people are usually attacking them. Whether it is because they "abuse" an animal by keeping it in a pen that is actually serving to protect it from some sort of danger, or because they are using technology to their advantage to make farming more efficient. We are being told to feed more and more people but use less and less ground.

Both of these topics are so near and dear to me that I can't even begin to seperate myself from them. As a farmer, I depend on God to get me through the times like we are in now. Trying to grow crops or feed livestock in a drought like the one we are in defies all logic. Yet, I know that I love and believe in providing food for others who can't provide their own. My faith in God allows me to know that no matter what happens with my income or crop, I will still be serving Him in some way and He will get me through those times.

Some people were nitpicking that Paul Harvey exaggerated on God's words. I don't think what he did really exaggerated on much of anything. I think instead it actually put them into a context that made some people understand them better and perhaps made them a little uncomfortable. God created man to watch over and care for the earth and the animals. Yet people even today are complaining about the fact that cats kill too many birds. Humans are the worst at disrupting the natural food chain that is intended to happen. We are the only animals that go against what is supposed to be natural and then we wonder why things get all out of whack? In Minnesota where my sister lives, they hardly ever see deer. They don't see deer because wolves have not been hunted and the population is starting to get out of control again. So, they opened wolf hunting back up this year. I know some people are irresponsible, but when you mess with the natural order then things get messed up.

If anyone was offended by the ad, then they truly don't understand the nature of farming. Yes, we have some bad seeds among us. But I dare you to look at any profession and only find people in it that are fault-free.

I'm tired of defending my profession. I'm tired of defending my faith. Looking back, maybe I'll start to "defend" myself by saying one simple phrase.

Those four words will hopefully continue to leave an impact long after the Super Bowl commercial is forgotten. After all, "God made a farmer."

Sleigh Ride...western Kansas style

We don't have many hills around here, but we find that an advantage when we want to go sledding. Big flat open spaces are awesome for our style of sledding. The biggest hazard? Frozen cow patties are as hard as rocks when you hit them!

Chores on a snowy morning

We enjoy the snow around here any time we get it, but especially now since we are in a severe drought. It seems to give a little extra energy to everyone ;-)

I know it has been a little while since blogging, so I hope that everyone had a Merry CHRISTmas and a have a blessed new year!