On days when it is cool enough, and I have access to our UTV, or Mule, I like to take some of our dogs for runs. We have an abundance of them and the combination of fixed and not-fixed means that we have to basically keep them in pens most of the time. They are SUPER happy when they get a chance to go out and run!
This is Zoey. She likes to dart across in front of the Mule sporadically so I have to keep on my toes with applying the brakes. However, she LOVES human attention and usually runs along right next to the mule so she can keep a close eye on where I am.
This is one of Zoey's puppies from last summer that we kept. His name is Auto. He was one of the biggest pups of the litter and is beautiful to watch run. This day he went full-out for probably 3 miles or so without me pushing him. Most of the time it was all I could do to keep up in the Mule.
Oh, and did I mention that the one dog I can't take on runs right now has 10 puppies? Earlier this year, mom and dad's dog (a puppy from the litter last summer as well) dug under the fence and got in with her...and presto! We now have 10 more dogs.
When I take the dogs out, I like to take them running around our farm ground close to the house. This is where we have our small amount of irrigated ground. Dad is extremely conservative when it comes to irrigating and with the early rains, we actually have only run the sprinklers a few times. The above and below pictures are after the second-cutting on our alfalfa. The strip of it that is left is because that is where the sprinkler was sitting when we swathed and baled it. I LOVE the smell of alfalfa and if you drive through it after it has blooms, you will see all the butterflies and bees, etc., that love it as well. We have cut it twice and baled it into big round bales to use to feed our livestock through the leaner months so they still get that nutrition even when there is no grass to eat.
Above are our oat bales. I didn't get a chance to get a picture of the oats before we swathed them. Oats, unlike alfalfa, have to be planted every year and you really only get one cutting off of them. Our baler was having issues and we needed to get them baled quickly, so some of our neighbors came with their baler and baled at the same time as we were to make quick work of it. They are really good about swapping labor with us to help each other out. No money exchanges hands, just good ol' fashioned labor. Their drills were not available to plant feed, so my husband took ours over and planted what they needed planted.
This last picture is really about the only picture I've gotten from wheat harvest. It has the grain elevator to which we haul our wheat in the foreground. But I took it because of the yellow stone building in the background. For decades this house has stood guard over the railroad and housed numerous families and workers through those years. It now belongs to the museum, but I think it is neat to still see it watching over the railroad today and the green grass in front of it made an especially striking image this day.
The first
day we cut wheat this summer, I begged my dad to let me ride into the elevator with
him while he took a load of wheat in the semi. This always brings back memories
of how special it was as a kid to go with him and get a cold glass
bottle of Pepsi out of the pop machine there at the Co-op in Wallace. I
don't know if they have the pop machine anymore (I am staying away from pop during the pregnancy), but my mouth still watered for the sweet cold
taste of Pepsi while I sat in the truck on the scales.
As for harvest, we are still harvesting. We have a couple of fields that got really weedy after the late rains so we sprayed them and have to wait for the weeds to die off before we can harvest them.
I guess that's it for me. Stay cool everyone!
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