It’s been warm these last couple of days of vacation. The snow isn’t melting but it’s the perfect temp to play in. And finally wet enough to build a snow man! The kids did it all themselves except for lifting the middle part up. I like the nose they made him.
Then we went out to the pasture for sledding.
We woke up to snow this morning.
It came as a complete surprise. The forecast had said maybe, a small chance of snow. We’ve gotten so used to not getting anything that perhaps they said more and we didn’t hear it because our expectations were otherwise. Whatever the reason we had not expected snow.
A small blizzard was even more of a surprise.
Had we known it was coming we would have brought the cows into the corrals. Fed them where there was shelter and feed. Instead they were out in the corn field. A great place in the weather we had been having. Lots of corn stalks to graze on while they search out the ears left behind.
Not a drop of shelter though and the wind is howling down with this snow. Driving it into drifts, coating everything in its path with a blanket of white.
Looking out into the powdery white my husband sighed deeply. This would mean lots of time digging out the feed bunks and the cattle would have to be found. Cattle drift with the storm, as any one who is a fan of old westerns can tell you. They don’t exaggerate the force of a herd with heads down walking blindly with the wind until stopped by fence line or, as in my favorite by Louis L’amour, a cliff. They could have drifted down to the corrals. That was the best case scenario. The storm isn’t all that bad. We could see the hay out inn the stack yard still. The wind was whistling through the trees letting us know how much worse it was blowing away from the shelter of the windbreak. They knew the way though. It was a good possibility really.
Or they could be gone. Off across the neighbors fields. Mixing with their cows. Hopefully not making it as far as the highway. We have a neighbor who lives on the highway and they got a whole herd of cows and one horse in their yard and barns during a blizzard. The horse determinedly herded the cows and held them in the barn until someone came to find them.
As my husband headed out to start digging out the cattle, I went the other way to check on my horses. They have a run in shed that they refuse to use except on sunny summer days and plenty of feed and shelter. I hate fr them to get cold or wet though. I wanted to see how they felt about it and offer the option of the shed to dry off in. Checking onn Ghost, Poppy, Baa, and Violet where they have their own little pen with sheds for all I closed gates and rearranged things so the horses could get to the barn.
Then I walked to the edge of their pen and called.
In the distance I could see where they were standing happily eating hay. They had heard me and responded with heads thrown in the air and ears prick towards me. They came, ready to go in the barn.
As they came through the falling snow to where I could see more than an outline of them, I was confused. Where were MY horses? These horses were a completely different color! We didn’t have any white horses!
Even as powdery as the snow was it had coated them head to toe. All fur was white, their manes all that retained any color. The beautifully colored snow horses pranced through knee deep drifts, nipping at each other and determind in their goal. Together we turned and walked into the barn.
Wading back to the house for a curry comb to scrape the snow from their hides I paused, wondering how the men were fairing. In the distance I spotted the dark outline of a payloader, then of two. They were digging snow, clearing a path to feed. Happy to know they were out there I carried on.
Horses scraped free of their snow blankets I followed my tracks back into the snow with a pitchfork to dig up some hay. Had I known it was going to snow I would have had this ready and waiting for them! It is more pleasant when all things are dry and not buried. With a handful of pitchfork my phone rang. Rushing to dump it through the open barn door I leaned against the barn to shelter my phone from the moisture and managed to answer before it stopped ringing. My husband was calling to check on us as he worked.
Yes, we were fine. Or I was. I couldn’t vouch for the children in the house. They had computers though, great baby sitters for times like these. How were the cows? They had drifted into the corrals! They were going to feed them in n the corrals. The corral I had turned the horses out into because we weren’t using it for cows! Uh oh. I needed to shut some gates!
Pitching a few more fork fulls to the horses I started my walk. Lots of corrals with lots of gates makes a nice little track for the horses to wander through. They also make a long walk through deep drifts to close. The first gate was buried in drifts. I pushed and pulled and could barely move it. Not such a bad thing. I could close other gates and this would give the cows a bit more room. But I had to try one more time first. Walking the drift down, kicking snow out of the way the best I could I go the gate farther shut. Repeating the process over and over I managed to get the gate closed.
Out of breath, lungs burning from panting inn the cold wet air I finished the loop closing the other gate then back into the wind towards the buildings. My torso was hot, sweating under coats, and gloves, and scarf. My legs were frozen solid with only the thin covering of my jeans. You would think the two would even each other out. Combine to leave you comfortably warm, instead of dying of heat and freezing to death at the same time.
A the buildings I paused. Halfway between house and barn I had to decide. Did the horses need more hay or did I need to sit down a moment, catch my breath and alternately warm up and cool down? They had been eating when I called them. They could survive for an hour or so on what I had given them already. I gave in to temptation and went inside. To write this. Now I should go check on them. Probably let them back out. A glimpse of blue is showing through the clouds now and then. The blizzard is gone. Hardly enough moisture in the dry powdery snow to make it worth the trouble it made. At least it will settle the dust for awhile. And I will turn the horses back out now that they’ve had time to dry.
Not how the quote goes but my mom would yell at me.
We brought the cows home last weekend. We had warm weather and everything went good.
Now that Ghost is home where I can get to her and we have a fence I can bring her through so we can work ALONE. I am making the best of it and trying to get to her every day.
We are going back over the things she learned before we quit being able to work because of too much help. We are reinforcing treat manners, greatly strained by all the extra help. We are learning how to do new things like work on a lead rope and give to pressure.
She is exuberant in her responses and perhaps a bit over eager to work. I’m hoping that settle down as she gets used to working together again.
I’m learning a lot too. Like that cows are more sensitive to a curry comb than I would have guessed. Or maybe it’s nerves because she isn’t used to being brushed.
Cattle are different than horses. Together hopefully we can learn to navigate the learning in a way that works for both of us.
It was one of those fall days. The air was crisp and clear. Chilly but not cold with the sun shining in that brilliant golden way it does no other time of year.
We left early for gymnastics, leaving my husband in the field with his combine. My daughter asked for doughnuts, who am I to tell her no. We ordered ahead and stopped on the way to pick them up. Then ate them on the way too the state park. We had good reason for leaving early!
The children wanted to stop at the usual playground, or the unusual one. I had a goal in mind though. There was a picnic shelter, we had stopped near it to pick wild raspberries this summer. From the road you could see the trail wending up the hill. It didn’t look exciting from the road but we had never hiked there. Might as well give it a try.
Starting up the wide mowed trail the first thing we came to was a jack-o-lantern. Its face charred and black. Finding that out in a national forest surrounded by bone dry tender was horrifying. The ease with which a fire could have started was terrifying. Probably college kids out messing around? We walked on.
The kids fought the whole way up the hill. It was cold. They were tired. Why couldn’t we go back.
I was determined though and with a firm grasp of each child’s hand I drug them up the hill.
At the top the trail narrowed, then narrowed further as we walked. Then began to snake about through rocks forgotten as the rest of the hill wore away. Ungainly chunks of stone left bare and exposed. By now the children were happy. Nothing pleases them more than cliffs falling away on both sides that they can try to throw themselves down. Up and around and down we twisted, finally coming back to the car. Laughing and happy by then to have been forced on the walk.
It was too late to have time for lunch before gymnastics though.
Oh well a lunch of the remaining doughnuts it was!
Back home again they wanted to settle in in front of computers. Until I lured them back out with promises of combines and grain trailers.
A grain trailer full of corn is akin to a huge wonderful sandbox that could kill you. Shoes discarded at the bottom you have to scale the steep walls of the trailer, scramble over the top to find the safety within. Protected by those same fortress like walls play inside can be as wild and carefree as can be. Until the trailer gets full. Then the sides can be reached again. Bouncing must be constrained.
They frolicked until the trailer had to be hauled to the elevator and dumped. Then we took a break all squeezed into the combine together. With the children getting bigger we don’t fit as well as we used to. It was warm and sheltered from the biting wind that wanted to be included in the play in the trailer.
The children finally began to wilt from their long day. After a couple of rounds we headed back to the house. Who doesn’t deserve some computer time after a day that long? Tomorrow it may snow. Today we enjoyed fall.
The kids asked me today if I could take pictures of them at gymnastics to share. Of course I would love to!
They are so good at it. They can stretch and climb and do all sorts of amazing things. Mostly they like to play around with their friends but that looks like lots of fun too.
Both of them can easily climb the rope to ring the bell at the ceiling and can hang upside down from the rings.
As my husband walked out the door to go spend the day planting wheat he just happened to mention in passing that if we wanted to we could come by later and check the cows over that way. We could even bring lunch! If we wanted to. Hint, hint 😉
I had planned to go check on Ghost and Blossom and Joker, plus all the others since I was there anyway, at some point this week. Might as well take him lunch while we were at it.
Shortly before lunch time he called again. Was there any chance we could bring the semi with the hay trailer when we came? Since we were coming anyway. There was a pickup there that we could use to go check the cows. Sure, what the heck. We were going anyway. Might as well get a load of hay out of the way.
We got to the hot dust field and enjoyed out picnic of sandwiches and melons fresh from the garden on the side of the seed truck. The children wallowing in the dust as they enjoyed what little shade it offered. Then we got to loading the bales. It’s so dry this year. They had cut a field of alfalfa despite it not being worth the effort. There were a few bales from there and some straw bales from the year before. As m father in law loaded it he was complaining about the bad shape the bales were in. Straw is slippery and doesn’t like too be confined to net wrap. I needed to keep an eye out for any bales falling off, he warned.
Leaving the field I sideswiped a corner post knocking the bales askew but luckily sparing the post. They didn’t fall off though and everything was set right with a bit of rearranging. Hopefully the trip home went better.
After loading we left the semi set and went to look at cows. My son was excited to show his sister how he could work the float to fill our water jug from the stock tank. The jug was empty so we were all looking forward to that. After a cold refreshing drink we walked down the draw.
The storm that destroyed Iowa in July came through here first. We didn’t get hit near as bad but the seventy mile per hour winds knocked down many of the huge old cottonwood trees. Now they lay in the dry creek bed, perfect for climbing. The children who love to climb their tree at home scampered over the arching tree trunks making me gasp and shut my eyes sometimes. They were not afraid though and nobody did fall to their deaths, or broken arms even.
Wore out from climbing we hiked back to the pickup, cast our eyes over the cow herd on the way. All the ones we usually notice stood out, Poppy, Ghost, Joker. The herd markers were there. In with a few more cow calf pairs counting the heifers isn’t as easy anymore. As long as the colorful ones were there we could assume everyone else was too.
Back at the field we waved goodbye to my husband leaving him any left overs from lunch to get him through until whenever he finished planting that night and headed home.
On the narrow dirt road we came upon a tractor speeding along, just barely slower than us. I hated to try to pass him. With the hay on the trailer takes up almost the whole road and I wasn’t going very fast. He pulled off to the side though and slowed. I had no choice. We hugged the grassy shoulder as tight as we could and I didn’t think we clipped him. We did leave him with lots of dust as we continued down the road.
Nearly home, far past the last intersection, I slowed even more to watch for the cows that have been coming and going freely from their poorly fenced pasture onto the road. When, inn the road ahead, there was something. Not a cow. Bigger even.
A round bale!
I had been warned to be careful of loosing my load and here instead was someone else’s bale. Lost dead center in the middle of the road!
In a car or pickup we could have easily squeezed around the edge. There were a couple of feet of road and a decent shoulder on one side. In a pickup and trailer I could have backed to the intersection only a quarter mile or so behind me. In a semi with a hay trailer I thought hard about the fence post I nearly took out earlier. Would the bale already there knock my bales off as I brushed past it? Would the trailer slip off the side of the road into the ditch if I got too far off the road?
If I tried to back with no way of seeing past the trailer how badly stuck could I get it in a ditch with a small misjudgement? Was there any possibility of the children being of assistance and not getting run over if I asked them to go back and guide me?
None of the options looked good. So laughing about the ridiculousness of the situation we found ourselves inn I called my husband. That’s what I do when life has handed me impossible options, call my husband and he will fix it. Somehow. He always does.
As I explained our predicament he laughed with me. He would get a hold of the neighbor. The one whose cows were walking through his mostly down fence to graze the road. whose hay field the bale was in front of. We could sit there parked in the middle of the road and wait.
But. No! As I looked back at the semi and trailer blocking what part of the road the bale didn’t, here came the tractor we had reluctantly passed! He had caught up with us. Now he was passing us, squeezing carefully between the bales and the ditch. He fit! Driving past me standing in the road, talking on the phone, past the children hanging out the windows watching the show. With never a wave or a smile he drove up to the bale. Was it his? Was this where he was driving to?
Wrong color tractor for the neighbor of the cows my husband assured me. This one was blue. Whether it was his or not he picked up the bale. I got in the semi, released the brake, and we followed him. He went slow, looking at the cow whose calf, still in the pasture she wasn’t in, got lined up to nurse through the fence. He looked around then found a driveway to the hay field. He slowly pulled inn and we passed him once again, grateful that he was there to clear our path.
Finally, home at last.
We went for a trail ride this morning. A family ride. Not of the usual sort. I got to walk for one thing. 8 rode his fourwheeler and The Goblin Child rode her horse.
It was a great time.
As 8 took off leading us with the fourwheeler, Daisy mounted behind him, Lady wanted to go with. As though the fourwheeler was a horse and she wanted o stay with the herd. She started off at a very fast walk. I was stretching my legs out as far as they could go to keep up with her. Then she broke into a trot. Sitting up there bareback a trot was more than The Goblin Child wanted to do. Very sick with a cold it was way more than I wanted to do jogging along side!
We went back to a walk.
With fourwheeler in the lead we walked to the end of our road, down by the corrals to check on our goat. She appeared to be fine. We turned and walked back. Towards the house but only inn a round about sort of way. We circled the stack yard and the quanset. We stopped to graze or to climb on the swather/jungle gym. Then on again.
I was exhausted. It was time to head home for real.
The Goblin Child is figuring how to get off on her own bareback. Swinging her leg over so she can slide off is scary but she did it all by herself for the first time today. Then all by herself she lead Lady out and turned her loose, taking the halter off and petting Lady good bye. Soon she’ll be doing this without me leading them.
I admit it. I’m more interested in the horse than she is.
The Goblin Child is loving Lady. There’s no denying that.
She is happy to lead her out to graze. She straps on her treats bag and is even willing to hand feed. Something she has refused to do with any other horse. I am NOT allowed to feed or work with Lady. I got in big trouble for using her to demonstrate teaching a horse to step onto a pedestal. Only she is allowed to do any training. She is also happy to sit on her while she grazes, to lay down on Lady’s rump, to lay down across her neck.
Then, when done, she demands the reward she’s due. She has earned her computer time or a bit of candy.
I’m willing to give it. Time spent with horses should be encouraged by what ever means necessary. A halfhearted interest can grow with time.
I want her to be horse crazy though! I want her to demand time with her horse, not computer time because she played with her horse for awhile.
I guess beggars can’t be choosers. Horse time is horse time. She does love Lady. If it’s not as much or the way I would like, in a perfect world, it’s better than nothing. Not everyone can be as horse crazy as me. Even my mom says I wasn’t completely horse crazy at that age.
So I will keep rewarding horse time and building the responsibilities she is accepting unknowingly, thinking it is just more of the horse fun. She caught Lady and put her halter on, all by herself. The last time she rode she undid the saddle, all by herself. She rode around, in a small inclosed area, and wasn’t even concerned when Lady trotted off with her to the gate, all by herself. She happily leads Lady to the gate and puts her away even taking the halter off, all by herself. Come to think of it maybe this horse thing is working just the way I want it to after all 🤔💜
