Quiet Time

It's pretty quiet around the ranch these day as the only bovine still there are three spare bulls and a cow with a grafted calf, and the pair will go to pasture soon.  We had the bulls tested about three weeks ago and a couple of them didn't test good so went to market this week after all the others were hauled to pasture and put to work.  Two cows went along and two steers went to the butcher.  The only livestock around the barn now are the cats and two batches of kittens.

Head 'em, move 'em out...to summer pasture

Junior has too much hair and needs to cool off frequently.

Two weeks ago we AI'd our heifers.  It's always interesting to have 100+ hormonal females around the corrals.  C's stepsons brought 50 head over to go through the process with ours since they'd never done it before so we had lots of extra help, and it went pretty smoothly.  We had rain showers but before and after we were working so it was all good.

The girls with their "I'm ready" (heat detection) patches

M and R (with a little bit of help from me) have done some fencing projects and developed our new well.  That is a story in itself after being started in June and finished in February...while we were gone to Daytona....with lots of headaches in between.  It cost WAY more than anticipated and after taking over six months to complete the driller wanted to be paid immediately....even though we were in Florida!  Anyway, we have water and set up a solar system to pump it since it would cost another small fortune to have power run up there.  M was so happy when it was working and pumping water...for two days....then nothing so they had to pull the pump (which was no small feat) and switch it out.  Apparently the pump was bad because the new one is working flawlessly.  We can water three different pastures from it so they put in a water corral and a cross fence.   The cows graze the pastures much better if they have more than one source of water.

We took a little time to celebrate our 33rd anniversary with a little back roads crop tour and a stop at this little dam.  It's kind of a hidden gem that we forget about and it's just a hop, skip and a jump cross country from our place.

The crop spraying is about wrapped up and haying has begun. Everything seems a bit early this year.  M would like to let the grass grow a little more, but the alfalfa is just about in full bloom so he feels like he needs to get started.  We've had timely rains and no hail thus far although we've seen some scary skies.  Some neighbors had photos of a funnel cloud yesterday.  I'm glad I didn't see it!

We believe M's dad is up there pulling some strings for us in the rain department.  He'd be thrilled to see how good the crops and hay look this year especially after the dismal crops we had last year.  I'm afraid that once again there will be no break between haying and harvest.  We like to take a little summer excursion, but we don't see it happening again this year.

This weekend is the all-school reunion for my high school with the annual Opheim Rodeo--the big event of the summer, can't miss it.  There's supposed to be a street dance tonight and as usual when one of those is planned it's cold and windy.  Oh well, we're used to that and we're tough.  It will be fun to see old friends.....