Long Weekend....and Week

Our weekend was a little crazy because we were the only members of the whole family that were home. R was in a wedding near Helena and left Wednesday night leaving his puppy with us. C headed to Canada on Friday while J left on Wednesday to see an orthopedic doctor (more on that later) and a reunion of K's family on the weekend. Thankfully, Jared came to help us instead of going to the lake with his parents. That was, however, a bit of a mixed blessing. M had Jared on the swather while he was trying to bale, but the swather was having some issues that Jared wasn't able to deal with. M is used to calling J or C to figure out what could be wrong and fixing it so he could continue with his baling while conditions were right. He was feeling very alone with no backup. Add to that the fact that he was baling about 30 miles from where Jared was swathing.

In the midst of that I did the unthinkable. He asked if I would come help him get his tractor unstuck and I said I was too busy, which I was. My nephew was going to come the next day to do some trim work for me so I was trying to get some stain and varnish on the trim and later was headed to town for a massage and couldn't reschedule it. I was sure he was somewhere where he shouldn't have gone so didn't feel very sorry for him. A few days before he had sent me to get Jared unstuck and all I did was get myself stuck so I didn't want to go there again.

While R was gone I had to deal with the DirecTV installation at his house. That was interesting considering the technician looked like he (and I use that term loosely) was in the middle of a sex change. Josie (Joseph) had some manly features but had a ponytail and was wearing a cap that said "Cowgirl" with bling, women's jeans, eye makeup and I'm pretty sure a bra. Hard not to stare, I'll tell you. I was disappointed that no one saw him/her but me. He was from Miles City and had an 8-year-old son. None of that computes in my mind!

R and J were home by Sunday night but that didn't improve things much. J has a separated shoulder from tipping over his side-by-side while chasing the neighbor's cows out of our lentil field. You can imagine how happy that whole situation made him. The doctor is recommending that he just wait and see how it feels in a month or so and then determine if he needs surgery. Of course, it's his right shoulder so that makes it even more disabling. Jared will have to be his right hand man for awhile. Hopefully, he won't try to do too much too soon. We were really feeling sorry for K putting up with him while in pain and crabby plus a baby and a dog and several days in Billings. She was happy to see him head to the farm on Monday.

R moved the swather to Opheim but continued to have problems and ended up making two parts runs to Glasgow. Then he smacked a deer on the way home. Not a good day! The next day we had rain so they spent more time working on the swather but had to wait for a part to come in. Hopefully, it is rolling now.

While they were waiting for the parts to come in they did some fencing so that we can move our big bunch of cows when we get some time. We've had some bull trouble in one of our other pastures. The neighbor has 150 heifers that aren't to be bred but aren't spayed next to our pasture so the bull wanted to go visiting. They moved our herd back across the road a week or two ago so that four fences and a road might keep him with the herd he was supposed to be with long enough to get them bred. R moved the cows back yesterday and brought the bull home. The only traveling he'll be doing now will be to the sales ring.

M says we are going to disappear for a week but I'm not holding my breath. He still has a lot of haying left to do.