Wednesday, December 6, 2023

Farm Happenings!!

Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.” 
Isaiah 7:14


I am so blessed to spend some time with Kaitlin. As our children grow into adulthood, parents aren't the center of their lives. I am happy to say this beautiful young lady enjoys hanging out with her parents. Any opportunity I get and snatch the chance to hang out with her. Kaitlin works full time and still finds time to spend with me. ❤️❤️

We were out doing some errands and getting some shopping done.
One of our stops was at Costco's. Kaitlin found a pinball game which she played for a good 10 minutes.
She also just loved all the food samples they had out.

Remember the spinach seed that I planted so late??
Well, it is growing quiet nicely. It has been so cold and I haven't wanted to open the wrap that I have my plants in. I waited for the weather to warm back up and took a peek. I've been praying for this to be successful. My prayers have been answered. 

There is just something about the scenery in the winter months.
I wished my phone camera could've captured the beautiful sky in all the right colors. But I will still post the picture for y'all to get the idea. Some things you just have to be there to enjoy.

Hope wasn't feeling well. She had lost weight and was losing her hair on her belly side. With winter coming and not growing her winter coat we had many concerns. 

Tim came with me to the vets office. Since she is a larger dog and not used to riding in a vehicle much less going to the veterinarians office. 

Not sure exactly what caused her symptoms, we took her to the vet. The vet wasn't sure but gave her a shot and medication to take. 

She did really good with riding in Tim's van and having the leash on her. On a norm she never did well being leashed. I think she knew we were trying to get her help. Her tail wagged the whole time at the vets office. When we finished up there were two kids in the waiting room. Kids are her favorite.


Within a couples of days, Hope was feeling better and back to eating, barking and running around the pasture.

Faith is growing and I think will be bigger than Hope.
Faith is only 6 months old and already in a large dog collar. She is the size of Roxy.
Faith is a happy go lucky pup and full of energy. She is so opposite from Hope. Faith is a fitting name for her. 

Cattle and fence checking for our weekend.
Saturday was a really cold day so we decided to wait until Sunday to check on the cattle. Since it was a nice day but still cooler I thought lets just take a nice walk to our back pasture. As Tim and I were chatting we noticed we had more cattle and a really big one. 

Far left side is our neighbors bull with our bull and cattle.
It's never a good thing when cattle get out especially when a bull gets out. They only get out for usually one reason; to breed!!!
We have 3 girls. Two of our girls are definitely pregnant and one of them we don't think is yet or too early to tell. Our neighbors bull is significantly bigger than our heifer. We really hope she already was bred with our bull. We won't know until late summer next year.

We are working on getting the cattle over to one side making it easier to separate them.
Tim and I already got a reel up. Meaning we put in posts and ran an electric wire across. We have a handle on one end making it easy to open one end or close one side of the pasture.

You can barely see the white fencing stakes in the background. That is separating the pasture in half.
If you look at the picture to your far upper right you will see the 2 bulls we need them to be where I am taking the picture. Once they come through the opening, Tim will close off the section.

Hard to take pictures when I'm needed to help.
The bulls finally came through where the girls were at. Now we trick the cattle to come back to the other side of the pasture so we can separate ours from the neighbors bull. Our neighbor was telling us his bull is mean and kicks. We only have one chance to make it all go smoothly so no one gets hurt.
 Patience and prayer!!!

All I can say is it went better than I expected. The bull got back into his pasture. Nobody got hurt so that was a win.
There are several differences in the way we are raising our cattle from our neighbor. His bull is only motivated by a bucket with grain and has no respect for people.  Ours is used to us moving them. Pasture rotational grazing. Moving them more frequently. When we are in the pasture with them they give space and so do we. They are electric fence trained. Which makes it easier to move them or take a line and  walk behind them. Another huge thing is we can holler for them and they will come. 

Other than the cattle thing we had a pretty relaxing weekend.

Who's ready for Christmas??