Wednesday, April 1, 2009

It's tough to have fun in a place like this....

but we try!



That's the biggest cowgirl, sitting on her heifer, Betsy. She bottle raised Betsy from less than a week old. It took Betsy a LONG time to realize she was a bovine, since she lived with horses instead. But now she lives with the cows, and is hopefully in a "family way".

More fun! We hooked the kid's runner sled on behind the cart and went for a make-shift sleigh ride!


Does this look like fun? I took this one from INSIDE the house!
A week ago, Monday, we were blessed with 24" of snow! It came down FAST! About 2-3 inches per hour! Thankfully we had watched the weather forcast and had some idea of what was coming. So, Sunday afternoon in lovely 50+ degree weather, we rode out and gathered the cows to bring them a little closer to home. When the snow started to pile up so deep and fast, we moved them closer to the haystack. By the time we finished feeding, the snow was up to the doors on the 3/4T pickup! I didn't take any pictures for the first few days. But I did finally take the camera along, when the sun came out.

The rest of the week we fed with the team. We actually had a blast! They really improved a lot with each day. Here you can see Bowers really getting down and pushing into the load. This was a huge improvement from just two days earlier.


Another way the team improved was in that we could let them stand without someone on the cart, or trying them to a post. They were quite happy to have the rest between bales!


Even the animals have fun here! The cats, Lizzie, in the window on the left, Mr Kitty, the black cat in the window on the right, Grace, at the end of the tie rail, and Clifford, in the middle of the tie rail, are all enjoying the sunshine!

And today... it's snowing again. We turned the cows back out yesterday in the sunshine. The snow has melted enough that they can get to the grass again. But with the snow this morning they are hanging out at the gate saying, "Hey!" I mean "Hay!" Poor girls, the Rancher and I went out with the pickup to "pull" them over to the area of the pasture where the grass is best. (They'll follow the truck anywhere, even with no hay on it!) They followed us there, and even started grazing. We rolled up some electric fence, and then drove back to the house. Within 10 minutes they were back at the gate saying... "We don't approve of your April Fools joke on us!" And we say... get to work ladies! It's your job!