Just a Boy and his..... Squirrel????????

Cloudy, 94/75, Fair to Change. Looks like another 1/10 inch of rain last night. Wahooo, Thank you God. Took stock of what we had. The drought has really affected us. I think we'll have enough hay. I'm going to have to buy a lot more corn than I thought. I'm not looking forward to that, because I bet corn prices are going through the roof this winter. We've had rain two days in a row, maybe the grass will get jump started again and we'll get one more hay crop in October.

The boys were working on our dust collection area that we’re calling a farm this last weekend. The rains have been almost non-existent in this drought, and our feed crops have been horrible. So while were waiting and hoping for a second cutting of hay, we were doing some farm maintenance. The good news is that we’re slowly making the land look nicer. The bad news is that these chores come at a price. It’s about $6 /hour for my boy’s time. I can understand that, they’re young men trying to get gas money and money to go out with their friends on the weekend. Besides, my wife wouldn’t have anything to else to do on Friday night if she wasn’t looking through the curtains trying to figure out which girl they are going out with.

Anyway, my older son is working on rolling up some fence wire and he seemed to be doing all right when all of a sudden he starts jumping up and down and yelling (something you don’t see much from this way too cool teen). Well immediately I thought “bee’s nest” and got into the truck, rolled up the windows, and locked the door (can’t have the young un’ dragging bees into the truck you know…..). He’s not running, but he’s trying to reach up his pant leg. So figuring it might be safe I cautiously got out of the truck.

Well I went over to see what’s going on and my son is doing a pretty good imitation of Elvis. I mean he’s got the legs and hip shakin’ and he’s slapping his legs and all of a sudden from one of his pant legs, out pops a little squirrel. I’m thinking this thing has to be a baby because he showed absolutely no fear. As soon as my son quit his dancing, the squirrel was back between his feet, trying to find a way back up his leg. We got a good laugh, and went back to work. An hour later the squirrel was still there. My son was trying to shoo him away, but the little bugger kept at it, and eventually the boy had to make an adjustment to his clothing and put his pant legs inside his socks.

As I drove off, I let my son cross in front of me on his way to the barn. He was carrying the last spool of wire when he went past and he looked at me and rolled his eyes. I couldn’t figure out that look for a while, then watching him from behind, I had to laugh again. There, clinging on the back side of his jeans leg was that squirrel….. Just along for the ride….

Hide and Seek

Cloudy, 94/78, Fair to Fair. Lots of work this weekend on the old farm. Since not much is growing here in the dry, we're trying to clean up old messes and trying not to make new ones. This weekend we pulled old fence posts from what used to be the edge of our pasture. We've since cleared and added about five acres to it. The old tractor was straining trying to get this dry concrete hard clay to let go of posts that have been in for four years.

Last night we heard something at 2am thats pretty rare around these parts.....RAIN!! probably only about .1 inches, but its always welcome.

Since telling you about this weekend would be completely boring (we pulled up this post... then we pulled up the next post.... then we pulled up the next post...), I thought I'd tell this story of what happpened earlier this year.


Well a fun time was had by all this weekend. Somehow the goats found a way into the barn. This means a clean up of tipped over feed bins (a fancy name for garbage cans) and hay bales. The goats had a great time. Their owner didn’t.

It started with me trying to pull the tractor out Saturday morning. I opened the gate and fired it up. This usually makes them back up, but after backing the tractor, there was a mad rush for the open gate between the goats and me….. I lost.

Funny thing though… Billy wanted no part of it. Once he saw everyone else was in though, he did find a shady place to lie down and watch the fun.

It took 4 seconds for all the goats to get in the barn. Getting them out was another matter. I left the gate open hoping they’d leave. None of them did. Whenever I’d force one out, he’d just come back in the open gate. It was beginning to look like a Three Stooge’s routine.

Finally, I started making progress. I’d get one and force it out, then close the gate and get the next one until I finally got down to the last one. Now the 90 degree Alabama heat was starting to get to me and I was getting a little punchy looking for the last kid who was nowhere to be found. I heard a bleat or bah or whatever coming deep in the hay. I thought the poor guy had fallen in between the bales, so I started digging at the loose hay. I was half buried in the hay when I heard Billy laugh (I’m sure he was laughing at me, and not just coughing up something more to chew). Then I heard the hay move above me, and on top of the bales stood my prize.

Now, I have watched every Elmer Fudd or Roadrunner cartoon on the face of the earth. You would have thought I’d a had some idea about what was going to happen while I climbed those bales. Its all kinda fuzzy, but here’s what I think happened:

I climbed towards the kid and it decided to jump (Billy snickered). I reached out to catch it and one of the bales gave way (Billy laughed). Kid and I fell off the top of the bales and landed in some soft hay below. I had kind of still not gotten my grip on the kid when he decided he wanted to be elsewhere and he started kicking me and gave me a bloody lip. (I’m sure Billy was busting a gut by now) I didn’t let go though and eventually all the goats were out of the barn.

I went home to nurse my wounds and get a little consolation from my compassionate family (“That little one did that to you dad?? That is so wrong…..”). After I got the bleeding stopped I went back to the barnyard looking for the goats. I only saw Billy, stretched out again in his same spot. Then I heard a baah or bleat from inside the barn again…… I forgot to latch the gate…….

This time though I was a little smarter and called them with some corn. They all came out in an orderly fashion. Why I didn’t think about that before, I’ll never know. The last to go eat was Billy. He just kinda walked by me with a little smirk on his face. That’s alright…. Summer worm checks are coming up…..Then we’ll see who has the last laugh……

Slide of a Lifetime

Sunny, 94/65, Fair to Change. Not much happened on the farm yesterday. The animals did all the work. Some eggs, some grass munched on, that kind of thing. The farm's owner's butts were in the bleachers watching a high school football game. It kind of lowers the blood pressure a bit, and now we can see why our boy goes from the door to the couch every school night.

This has nothing to do with our farm and it isn't very Christian like, but I decided to tell the story, because it is true and it is funny.

At nineteen, I had decided I had enough of college and my future was in backpacking in Alaska. I had a camera, a Kmart backpack, and a cheap pup tent. I hitched a ride with some college friends heading up there and spent about 4 months up there mostly in Denali National Park photographing, backpacking, and slinging burgers so I could get money for supplies to head out again. It was working out great until my girlfriend (future wife) wanted to come up and see what Alaska was all about.

Well her version and my version of how to see Alaska were completely different. She was up here for two weeks, the first week was spent in the comfort of a climate controlled bus oohing and ahhhing at every bird or squirrel they came across. I had had enough! I finally convinced her to go with me on a two day backpacking trip. Nothing fancy just down this one valley I hadn’t been down before, you could see the topographical map only had one line (each line is a change in elevation)on it so it would be an easy hike. She finally said yes.

So I packed my pack and she packed her daypack and off we went. Pretty soon we began to notice the mountains were getting steep and pulling out the map I realized the one line I saw was thick. This meant it was a bunch of lines together, which meant it was a cliff!! Seeing the river was blocking our path, the only thing to do was climb.

Climbing a rock face with a girl who’s previous climbing experience was climbing a hay mow leaves something to be desired. We came to an impasse where the only way to continue was to swing out on an overhanging tree to reach a walkable area again. I decided to do this without telling my dear girlfriend. When I went to swing, she thought I was falling so she grabbed my foot. I told her what I was trying to do so she said “Well I’m sorrrrryyyyy!!” and let go. Now I’m just hanging there from the branch with no momentum to swing wondering if I’m going to be able to get to the other side. About this time she decides to tell me in so many words how she’s really not enjoying herself and would like to go home. Finally I struggled to the other side while she kept expressing her feelings. I decided the only way to keep her quiet was to climb (at least it might take her breath away).

Well we climbed along the ridgeline until we couldn’t climb anymore. We found a backpack that had been torn up by some animal (probably a bear) which pushed us further. (I was just hoping we wouldn’t find the hiker that went with it). Finally, I found a spot where I thought we could set up a campsite. It was easy to set up the tent because it stayed light for most of the night. I pounded the stakes in and set up the poles. We were exhausted……. But not too exhausted for…. You know….

Alright, she was too exhausted, but I was a young man full of hormones and if she said anything close to a maybe. I would take that as a yes. Well she finally succumbed to my charm and youthful exuberance (she called it begging).

Its funny how in the throws of romance, you don’t realize the tent your in might not be set up for mountain camping and one by one the tent stakes are loosening. You also don’t realize that you may be putting weight on the down hill side of the tent causing those stakes to come out of the ground one by one. Its also funny how your girlfriend notices this long before you do and screams like a… well… like a….girl.

After the stakes pulled out, the tent started sliding down the slope. We had climbed above the tree line, so there was nothing to catch us for a while the poles had collapsed and I’m sure we looked like we had been put in a potato sack and thrown down a hill. We were rolling and tumbling until the tent finally became hung on a tree and stopped us.

Now that we seemed to be stopped and semi-safe my girlfriend took every opportunity to spell out the differences between me and every great adventurer that ever lived. I was just trying to find the zipper of the tent in all that fabric that had wrapped around us during our journey.

It took about five minutes to get untangled and out. We struggled back up the slope to where our backpacks were dragging our tent. When we got back to the original camp site, I dug a hole for our rear ends and we slept facing up and down the hill without the tent and our feet against some rock outcroppings. One more feeble attempt at romance was quickly squashed by an icy stare and we went to sleep.

We hiked out the next day. The rest of her trip we nursed our bumps while we took bus trips looking at the animals most of us see in our back yards.

That was 25 years ago. Funny though how those things come back to haunt you, the other night Kathy jerked awake. I was feeling kinda frisky and moved closer to her… she said “The reason I woke up was I was having another bad dream about our Alaska trip!!” then she rolled over. I’m almost positive she was smiling in her sleep…..

Dog

Sunny, 92/72, Fair to Change. Mowed again yesterday. The mowing does two things, it reclaims some of the land, and it gives the goats some more food. I'm only able to get out for about an hour a day right now, and it seems to be just enough food for the goats to finish off before the next day. They're almost like a land seagull, they get out of the way when I go by, and I'm not 5 foot past when they jump to the new mown area .

I've never became overly attached to any of our pets. Except for the one below:

There’s that dog again. I hate strays, but man it looks hungry maybe we should give it some food. All right now, here’s some bologna now git home.

Honey why’d you buy that dog food. You know we can’t keep her. She’ll be leaving here and going home anytime. No you can’t come inside you’ll wake the babies. All right you can stay on the porch. What should we name a dog like you?

Look Hon, one of the children is trying to ride Dog. She’s letting him too. He sure looks cute on top of her with his cowboy hat and gun. Get off her buddy Dog’s had enough fooling around.

No I can’t come home right now, what happened? What is Dog barking at? It’s a water moccasin by our front porch? Good thing she warned you. See if a neighbor will kill it

Go get em Dog….. She sure is getting good at bringing those whiffle balls back we hit. She won’t have anything to do with those basketballs though. Why are you crying buddy? Dog spilled all the fish out of the bucket? Well, she didn’t know any better..

Come here ol buddy, you’re sure getting up there in years. You’re as old as my youngest teen now. Its getting hard for you to dodge the older ones car when he pulls out isn’t it. Well, lets go down to the creek so you can lay in it and cool off.

Hey son, have you seen Dog? I haven’t seen her all day. Hey buddy, why are you laying under that shed whining? Lets go to the vet…… Cancer…. She can come back to the house until the pain gets too bad, then she has to be put to sleep.

I’ve never cried digging a hole before, especially for some stupid animal. An awful lot of tears flowing around the house today, even from the cool teenager.

Dog grew up with the kids, became their best friend and playmate. I guess she kinda became mine too.

Sounds from the barnyard

Sunny, 93/73, Change to fair. Mostly mowing and clearing yesterday. The ground is so dry, saplings just bend rather than pull up by their roots. What the brush-hog cant get, I’ll just have to wait for fall when the rains come.

This time of year in the south is a little bit depressing and exciting at the same time. Depressing because the grasses start to die and one hot day draws into another, and the cycle just seems to go on and on. Exciting because its time to start to think about fall planting, and which grasses go where.

When we bought our farm, all of it was abandoned farmland. The problem with abandoned farmland is that after a couple of years here in North Alabama, it turns to brambles pines and poison ivy. Slowly, between the goats and our tractor, we’ve been clearing it. So far, we probably have about 15 of our 60 acres cleared.

Well yesterday, I was clearing on the backside of our 10 acre pasture with Sam the goat dog and my entire herd when I heard thunder off in the distance. Not having rain in a while, I started getting excited. I was even more excited when Sam started cowering under a log (she hates thunder). It eventually got close enough where I thought it might be a good idea to put the equipment away and wait the thing out in the barn.

Sitting up there at the barn with nothing to do, I pulled out my Horner “Old standby” harmonica and started to play. Now, I’m not some great harmonica player or anything. In fact, I really just screech and squawk through songs. I started playing only because I was jealous of other drivers in town having things pressed against their face all the time. I didn’t have a cell phone, and the ol’ harmonica was the next best thing.

While I went through a scale, the dog began to yap and the goats tried to join in. All except billy (my billy goat) who is way to “cool” for such behavior, Billy went to find a spot under the tree and laugh at us. After another scale, I’d about decided we had ourselves a choir. With all due respect to the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, I believe we’ll call ourselves the Moron Lab-n-Stable choir.

Well, I started playing, and Sam started howling, and the goats started baaing and we were sounding real bad. I think the good Lord finally had enough and shed some of God’s tears down on our dry land and us. The rain shut us up in a hurry, the goats and the dog were scrambling for shelter, and I couldn’t hear myself think over the noise of the water on the barns tin roof.

The rain lasted about 15 minutes, but you wouldn’t have known it even happened. The ground gobbled the water up as fast as it fell. The sun came out and the humidity went sky high. It felt good though, and I slid the old standby back into my pocket. I looked back at my singers as I headed home from the barn. Hmmm maybe we’ll try this thing again tomorrow.

I'd be fence sitting, but I just got a splinter.....

Think of this as a dream sequence:

Customer- "I really appreciate these brush/boer goats. I haven't been having much worm problems and they seem to be surviving better and throwing more kids."

Me- "Well, I'm glad I could help you out. You know its taken me years to develop these and they seem to be doing pretty good. I've got alotta sweat into them."

Customer- "Well they have made me a lot of money"

Just then a Boer goat breeder walks up.

Boer Breeder- "Look at these raggly old goats. I can't believe you have them on your farm.

Customer- "Oh I know, I can't stand them. If it was up to me, I'd shoot em all. This guy here has been selling them to me for years. If they didn't make money for the farm, I'd just let em starve, It would cost me less effort than giving them away."

Now, if you were me standing there what would you do?

Normally, I'm a fence sitter, I listen to other peoples opinions, respect them, maybe inject a little of my own thoughts, but try to keep things civil and respectful.

Well, the other day I was reading one of my favorite farm magazines and this situation came up( having a hard time following me on this one yet??). I've been reading this journal for years and know where the publisher stands on the USDA. I don't entirely agree with him, but he makes some valid points. In his response to the letters, he was doing what he normally does and expresses his opinions about the lack of support the USDA gives for the small farmer. I'm Ok with that.

Turn the page and there is an article from an organization (specifically for small farmers) funded by the USDA. Hmmmmm. I read the article. Its a pretty good article. Then after the article, the publisher puts in a little blurb how this really isn't the USDA and how the magazine still wants to do away with all the USDA practices.. Hmmmm... I've smelled this before.....

Man, this got me fired up.

My point is this. If your using an organization to help you make money. Don't bad mouth it. If you want to badmouth an organization, don't use their articles to make you money.

It all comes down to being a man of your word and following that word.

Thank you for participating in my first rant ever on this blog thingy. Before I take the tweezers and find the splinter, I think I'll go tell that customer a thing or two, then its time to get back on that fence and ride.

Alright, I'm taking too much joy in getting old...

This happened way back in the early spring. Back when we remembered what a wet creekbed looked like.....

When I was a kid, I always wondered why old men were always smirking when I got in trouble. I think I figured it out.

A couple of kids came up to me yesterday while I was disking and said they had gotten their four wheeler stuck. They were covered in mud and breathing heavy. Seems they were riding in a drainage ditch of a cottonfield and the Alabama red clay reached up and grabbed the four wheeler. They asked if I could pull them out so I went back to take a look. Sure enough they were stuck. When I went back to get the tractor, the younger one decided the mud was fun and ended up losing both his shoes. When I came back, both were up to their knees in mud looking for the shoes... They never found them.

Well, we got the four wheeler out and they made a hurried thank you and sped off down the lane. I was wondering why they left so fast, then I noticed a mini van at the end of the lane. As I was getting closer ( the ol' JD B doesn't move very fast) I could see mom's finger waving and mouth moving..... The boys were getting it good... Then I noticed that same old man smirk started coming to my face. I tried to stop it, but couldn't.

That smirk took me back years before when my brother and I got the bright idea to use our lawn tractor with the snow plow to clean off the pond so we could play hockey. The idea would have worked too.... if the Ice would have been thick enough..... Grandpa listened to our story and that silly grin came over his face...

Well I passed those boys, still getting it from mom, with a full grin on my face. They were probably hoping I'd help them out, but all I could so was smile.

Someday, they'll understand...

Whats Really Important

Usually I walk around in kind of an ignorant bliss. My crisis’s this year have consisted of a teenager and chewing tobacco, shunned teenage girls , or being a mediator in a family disagreement. I walk around sometimes quietly passing judgment in my mind on complete strangers in situations I know nothing about. Then out of the blue, something will snap me back to what’s really important. The phone rang,my wife screamed, and reality came quickly. My nephew, who is going to be a senior this year, was broadsided while driving his car. He’s in a coma, on life support.

I can only think of his parents. Sitting in that darkened room listening to a machine make sounds of rushing air pump life into his body. Wondering how this whole situation is going to turn out. I think what if that was us watching one of our sons instead of them. It easily could have been.

So today, I say a little prayer. Lord, please help their son recover. Let him throw water balloons at teachers, skip class, egg the school, and do all those things kids are supposed to do their senior year. Let his parents get mad at him, ground him and stress over these little pranks, instead of going through what they are going through now.

And Lord I want to thank you for keeping me in this ignorant bliss. I hope to stay in it the rest of my life.

Amen



This happened about two weeks ago. My nephew has since been taken off from life support and has moved to a rehabilitation hospital. If you want to keep up with him, you can at Updates on Alan Hong Any and all prayers are more than welcome.

Well, there you go.....

Three posts in and I'm already a hypocrite. My summary says no memorized scripture verses, and I'm quoting creeds . Well, truth be known, I had to look it up. I can get through most of it, but then I get verses mixed up and have to start over in my mind.... its kinda like the third verse in a hymn. If you don't have the book, your just hummin along anyway.

Just thought I'd better straighted that up...

A lot of fence stretching and testing (you could insert "accidently touching" here instead of testing)going on lately. Seems with all this dry weather, the goats want to venture over and satisfy they're craving for zoysia, or bermuda, or whatever is on our neighbors yards.

The Latest test while sucessful was the most embarrasing. Usually I don't see a sole at the entrance to my 10 acre pasture, but not yesterday.I was all wore out from fighting the creeks and briars and hills, so when I'm leaving the place, I usually only care about locking the gate and getting home. Well, I drug the metal chain I usually latch the gate with across the hot wire ZWAAAPPPP "Golly Bum!!" Thats when I heard "It gettcha?" Two of my neighbors were standing up the hill, laughing.

Well, recovering a little from the shock (man I hate that feeling) and the embarrasment I thought I'd better go apologize for my vagabond goats and went up there. I was explaining I was trying to do everything I could to keep em in and I stretched this hot wire last Sunday and if they would tell me the next time they're out, I'd appreciate it. Then our conversation went someting like this:

Neighbor- "I think I saw em out today"
Me - "Your kidding right. When?"
Neighbor- "Turn around"

There they were. Looking at me wanting me to move so they could have a clear path to the lawn. So I switched into goat wrangler mode and herded them all back through the gate. Found a place where they were crawling through in the dry creek bed and patched my patch.

Man these things will make you humble!!

The Creed

I am often asked what drives my faith. I love to listen how others profess theirs. I try not to judge or determine a right or wrong with how they do it. I mean, if it works for them, well..... GREAT!! I mean isn't that kind of what the Pentacost was all about?? People speaking in different tounges to proclaim what the Lord is about. Personally, I believe thats why there is so many denominations. If one thing fit all, we'd all be democrats, or republicans. But one thing doesn't fit all, so were Baptists, or Church of Christ, or non-denominational, or Catholics.

My family is Catholic. Me, I'm a non Catholic. Now don't get me wrong, I go every week to St Pauls Catholic Church and listen to the sermon and pray with them. I've been doing it for 16 years. We just don't see eye to eye on a couple of things thats all. My friends ask why I don't go somewhere where I can be a member? Well being a member of a denomination is not important. Loving Christ is!!

So why do I go there every week. Well, my family goes there for one, but the most important reason is after the sermon, or Homily for all you Catholics (see, I don't fall asleep....), the congregation stands up and says the most beautiful and complete summary of how we should live our Christian life. If I could pick one small summary of faith, this would be it. Its called the Nicene Creed, and it goes like this:

We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all that is seen and unseen. We believe in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father. God of God, light of light, true God of true God. Begotten not made, one in being with the Father, by whom all things were made. For our sin and for our salvation he came down from heaven. By the power of the Holy Sprit, he was born of the Virgin Mary and became man; for our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate, suffered, died and was buried; on the third day he rose again according to the Scriptures. He ascended into heaven, and is seated at the right hand of the Father, and shall come again with glory to judge the living and the dead, of whose Kingdom there shall be no end. We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and Giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son, With the Father and the Son he is worshiped and glorified, who spoke by the Prophets. We believe in one holy, catholic, and apostolic Church. We acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins. And we look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come. Amen."

Now before people say "We don't believe in one Catholic church!!". Note that catholic is not capitalized. Before it became associated with a denomination catholic meant universal, as in "We believe in one holy universal and apostolic church". Try that.

I love this creed. It's a simple summary of what the Christain belief is. And Lord knows..... I need simple.

Draggin' the field

I have been posting for a year on the Goatweb bulletin board. Since I'm not creative enough to come up with stuff too often, sometimes I'll post old articles that I wrote over there. Here's one of those articles.

I went out to spread some rabbit manure yesterday, but it was too wet, so I started fiddling with the old John Deere B tractor and it started me thinking back to when I first got the tractor and how I ended up dragging an 84 y/o man through the field and almost got a divorce within minutes of each other. It makes me shiver just thinking about it.

This whole thing starts years ago. For some reason, my wife’s dairy farming family thinks I’m from the city. I lived on a dirt road, in a city smaller than they live in, but I’ve become known as a city slicker. It probably comes from the fact that when I was dangerously close to asking for my wife’s hand in marriage, my Father in Law asked me to help round up a wild bull. His plan was to have me stand in the trailer and get the bulls attention. When the bull came after me, I was supposed to swing out of the trailer and he and his son would close the trailer door and they’d take the bull to the stockyard. I was waiting for them to break out in smiles, but they didn’t. In fact, when I refused, they both told Kathy that I wouldn’t help them and she was mad at me for a couple of days after that.

Anyway, we have since patched things up and when my Father in Law heard I had some acreage, he offered me his old semi-retired John Deere B if I could get it to Alabama. A couple of months later I had a trailer up there ready to go. I have operated tractors, but not one that old, so I thought I’d better get a lesson. Well he showed me how to ease the hand clutch out and that I had to be careful with the brakes because they were on both sides of the tractor etc. etc. He took it out to the alfalfa field and told me to give it a try.

I got up in the seat, and was finding all the controls out and getting a feel when I hear behind me, “let er rip”. I looked and my octogenarian father in law is standing on the drawbar waiting for me to give the tractor a go. Talk about pressure!! Well first gear wasn’t bad, second was OK to, but I noticed the tractor was getting more sensitive when I let out the clutch. Then I heard the faithful words “OK lets try 5th gear”. I didn’t think this was a good idea, but I had flashbacks to the bull incident and resolved never to go through that much family ridicule again. I put the tractor into fifth gear and eased out the clutch, the tractor jerked and the front wheel rose about two feet in the air.

Now my wife has two rules in our house; Don’t Break the Kids, and Don’t Mess with My Daddy. I have broken the rule about the kids often and have survived, but our marriage was about to be tested on the second rule because I was dragging a daddy’s girl’s daddy around an alfalfa field just like I will be dragging the disc around the garden soon.

When the tractor reared up, his feet slipped off the drawbar and he started yelling. Now I haven’t been able to understand a whole lot of what he says just sitting in the living room, but I’m pretty sure he was going to have an interesting confession the next time it came around. I, in the meantime, had gone into full blown panic mode. I hit the right brake while trying to undo the hand clutch which seemed to be stuck, which made the tractor take a right turn and sent us off the lane and into the alfalfa. Now my Father in Law is not only cussing about his situation, but also about the crop I’m ruining.

Just as I’m finally getting the clutch unstuck and slowing the tractor down I heard a scream over the popping cylinders. It seems my wife wanting to capture a Father-In-Law/Son-In-Law moment decided to come out and take a picture. All she says she saw were my arms flailing, another set of hands holding onto the seat and her dads straw hat. She said she knew immediately what had happened. As she came running up, her dad said something like “Well Brad, I think you got the hang of it”, she gave me one of those looks like only you women can do and ushered him off to the house.

That was about five years ago, the tractor story is told every Christmas. It has replaced the bull story and the time I got into “a disagreement” with one of her brothers (another story for another time). Everyone including my FIL laughs every time it’s brought up. Everyone except my wife who just keeps giving me that look……. Rule #2 must never be broken….

Honey, the fence is leaking again

Oh to be young and innocent again. I lucked into the innocence with my four relatively new goats this weekend. I found their escape route. Let me explain.

My ol veteran goats have become crafty through the years. I mean they have made escape an art form. Some day, you’d see them dragging their butts near a fence, most would say “Oh, she has worms”. I know better, they’re just trying to cover their tracks from another escape route. I have become a more experienced tracker too. I can spot a potential hole from 100 yards…. Well usually……

This last week, they had me buffaloed. They’d end up in my neighbor’s yard most everyday. I looked and looked, and mended and mended, but had no luck. They still escaped. My neighbor threatened to start shooting if I didn’t do something, so I told him to give me to till the weekend, and if they were still getting out, he could have at it. I’d even paint targets on em to make it easier.

So not seeing where they were going under, I guessed they were going over. I had miles of electric fence wire from my failed six-strand venture and decided to put a wire on top of the fence and hook it up to my old solar charger. So Sunday, armed with butt paste, spandex, and my fence stretcher, I decided to make a day of it.

I made great progress and towards the end of the day ended up doing a successful fence test using the “Bachelor method”. This is where I had hooked up the fence to make sure everything works, then while pounding another ground rod, I accidentally lean over with my sweaty forehead and touch the wire, then try to guess the voltage. SWWWWWAAAAPPPP!!!!!! OWWWW, that felt like around 4000 volts, The tester said around 2500, I’m a little bit rusty…..

I was pounding the last ground rod, when I heard some fence rattling and some commotion near me. One of my veteran goats made a Bawwwwww. I knew that that meant “NO!!!! He’s too close!! He’ll find out!!” Sure enough, one of the new goats was outside. I sprinted over to see what was going on. OK, I say sprinted, and for a 44 year old it might be considered a sprint, but here’s what actually happened:

I took off running, then my toe caught on some leftover bushhog stubble. I tripped and finally regained my balance in the middle of a fire ant mound. Realizing where I was, I went stomping and running right into a briar patch, which, with some strategically placed briars, will stop your stomping in a hurry. After untangling myself and making sure I was ant free, I came to near where the goat had escaped. Sure enough, there was another new goat about halfway through.

These guys were pretty clever on this one. The hole was under some small brush and it wasn’t very high. It was a loose part of the fence, and the goats were going under. All except Billy, who can jump a five foot fence (I’ve seen him!!). Well a post and some fence ties did the job, and hopefully that will stop the leak. Thanks new ones for showing me the way.

Just in case that wasn’t the only hole though, I picked the most ornery goat I know of to appease my neighbor.

Billy is probably still wondering what that painted on red spot is for……..