Sam the Goat Dog

Sunny, 85/55, Fair to Change. Took my ol dog Sam with me to work on the barn last night. I've almost finished shoring up the walls, I have a ten foot section to go and I'll be done. Then I have to start removing the rotten floors in the granary, but that can be done rain or shine. I also helped a neighbor get in his sorghum cane he feeds his cows. He takes an old corn binder out and ties the cane into bundles, loads them onto his truck and takes them back to his place and stacks them. He says its great for the cows. I'm going to look into seeing if it's good for goats. If it is, I might start planting an acre or two of that.

Taking Sam reminded me of a story I had told earlier.

Every farm needs a good working dog. We have Sam. Sam is short for Samantha; she loves to go to the farm. Sam is a pound puppy. A breeder’s cull when a mongrel got a hold of a prized bird dog. She usually spends weekdays pointing out squirrels or birds at our place. Her favorite time though is the weekend.

Every Saturday morning at 8am I go out the door, dressed in my overalls. Sam sees the outfit and starts to get excited and starts jumping around the truck. I open the tailgate; she jumps in and we’re off to the farm. Usually, she gets to say hello to about fifty of her friends along the way. Seems they know what day it is too and they try to chase her in the four miles to our land.

The first thing we do is check on our layers or broilers. She’s better now, but the first times I took her out, she saw the birds and went into a point. It was a classic point, one leg up, tail straight back. The problem was, I couldn’t get her out of it. I called for her, she wouldn’t move. She must of thought she was in birddog heaven. I thought about planting a flower garden around her and making her a permanent part of the farm, but a quail got her eye and she went chasing and pointing after that.

Her best job tough is being a goat herder. Not your typical herder, but just as effective. Early on in her farming life, she decided to terrorize one of the month old kids. Momma goat was not going to have any part of that, and after a swift butt to the ribs, Sam became a goat herder extraordinaire. Let me explain her technique.

First she’ll come up to the barn with me all excited. If I go into the barn, she’ll wait for me outside. The goats see Sam and start to circle around. Sam see’s the goats coming for her, and remembering the butt, her ears start to lower. The goats circle gets tighter and too close for comfort for Sam, who starts whining and goes cowering under something. When I come out of the barn, I’ll see a circle of goats, but no Sam. I’ll call and she comes out all excited and brave, but doesn’t leave my side.

One day, I thought about how this could help me. I put Sam in the working pen, and told her to stay. Sure enough, the goats came towards her (all except Billy, which is why I had to resort to other techniques described in other stories). Her ears lowered, but they kept coming. Finally she started whining and crawled under the feed trough. The goats circled around the feed trough and I closed the gate with most of the goats inside. I called for Sam, she sprang up and came over to me and I let her out.

I probably won’t win many working dog competitions with my technique, but I know, every Saturday at 8am, I’ll come out that door and Sam the working dog will jump in the truck ready to whine and cower her way through another busy day of goat herding.

Snake Story

Sunny, 77/47, Fair to Fair. Disked and seeded the pastures Saturday inbetween rainstorms. The drought has got me thinking about better pasture management so I don't have the $100/acre expense of pasture renovation with perennials, along with trying to supplement a low hay year with rye. This seeding is for cool season grasses that will do better here in the winter months. I'll try to keep the animals off it in the summer.

This weekend was seeding weekend out on the farm. Our pastures have been reduced to dirt by the drought this year, and I thought I’d get some fall grasses to perk them up, four different kinds to be exact. So, I pulled out the ol hand seeder with the twenty pound holding bag and started to make my laps on my 10 acres(NASCAR had nothing on me this weekend….).

Well, about half way through my first seeding I was just tooling around out of breath thinking about killing the person who suggested I get a hand seeder rather than one of those tractor mounted ones, when I caught something out of the corner of my eye. By the slithering I knew it was a snake. By the triangular head, I knew it was a copperhead.

Well getting surprised by a snake sets off a whole bunch of alarms in an old mans system. First is the voice alarm. “Whoa-hoa” is what I would like to think I said, but I think it was more like “eeeeekkkk – shreeeeekkk”. Next my cat-like reflexes sprang into action as I jumped about two inches in the air and about ¾ of an inch sideways. The rest of getting out of the way was me tripping over my feet while spilling seed all over the place ( I think I know where the goats will be grazing the most this fall….). The last alarm which thankfully didn’t go off was my automatic sprinkler system…. But believe me, it was in standby mode!!

My wife heard my manly yells and came over to see what was going on. I told her what happened and I was going to get the shotgun out of the truck. Now this is where the combination of being in the Army, and my hearing got me into trouble. I could have sworn she said the shotgun would make too much noise and I should “just beat it with a ho’….”. Well, trying to pick her up just got me thumped about the face and neck, so I decided to go off to the barn and beat the thing with a shovel.

Two wacks with the shovel got me nothing but two near misses, a broken shovel handle, and one coiled up and mad snake. I told the wife I would do a whole lot better with the shotgun and that if I missed that thing one more time with this now shortened spade, my body would switch from standby mode to activate mode and we’d have a bigger mess on our hands.

Well, nothing like a little birdshot to take care of what I’d been trying to do for the last ten minutes. The rest of the day was spent doing laps again, much more carefully, and mentally moving the tractor mounted seeder way up on the things I need list.

Rabbits

Sunny, 79/47, Fair to Fair. Mowed the pastures for the last time this year. I like to mow them, even though they probably don't need it. It just makes the ol farm look better over the winter. I'll do some discing tonight right up until my son's High School football game. Tomorrow, I hope to overseed the pastures with clover, fescue, orchard grass, and rye grass. The drought killed our pastures for the most part. I haven't had to start feeding hay yet, but will probably have to start soon. We still need rain BADLY!! I have a feeling all the discing I'm doing is just moving the dust around.

Sorry, for the rerun, but this is a story I told about adventures in rabbit raising this spring

Yesterday was interesting, it started out with cleaning the rabbit barn for the last time. I tried to raise rabbits for meat, I really did. My problem...... I couldn't get the rabbits to have babies... Yep, probably the only rabbit breeder on the face of the earth not to be able to do this. I should have known there were problems when the day after I bought them, I put the first doe in the cage with the buck and SHE ended up violating HIM!!! Well I quickly pulled them apart and explained to them how this things go and thought things would get better.... They didn't.

Finally the does started having babies, but not in the nest boxes, so I ended up with one or two out of eight that would survive. This happened three litters in a row and I was getting pretty disgusted going out to pick up dead babies all the time.

Well my rabbit ranching ended one day when I put a doe in with the buck. He did his business and as all male rabbits do when they're finished, he fell off to the side. I happened to be out there when it happened and noticed he was still on his side twitching a little. Well, the poor fella died!! I took that as a sign to get out of the rabbit business, but I couldn't think of a better way to go......

Anyway, cleaning the pens for the last time and were going to put tin on the sides for a goat barn. I'm kind of leery about this though, because if they congregate there you have to clean it. All the manure is going in the garden so it ought to be pretty fertile this year.

One more week until garden planting, Although my wife handles the garden I sure look forward to the harvest. Not the actual vegetables, but the pained look on my teens face as their picking and snapping beans, husking corn, or shelling peas. I hear their complaints about taking them away from their instant messaging and harkin back to not being able to watch some Gilligans Island rerun because we were juicing tomatoes. It's kinda a third generation payback thing..

Humility

Sunny, 89/60, Change to Fair. All the hay and corn is in for the year and farm maintenance is heavy on the list as we get ready for winter. Right now is building maintenance with the barn straightening finishing up. We also got the loft cleaned out and have started to gather materials to start on the old farmhouse again. We still have fall planting to do to try to get some of the pastures back in shape after this bad drought this year. Probably disc the pastures this week and try to plant by this weekend.



One of the things I constantly have to work on in this life is my humility. Thankfully, between the good Lord and my wife of 23 years, they have for the most part kept me honest and straight when I start getting the big head. Well, they had to do it again last weekend.

It was a very busy weekend last weekend. We were trying to catch up on chores that we had got behind on due to our recent trip to Michigan and we were making good progress. One of the big jobs (straightening the barn) is almost completed. We jacked it into place and braced it so I can come along and do the finishing work. Finally, you can see how the end product is going to look. Seeing the progress and knowing another job was about to be checked off the list made me feel…. well…..superior….. That was until I went out to feed the animals….

Every now and again, Kathy will go out with me to do this. She especially wanted to go because we had two new goat kids that morning. Well while she was ooohing and ahhing over them I went and fixed the mineral feeder for the 80th time (durn goats keep climbing on the things and knocking them down….they just don’t make baling wire like they used to…). I finally might have gotten frustrated and told her it was time to feed the chickens. By the look on her face, I would say I might have told her in a not so tactful way.

Well we get up to the laying tractor which is 4x8x 4 foot high and the goats seeing me carrying the chicken feed decide to follow. Kathy gathered the eggs and went off to look at some plant the goats hadn’t devoured yet, while I filled the feeder.

I opened the door and bent over to fill the feeder, the goats decided they wanted the feed and started to push on my legs. Well I lost my balance and took a step forward into the coop. Now, I’m 6’3” and the coop is only 4 foot high so I’m all bent over and have no leverage to push back against the goats. They keep trying to get to the food and I’m kicking and yelling for them to get back, they weren’t moving. So I finally had to call my wife over to help me get out. This is where the story versions separate. My wife and I went home and the two teen boys asked what took so long. I told my version, and then Kathy told hers. See which one you believe….

Brads Version:
So I called your mother over by saying “Dear fair maiden, these goats seem to have me in a little bit of a fix. I would appreciate your help in getting me out of this predicament. Please take your time, if you would like to stop and smell the flowers, I will have no problem with that. The livestock and I seem to enjoy this confined space together.

Kathy’s version was a little different:
So I hear your daddy screaming like a little girl. “Help me….. Kathy….. Help me!! These goats are going to knock me over”. So I go over to see whats going on and these sweet goats have cornered your dad in the chicken coop. He looked like a jack-in-the-box just waiting for the handle to be cranked. I ended up moving the goats with a wave of my hand so he could get out.

After the laughter died down, I know which story the boys believed. I once again have been humbled. Sigh…..Now when I go through the house telling the boys to pick up their cloths or ask Kathy where something is, I’m beginning to think my families mocking me. They’re fine to my face, but when they turn away I can almost swear I hear a faint “baaaaahhh………”

Eulogy

Sunny, 89/60, Fair to Fair. The haying we've been doing has been keeping me busy. The old baler is slightly older and more ornery than I am. While I was busy with the hay, one of my nannies had triplets (Just my luck it would be the one with one teat). By the time I found them a day later, two of them hadn't started nursing yet and were in pretty bad shape. We started feeding them with an eye dropper last night and they started to come around.

My Father in Law passed away last night. The funeral should be pretty interesting if we have farm animals there too. Somehow though, I think my Father in Law would get a kick out of that.

The events of the last 24 hours have me thinking about ¼ section of prime farm land in Gladwin, Mi. Last night, it’s owner either lost or won his battle with life depending on how you look at it. The owner who had the vision to take this 160 acres of potato land and turn it in to a dairy farm. He would build a homestead, raise 9 kids, widow twice and divorce once on the land. For 56 years he would call this place home and eventually, he would die here.

Looking over the fields, I’m saddened. Not by his passing, he said himself he was ready to “kick the bucket” a long time ago, but by what would become of all his hard work. All ready, fence posts lay on the ground by harvesters who carelessly laid their round bales of hay against it. Unused Silos are beginning to fall, barn boards are missing and the machinery buildings, foundation is heaving. In a few years, when the land is sold off and developed, and the buildings disappear, I wonder what will be his legacy.

Then I think about the house, where his legacy really is. Not the sticks and nails, but what’s inside. There’s a teacher, a laborer, and a pharmacist. A carpenter, bricklayer, a computer systems executive, a nurse practitioner, crime scene investigator, and an insurance salesman and there all remembering what he meant to them. There’s laughter when they tell about him hitchhiking to the bar in a body cast because the hospital was too boring. There are tears when they talk about him leaving for the hospital with their mom and returning alone, having to tell his young family that their mother won’t be coming home. But most of all there is respect. Respect for his way of life and the way he lived it.

In the end, I guess that’s all of a legacy that a man really needs.

Combat Croquet- Another Way of Becoming One with the Land.

Cloudy, 85/65, Fair to Change. Busy time of the year with haying, and picking corn. I am lucky enough to have a job that allows me to get out at 2pm. I can usuallu get about four hours a day in this time of year, so I don't have to cram everything in on the weekends. Right now, the small amount of rain the last two weeks has given the grass a jump start and since my farm help (wife) is going to be about 800 miles away for the next two weeks with her dad, we decided to cut last weekend. Tonight is raking and baling. She does the baling while I follow behind and pick 'em up. I tried it the other way, but the neighbors really gave me a hard time.

Corn didn't do well at all in this drought. 11 bushels an acre!! Oh well, I grow some for seed and some for feed, by the looks of the ears, it'll be mostly feed this year.


Man, I hate this. I’m looking into the woods around the farm. The goats are baaaing all around me. Its been two years since I lost one of these things, and the last time I did, I ended up pulling ticks off me, swabbing briar scratches, and almost having the first terminal case of poison Ivy. Usually I find them under a log, or hidden in the deep grass. Ahh Haa!! Found it!! Ohhhh that’s not it, that’s the white one lost two years ago. Ahhh, there it is. Yep its blue. Look out!! (WHACK) Dang!! Alright, your turn Seth…..

What I’ve described above is one turn in a once elegant game that has been twisted by the Bachelor Family into a vindictive, strenuous sport called “Combat croquet”. Every year, a pile of broken mallets are burned in the fall signifying the end of another season.

Our family has always taken some time out on Sundays for a game. My wife’s jaw still hurts from being beaned by a pitch by Sean when he was eight one Sunday during a game of “Bachelor Baseball” (Sean still has that habit, he hit two batters last spring during the Varsity High School game). Then we switched to “Bachelor Basketball” until both the boys outgrew us and our knees couldn’t take it anymore. As we prepared for old age and retirement, we thought, why not do croquet.

So in the warm months, our Sunday afternoons are spent out on the land near a creek frying hamburgers and eating until were stuffed. Then the croquet game begins.

Leave it to two teenage boys though to take a gentile game and make it into something brutal. When Seth (the youngest) found out you could “send” someone by just hitting him, he decided that the strategy of the game needed to change. If everyone is knocked to place where they couldn’t get out, then he could go through the hoops and win. Sean being the smarter (and the one who will probably get the inheritance if this keeps up), of the two plays more conventional, but goes out of his way to avoid his brother. Kathy and I are the targets of Seth’s sending obsession.

The one rule we follow is you have to play it where it lies or forfeit. That rule alone makes it a game of human pain and suffering. Usually the wife and I are stuck in the briars. The worst shot though happened to me.

I ended up getting too close to Seth and the creek. Usually, the trees and brush provide a buffer zone and the creek is unreachable, but my younger son pulled off a one-in-a-million shot. Splash!! Alright, I have never been there before. I stood over the ball looking for a way to hit it out when it started moving. The current was starting to take it to a small waterfall. I swung twice to get it out of there, but the second shot took a bad bounce and put the ball in the mainstream.

I caught up with it about ¼ mile later. Floating in a pool just below a waterfall (Who’d a thunk croquet balls would float). The rules said I had to play it where it lies, so I took off my shoes and spent the entire rest of the game in that small stream pool watching for snakes and waiting for the now all too familiar call of “haahahahahahah- Dad it’s your turn-hahahahhhaaahahaha”.

This year though will be different, I took the post hole auger this winter and drilled a hole hidden in the brush about three foot deep. I will bide my time and wait until Seth hits into the area, and then we’ll see who has the last laugh… BWAHAAHAAAAAAA