Turkey in the Straw... Sorry Sean

Cloudy, 73/44, Fair to Fair. The 3-1/2 inches of rain we had last week is starting to pay dividends as the fescue and rye I planted a couple of weeks back is starting to grow. I also planted orchard grass, but I haven't seen that come up yet. Fixed the barn roof and nailed it back down after the strong winds put a board through it. Looks like some other loose spots up there, so I have to get up there again and do some more anchoring.

Some of you might have heard this story before. I think I have mentioned it here in passing, but things have slowed down now both on the farm, and in my mind, so I thought I’d give you one from years past.

Life used to be simple here, we had 3 goats over on about two acres of our 10 acre farm, and on the other side we had our chicken house. In the chicken house we kept 3 hens and a rooster. The hens provided eggs daily, and the rooster did what roosters do, which is crow some, jump on the ladies, then crow some more (kinda like one of those leisure suited 1970’s swinger type guys).

Looking into the pen one day, I noticed a raw spot on one of the hens back and thought I’d better start keeping an eye on it. Chickens get flesh eating when given the chance and the last thing I needed was a bunch of chicken eating chickens. Sure enough, the next day, the raw spot had opened up. I opened up the pen and grabbed her, while she was going after some vegetable scraps (better her than me). Well as I pulled her out, ol’ lover boy didn’t want one of his harem gone, so he came flying out after me.

I managed to grab him around his neck before he got to me and I’m holding a hen under my arm like a football, and an angry rooster by the neck. I’m trying to explain to her how I’m trying to help her, and trying not to dog cuss the rooster to loud in case the neighbors were out and see the situation I’m in. Well, I gently laid the hen back in the pen and threw the rooster as far to the other side of the cage as I could. This was obviously going to take more than just me, and that is where the story begins.

Enter into the picture one “way to cool” teenager who just happened to be sitting on the couch watching TV and laughing at me covered with chicken feathers when I walked into the house looking for some help. After some coaxing and a little threatening, Sean decided to come out and give me a hand.

The plan was for me to lure the chickens over with some more veggie’s, then grab the unsuspecting chicken and clean her wound and grease her up with bag balm (there are only two things we use for tractor maintenance, or animal fixing and that’s axle grease or bag balm…. Both are interchangeable…). Meanwhile when the old rooster came at me, my son was going to slam the chicken pen door behind.

It almost worked. I grabbed the chicken and got out of there, and then I heard a loud SQWAAAAKKK!! I turned around, and Sean had closed the door with the rooster half in, and half out. Sean says, “What do I do??”

“Get him back in the pen”

“Oh”

Then what took place was a wrasslin match that even Hulk Hogan would have been proud of. The roo ended up working his way out when Sean grabbed him by the wing. Eventually, they were both on the ground, all you could hear was squawking and crowing, and the rooster was making noise too. When the cloud of dust cleared, my son had opened the pen door and threw the rooster back in.

Looking towards the pen, you wouldn’t have known there was a fight. He was king of his castle again. Just strutting around his head bobbing, Looking and talking with an “I’m bad!! Don’t mess with me type attitude.” The funny thing though is that the rooster was doing the exact same thing……….

What a day at work

Cloudy, 57/34, Fair to Fair. Been kind of easy on the farm the last week. I'm making the transition from field maintenance and harvest to the "to-do" lists for the machinery. The problem with that is the machinery usually never gets done until the next spring..... when I need it. This weekend, I'm going to make a homemade seed cleaner out of PVC and an old furnace blower motor. I'll use it to clean the chaff out of my corn and sunflower seed that I've saved for next year.

Things are starting to slow down here on the farm, so I thought I’d tell you the most unbelievable day here. It started with a client meeting in the morning; we were going to try to convince him to switch to our company. I ended up dropping some papers on the floor going into the meeting, a co-worker ended yelling out in front of everyone what a moron I was (man was that embarrassing).

Later, we were sitting around and the boss came in, I had floated an idea by him I thought would be pretty good. The rest of the co-workers thought it wasn’t that good, so they started yelling right in front of my boss how I needed to be fired and someone else needed to be hired. I mean, they had no idea the research and fact digging I went through to get the idea. They hadn’t even been involved in the concept, but they felt right to criticize.

Finally, that evening, the client decided to go with another company. The co-workers complaints finally paid off. I ended up being fired. That’s alright though, our boss will be fired at the end of the year because the workers can’t stand him, even though he’s shown a huge profit for the company.

Don’t worry about me though….I can take it.

What I’m worried about though is the young men, ages 14-18 who might not be able to. What I am describing didn’t happen to me a work, but happens to my son and his 30 teammates every Friday night. They work and sweat from 3:30 to about 6:30 four days a week, just to hear adults boo them and yell at them when they miss a play on the football field. To me it’s just incredible how much abuse they take and still love the game.

Funny thing though, this is the first time in 15 years we might make the playoffs.

Asking around you get the same response. “Hey I paid my $6. I can yell if I want to!!”

It just bafffffles me!!

“If he can’t spell a word right!!!! Get Him off this web page!!!!”

Grrrrrr…..

Screeyapping

Cloudy, 69/35, Fair to Change. Yesterday was yard day. Fertilized and seeded that with the anticipation of 100% chance of rain today. Looks like a gentile rain falling now, so the weatherman looks right. I also threshed (???)sunflower heads yesterday using a screen over a bucket. Good fall type weather thing to do. A couple of hours work got about 10 gallons of seed. I separated the best seed and it will go into the ground next spring. The rest will be mixed with corn for the goats this winter.
I threw thesunflower heads into the feed trough to see if the goats would eat them. They didn't seem too intersted right away, but I'll go back tomorrow and see whats left.

One of the things I really need to change around my place as the herd gets bigger is our barn layout. Years ago, it seemed to be a good idea to put the barn near the middle of our property. That was before we had goats…. And way before we had a lot of goats!! Now everything I do at the barn has to be done before the goats realize I’m there. Most of the time I can make it; this weekend I didn’t.
I got up Saturday morning and drove the ol’ truck through the gate into the pasture. My first stop is at the chicken coop to get their metal feeder. It’s the tube type with a pan underneath. It works out pretty well for our 4 layers we keep year round. Well I head to the barn, with the feeder and 150 lbs of chicken feed to unload, and low and behold there are twenty of my best friends waiting for me at the barn gate.

Not a problem, I open up the gate a little to let Sam the goat dog in so she doesn’t get terrorized for the next 15 minutes, then I throw the bags of feed over the barn gate and into the barn. After the three bags of feed are in, the goats, always curious, have they’re heads through the gate into the barn looking at the feed. I wade through with the chicken feeder and toss it gently over the gate, hoping it was far enough out of the goats reach…….unfortunately it wasn’t……

Somehow one of the thinner goats stretched through the fence enough to get her head in the tube and drag it towards her. Another goat seeing her prize also jammed her head into the tube and tipped up the feeder. Well, the two goats were stuck in the tube. At first, they were happy until one of the others, not getting any food, decided to back up and let those two have it!! I jumped in there to break it up.

Now, let me set the scene for you. There are twenty goats outside the barn, most with their heads through the gate trying to get to the spilled chicken feed. Two of the goats have there heads through the gate and stuck in the chicken feeder tube. They can’t back out because the feeder won’t go through the gate……..Meanwhile, Sam decided to have some fun from the inside of the barn………

Sam is turning into a fine dog. She’s eventually going to get entirely out of her puppy phase, but she’s getting better every day. One of the things God did not bless our dog with was a manly bark. Really, she has no bark at all. She starts out with a screech that eventually turns into a yap. For me, the sound is painful. Kinda like the sound of a dentists drill going into the first layer of tooth enamel without any pain medicine. That kind of annoying incredible pain….

Anyway, Sam realizes the goats are stuck. They have dislodged the pan, so only the tube is left of the feeder. Sam walks up to the other end of the tube and looks inside, sees the two goats heads in there and lets out a SCREEEEEYAP!! This drove the two goats crazy. And they tried desperately to get out. Sam, seeing how bad this was annoying the goats let out a few more “SCREEEEEYAP---- SCREEEEEYAP---- SCREEEEEYAP”. Oh the goats were suffering….. I was suffering…… something has to be done quickly.
Well, trying to move 1400 pounds of goat meat away from the gate is an impossible task. The only think I could do was wade in through the goats and climb over the gate. With three surgeries on my right leg from various athletic injuries in the past, climbing is not one of my favorite things to do. Its really not my favorite when while I’m climbing, I forget where the barn beam is when I go to swing over the gate. Thank goodness I had that 1/8” of an inch of fabric from the John Deere Hat to protect me.

Finally inside the barn, I shut Sammy up and try to get to the two goats that are stuck. They’re not only stuck together, but they’re horns are caught on the upper lip of the tube. Finally, I got one loose, and successfully fended off another who wanted to take her place before freeing the can from the other one.

I stayed in the barn and fiddled around for a while. The goats eventually got bored and moved on. After we finished, Sammy jumped in the back of the truck and as I was closing the tailgate I said “We sure had a busy morning didn’t we girl”
“SCREEEEEYAP” (oooooh, I have got to find a way to change that bark………)

Ralph, Fred, Billy, and Me

Cloudy, 77/60, Change to Rain. Mamma goats are getting bigger as kidding season begins. I fertilized Tuesday in anticipation of the 80% chance of rain yesterday. Needless to say, no rain. This whole drought thing just gets more and more frustrating. It impacted this years crops, now it looks like it might have a big impact on next years.

Oh kidding season has started here and with that are the usual comments my wife makes about men in general, me in specifics. The other day, one of the nannies was giving birth and Billy was about 100 yards away not paying attention, and it brought up thoughts about the birth of my two children….. and how Billy and I handled it about the same way.

My buddies were all going through the “child birth” experience about the time Kathy and I were. They were talking about how “we had the baby together” and how precious the video was etc… My wife grabbed me by the face and gave me two rules. 1. NO VIDEO!! And 2. “We” don’t give birth. “She” gives birth. “He” stands by and watches. Well I told her “He” doesn’t want his first memory of the baby to be a kid covered with cottage cheese, so “he” will be in the waiting room. Plus, I only remember watching two baby birth episodes on TV. They were on the Honeymooners, and the Flintstones. In both those episodes Ralph and Fred paced outside the delivery room while their wife gave birth and they seemed no worse for wear.

This worked out well for the first boy. I sat about 100 yards away in the waiting room eating a snickers (not unlike Billy), while my wife was moaning and screaming our way through the first baby boy. Everything seemed fine, but the rules were going to change for the second one. I was going to be in there.

Well the fateful day arrived. We had compromised that I would be in for the labor, but when it came time for rolling her into the delivery room, you could color me gone. She agreed and everything was proceeding well, until they hooked up the contraction monitor.

I’m sure they just use this machine to laugh at the dumb husbands. I know I was one. The lines on the strip would get bigger every time my wife was going through a contraction and I’d say something brilliant like “here comes another one”, or “hang on honey, this looks like a big one”. Finally my wife had had enough and told me that the good Lord had set up a way for her to naturally monitor her contractions and the last thing she needed now was a “play by play” guy in the labor room.

The contractions were getting closer, and the gurney was rolled in, I kissed my wife goodbye and was getting up to leave, when I noticed three delivery nurses all in a row. My wife (the ER nurse) had talked her L&D co workers into kidnapping me and taking me into the delivery room. I realized this because the nurses were talking to me calmly while I was inching towards the door, when all at once my wife yelled “get him”, or “Don’t let the %*&&#$!! leave”, or something like that.

Well the first two were pretty easy to get around with a simple head fake. But a nurse who had to be named Beulah was on the other side of them and she looked experienced at this sort of thing. I put on a spin move the Green Bay Packers would have been proud of though when Beulah grabbed for my shirt. I had been smart enough (or unfashionable enough) to wear 100% polyester that day and as I slipped through the last nurses fingers I heard my wife yell “Brad !! Get back heeerreeeaaayyyeeeeeeee!!!” (thank goodness, another contraction).

Well, back in the pasture, momma goat needs no help as she’s having twins. My wife says “I think we need to bring Billy over here to see what’s happening. Billy looks up from the grass, I’m sure he’s sizing up my wife…… his Beulah……thinking about which fake to use……

NASGAR- The Chase for the Trough

Sunny, 88/57, Pasture seeding is done for the year. I'm trying to wait to get some fertilizer on it this fall until we get some rain. Still Haven't got any. The barn is coming along. Now I've moved on to siding the backside. When thats through, I'll start on the grainary floor.

These termites are funny little bugs. You can pull one beam that will have the complete insides gone out of it, and the beam its attached to will have no termite marks whatsoever.


Lap One’s looking good. As the weight goes down, I’m noticing the truck is getting a little loose in the corners though. I look in the rear view mirror, and I’m leaving goats behind like they’re standing still.

Lap two shows there are still a few stragglers, but they’re slowly falling off the pace. Billy looks anxious as I pass the start. I almost think he’s motioning me to stop in the barn area, for a pit stop. Can’t stop now, I’ve almost left them all in the dust.

Lap three…. Only one left!! If I can just hold off…… Ohh what the heck…. I’ll just stop and throw her off.

This was a little event that took place last weekend when a series of events has me thinking about forming the National Association for Stock Goat Auto Racing (NASGAR). The inaugural event was three laps. I think as the goats get braver, it could go on longer.

It started Saturday morning when I went out to feed the chickens. Now, my chickens are in a Brad Bachelor designed coop on wheels so I can move them around the farm pastures onto fresh grass. Right now, the chickens are a long way from the barn, so I usually get a bucket of feed and take it to them.

The goats of course think of this as their feed and decide to follow. They might not only get fed, but its also fun to throw the farm’s owner around in a demented game of caprine ping pong.

Well, I put the bucket on the pickup bed tool box and take off. The only problem is that I have a bunch of posts in the back of the truck I’m using to finish shoring up the ol barn, so the tailgates down. Well, halfway up the hill to the chicken pasture the bucket slides off the tool box and spills into the bed.

When I get to the coop, I notice the goats about 100 yards behind, and I try to get the feed picked up before they get there….. I failed. Well, I took what was left of the chicken feed to the chickens when I hear the sound off hoofs on metal. I turn around and a bunch of goats are in the truck bed eating what they can, and the rest have their hoofs on the side of the bed propped up looking at the others. My truck paint was going away fast!!

So I go running back to them yelling at them trying to scare them away, the only thing I hear is a “Hmmmpphhh” from Billy, who obviously is getting too big for his britches. None of the others moved either. I tried throwing them out, but when I’d get one out another would take its place. There was only one thing to do, so I hopped in the cab and started the truck.

That got the propped up ones away, but the 12 in the truck bed just continued to eat (for future reference, a 1998 Ford F150 with toolbox will hold 12 goats in the bed, including two on the tool box). Thinking quickly, I decided to start driving, and when one looked like one was going to jump off, I jammed on the brakes and tried to stop so they wouldn’t get hurt.

My upper pasture has two alleys connected by cross alleys, so I decided to make laps around that. For the record, Billy was the first to go (that weenie!!), after that others followed, by the first lap, I had lost eight. I’m sure it was quite a sight. Goats popping off the truck like popcorn popping out of a popper with the cover left off. Sam the goat dog was following the truck and barking probably wondering why these goats were all trying to attack him from the air (he cowers more now). The second lap I lost three more of the die hard feed eaters and noticed only “Trouble” was left.

You know, its funny how after you’ve been with these things for awhile the names change. The first few my wife named are “Braveheart”, or “Bearded Lady”, or “Hop-along”. Now the few I do name are called “trouble”, or “pain”, or “frickinfrackin”. Seems I only name the troublemakers anymore.

Well, on Lap three, I noticed the others had given up following and all stood in one area, kinda like a grandstand area. “Trouble” was not leaving, she’s a smaller goat and seemed to enjoy having all this food to herself. Finally I decided to end her fun by stopping the truck and throwing her out, running back to the truck, then high-tailing it to the nearest farm gate.

The race was over. Once again, I was victorious. The only kiss I got in the winners circle was from on exhausted female goat dog, but I felt good anyway.

Well Folks that was my Saturday morning last week. Wish I was lying, but even my imagination can’t make this stuff up. The rest of the day was finishing the barn framework on the never ending barn project and going home to tell my farm girl wife about my day.

She just rolls her eyes and laughs……. Seems our farm is a lot less tame than hers used to be……..

Gettin' Lucky

Sunny, 82/52, Fair to Fair. I'm alternating disking and seeding with barn repair. Both need to be done before the rains come, although, I don't know if they ever will. Last month we had a little over three inches of rain, but it was only during two days. one day we had 2-1/2 inches, the other 1/2 an inch. It seems I'm just disking dust. I sure hope the rains come soon so the seed will germinate. I took some sorghum cane that my neighbor gave to the goats this week, they seemed to love it. It maybe something worth raising. He uses an old ground driven corn binder to cut and bind the stalks. I'm thinking I could use something like that for my sunflowers too. Hmmmmmm.... the auction is this Friday, I might go see what I can find.....


GOLLY BUM!!!! That’s probably one of the kindest things you’d hear me say on any given day when the ol’ John deere B sputters and stops with only a row and a half to go. Today, I knew why it stopped, I forgot to look at the gas gauge to see if I had enough fuel to finish the field (the gas gauge is an 18” section of yard stick from Harris Bros Hardware that I’m supposed to dip into the tank before I leave the barn).So climbing off the tractor, I fiddled around with the equipment preparing myself for the long walk to and from the barn to get the gas can. The day can’t get much worse than this I thought.

Just as Sam (the goat dog) and I were starting back, I noticed a bolt laying on the ground. It looked about the same rusted color as the disc I’d been pulling, going back to the tractor and looking around, sure enough, the bolt had come out of the disc frame and it was starting to bend “Well, lucky me…..” I thought, and made a note to look for a nut when I got back to the barn.

Sam had run ahead and was playing with a couple of the new goat kids. It was kind of fun to watch because actually she was trying to scare them and they would run off, but then they’d turn around…. Always curious…. and head back towards where the dog was. Finally momma heard their bleating and made her way over there. It was interesting to watch the protective mode of mother. Once she arrived, the kids quit being worried, and went to nursing. Momma on the other hand kept herself between the kids and the dog, making short grunts. If the dog got too close, she would put her head down and drive the dog back. Really interesting stuff, I guess I was lucky to see it.

About the time my neck started hurting from looking back, I nearly tripped over a stump in my way. Sittin’ on that stump were those danged old fencing pliers I had nearly torn the barn apart looking for two weeks ago. I’d left them out when I was stringing some new electric wire. Hmmmm… Guess I was pretty lucky finding them, and lucky we’re in a drought so they didn’t get rained on.

About the time I got to the barn, I realized how lucky this breakdown was. You see, I believe the Good Lord takes care of idiots like me and I had to run out of gas about then so the disk would stay together, and I would find the pliers, but most important so I would see how the animals I was raising react to danger or how they play. Sometimes, I get so busy tilling ground, fixing machinery or rebuilding barns, I forget why I’m really doing this.

Oh, and one more thing Lord. My wife wants to thank you for keeping me in shape. I forgot how lucky I was carrying that 40 lbs of gas back to the tractor…………