A Day in The Life...

Year of Death

2007-03-29T07:27:00.000-07:00

Sunny, 83/59, Fair to Change. Well most of the farm events are described in the post below. We are getting ready to plant corn though. Plowing is finished (well.... almost) and disking will start. We are planting some Reids open pollenated corn this spring. Some of grown by us for seed and some of it bought because we didn't get enough from last years drought.

Speaking of drought. Since Jan 1 we have had 6.41 inches of rain, thats over 10 inches BELOW what it should be this time of year. Things don't look too positive for the year to come. I'm holding off planting a couple of weeks hoping for the rain, but this is a dangerous game because the Japanese beetles around here love corn silks.

Well, I try to find humor in everything, but unfortunately, there won’t be much in this post. I’m looking back at this past year and trying to decide what I can do differently this year to change it.

It started last spring when a dog decided he wanted our broilers more than I did. I keep them in a moveable pen and he jumped on top of the pen and fell through. While he was in there he took out half the flock, little did I know, that was only the start.

In October, one of my mothers kidded twins. She was a great mom to them and took care of them well. One day in December, I noticed she was only taking care of one. After a search all I found was the carcass of one leg.

Around December, I lost a mamma goat to being stupid and some loose corn. She saw some corn near the rear tire when I was backing up. I never saw her. Around the same time I noticed one of the goats had some scours. I thought it was worms, wormed her and that didn’t help, wormed her again, but she just got thinner. Started giving her some sugar water to keep her up, but nothing helped, just before I put her down, I noticed another with scours. For the second I tried antibiotics, but that didn’t help and she slowly went the way of the first. Then a third got it. I doctored and doctored, but once again, a .22 caliber bullet was the only shot that worked. The bonfires were getting pretty regular around here. Finally after the third, the herd was starting to look healthy again.

Monday my wife came back from the goat pasture. She said we had a problem. She was right. Seems a Weimaraner got loose in the herd and decided to have some fun. When all was said and done, four nannies, one billy (no, not that Billy), and 3 kids were down and out. It was time for another bonfire; I sure am getting good at building them.

Last night, I decided to take a break from the farm. I was feeling down a little and told my wife, I was just going to sit in the rocking chair for a while. She brought me one of the victims of the dog attack. A two day old nanny kid who has to be bottle fed. She told to watch it and feed it, while she and the boys went to church.

After the first feeding, the little thing kept trying to fly, or it seemed like it, off our woodstove hearth. It would jump in the air and twist, and then go do it again. I started smiling. After it got tired of that, it just following me around the house, I couldn’t shake it. One time I had a race it to the bathroom to get some privacy. The blasted goatling almost won!! Then after another feeding it curled up next to my feet and went to sleep. I looked up at the ceiling and gave a “Thank you God” and went to bed.

This morning, I seem to be back in the mode. My list got a little longer from taking yesterday off, so it’s off today to grease the planter and mount the cultivator. The fence didn’t get fixed over night like the elves said it would, and that one renegade bull still needs a rubber band so he’ll be less of a rebel.

I’ll tell ya’ll, that’s the thing I like most about taking care of this little piece of land here in Alabama. It may not always be happy-happy-joy-joy, but it’s never boring.

In Touch With My Feminine Side

2007-03-26T08:42:00.000-07:00

Now don’t even think of it you raggely old billy goat!!!

Today was not going well, I’ve been trying to get a fifty seven year old tractor out of the field where it decided to breakdown while pulling what was left of my brush hog that I have re-welded several times just to have it fall apart again. On top of that I got kicked by a bull calf who liked the idea of castration a lot less than I did…. AND I was beginning to feel the painful burning and itching again that we all laughed about as kids whenever the “Preparation H” commercials came on…..And now this…..

It was the end of the farm day, so I went over to the goat pasture to feed them some corn. As things green up here, corn feeding gets less and less. Finally, it will just be once a week so I can call them up if I need to.

I hate corn feeding. It is chaos at its best. The goats are all over me while I’m carrying the bucket, so I have to carry it shoulder high. On top of that, they use the feeder as the loo during its down time, so I have to try with one hand to keep them out of it while turning over the feeder, and keeping the feed bucket out of their reach. On top of that ‘ol Billy is a pig, so I have to herd him away so the others can eat, then when I think they’ve got their share, I let Billy go at it.

So after the barnyard ballet, I had Billy separated and was looking back at the others when I heard a pawing at the ground and a “Hmmmph”. Billy was about to charge. Now caught off guard on another day, I might have been chased around the barnyard while screaming like a little girl in a pink dress, but my arm hurt from the kick, and my wallet hurt from the tractor parts, and I wasn’t about to let one old billy goat push me around. So I yelled and moved towards him. Well he decided not to charge (probably good for him and me), but he still kept lowering his head and pawing the ground and “hmmmph”ing.

Just about then, something strange began to happen to me. Something I couldn’t stop. It happened with my right hand first. It twisted around so the heel was facing forward then went right for the hip. The same thing happened to my left hand. Now I’m standing there, in the barnyard with both hands on my hips and this strange voice said one of the most annoying phrases known to mankind “Don’t even think about it Mister!!”

Let me first say that I’m fine with guys “getting in touch” with their feminine side. I mean, It’s the twenty first century right?? Unfortunately (for both Billy and I), my feminine side is an impression of something my wife has done to me for the last twenty five years….. but it kind of felt good…. And I couldn’t stop!!

Well, I started by telling old billy about all the things I’ve done for him over the last four years. How I’ve fed him and nursed him while he’s sick. How underappreciated I was and how thankful he ought to be that I owned him and not some butcher shop. While I was telling him this, I started thinking about bubble baths and body oils. I shook my head to get out of that vision and could see Billy looking all glassy eyed and probably wishing he had a TV remote in his hoof about now.

Well, that only made me madder, so I reversed my hands so the palms were facing backwards and put them back on my hips. Then I used the “history technique”. You know where everything that was wrong over the years has been stored in the brain to be reused for any argument. My wife’s memory goes all the way back to our first date when I locked the keys in the car while at the movies and we had to call her roommate from the only place that was open; a drug paraphernalia shoppe. Well, ‘ol Billy heard about all his escape attempts and him being as dumb as an…. Well… as an old goat . Before I could finish, Billy turned around and started to walk off.

As I heard myself say “Don’t walk away while I’m talking to you mister!!”. My mind flashed to a picture of me sitting in a garden swing in a white housecoat with flower petals floating down all around me. Then I snapped back into reality. Billy was gone, and the picture in my mind of me wearing a white housecoat made me feel…. Well…. uncomfortable…….

Seeing the goats busy eating and Billy walking away, I quickly switched back into man mode with a couple of well placed scratches and a precision attack loogie that landed at the base of a tree. I thought about telling my wife about the experience, but she wouldn’t believe me. Besides, why ruin the feeling that for one moment in my life, I could think of myself on that garden swing and feel…. uhhhhhh… pretty.

Fencing

2007-03-08T06:15:00.001-08:00

Sunny, 70/38, Fair to Fair. Pretty laid back here today. Cows behaving, goats behaving, machinery just as broke or fixed as it was last week. Time to quit foolin around with these animals and start sharpening and greasing up the things that feed these animals. I did pick up a culvert for a driveway the county's putting in for me. It'll make it easier for the ol truck to get out of the pasture. Especially with the rainy season coming up. Since nothing much is happening here I thought I'd tell you about something that happened in January

Another day, another goat leak……. I’ve about got these things slowed down to a trickle and I pretty much know where they are going to be now. It’s become a lot easier since I’ve tried the kinder and gentler approach of trying to make these guys and gals my friends. All except Billy of course, I don’t think he’ll ever trust me, and if he did, I’d start to think he was on the road to an alternative lifestyle or something and probably have to sell him. Besides, I do need the wrasslin’ practice in case another one comes along that’s as ornery and stubborn as he is.

Anyway, the goat leaks always seem to take place in a narrow creek bank on the south edge of our property. When it storms here, the creek gets pretty full, and tree branches and other debris seem to knock the fence loose to let the goats out. Now, I use the word fence lightly, because what I did was throw our rolled extra fence down into the creek and wired it to the bottom of the fence. Looks tacky, but works fine unless it storms. Well a couple of weeks ago, it stormed pretty good.

So here I go with my fencing pliers and some wire to the creek edge. I get there and look around. Its about a 4 foot drop into the creek. In my younger days, I’d have taken a flying leap off the bank and onto a small island in the middle of the creek. Now I look around to make sure no one’s looking, sit on the side of the creek bank, and slide down the mud until I get to the creek bottom. This is really embarrassing when I go home now, because where my wife used to patch the knees and the thighs of my ol jeans or overalls, shes now always sewing up the seat of my britches. I know she thinks I just come out to the land, sit under a tree and sip apple cider or something.

Back to work though, and after some fence wrangling and some wire cutting and twisting, the fence is as good as it was, and ever will be as long as I’m there, so its time to crawl out.

Now, I’ve been battling this fence leak for three years now. There are certain landmarks that are indistinguishable around this spot. The first is my mud slide down area. The next is the root of an at least 60 year old oak tree I use as a step. The last mark is the 10 year old sweet gum tree I use as a hand hold. Each has a specific job to do and over the last three years they have served me faithfully.

Today though, I don’t know if was too much Christmas pie or what, but the sweet gum decided it had had enough at the worst possible time. With the grace of a well trained gymnast, I managed to avoid landing on my feet and fell on my side about half way down the creek bank. I knew to successfully get off the bank I was going to need to perform a half twisting dismount which I did. I stuck the landing like only a 44 year old crippled man could…. Landing on both knees……. And both hands……. In the middle of a six inch section of water…. And the pain was tremendous…..Oh you should have heard the applause from my caprine audience as they asked me to do it again.

Instead, I slogged down the creek to a spot where I wouldn’t have to crawl out. Stepped out, took my broken butt to the barn and looked myself over. Then the most amazing thing happened. All the goats came around. They looked at me with a wondering eye; almost a look of concern. I was finally figuring out why people like these durn things so much. I mean they really do care…. Here they were, all of them (even Billy) staring at me through the gate and baaaing softly, probably hoping I was going to be alright. I got up slowly and walked towards them, reaching out to let them know I was OK, but there eyes never left where I was sitting, and there baaing got louder and more desperate. My mood quickly changed when I realized they didn’t care about me at all. All they cared about was what I was sitting on; the corn bin.

Its probably a good thing though in the end. These stories would get pretty boring if the goats and I actually did like each other.

Houdini

2007-03-07T04:11:00.000-08:00

Sunny, 65/29, Fair to Change. Good news!! No cows hitchhiking yesterday. They all seemed to be on the "Right" side of the fence. Not wanting to set on my laurels of actually keeping them in one day in a row, I strung some electric wire down the road side of the fence line. Everthing went all right except those darn critters are curious. I had to keep one eye on them and one eye on what I was doing. I don't know how an 8' piece of electric wire does to a steer, but if I wouldn't of saw the youngun try to take it graze on it we just mighta found out!!

Sometimes life on this ol' farm gets a little more complicated than usual. Usually it’s because of some predator or some fence malfunction. The last couple of weeks though, my evenings have been spent chasing around a little bundle of trouble the wife and I have given the name “Houdini”.

Houdini came to us about 2 weeks ago. His mother kidded a single and when we showed up at the farm that morning, she was busy licking off the cutest little chocolate brown bundle of fur you ever saw. Well, we’ve been having coyote problems the past month or two, so it was off to the kidding pen for a couple of days until the little critter could get her feet under her. When we let her out, the trouble began.

Houdini has this fascination with playing hide-and-seek, She’s pretty good at it. On any given day she has me, my wife, her mother, and maybe the our two boys (for a modest monetary sum), looking for her. The first time was the morning after we let her out. I showed up at our 10 acre pasture Saturday morning to check on her. I saw her mom looking all over for her.

So with Sam the goat dog along side, I started searching. After two hours I gave up. I assumed the coyotes got an evening meal and told myself I was going to have to buy some beef liver and do some bait hunting.

That evening I came back and was doing some maintenance on the tractor, when I heard a weak bleating coming from under the workbench in the barn. Seems ol’ Houdini had crawled under the workbench and couldn’t figure out how to get back out. Well, I helped her get unstuck and soon, she and her momma were back together.

The next day was more of the same. Houdini was gone and my Sunday was spent looking all over. Found her face down a gopher hole in the woods near the barn. She couldn’t get back out. This was the day my wife named the little one “ Houdini”, because she kept disappearing. She thought about naming it Brad, because it was always getting itself into trouble and was too stupid to get out, but then she thought that every time she called for it when it was lost, I’d be coming over to where she was and we’d never get any searching done.

Well, now Houdini’s a couple of weeks old and things had calmed down until yesterday. Seems the little girl got herself caught on a little island in our creek and was too afraid of the rushing water to jump over. Momma is on the other side of the creek bleating for her to come, but she’s bleating back that she’s not gonna do it. The other goats see me walking toward the creek bank, and hoping to see some entertainment like they did last week come along to watch.

No entertainment today though, just some dirty drawers…. No, I didn’t scare myself, I just sat down on the most cushioned part of my body and slid down the bank. Snatched up Houdini and returned her to her mother.

You know, I was commenting lately to the wife how Billy and I have been getting along better lately, and the farm was getting more toward what I call normal. I’m just wondering if the Houdini girlie might have been sent here to keep things a little interesting……

Holy Cow!!!

2007-03-06T04:03:00.000-08:00

Sunny, 61/24 Fair to Fair. Busy around here as I've decided to get into cattle. Picked 'em up a couple of weeks ago and finished the cross fencing with electric wire to keep in certain areas. Well, I stood back and looked at my work Saturday, and it looked real pretty. Then I decided to turn out the calves.
Well, theycame out of the corral slowly, then started kicking up their heels at their new found freedom. Took em 2 minutes to lay my electric fence to waste and disappear over the hill. Thank goodness my perimeter fence is barbed wire. If that didn’t stop them the next thing was the tennessee river… 15 miles away!!

Yesterday, I come up on the field and one of my heifers is trying to hitchhike her way out of the county. Took about 15 minutes to get her back in the pasture and another couple of hours to find the leak in the fence and fix it. I'll be glad when daylight savings time gets here. Fixing fence by tractor light is no fun. Especially with my habit of laying tools down anywhere!!

Interesting doings around the Bachelor place of late. We’ve started a cow herd. Well…. not really a herd…. more like a passel. Oh, they’re just as much fun as the goats, and took no time at all messing with the owner of the place. In fact, I think they are having a downright good time.

My biggest problem is watering. See, my pond is three hundred and three feet from my pond. How do I know this? I bought three hundred feet of hose to hook up to the pump to fill up the watering trough, but I seemed to have misjudged the distance by the slimmest of margins. So rather than waste an hour going to the store and back, I decided to fill it while holding my thumb over the end.

Now, my wife has taken care of many of my farm injuries before, but never a sprained thumb after 100 gallons of water flowed over it. When I showed it to her she told me to “Cowboy up” which is quickly becoming her new annoying term of the month. So rather than face another one of her irritating jokes, I’m keeping my mouth shut about the probable plastic surgery I’ll need to repair what seems to be chronic “water wrinkle” of my thumb.

Anyway, back to the cows and how they mess with me. Because they’re weaning, I’m keeping them in a corral for a couple of weeks. So I pump the water out of the pond with a gas water pump and 350 feet of hose (yes I added 50 feet) to the water trough. Well at my advancing age its kinda hard to see what’s happening 100 yards away, so after a half hour I walk up there, and they have knocked the hose out of the trough and are taking turns dipping their noses in and out of it. Its become a game of sorts.

Well, I’m mad that I’ve wasted a half hour, so I put the thing back in and stand there and watch them. Its all going pretty well, when I hear the pump sputter and run out of gas. I went back and filled up the pump and started it up and stood down by the pond for a while. I looked up towards the corral and all I could see were the cows facing backwards shaking their booties like KC and the Sunshine band were doing a reunion tour.

I hurried back towards the corral and sure enough, they had knocked the hose out of the trough again, and the water was shooting towards the corral, so they were taking turns putting their backsides towards the water stream and giving themselves some sort of perverted water wedgie.

I am so thankful this was on the back side (no pun intended) of my property. I had just bought this twenty acres and didn’t want anybody looking out their windows and saying stuff like “What’s he doing to those things now??

Well, since that first day, I’ve learned the value of baling twine and how to tie the hose to the fence so it doesn’t come out. I have to say though, I was using goats as training materials for cattle. I don’t think they’ve trained me near enough!!

Other interesting things to note:

1. When banding cows, Don’t bring a goat toy to do a mans job

2. I think I’ve discovered the organic equivalent to Velcro. Its called cow flops!! The stuff sticks to EVERYTHING

3. On that note. Cattle dirty things a little higher than goats….. about hand high…

4. On that note. Why are cattle’s favorite targets gate handles?

5. So Far in the electric corral fence “who gets shocked the most” contest Brad 5…. Cows 1

6. In the “who gets shocked the most when nature calls” contest Cows 1 Brad 0 (although I almost sent this one into overtime….)

7. When goats move in the livestock trailer, you look back to see how they’re doing. When cows move in the trailer… You’re changing lanes…

8. Cows and goats are both pigs when it comes to corn.

9. Young cows can get in a hay-ring like young goats get in the bunk feeder.

10. When a goat gets you, your hand gets blue… When a cow gets you, your hand gets the blue cross card….

Menopause takes the fun out of marriage.

2007-01-19T04:13:00.000-08:00

Cloudy, 46/37, Fair to Fair. Winter has finally set in on our place and the weekdays don't offer much in the way of farm work except for the every other day of haying and graining the animals. This year, I don't know whether its from the drought or what, but I'm having to give out more feed to maintain their body weight.
Tomorrow looks like a gorgeous day sunny with the high of 49. A great day to finish up the sickle mower and grease up the old corn picker before we head to church Saturday night.

For years, Kathy and I have been playing a little game of wits (before y’all say it….. yes , she wins most of the time…..). Its kind of like a “lets annoy the spouse kind of thing” and see how far it can go. An example would be I go to bed an hour before she does. When she comes to bed, there I am laying catawampus in the bed. The first elbow she gives me really does wake me up, but its kinda fun listening to her trying to get her 230 lb bag of bones on his own side of the bed.

Now before you think she’s just an innocent victim, she plays the game too. I know this because every Saturday morning we’ve been doing the same thing for a couple of years. I get up early have a couple of cups of coffee. She’s up too. She fiddles around until I get dressed in the overalls and work boots and tell her I’m going to the farm. Then she says in a little kids voice “Your not having breakfast with me???” …. Sigh….. My answer should be “NO!!”, but the torture I’d be subjected to over the next 16 hours is not worth it. So I grab a chair and sit at the table while she pours me a sugary cereal, then when I finish that, she says “Oh, I forgot the grapefruit….”. I end up leaving the house with my lips so twisted and puckered, it takes me an hour to talk again.

She also does it with other meals too. As you probably have figured out by now, I believe the reason that marriages fail in these days and times is because of the invention of the crock pot. You can look it up!! The crock pot was invented in 1960. Since then there has been a sharp increase in the number of separations and divorces. I think I know why. Kathy will get out a bunch of ingredients and lay them on the counter, then go to the crock pot recipe book and decide what to make. Who da thunk that there would be a crockpot recipe for cheese, fish, spinach, and ice cream……. Or as she calls it, “chafishspin cream”. Hey, I’m a guy!! I can live for years off of burgers and pizza. For a little change of pace, I like my chicken in wings. Preferably hot!!

All that background so I can tell you this. Since we heat our house with a woodstove, the best marriage terrorism technique is the ol’ cold hands and feet tricks. These work best in bed after someone (mainly me…) has been in there a while, nothing like a cold hand on the back to send me through the roof. Well this morning it was my turn. I went outside started the truck, and spent a little extra time fiddling around in the toolbox with my metal tools. When my hands had reached the appropriate shade of blue grey. I went back in the house to tell Kathy goodbye. She was laying in bed and I bent over and slid my hands slowly down her upper back (I could keep going here and turn this story in a “Harlequin Romance novel”), and waited for her reaction.

“Oh thank you, thank you!! This is the hot time of the morning for me”

I stood there dumbfounded…... I had failed…… I have no idea where my marriage fun is going to come from now………. MENOPAUSE…..I CURSE YOU!!!!!!

Animal Revenge

2007-01-18T03:56:00.000-08:00

Drizzle and snow flurries, 32/27, Fair to change. Not a whole lot happening on the farm right now, so we've went into the farmhouse renovation pretty heavy. We finished the electricity and had the county hook that up, so now we don't have to rely on the 1300 watt generator for all the power. We also finished all of the rough plumbing last week. Now its time for the expensive stuff, so we'll slow down a bit. This weekend,I am going to replace three windows in the house with three of those old weighted windows I took out of a house that was going to be torn down. Some of the weight ropes broke, and I have to replace them first. Should be an interesting project.

As far as the farm goes, winter is usually equipment maintenance, and I've gotten a good start on that. My biggest accomplishment has been fixing up an old sickle mower I found at the auction for $25. This week, I finally hooked up the PTO drive shaft to it. I'll try it out this weekend.

Well, now that the young’un has a little time on his hands from a series of family rule breaking, I thought it would be a good to get him to help with some farmhouse renovation. For those of you who don’t know, Kathy and I bought an old farmhouse a couple of years ago and began fixing up both it and the barn. We tore out all the walls, ceilings, electrical and plumbing and basically just started with the house frame. So far we’ve got the rough electrical in and half of the rough plumbing.

Anyway, one of the jobs was to go under the house and shore up the place our woodstove is going to go. This is not one of the fun jobs because the crawl space is really that; just a crawl space. In fact, this svelte 230 lb frame can’t even make it all the way to the end where the woodstove is supposed to be without the floor beams pressing on my belly like a cork in a wine bottle.

The boy and I have been working down there about a half hour and had moved the blocks and beams into place. I’m pretty tired from watching him crawl all over the place. I got myself as close as possible. Wedged myself into place did what I could and barked orders for him to do what I couldn’t. Well we go to crawl out and guess what………(nooooo not yet…….), some critter let it be known that we were not alone down there.

My son screams out “Holy Moley” (I’m paraphrasing here, I was going to talk to him about his language, but being wedged in a crawl with wild life is neither the time nor the place…) and he goes scurrying for the opening to the house. “What is it?” I asked. He says, “I think it’s a coon!!” I try to scurry too, but there are certain times in a man’s life when he has no advantage over anything else in the wild….. This is definitely one of those times.

Let me set the scene for you now. The boy has successfully made it to the opening and is almost out. I’m about 10 feet away on my back, wiggling my backside like its got a bad itch that needs scratching, and trying to get out. My legs are at about a thirty degree angle to help my boots get some grab. Directly below my feet is some sort of animal that’s taking to hissing and screeching like my wife does when I decorate her carpet with goat poo. This was not a good situation to be in, when all of a sudden, a “man thought” appears…….

Looking back on it, I realize now it was probably just a scared little animal, trying to get away from the threat I was imposing. In my mind though, this animal was going to get even for any and all injustices ever done by humans to animals. The animal below my feet knew exactly where to go to get even and that was right up the 30 degree angle it was looking at. I wasn’t about stick around and allow manland to become some kind of mammal amusement park. I was getting out of there now!!

The first five feet were easy. Then I came to the septic pipe that I usually go around. I wasn’t sure if I could fit under it, but the “man thought” came back. Well, I made it under to just past my chest. That was as far as I was going to go. The animal, whatever it was, I guess decided he had enough fun for one day and skedaddled out a foundation vent.

My son yells down “Dad, you OK?? I think he’s gone”

“Yeah son, I just have to finish up a few things down here…”

Well, what I had to finish up was figuring out how to get unstuck from the sewer pipe without breaking it. In all it took about 15 minutes to get out. I grunted and sighed, then I’d call up and ask my son to throw down a tool every now and again, so he didn’t know what was really going on.

I finally saw the light of day and we never did figure out what the animal was that was down there. On the way home my boy says “Did you break the pipe Dad?”

“No son. why?”

“Well,” he said with a smile, “With all those tools I was throwing down to you, I figured you had to break the pipe to get unstuck…”

I looked at him with that stupid grin on his face…… “Son, I’ve been meaning to talk to you about your language…..”

My Best Christmas Ever

2006-12-21T04:48:00.000-08:00

Sunny, 63/42, Fair to Fair. Well, the goat keeps hanging in there.... I don't know for how much longer though. She keeps getting thinner and thinner, but still seems to be eating and not in any pain. I've decided to let her have a go at it until she struggles getting to her feet, then I'll put her down. In other news, the farmhouse is getting electricity next week. We put in the meter base last weekend and I put in the application yesterday. Hopefully next Wednesday we'll have power and my tools won't be at the mercy of an underpowered generator.

It occurred to me looking at the last post y’all might take me for some sort of scrooge. That is not the case at all, because the best Christmas ever will probably happen in three more days, just like it did last year and the year before that…. Actually, the best Christmas ever doesn’t even take place on the 25th of December, but the night before. Oh sure, we open gifts on the 25th like most everyone else, but Christmas Eve is when the real festivities are. Well, let me describe it….

It begins before daybreak on the 24th with a hurried cup of coffee, a brief conversation with my wife, and me going off to find things to do around the farm. It is understood that we are on our own for whatever food we can scrounge up that day, and none will be from our kitchen because for the next nine hours my wife will be working herself into a frenzy cooking up sausage balls, cheese balls, shrimp, barbequed weenies, pigs and blankets, cookies, candies, and chips and cheese dips. From the moment we are told to skedaddle, she is left alone in her own private pleasure she calls cooking (its only a pleasure on this day mind you as we hear over and over the rest of the year….).

At about 4 o’clock we all gather back at the house and get ready for Children’s Mass at the church. During mass, we see the same play that has been repeated for hundreds of years, with the manger and baby Jesus. My wife and I remember when our kids were in those plays. In fact we look back at one year most fondly. It was the year both boys were given the coveted “post” part in the play. In order to play the post, the boys had to hold up two of the four posts that held a piece of fabric that represented the manger roof. Lots of pictures were taken that year and now I can show them proof whenever they do something stupid and I tell them they’re acting “as dumb as a post……..”

With all apologies to Father Charley, Father Allen, and our Lord, by the end of mass it gets really hard to concentrate. The food starts getting into my brain, and I don’t think I’ve ever really not tried to increase the closing hymn song speed. After we pile into the car, it seems to take forever to get home to the feast.

When we get home, friends and relatives start arriving. The food is brought out and everyone gets there own buffet style and won’t stop eating until the about 4 hours later. When the first wave is over, someone goes and gets a deck of cards that haven’t seen the light of day since last year’s Christmas and the fun begins.

I don’t know if it’s the card playing or what, but everyone seems to have a good time. The boys needle their great grandpa who’s almost eighty years older then them for rubbing his fingers or his chest trying to get someone to call up diamonds or hearts. This gets Pa-paw started on some stories and the card game stops while the boys listen to tales of runaway horses, playing hooky, or dipping a school girl’s pigtails into the inkwells. The same stories I heard as a kid except the horses are faster, the schoolmaster was meaner, and the girls were uglier….

Around 11 pm the Television get turned on, and some of us break away to watch the mass at the Vatican. The boys continue to play cards, but Pa-paw is about give out. Grandma and Grandpa are usually good for one more game of euchre though and after that, most everyone heads home.

I help Kathy clean up. It is the end to a magical time. Tonight, everyone was on equal footing. Kids were not nagged. Pa-paw was not being watched over like a hawk to make sure he was not getting confused. The food is great and the games that were played didn’t need a joystick and everyone from 8 to 93 could understand them. It is a 4 to 6 hour time of total peace in our family, before the surprises of life start up again for the next year.

So different from that Christmas twenty some years ago in a foreign land; so wonderful, and so worth the wait.

The Worst Christmas Ever

2006-12-14T04:22:00.000-08:00

Sunny, 65,43, Fair to Fair. The sunny weather continues, but not all things are looking good on the farm. I've got an animal going down. She's got the scours real bad and I've tried a bunch of things to get her well, but she keeps getting thinner and thinner. This week, I'm trying some last resort medicines. Unlike cows, it doesn't make sense for the vet to come out for a $70 goat, so I keep trying and trying. If she gets much weaker, I'll just have to put her down....... man I hate to do that......

While I was getting ready this morning, I sat and looked at our Christmas tree. Thinking back on Christmas’s past, I remembered my worst Christmas ever. I thought I’d let y’all in on it.

I was in South Korea, about 10 minutes from Panmunjom at a base camp which I believe was called Liberty. I was a medic in an infantry unit that was patrolling a section of no mans land called the Demilitarized Zone, DMZ for short. The Routine was to do a 24 hour patrol in the DMZ, come back and get debriefed, and get a little sleep. The next day was weapons cleaning and requalifying the weapon and getting whatever personal stuff needed to be done. The third day was a battery of inspections, then get transported up to a guard post inside the DMZ. This was a three day cycle that seemed to go on forever.

In addition, we happened to be going through a cold snap and the temperature at 0 degrees or below. Because of the cold, orders came down that people responsible for vehicles needed to get up twice in the night and start them. So on non patrol days, I’d get up at midnight and 4am to start my transport truck.

We stayed in a canvas tent that would house about 25 guys. There were two diesel fuel heaters in the tent that looked like mini woodstoves, but gave off less than half the heat. Each one of us had an area for our cot, duffel bag, and footlocker. We tried to spruce up our areas best we could with whatever was sent from home. Around Christmas time, some areas in the place looked down right festive with cards and letters from family and friends.

I had four Christmas cards sitting on my foot locker. They were from my Wife, Mom and Dad, and both Grandparents. Not much, but I would read them everyday (as I would a lot of my letters that came too few and far between), until they started to tear at the fold marks.

My cot happened to be next to a hard nosed inner city kid from the east coast. New Jersey I think. He was an alright guy, but didn’t say much to me or anyone else. Kind of the bully of the squad, but since I was pretty quiet too, he pretty much left me alone. The one thing I did notice about his area, was that where everyone else had their cards and letters in their area, he had none.

Well, I got back in from a 4am check on the deuce and a half, and I heard the Jersey guy say “Hey Bach, throw those cards over here”. I gathered up the four of them and threw him on his cot. He read them while I was getting out of my boots, field jacket, and BDU’s. About 10 minutes after I crawled into the bag, I heard the cards hit my cot near my head and the Jersey guy say “Merry F----‘n Christmas Bach”. Alls I could manage was a “yeah” in return. He rolled over and with his back to me, I could hear sniffles and a small sigh, he tried to cover by clearing his throat. I was welling up inside too.

That was the only Christmas greeting I got that day. A few hours later we were walking in a wasteland. A piece of land that the country we were in claimed as off limits except to people with weapons and bad intentions. No peace on earth, no good will towards men, just bullets and barbed wire, and some lonely, lonely soldiers.

Do me a favor this Christmas, if you have any relatives in the military whether they’re overseas or next door. Get a Christmas card and write the longest letter you can write and send it to them. They may never tell you, but it just may be the biggest pick-me-up on what is supposed to be the happiest day of the year.

Thanks

Wormin' Time

2006-12-12T03:56:00.000-08:00

Sunny, 68/30, Fair to Fair. Been sunny here for a week and a half. Both boys play basketball, so its hard to get the chores done before their games. Most farm chores are happening on weekends only now. Last weekend, I fired up the ol hand cranked sheller and finished up this years feed corn shelling. It went pretty well, I also ended up with enough seed corn to plant for next year. More than I expected with the drought this year.

With this seasons drought it was bound to happen. Worms!! A couple of my nannies were looking a little peaked, so along with my wife, we went out for a two hour bout of wrestling, chasing, and being chased that we around here call worming. While my wife was finding all the medicine and syringes and stuff, I rounded them all up to the sounds of the Commodores. Now if you think these goats just happen to like the funky sound while their owner is getting down with his bad self, you are wrong. While “Brick House” is being sung at the top of my lungs, I’m also shaking a bucket of corn. I tell my wife it’s a combination of the two, she thinks its just the corn….. she may be right…

Well, they all get into the pen… all except Billy. He’s looking at my wife kinda suspiciously. He looks at the corn, then looks at her and then me with a “What’s she doing here?” kind of look. Finally, Billy can’t stand others eating food while he’s not (my wife says I have that problem too), and he runs to the food trough. The gate slams, and the fun is about to begin.

Our pen is square, with an alley for running the goats up to a gate. I follow them up the alley, and when they reach the end, I grab them. Then Kathy reaches through and gives them the worming medicine and we open the gate and let the goat out and move on to the next one. This works pretty well on everyone except Billy, who tries to leap or butt, or crawl through and known barrier or pursuer. We try to get him out first.

For me, catching Billy is a delicate balance of maintaining my manliness, and staying alive. Any given Billy catching session will contain tough talk with an occasional curse word, while not trying to dirty my drawers when I realize Billy sees his only way out is through me. I swear my wife just comes along to laugh at a 6’3” 230 lb man trying to regain his bravado after screaming like a sissy man when Billy lowers his head and charges.

Well I finally had Billy cornered next to the hay rack. The other goats had moved to the perimeter of the pen and were watching the two wills collide. The whole catch pen was taking on a football stadium kind of atmosphere. Billy looked at me……then the hayrack….and I saw it!! My wife screamed at the top of her lungs “Did you see that? Did you see that look? That’s the man look I’ve been trying to tell you about!!”

Ahhhh….. the man look. The look my wife says I get just before I go and do something really stupid. It’s the look I get when I go to show my Varsity football playing son how to block even though its been 30 years since I played football and he’s in the weight room all the time. It’s the look I get when I strap on water skis and decide that at 44 years old, I’m just as nimble as I was in high school. Its also the look I get when while standing in Wal-Mart, I get the bright idea that a Hoover upright vacuum cleaner is the right gift for our 20th anniversary. Anyway, lets just say… I know the look.

Well Billy had the look too just before he decided the only way out was to jump the hayrack…. He didn’t make it. Now stuck on top of the hayrack, he tried to scramble over. While scrambling, he got his leg caught in one of the steel hay supports. He let out a bellow and my wife screamed “Do something”.

So with the grace and elegance of a fine herdsman, I quickly moved in and calmly let his leg go from being caught. Then upon freeing him Billy jumped off the hay rack and stood there looking at me, I knew from the on…we’d be best friends.

“Do Something Brad!!” I quickly snapped out of my day dream. The only way to get him unstuck was to lift him off the rack. At close to 200 lbs. it wasn’t going to be easy. So I ran behind him and lifted him off the rack while trying to avoid his ol’ spread out Kiko-like horns. I pulled backwards until his leg pulled free. When it pulled free, I lost my balance and fell backwards. Billy fell on top of me and scrambled trying to get up. I ended up avoiding most of the flailing hooves and with Billy on his feet and my wife laughing her… uh… head off. After Billy was gone, and I was laying there flat on my back, I decided to open my eyes. There above me was one of my nannies chewing her cud and staring down at me. She looks at me and lets out the most obnoxious bawl I’ve heard in quite a while. I got up quickly, brushed off the dingle berries and continued the chase.

Eventually I caught Billy and all the other goats (with the exception of one kid who squeezed through the gate). We wormed and doctored them. When it was finished, I looked out to the edge of our pasture an along the tree line. All the goats were grazing contently. All except Billy, who just stared at me. I have a feeling Billy might be causing another headache come spring worming time.

I have got to get my computer out of her sewing room!!

2006-11-13T03:41:00.000-08:00

Sunny, 54/35, Fair to Fair. More rain the last couple of days has started the small creek running again, and everything is starting to get back to normal on the farm. I've taken the barrels out of the back of the truck I've been using to cart water. Hopefully, if the weather holds and the rains keep coming, I won't be doing that labor intensive task for quite a while.

I met with the ag extension agent last week and started to explain what I was tryin to do. He sounded upbeat about it, and I'm ssupposed to get with him in the next couple of weeks to look at the farm. I also need to talk with the NCRS agent about keeping environmental areas around my creek because I'm clearing for more pastures this winter.

I was reading something on the wonderful Fiasco Farms website about their goat bucks last night, when my wife came through and was reading over my shoulder. After a couple of minutes, she says "You know, if you replace the word Buck with Man, you'd have a pretty good description of why our marriage is better since your procedure"

So alright..... Here goes........

Can I keep a man as a pet?

We don't recommend keeping a man as a pet because of their manly characteristics. Neutered men make excellent pets, but in our own opinion, in tact men do not. This is because neutered men never develop "manly" characteristics. Men are totally different animals than nuets and girls. It may be hard for you to believe that your cute little young man will change, but take my word for it, he will. If you decide to keep a man as a pet, that is your decision, but please read the information supplied below first and be prepared. I provide this information because I truly CARE about men (as I care deeply for all animals). I know that in some cases of a man being kept as a pet, he may eventually become unwanted because of his manly characteristics, that his owner had no idea about. He may then be "discarded" and this poor, loving boy, gets taken to the auction and/or eventually getting "tied out" alone somewhere to live a lonely sad life. This is a scenario I would like to help avoid.

I think she was giving me some kind of compliment ......I think .....

A Night Not Fit For Man Nor Beast.

2006-11-02T04:43:00.000-08:00

Sunny, 64/44, Fair to Fair. A little more rain last night which is great. The pastures keep looking better and better. Next week I'm getting with our Ag extension agent to see how he would suggest I manage the goats better. I'm worried as I get more and more goats, I'll need to do some things to help maintain their healthOther than that, not much happening. I help out the high school basketball team this time of the year, and with daylight savings time ending, most of the major chores have to wait for the weekend.

I absolutely dread this time of the year. Well actually, 12 of these times of the year. The warning signs are all around as things show up in our bathroom that we won’t see for three weeks at a time. The other thing about this time is the cat (who’s male) really starts to get annoying……..along with, according to Kathy, the cat’s owner’s husband. All I know is I won’t be sleeping well for a PERIOD of time.

Take last night for example:

8:30pm – In bed

8:32pm – In la-la land

8:52 pm- I hear “Are you awake??...... Hey, are you awake???....Hey…..” Then come the most dreaded words known to man…… “You forgot to say goodnight….”. and so begins our one sided conversation

9:22pm- “Good night dear…” “Good night honey”

9:24pm- ahhhh.. laa laa land again…..

11:32pm –
Kathy- “I wish this cat would quit bugging me”
Brad – “unnhhhh”

11:33pm –
Brad- “EEYYYOUCHHHHH” (Kathy has just thrown the cat on Brad’s face…..claws first…
Kathy- “Keep that cat on your side”

12:10 am- I’m in peaceful bliss again

2:12 am- WHACCKKK (Kathy hits Brad in the face)
Brad- “What was that for”
Kathy- “Oh, I thought you were the cat”

2:14 am – WHAACCKKK (Kathy hits Brad in the face…)
Brad- “Stop it”
Kathy- “Well that cat keeps making clawing noises on the sheets, It’s driving me crazy”
Brad- “Well, I’m not feeling to good about it myself”

2:42 am-
Kathy- “Brad, your just going to have to get rid of that cat, its bugging me to death”
Brad- “Can I flush it down the toilet?”
Kathy – “No, just put it outside”

3:12am- ahhhhhhh sweet slumber again….

4:22am- RRRRRIIIIINNNNGGGGGGGGGG (alarm clock)

Brad- “unnhh”

5:12am
Brad- “ Goodbye honey, see you tonight”
Kathy- (Looking cute all snuggled up, which was the only thing that saved her)“Call me about 6:15, I feel like sleeping in this morning”

That is what last night was all about. Three more days before the feminine products go back into hibernation for another 22-31 days. Then life will get back to normal and I can start talking about goats again.

Oh oh, I should have woken Kathy up 10 minutes ago; I’m dead for sure now!!!

Turkey in the Straw... Sorry Sean

2006-10-31T04:18:00.000-08:00

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

2006-10-24T04:45:00.000-07:00

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

2006-10-16T04:49:00.000-07:00

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

2006-10-12T04:29:00.000-07:00

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 %*&amp;&#$!! 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

2006-10-05T04:34:00.000-07:00

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

2006-10-03T04:16:00.000-07:00

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…………

Sam the Goat Dog

2006-09-28T04:06:00.000-07:00

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

2006-09-25T06:28:00.000-07:00

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

2006-09-22T04:36:00.000-07:00

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

2006-09-19T04:31:00.000-07:00

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

2006-09-08T03:56:00.000-07:00

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.

2006-09-06T03:46:00.000-07:00

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

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

2006-08-29T03:27:00.000-07:00

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

2006-08-28T03:32:00.000-07:00

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

2006-08-25T03:47:00.000-07:00

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

2006-08-24T03:35:00.000-07:00

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

2006-08-23T04:33:00.000-07:00

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.....

2006-08-22T03:35:00.000-07:00

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...

2006-08-18T09:19:00.000-07:00

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

2006-08-18T03:52:00.000-07:00

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.....

2006-08-17T04:02:00.000-07:00

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

2006-08-16T04:02:00.000-07:00

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

2006-08-15T04:12:00.000-07:00

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

2006-08-14T11:39:00.000-07:00

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……..