How many plants will you have in there this winter?

It's still summer here: 86, sunny, humid, but quite a pleasant day. I spot treated weeds in a couple of the smaller paddocks. The recent rain has begun to revive some of the grass and all of the WEEDS, it seems. We never had such a dense stand of pigweed as I am now seeing since last week's rain.

Oh, over 100..................

Well, on the up side, pigweed has a nutritive value of 18 % protein and is apparently palatable to livestock when young. That's from the US Forest Service website. Being an amaranth, if they will eat it, it's good for them.

mid to low 40s here and enough breeze to cut through a jacket. Stan's off checking on the wandering girls up to his brother's. One was out at least twice yesterday. It's getting toward time to bring them home. He's back - breakfast time!

So far the stock is so delighted with the new grasslets that they are ignoring the pigweed and allowing it to get past the yummy stage which is happening at alarming speed.Apparently all the plants have been storing up all their growing energy all summer and unleashing it with a vengeance at this first opportunity.

I need to remember to put a scarf on when I go out! The breeze makes my ears hurt. It started out partly sunny, and is now mostly cloudy. Stan is out working on the storm shed where he will be installing an overhead door. It's where the spreader tractor goes in and out and everytime he'd drive through the door that runs on a track, the mud (and snow and ice) would fill in the bottom path, so he would have to shovel, pick axe, stomp, cuss it out. this should be much easier.

SU and I have a milking job..........last night and both milkings today. Close, only 3 miles down the road, so that's nice. 52 cows, and 11 calves to feed. There is a feed guy to do the mixing, so SU is milking too. We each take 3 units and go down "our own side". LOL 1 more to go. Doesn't take too long to milk.

Tonight after we're done, I told SU that I wanted to run up to DS#2 and give Aleigh one of her birthday gifts........her B'day is Friday, and after they leave for school, he won't have them again till his usual Wed/Thurs. nights. He had them this past weekend, so it's their "mom" weekend. I know, confusing, but as long as THEY all remember...........LOLOL I got her a little "Purse Pet"...........a stuffed kitty in a little purse. She loves things like that. I guess DS will have a Sunday "event" for her on Nov. 13th, as the 14th is DS's b'day. It will be fun. I would imagine that a pan of cheese bread will be requested by all 3 of my boys.

Well, they've said the 's' word on local television followed by 'higher elevations', which at 1800 feet means us. Today it's just rain, but I have to go to the dentist tomorrow when the flakes might start flying. What fun.

I don't know why, but for some reason my crazy husband got up at 4 this morning. I laid there until 4:30 and then got up and watched the weather channel until the local news came on at 5. Got a load of wash in and did some tidying. This is just plain nuts!

Just stuck my nose out the door. Pretty cool-ish out there. The SU is playing cart-boy for the neighbor; running the catch cart. Guess he has about 700 acres left to do. Hoping for good weather.

Summer 2011

I saw all these buzzards sitting in the dead tree this morning and decided the scene pretty much described our summer.

That's just bleak.

This will cheer you up, it's snowing. Actually, we did get a couple of inches the other day, and a lovely frost fog yesterday that hung on until midday. We are on the western edge of the nor'easter that's crawling up the coast and will only see a couple of inches, if the forecast is right. This could pull some cold air across the lake, though, and then we'd get more. At this point, it looks like it will all pull east - YAY,

The heifers discovered that the plug on the fencer was broken waaaaay before Stan did. They went through the poly tape and headed out the well road to Wickwire and were two fields away from the far end when a neighbor chanced by and saw them just sort of milling about. He put them in the nearest pasture, checked with the owner of the pasture and then came and told Stan. I drove him back and then played SUV cowboy in the Trailblazer herding them along Wickwire toward home. Wickwire is a dirt road that gets some care at our end and then a little grading and maybe some gravel if the town budget will cover it. It has been pretty good this summer and fall, right up until the last heavy rain. Let's just say it is a very bumpy ride. The heifers were tired and sulky and the poor old cow that had decided to join them on their romp was near exhausted. We got them as far as the neighbor's first meadow and they turned in for some r and r and to nibble the grass. Stan, who had gotten in the Trailblazer a bit before had me bring him back here to get the 4 wheeler and then I went back up to just this side of the well road to herd them in. By the time we got them back to the woods we noticed that one of them was the neighbor's scruffy bull. At some point, he sorted himself out and went back through the pasture and over the fence into his pasture. What fun. Stan spent the rest of the morning and a good chunk of the early afternoon fixing the fences that they had torn through. They are down below the house now where the fence is all barbed wire, some electric and some 3 tight wires strong. Knock on wood they will stay in until we get them sorted around and in the barn.

I always figure that if the heifers are in the pasture, the hot wire is working; because they are ALWAYS the first to know when it isn't. It is amazing how much fence they can ruin just because of one small electrical ground! I hope you can get the fences up and working before they destroy more of it.

Here is Buttercup. She led many an escape as a young heifer.



She even notched a horn to record her successes (?)

What is her parentage?

See, I knew they were marking them down somewhere! Ours don't have horns so they must notch a fence post or one of the trees back in the little wooded bit.

Chilly today rather than cold, grey skies. Maybe I'll go for a walk later, although it's rather muddy and there are heifers in all of the good places to walk.

You don't want company on your walk? You could lead a parade!

Buttercup is a Longhorn cross.

Not could, would! Sometimes they get a little rambunctious. I prefer a more stately pace.

I don't know what kind of trouble I will get into today............I'm sure I can find something. SU will be running the catch-cart again today. What I would LIKE to do is take a nap. What I WILL do is something totally different, I assume.

New month, new thread?????

New month, new thread?????

Here we go, better late than never: The thread "November and the cold begins to settle in" in Farming forum