Things Aren't Always What they Seem

So about two weeks ago Caleb and I were awoken to barking dogs early in the morning. They were at the other end of the house so they really weren't bothering us all that bad so I didn't bother getting up and yelling at them.

Later after getting up, eating breakfast Caleb and I head out to go our separate ways...

He was headed to put anhydrous on and I was going to check and feed all the cattle.

As we walked out side we found what they were barking at...

a possum.

Now this isn't the first time we have had a critter like this laying in the yard, with a jack russell it is a common occurrence.

Well I head off to feed a group of cows down the road and then head back to the house with a bale of hay to feed the group that was there.

Well after feeding them I stop by the house...

Probably to get food. Currently food is ruling my life.

Anyways when I was walking towards the house I noticed something in my tree that isn't usually there...

Yes that would be the possum that I thought was dead.

Evidently it wasn't and was able to crawl away when Jasper and the others weren't looking.

It crawled up here in the tree thinking it would be safe...

But it wasn't expecting me and my pliers to come along and pull him out of the tree.

Oh how excited Jasper was for this.

I let him play with it for a while and then I "took care of" the nasty pest.

I could of let Jasper take care of it, but that would mean I would have this dead nasty critter in my yard that would start stinking and well I didn't want that.

After taking care of the critter I put it on the back of the truck along with the raccoon that I had seen a few weeks ago (I thought it was gone only to be wrong in finding it again).

So they were both loaded on the back of the truck and taken a long way away to another farm where the dogs couldn't get a hold of it and drag it back into the yard...

Because as of today there is another dead possum in the yard (that Caleb threw across the road and the dogs retrieved) as well as what it left of a calf that died a long time ago...

Oh the joys of having dogs.

I hope you all have a great weekend and hopefully I will get the chance to do some more posting next week...

No guarantees.

Have a Wonderful weekend!!!

JP

Terrible Horrible No Good Very Bad Day

Terrible Horrible No Good Very Bad Day....Yep, that pretty much describes the past two days around here. We messed with cattle both days and well nothing seemed to go right for us! Usually I would go into a big long crazy story about what happened but it was bad enough, crazy enough that I really don't want to relive the day again by writing about it.

I kept having to remind myself of the positives all day yesterday, cause if I didn't the day would have been worse...

No one got hurt, we didn't get any rain (which means we should be able to get back in the field a lot sooner), some of my herbs were starting to green up...

Since I'm not gonna go into what happened over the past couple of days, I thought I would tell you what we were up to last week. It was a crazy busy week which makes it hard to write....

First things I was able to get some of my garden planted. Well at least all the cooler season crops. Some of my potatoes went into the ground...

As well as onions...

Lots, and lots of onions. I also was able to plant some peas, lettuce and other greens, as well as broccoli and garlic.

Lucky for me my garden was ready just before the fields were ready so I was able to get all my planting done before I had to help in the field.

Field work right now consists of putting anhydrous ammonium on all our corn ground.

For those who don't know anhydrous is use as a Nitrogen or fertilizer source for crops.  The only crop we use it on around here is corn.

Since it's been kinda wet around here towards the end of winter, we are running tight on time before we will be needing to plant corn and there were chances of rain at the end of the week so we were tryin' to get as much done as possible so this meant early mornings.

When I wasn't helping Caleb's dad haul anhydrous tanks to the field I was out checking a feeding all the cattle.

(On another positive note we are hopefully done with feeding hay since we had all the beautiful weather over the past week the grass is growing good!)

Then the rain came and we were done with the field work for a while. This system was a crazy spotty one. We ended up with only .65 inch while a neighbor who was less than 10 miles from us got about 4 inches. We were oh soo glad we didn't get that much!

So that's what we were up to last week and probably what we will be up to here at the end of this week. Though I probably wont plant anything else in my garden till next week, but we will just have to see what the weather does.

Later,

Janet

Babies are Coming

It's that time of year when our heifers start poppin' out little one's and....

My girl Pokey was the one who started out the year with a cute little bull.

Meet Patches...

I really don't like his name, but it's all I could come up with so far, so Patches it is.

Even though I sure we would be able to figure out this little guy is we still like to stick a tag in his ear just for good measure.

The good thing about workin' with heifers is that they usually aren't to crazy actin' when you go to messin' with their baby.

Mr. Patches wasn't to excited about his new piece of jewelry.

So far we have 2 heifers have had babies, so we have 13 more to go!

Along with heifers calvin', we are also gettin' ready to get rollin' in the corn field as well as I have been tryin' to get my garden in shape so I can get my peas and potatoes and everything else planted!

Janet

Momma's Meatloaf

So last week....I think it was last week it could have been last month for all I know...I was finally able to make meatloaf. I had been craving it for a while and didn't have any crackers.

So finally after a trip to town to do some shopping I was finally able to make this easy yummy meal and I thought I would share it with you guys.

Roll Call: 1 lb hamburger, Minced onions, 1 Egg and Saltine Crackers. (There are a few other options we will talk about later)

Thaw your hamburger out and place it in a medium to large mixing bowl.

Crack in one egg.

Now add in the onions. I use dried minced onions that I get from good ol' Sam's Club and I use probably three tablespoons of so. You can also use a fresh onion and about 1/2 of a large onion would work just fine.

Now take about half of one of the tubes of saltine crackers and crush them all up. If you have small children who like to help this is on of those things that the can't mess up!

*You can also add a chopped up bell pepper to this and it would be delicious. I don't add them because...well lets just say we don't play nice together....it's not pretty, not pretty at all!

*Also Caleb tells me that his mom uses oatmeal instead of crackers so that is another option.

I also add in a couple of pinches of salt and pepper at this point.

Now it's time to get dirty sand do some mixing. I usually use both hands but I couldn't get a picture that way.

This is also one of those things that kids would love to do!

Mix it till you have everything fully combined.

Then form it into a loaf and...

Place it into an oven safe pan.

I like to use my dutch oven for this, but you can also use a cake pan as well.I like having a lid on mine for most of the cooking because I think it gets too crunchy without a lid.

Next I will take a bottle of Ketchup and squirt a little of it on the top.

I try and make it look pretty, but it usually looks like a mess...

O-well it still tastes good!

You can also put a couple of strips of bacon across the top instead or in conjunction with the ketchup. I didn't think about this when I was making it otherwise I would have done this.

*You can also chunk up some potatoes and place around the meatloaf to cook while it's cooking for an easy side. I'm not doing this today, because I have some leftover mashed potatoes in the fridge and I'm gonna use them instead.

Now place it in a 350 degree oven and cook for about an hour. For the last 10 minutes I will take the lid off of the pan. This allows it to get kinda crunchy but not overly done!

Once it's done pull it out of the oven, plate it, slice it, and serve. Mine usually ends up covered in ketchup....yummy!

Well if you try this I hope you enjoy it. it's very simple to make and oh soo good!!

Momma's Meatloaf

Ingredients

• 1 lb hamburger thawed
• 1 egg
• 3-4 tablespoons dried minced onions (or half of one large onion minced)
• 1/2 a tube of saltine crackers

Optional

• a couple of pinches of salt and pepper
• one bell pepper finly chopped
• 2 slices of bacon
• Ketchup

Directions

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

In a medium to large mixing bowl mix a four ingredients together. (If using the bell pepper and the salt and pepper mix it in now as well)

Form into one large loaf or a couple of miny loafs and place into an oven safe pan.

Next either place the bacon slices on top or squirt some ketchup on top or both or neither what ever floats your boat.

Place in the oven and cook for about an hour. (If doing several smaller loafs the cook time will be shorter)

JP



3-2-2011 Sale Day in Review

On Tuesday, March the 1st Caleb tells me he has decided to go ahead and sell all our calves that we weaned last fall. We go ahead and sort off all the heifers we are planning on keeping for replacement and get things all ready for the next morning because we will be loading out our first group at 6:30 in the morning.

We get things ironed out and ready for the next morning and crawl into be at about 8:30. I did some reading so we really didn't go to sleep till about 9:00. The rest of this post is the chain of events depicting what we went through on sale day.


4:00 am - Woken up by Dogs Barking

4:10 - Hank (the only dog off the chain this night) decides we must not heard him and that he needs to sit right out side our bedroom window and bark.

4:20 - Caleb bangs on the window...it doesn't really help.

4:30 - Hanks still barking. I get up and go out side and give him a "talking to!"

4:32 - Caleb asleep. Me, I'm wide awake.

5:00 - Still Wide awake, evidently one symptom of pregnancy is sleeplessness....usually doesn't bother me too much.

5:05 - First alarm goes off.

5:07 - I decide to get up and get dressed, because I'm already awake and the alarm is just gonna go off in 8 minutes anyway.

5:18 - I holler in an tell Caleb he had better be getting up. His alarm was suppose to go off at 5:15 but I never heard it.

5:19 - Caleb looks at his phone and determines that he set the alarm for 5:15 pm instead of am....oops.

5:25 - I'm Eating breakfast, making coffee and getting snacks ready for the day.

5:30 - Caleb and I Praying over the day

5:35 - Out the door and headin' up to Pop's house to feed the calves before the go to the sale barn. It's still soo dark out and I think it's truly wrong that I am out of bed right now.

5:45 - arrive at Pop's house. 

5:47 - Spill my entire cup of coffee after only having a small sip....seriously that's just mean!

5:50 - Feeding first two groups of calves

6:10 - The guy who was gonna haul some of our calves arrives.

6:30 - Truck leaves with the first load of calves.

6:50 - Head up to lead Pop's calves back over to where the good corrals are at so we can do some sorting.

6:52 - Sun is finally coming up!

7:00 - all but about a dozen calves are following the feed truck. So I get out, grab a stick and and start walking behind them pushing them along for about a 1/4 of a mile...usually walking 1/4 mile is no big deal, but when it's muddy and you have 10 lbs of mud on your boots it kinda stinks!

7:20 - All the calves are finally where they are suppose to be.

7:22 - I take a big ol' drink of water.

7:28 - Truck is back and ready for it's next load.

7:38 - Truck loaded and headed back to town

7:45 - Load one of our trucks with the last of mine and Caleb's calves.

7:50 - Sorting the heifers from the steers in Pop's calves.

8:20 - Truck is back and ready for it's third load.

8:27 - Truck is loaded and on it's way again.

8:38 - All the heifer's Pop is going to keep for replacements are sorted off.

8:40 - Caleb and I head to town with our load of calves.

8:53 - Our load is dropped off and we are on the way back to the farm

9:05 - All the rest of the calves are loaded on two truck and on their way to town

9:13 - Arrive at our house to load a cow we had been wanting to sell

9:16 - Get another cup of coffee from the house...ti doesn't really help much cause I'm still tired!

9:40 - Cow is dropped off at the sale barn and we are on our way back to Pop's house.

10:05 - Back at Pop's and loading up his sorted off heifers to take them to their new pasture.

10:20 - Heifers dropped off and trailer un-hooked.

10:25 -  Washing my boots off for the 3rd or 4th time.

10:30 - Caleb leaves to feed the rest of our cattle and I head home to eat...cause when you have been awake since 4 10:30 is dinner time!

10:32 - I notice the heifers who were needing to be moved across the road were waiting by the gate.

10:33 - Call Caleb and tell him about the heifers.

10:36 - Caleb arrives with feed

10:50 - All but one of the heifers crosses the road.

11:00 - The last heifers finally crosses the road.

11:01 - Shut the gates and Caleb once again heads to feed cattle and I head towards home again to eat!

11:11 - Arrive home

11:12 - Run into and break the bug shield on our good truck....grrr

11:12 and 10 sec - say a word which I will not repeat on here.

11:13 - Go inside to get food....food always makes things better.

11:16 - Re-heating leftovers for dinner.

11:19 - Praying for food and that Caleb has no problems while doing the chores...then gobbling my food down.

11:25 - Sitting down with my feet up, watchin' Rachel Ray while writing the first half of this down so I don't forget.

11:50 - Drooling over the hamburger that Rachel Ray just made!

12:18 - Caleb arrives home from feeding cattle.

12:19 - Told Caleb about the bug shield...and he didn't get mad...oh how wonderful! (but to be honest, Caleb doesn't get mad very often or very easily.)

12:24 - Caleb re-heating his dinner

12:25 - Me getting more food cause I am still hungry.

12:38 - lay down in the chair to take a short nap.

1:00 - Wake up

1:10 - Still in Chair

1:11 - Finally get up and get ready to head to the sale barn to watch our calves sell.

1:22 - Leave for the sale barn

1:45 - Arrive at the sale barn

4:00 - Watch our calves sell. They may not have been the top of the sale, but the were still the best ones we have ever sold before!

4:45 - Grab the check and leave the sale barn

5:00 - Walk into my favorite Mexican joint in town to eat supper...we never eat this early, but baby and I were hungry and I was gonna be too worn out to cook, so Mexican it is!

5:45 - Head home!

6:00 - Home and laying on the couch where I will stay till it's time to go to bed!

8:10 - Turn TV off and take a shower, cause I smell like a cow and I don't like smelling like a cow.

8:30 - We crawl into bed.

8:40 - Get up to go and tie up those crazy barking dogs

8:43 - back in bed

8:45 - I'm passed out

9:00 - Caleb gets up to yell at dogs

9:10 - Both of us are passed out and stay that way till morning!


Just re-writing all this has wore me out! It was a long day, but that's just part of it when you live on a farm!!

Lots of Love,

Janet