June and July flew by in a hurry. There was lots of summerfallow to be worked, and then haying started in late June. In between everything, we finally got a few fences checked and mended. Gregory went around the neighbours’ little pasture fence July 8 and early the next week I was able to move two mares and foals out to green grass. A few days later I took three more mares and foals out to our native pasture south of the home place and then four of our keeper fillies and a big gelding to one of our pastures in Landis. There are still horses at home grazing around the bin yard, but it definitely helps getting the others out on real pasture.
On July 18 we brought our heifer bull home and moved the heifers over to a new pasture. It is always a bit of an adventure with the heifers, but the rain made it even more so this time. We had to check the north side of the pasture fence before we could move the heifers over and so we took the post-pounder truck around and put in a few posts and some staples. It started raining lightly as we were finishing but when we were ready to start moving cows, it started raining hard. We decided to try to wait out the storm, and finally the rain let up.
Getting cattle moved and sorted
Our corral system needs quite a bit of work to get it to where we want it. In the meantime, we’ve made do, but by the time we had the heifers in the corral and the bull on the trailer my horse was very tired. The heifers did not want to go the right way and kept going past the gate and scattering in all directions. Finally, the cow we had put with them decided to try the gate hole and the rest followed her. We loaded up the bull and my horse and drove out of the pasture, and the rain started again. We had a small break in the storm and we were able to unload the bull and put my horse away and then it started raining hard again. At home we ended up with over an inch of rain.
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On July 26 we moved a few cows off the neighbour’s’ home pasture and over to a pasture north of their yard. We decided to haul them over so that no damage would be done to any of the surrounding crops. It took two loads to haul them over, and then we came home for a quick bite of supper and then went over to Landis to bring home the last bull. In both locations the corral system works very well and so everything went well.
A few days later my two very good friends from the States were able to come up for a short visit. The boys had lots of fun and kept their godmothers very busy playing all kinds of games over the weekend. They had to drive home on the morning July 31 in order to be back to work the next day. It was a short but very sweet visit.
