On November 11 we took a day off from fencing and drove up to Maidstone to visit David and Maxine Mitchell and pick out a few bred heifers. This will be our third year buying heifers from River Bridge Herefords and we have been very happy with them.
A few days later we brought our heifers home from a pasture by Leipzig, which friends let us use this year. The next day we sorted off some of the calves and hauled them into Provost for the sale.
When we got back from Provost we discovered that three of the horses were out. It was LJ, the colt that Gregory rides, and two mares. So I used a tie-down strap for a halter and led LJ to the gate and the mares followed. Just like we suspected they had walked across the frozen slough. So we got to work building our ice fence again. We strung out a line of barbed wire, drilled holes in the ice, and attached the wire to metal rods and stood them up in the holes. Then we put some orange tape on the wire to make it visible to the animals.
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On Nov. 22 we brought the cows home from the Landis pasture. Their feed was still good but the water supply was getting poorer. Joseph got to help us this time. He sat in the truck as we rounded up the cows. Then, while we were trying to load he honked the horn at us a few times. While Gregory took the first load home, I took Joseph on Danny and we rode around our pasture. He loved it and was happily chattering the whole time.
The next day we put the post hole auger on the tractor and dug a few holes for railroad ties to make a pen for the bulls. The frost was pretty deep. For the last few holes Joseph helped Gregory in the tractor and then he helped me in the pounder truck as we pounded the ties into the holes.
We put up rails in our new bull pen and then took a break and celebrated Thanksgiving supper with family and friends. We have so much to be thankful for that we feel its only right to celebrate twice.
Early December was filled with projects. Some of them were on our list and others got added as we went. For instance, the water bowls quit working Dec. 2, so we ended up pulling the submersible pump out of the well in order to splice a couple of the wires that had rubbed and worn through.
On Dec. 7 we took the flatbed trailer over to Gregory’s Grandpa Fred’s place to pick up some panels and wire. Grandpa Fred sold his cows some time ago but he thought of us when he was cleaning up his fence lines and graciously sold us the posts, the wire, some panels, and other odds and ends. Those kinds of things get used up fast around here and we are very grateful he thought of us.
