posted on Aug, 11 2019 @ 08:13 PM
I guess I could have put this in "Rant", but it's not really a rant, it's more of a 'day in the life' post. (though parts of it SUCK!)
Got up this morning around 4:45am (late for me). Sun was just cracking the horizon. Nice and cool outside (about 68F)...YAY!! Far better than the
upper 80's in the morning (it's been smokin' hot here lately). After I shake the sleep off I'm thinking of having a nice cup of coffee on the
porch, so I set up to make some nice fresh ground coffee. In the process I'm looking out the kitchen window (as I often do) for the cows. As the
sun sheds its light, I see a small animal. HOLY COW!! it's a CALF!!!
Now, I won't bore you with how hard this calving season has been, but it's been hard. To see a baby calf in the pasture at daylight was wonderful!!
The calf must have been born minutes before because it was still getting it's legs. (Little calves can walk within an hour, but they're pretty
unsteady until 4-5 hours). Yay...babies!!
Then the day started!
Within an hour 'baby' was separated from 'mom' by a fence. Don't know how it happened, but it was major distress. Baby was in one pasture, and
momma was in another, separated by a barbed wire fence. Baby is sooo young it doesn't understand fenced and is raking itself up and down the fence,
next to momma who is panicking. Great!! (Not)
So the wife get's mad at me for going in the pasture with our herd bull, but it's the only way. He leaves me alone and I go hiking up to baby (in
the furthest corner of the high pasture). I get up there and baby springs up and darts out of the fence to a wide open 1,700 pasture to our south.
Great (not). No worries though; baby will stay with momma across the fence, so we've got time.
So I head up to our high pasture thinking we'll head baby up to the corner and through the corner gate we have in our high pasture. BOOM!...WRONG!!
When I finally get up there I see our bull, Jack, has torn down about 90' feet of fence and it's just laying on the ground! Great! (not) Holy
crap, I can't bring these cows inside this pasture with the fence down into our next door rancher's pasture, because they'll just escape into the
other pasture...so now I have to fix fence...in a hurry!
Of course, the sun came out at that exact same moment, and the nice cool morning turned into a FLAMING HOT and HUMID morning by the time I got up
there with my fencing tools (which is a trailer behind my ATV, complete with wire, stretchers, chains, come alongs and numerous fencing tools and
things).
I enlisted my wife, who was innocently mowing a pasture with one of the tractors, and we go up there. I get the #3 wire tight, have the splicing
sleeves on...everything looks good...and snap the fence wire crimping the sleeves! The wife is pissed because it's HOT! All over again!
Fixing fence is not easy, and making a mistake is worse. I tried to crimp too many crimps, and broke the wire. Worse, I tried to pull the wire too
tight and snapped the wire, which sent speeding, snapping and coiling barbed wire flying for 75' feet around us (DUCK!!!)
We got the fence fixed (our stupid neighbors watching through their binoculars. They don't know Jack S#, city people...but they LOVE to have our
cows on their property, for the tax deduction...as long as WE build the fence!!) Anyway...
We get the fence rebuilt. And, it's clear some of the "real" ranch hands from the adjoining property have attempted to fix 'some' of the fence.
Okay, if the fence is "first" on your property,, then you own it. That's the rules. Okay...even though we didn't build the fence, because it's
our fence then it ours to maintain! Got it! I grew up here, I know fence and that's just how it is.
I think I should stop here and make a "Part II" of this story.
So, if you're interested...stay tuned, because it does get better!