After getting the cows sorted we went to town to pick up our new piece of furniture from the antique store. I thought we were going to need three people to carry the thing across the bridge but come to find out yesterday it comes apart in pieces!!  It is a stacking modular system. Incredibly clever and well made. We had a spot for it just are not sure what we are going to put in it. 

We also scored some old maps from 1887 to 1913 of several local townships and some of the surrounding land. We are unsure how to mount them. We are thinking about covering an entire wall in the upstairs hallway as it never sees sunlight. It will take us a while to figure out how to effectively mount them. Until then I am going to cut three pieces of plywood and sandwich them under the bed so they lay flat. 

 

Dinner on the hoof!! Grass fed beef at its finest. 

 

AnnMarie had to go to a funeral so the job of sorting the sheep was left to Mouse, Zeke and myself!  We all three were confident in our abilities. 

So the first thing we did was push all the sheep into the barn and then pile them up at the end and run them through the chute. This went stunningly well. The dogs stayed in place with one tiny exception from mouse. I shook him and drug him back to his spot and he stayed. He really does know what he is supposed to do it’s just not what he wants to do all the time. 

We sorted out 15 sheep and once that was done we ran those fifteen sheep through a second time to get it down to ten.  I had one wily large whether that jumped over the gate!  I ran the sheep back into the barn four more times trying to just wade in and grab him. By the third time I wanted to just go get the 22 LR and let a bullet do the catching but the butcher was not coming until the next day!!!  So I kept at it and finally managed to get him and nine of his closest buddies into the corral so they were stuck and ready for the butcher. Every few years we get one animal that is just painful to handle. This was his year. 

 

 

This is not where the cows belong!!  This is the hillside above the upper prime. It is not currently fenced in. I have plans for that but they have not made it past the planning stage, prep stage, supply stage and I have even managed to set up supplies on the job site but no actual fence has been constructed. The cows pushed through the last cow panel fence left. Initially, slapping a cow panel up as a gate seemed like a good idea. It works great for keeping the sheep in. The problem with this plan are the cows, specifically the bull. He loves getting by cow panels. He knows there is a way and just keeps at it until he wins.  Being a gentleman, he will actually hold the gate up and out of the way to let everyone else get past. 

AnnMarie called me at work to help but I have been prepping for a big inspection at work and was not able to get away. She took the tractor up with some hay on it to entice them down. No success and she managed to get the tractor stuck in the dry creek bed. 

I came home early and put tractor in four wheel drive and drove back into the upper prime pasture and broke open both bales of hay for the cows. AnnMarie went up on the hill with the two dogs. Mouse was not behaving well. I snuck below the cows in the tractor in attempt to get behind them so I could slowly push them towards the gate.anne-Marie stayed up on the hillside with the dogs making sure they behaved. It took 10 minutes and we had the cows in the upper prime pasture with all the gates shut. 

The raccoons are back. We are pretty sure that someone has been dumping town raccoons out at our house again. My mother-in-law Donna has seen two huge raccoons on her front porch eating her cat food. I have not lost a chicken and the current babies are so dumb they are getting stuck outside the coop because they don’t go inside the before the auto chicken door closes.  She called us to come down and shoot them the other night but when we got there no raccoons were found. Out of paranoia we took the super bright flashlight and started scanning all the tops of the nearby trees.  We found a set of eyes high up on one of the trees in the orchard. It turned out to be another raccoon.  AnnMarie took several shots to knock it out of the tree and then I had to go over and finish it with the pistol. One of the problems with there being a shortage of 22 ammo is I have a wide variety from 800 ft./s up to 1200 ft./s.  The low velocity ammunition is too slow to effectively kill predators and doesn’t cycle the action on my pistol so you have to constantly cycle the action manually.

This is a painful process in the dark. After dispatching another potential chicken killer we went inside the house. I started going through boxes of 22 ammo looking for high velocity 1200 ft./s ammo and making a separate basket so I could rapidly locate it.  I also changed out all the pistol and rifle ammo for 22 high velocity rounds. We should be good to go except we need another flashlight. We are constantly arguing over who is holding the flashlight and where is it not being pointed.

Resulting in one of us almost falling. 

 

 

We have wonderful friends who come and visit us for Thanksgiving.  They have not been here for the last three years and are finally able to make it for a holiday visit.  We love them to death, but this necessitates a whole new level of cleaning.  Normally, I pick up the bare minimum and thankfully we have a housekeeper who makes great progress when she comes.  Unfortunately, she has a life also so only comes out to the house on average 4-6 times a month.  I spent all weekend picking up and cleaning house getting ready for our guests.  I even took the dead racoon up to the bone yard.  I had dropped him off in the barn lot and the cool weather just preserved him until his trip to his final resting place was initiated.  I will get every room done but two.  The craft room will be the last thing I do.  It has become a catch all, one which even the housekeeper will not venture.  

I threw out 6 bags of trash today.  I figured if we hadn’t used it we didn’t need it.  I also started up and have a full box of giveaway items.  

 

When I was taking the racoon to his new home, all the cows came over to the fence when they heard the tractor pass by.  So I figured they needed to be fed, so on the way back I loaded up four bales of alfalfa and went down and fed them.  The new baby is now running with his momma all the time.  This is good news as our kill date got pushed back another two weeks.  So now the baby will follow momma into the barn lot and I will be able to tag and band, if necessary.  We are also going to put plastic chains with ID tags on them around each of the female cows necks so that we can tell who is who.  

 

I finally got the chicken light working in the coop yesterday again.  I only had one egg today.  It is looking pretty sparse.  I have two customers who want to buy eggs and one who paid in advance but I have NO eggs.  Looks like I may have to give his money back until we get eggs  

 

I also got our big freezer all cleaned out, it has been defrosted for a month.  I washed the whole thing today and got it plugged back in.  Tomorrow I will be able to move all the food over from the small freezer and get it defrosted.  It has been oer 8 years since we defrosted the freezers.  It was time to get it done. 

 

Doug and I usually do some small project when they are up.  I think this year we will get the floor all measured for tile so we know how much to buy and what it will cost.  I also need to put away tools, they are spread out to heck and gone so organizing the shed would be a great help.  Who knows, we will see what he wants to do when they arrive.