Cattle Drive

10/20/06 - 6th Day. After Lunch. Ok, so it wasn't the Chisholm trail drive, but we did move all the cattle except Holga and her calf (Pedro) to the upper pasture today. It was a move we kind of dreaded since we do not have horses or any other of the accoutrements of driving cattle. It kind of started on a whim, since David was taking Tiara out for training at the same time that I was walking Pita. Ami had been bellowing for Tiara (her calf) for 3 days non-stop and was really taking the weaning thing pretty hard. So I asked David if we should just let Ami out and see if she would follow us up to the front pasture. Well, we did, and she did. That part was easy. Then we decided to take Maria and Rosa. Maria is big with huge horns and she is part Watusi so she isn't naturally as gentle and easy to work with as the Longhorns. So we let Maria and Rosa out and, as expected, Maria kind of just did her own thing, running here and there and everywhere. After some time we started to lure Rosa up towards the front pasture with range cubes, and occasionally Maria would follow. Mihai and I finally got Rosa up into David's pasture (which is one field short of where we needed these cows to go), and Danielle, Susan, David and Mark began the chore of working Maria up in the same direction. As best as I could I kept Pita in view of Maria, so when she got a wild hair to run she would run in the right direction. We finally worked Maria all the way to the top pasture, then it was short work getting Rosa all the way in too. We filled up the 100 gallon water tank from David's catchwater and it was done. The grass in the top pasture is high and green and it is a very large pasture so the cows should be quite happy there. The only bad thing about the transfer is that now whoever milks Ami will have to walk all the way up there twice a day to do it. It probably won't be me.

David got his DC/Solar well pump in today and has gone to town to get all the pipe, wire, etc. to start pumping water today. It is a glorious thing to think we are this close to having our own water on the land.

The fellas have been working on re-doing our gutters for the catchwater system since they were not working well during the last rain.

I finished the Q&A Fridays for today and got it e-mailed out to my friends list. If you did not receive it, but would like to you can let me know.

The weather has turned a bit cooler. It was 41 degrees at 6 a.m. this morning. It has warmed up to 77 today and is beautiful again. We are expecting mid-70's through the middle of next week, except for the Lord's Day which is supposed to be cool and 64.

The Sabbath comes at 6:59 tonight. The days get shorter and shorter.

Michael