Robert Soccer, Comanche, and Root Cellar news...

12/03/06 - 1st Day - Before Breakfast. Good morning to you all on this Lord's Day. The weather here has improved during the days. T-shirt weather again, usually by noon or so.

I guess the biggest news is that we were blessed by God as Robert (7) was tossed about by a few of the Longhorn cows yesterday, but was, for the most part, unhurt. Tracy and Robert had gone up to the top pasture at around 4 p.m. to milk Holga and Ami. Longhorns are remarkably gentle animals, and the children have been milking them for 5 months, so we felt pretty confident in letting the children go up there by themselves. The children usually rotate milking duties with the "fellas" (Mihai and Mark) every other day. Mihai and Mark had gone to do laundry, so they asked me if I would go do "calf duty" which entails putting the calves back on the mommas after the milking is finished. The children had been gone about 30 minutes or so when David came out of his camper heading up to move the calves. I told him to wait and that I would walk up there with him. As we got 100 yards or so from the pasture, we heard Robert and Tracy screaming and we saw the cattle all rushing into an area of woods. David and I sprinted up there (but we are close to 40 and sprinting is really a misnomer... we ran though) and as we got near Tracy had gotten Robert clear of the cows and was walking him back through the fence. Robert looked like he had been kicked around the pasture like a soccer ball. He was covered with dirt and mud and had a shocked look on his face. Well, it turns out that Robert had made a few key mistakes and was blessed to get out of there with his life. Generally one person milks while the other person keeps the other cows away. They have a "pecking order" and if you are feeding grain to one cow and another cow wants the grain, you have to keep them away and from spooking the cow you are working with. The children had finished milking and had decided to move Pedro by themselves. Tracy was tying Pedro to a tree branch in the woods, when Holga (Pedro's momma) became very interested in getting to Pedro (they had been separated all day). Robert, seeing Holga move towards Pedro and wishing to give Tracy more time to tie Pedro off, made a running motion towards Holga. Pedro did not back off. So Robert sort of lunged towards Holga. These actions are the sort of actions a coyote or other predator would make, so Holga charged him, and seeing that he didn't smack her with a whip (Tracy had dropped the buggy whip when she began to tie off Pedro) Holga tossed him with a horn and began to push him around, trying to stomp him. Now, cows who feel they are being attacked by a predator, will then attack as a group, so Rosa joined in and Quitachon (the bull) also headed in. They pushed Robert around like a toy for a few seconds until the screaming and Tracy running at them caused them to back off long enough for her to get Robert up off the ground. He was remarkably and miraculously un-killed and uninjured. Once the children were up and together the cows realized that they were not a threat and walked off.

Robert was shaken up a bit, and had a few bruises to his face and back where he was kicked, but, like I said, he was remarkably well.

David and I arrived just as Robert and Tracy were walking back to the fence. Tracy was crying and panicked, but Robert was just wide-eyed and dirty. I told David, "Well, Holga will need to be taught a lesson. I know that it was natural behavior, but she needs to know that she may not do that to humans." I picked up a shovel and rang her bell pretty hard. So hard the shovel broke. She will associate the shovel smack with the screaming and such and hopefully learn not to do that. If she does it again she will be hamburger. We also shuffled up the milking duties so that an adult is always present during milking. Praise God that Robert is ok, and that the lesson he learned did not cost him much more.

This is one of the reasons why we need a milking shed very soon.

We had heard from a friend that there were pigs sold at the Livestock Auction in Comanche, so, after breakfast yesterday we loaded up the whole household and drove to Comanche. Well, we learned a lot at the auction, not the least of which was that they do not sell pigs at the auction in Comanche. It has been interestingly painful to try to find anyone selling pigs around here. We are told that pigs are "cyclical" with the market basically disappearing after a period where the market is glutted. Well, right now,the market seems to be disappeared, because we can't find pigs anywhere. We may end up driving a ways to find some pigs, but I have every intention of raising free-range pastured pigs for meat and for sale. Our current pig (Mr. Pig) is ready to go to the butcher when we find a butcher that isn't too busy butchering deer.

This morning I have been studying more about icehouses, since we plan on building a mini icehouse into the root cellar. I will be writing more about that in the future.

The root cellar is coming along. We began sealing in the south wall (the east and west walls are completely done. and we poured the first of four roof slabs for the south wall on the day before the Sabbath. It is our hope that the Lord will enable us to finish enclosing the root cellar in the next two weeks. The entryway passage, stairs and doors can be finished at our leisure, but we would like to have the cellar enclosed and sealed by Jan. 1st if the Lord wills it. The picture at the top of this blog entry is of the roof going on. We finished the roof in the middle of the week. I hope to post some new pics today or tomorrow. We also started digging the foundation holes for a cabin for one of the ladies in the community on her land. We will be building her cabin over the next few months too.

I hope all is well with you all.

I remain your servant in Christ Jesus,

Michael Bunker