Update, but more Off-Grid Living comin'....

2/25/08 - 2nd Day - After Breakfast. We had our cattle drive yesterday, whereby we drove our herd (17 cattle I think) to the west pastures. I am sure you will see plenty of pictures because almost everyone in the community was there taking pictures/video, and now (thankfully) many of them are blogging. You can find the bloggers in our community mixed among my links on the right side of the page. If you check those blogs this week, I'm pretty sure someone will post some pictures of the cattle drive. I think the Ante's said they might be posting a video of the end of the drive. Anyway, we closed down the county road in front of the community and drove the cows from our easternmost pasture to the westernmost pasture. It was quite exciting, and it was our biggest cattle drive yet (I know 17 cattle doesn't sound like a lot, but it is a great deal for us). If all goes well and the Lord wills, we will have between 24 and 26 cattle after our cows calve this summer. Later this summer we will begin free-ranging the cattle on the entire 132 acres (minus the fenced off homesteads). We feel like we can get to somewhere in the mid-30's to maybe 40 cattle before we have to start looking to lease land elsewhere, or sell off some of the cattle for profit. We should hit that number (if the Lord wills it and all goes well) sometime in the late summer of 2009, unless we sell some or butcher some before then. I plan on butchering a steer this fall, and another one in the fall of '09. I will also have some mixed-breed part longhorns to sell or butcher by then, so that will help keep the numbers down a bit. I plan on keeping Pita (our 1/4 Watusi that we are training to ride and pull), but don't know what I will do with her mother (Maria) or her sister (Mariana). I should also have my Holstein milk cow by then.

I plan on putting up another part to the Off-Grid Living series, so stay tuned later today for that. I hate to make you all check back, but please do. The weather has been very warm for February. Today is supposed to be in the upper 80's but it is supposed to be very windy. It is supposed to cool off tomorrow (down in the low 60's) and it might dip down in the high 20's tomorrow night.

Danielle and I still haven't been able to plan on our yearly anniversary trip to San Antonio, and she is supposed to go back to Smyer to take care of my mother on the first of March, so we hope to plan the trip sometime in March. We may make a day trip to Fredericksburg (a beautiful German town 2 hours south of here) on Tuesday, but we'll see how things work out.

Ok, I have to get to work.

Michael Bunker