Country life and why I love it!!!

We woke up this morning and I let the girls out and they barked, which is normal. I looked out when a truck honked and I saw calves in our yard, our hay pasture and in the road. We don't have calves but I am wanting a couple. I keep telling him if we would buy a couple little calves in the spring, bottle feed them and raise them during the summer, sell one and butcher the other. We could have some wonderful beef in the freezer!!! But back to the actual story! Our neighbors calves had gotten out and were wrecking havoc on our trees. Thankfully they left the new trees that we planted alone and we worked to keep them out of the garden. We have a tree line that divides our yard from the hay pasture and they we eating the leaves off of the trees in the tree line. I got to counting and we had about 35 calves everywhere on our 5 acres and out in the road. I walked out into the road and got all but 4 (I thought) out of the road and we pushed them into the hay field. I then went back out to get the other four and they ran down the road to our next door neighbors and as they were running into their driveway another calf poked its head around from their drive way. I fussed and ran and tried to get them back down towards our hay field and they didn't want to go. So I left them in there and went back to our hay field. In the mean time Matt went and got the truck and parked it in one of the gate openings and we got out to move the 30 that were in the hay field. In the meantime there were about 5 who decided that they wanted back into our yard. It tasted so much better ya know. So we got those 5 back into the hay field and ran them through the gate, back into the pasture where they were supposed to be. So now we had to get the five that were left. Matt started to shut the gate in between our pasture and their pasture. I told him not to and took off towards the 5 calves. they got fidgety again so Matt drove the truck around them and pushed them back towards our gate. I had ran around and was on the outside of the gate to push them through it. We danced and ran and finally got them into the hay pasture. I started pushing them through and as we get closer to the gate. It was shut..... He had gone ahead and shut it when my back was turned.... I threw my hands up and was saying all sorts of words in my head. He ran up to open up the gate as they ran back towards the open gate. I stood there and looked at Matt irritated. Luckily the calves just ran around the fence line and then towards the gate. I had one of them who left me get a foot away from him before he turned and ran. He was a brave "little" guy! We had a couple that were trying to see how far they could push us but I won! As we were running the last group of the calves Matt was yelling at me "And who is wanting to have cows?????" I was yelling back "Just two and a good fence to keep them in...." I was raised doing all this stuff and it is normal but Matt never really got to do any of it. So this is a learning experience for him but he is loving every minute of it.

We ran out about 6:15 to start getting them in and ran back inside at around 7:15. I got ready and was ready to leave in 15 minutes. I actually made it to work on time!! I am now tired and can feel the soreness settling in. I will work outside tonight and I KNOW that I will be sore! I am going to go get a chain for the gate and put a new one on it. That is how they got out. The gate was standing wide open. It looks like they had bedded down in our hay field. The gate is ours but we have left a 30 foot ease way for them to stack their hay and we fenced it in so the cows couldn't get it. I think that the cows got tired of looking at the hay just sitting there and worked on the gate until they pushed it open. So I will go and get a new chain so hopefully we won't have calves in the yard, hay pasture and road again. We have been finding hoof prints in the yard two different times, the last time being Monday and we had walked the fence line last night and found that a post had been removed. So tonight we will put a post up, a new chain on the gate and start cleaning up some other stuff. It will be a good night to do all this. It hasn't rained in about a week now... I still want a couple calves to bottle feed, one to sell and one to butcher. Matt thinks that I will get too attached and won't want to butcher one of them. The truth is that I probably won't, but I want to have good meat so bad, so whatever it takes!