Tis the Season to be Baling!

Jared took some much needed time off work...little did he think he would be spending it baling!  Actually it hasn't all been spent baling...The first Saturday, Sunday and Monday of his vacation time were spent with us in Kalispell...Tuesday was spent cutting and then he had a Young Men's and Young Women's activity that afternoon so I took over...Wednesday was spent raking and baling what we had cut from the week before...Thursday it rained, but thankfully because Jared had to get all his camping gear ready for his Young Men's back pack trip!  Friday and Saturday he spent 14 hours hiking from Pickle Jar to Junction Falls in the Kananaskis with his Young Men...Sunday was church, a day of rest...NOT!  Our big bull, Casanova, got into the neighbours field with all his heifers!  It wasn't a big deal, since their bull is also a Red Angus Bull, but we did have to get him back in so our cows could get pregnant!  We got him in by pulling the staples off one of the posts between the two fields and made him step over it!  He did it effortlessly...little did we know that our neighbour had done exactly this the day before with Casanova!  Jared and I then walked the half a mile repairing that fence.  The next day all looked good, Casanova left that fence alone and stayed put!  So we spent the rest of the day raking and baling!  Expect for the minor delay when I ran into a bale with the rake and snapped an instrumental part that keeps the rake in place!  So home we went to get the welder...this little mishap only set us back an hour, and more baling was done!  I finally rescued Myrna from our children at 7:00pm...it was a long day...I am sure for all of us!!  Jared finished baling what I raked and then he too came home!  Yesterday, Tuesday was also spent raking and baling!  Only when we got down to the field we noticed that the little bull, Junior, was now in the neighbours field!  Not a good start to the day!  We tried for about 45 minutes to move him toward our fence but he was totally not interested!  He so badly wanted to stay with the young heifers!

Instead of spending the beautiful day at the lake we spent it bouncing along in a tractor!  Although it was fun...I really enjoyed helping Jared, and it gave me a chance to become more familiar with where the cows spend the summer!  The kids seemed to have a good day too, they got to spend the day in town with friends from our ward!  Thankfully their summer doesn't get put on hold just because we have farm work to do!  We were able to get everything baled that had been cut last week!  I finished cutting the little piece that Dave started last week and then Dave came and finished the other little piece!   Thankfully we are all done cutting and by Saturday if the weather stays hot and dry we can finish baling too!  We didn't have a lot to do but with Jared and Dave both working full time, it seems to take a lot longer!

After Jared finished baling I met him in the neighbours field to help him try and get Junior back into our field!  It took us three hours!  He was totally smitten with a little black heifer, number 66, and she was the flightiest little cow!  She would not move in the direction that we wanted her too, instead she would take off at a full sprint, kicking her legs up as she went.  Junior desperately wanted to follow her and once she took off there was no stopping him.  We tried several times pushing him toward our fence, and I was even able to hold a group of them near our fence while Jared took the quad around and back into our field to move our cows closer to the fence hoping to entice Junior...No luck.  We finally pushed the herd toward the water at the other end of the field and from there we tried pushing Junior and a couple other heifers over to the hub in the corner to trap them in.  This plan would have worked if the group would have calmly walked along the fence line, but they had another idea.  Finally we got Junior separated from the rest of the heifers and since we had worn him out with all the running he realized we weren't going to give up, he headed back to the side of the field that bordered our cows!  It only took him three hours to become totally exhausted!

The famed other heifers!

Cows are so curious!  This one had her head right inside the truck!  And all the others had me surrounded!

She even pushed the mirror in trying to scratch herself on it!

The red one in the middle is Junior! 

Well, our fun didn't end there!  Junior finally decided to walk nice and calmly along our fence line looking for a place to go through.  As he walked the fence line he would stop and bellow, thankfully our cows bellowed back to him, almost like they were calling him home!  This helped immensely with keeping him against the fence!  There isn't a gate along that half mile so Jared had to do what he did the other day and drop some wires.  Jared would ride the quad a little ways ahead of Junior and I, and drop the wire.  He did this twice and by the time he was able to tack the four wires in the bottom staple on the post Junior would pass him!  Jared finally took a longer lead and went to the corner of the field to drop the wires.  When Junior and I caught up all was set, and then as soon as Junior got to the point of crossing, the wires let loose and sprung back up!  I held him in the corner while Jared tacked them down again...only this time Jared lost his tool box off the quad when he was coming back to help me steer Junior the right way...but somehow he got it to work and across Junior went!

I was happy we stuck with it and remained patient, as aggravating as it was not having the bull cooperate, I thought Jared and I handled the situation well and came even closer together.  Ranching has been a lot of work for Jared, and I know there are times when he wishes he didn't even get into it, especially when he has 7 days off during the most beautiful time of the year and the lake is like glass, or his Saturdays in the winter are spent feeding cows instead of carving it up on the ski hill, or his free time when he gets home from work isn't spent taking his bicycle out for a ride, but are spent checking cows, fixing waterers, putting bulls back in, haying...or just keeping care of all the mowing around the farm yard!  Work on the farm never seems to end...although I am happy we have this lifestyle, I really wouldn't trade it for anything and I am happy I can help Jared when he really can't do it alone!  Thankfully I have a mother in law who is super understanding and takes the kids when she is home!  One day it will slow down...well, maybe not...my sister and brother in law have 10 times the amount of cattle we have and they too have things happen like bulls getting out!  Maybe it doesn't slow down but maybe we get better at it!  Even though the kids and I only got to spend four full days with Jared during his 7 days off, we enjoyed having him home!  It was a great week, and a lot was accomplished!

Well, on Jared's last day off work we wanted to do something fun!  So before we decided what to do he took Emry and Calum down to the sand to check cows, and much to their dismay Junior was back in with the other heifers!  So he came back to the yard and we loaded the kids up in the fencing truck and started the adventure once again of getting him back in our field!  Thankfully he cooperated and it only took us just over an hour to get him back in!  But we wanted to make sure he doesn't do it again so we went and got the fencer to put electricity through one of the barbed wires.  This usually isn't the ideal way to electrify a fence...usually you use a smooth, high tensile wire attached to posts with plastic insulators.  But that would have taken at least 2 hours, so we tried this hoping it would work!  We were able to get a 2000volt current going through the wire so hopefully this will deter Junior when he tries again!  This took about an hour and a half, so we do have some time to do something all together, if only we could decide what to do!!