A Day of Rest?

Sunday's are supposed to be a day of rest from our labours...I guess with cows there really isn't a day of rest!  Not for Jared anyway!  After much of the day debating whether or not to go out and add a wire to the fence around the dugout to keep last years calves from going under, Jared finally decided he better do it!  Oats were just seeded into the field they kept getting out into and they are starting to come up, Jared didn't want to see them ruined before they were given a real chance to survive!  So we headed out with the kids in tow and put a third wire around one side of the dugout to keep the calves on the right side of the fence!  It took some time, but the kids had fun playing on a huge block of cement that had been used for a cistern long, long ago!  I enjoyed taking pictures of the calves that became so curious they suddenly had me surrounded!

Silly cat, instead of having a cattle dog, we have cattle cats!  They follow us everywhere!

I liked the composition of this photo...the "old" buildings all in a row!  They are really are old, but still serving a purpose! 

This is one of my favourite cows, I love her colouring and her fancy hairdo!

A very handsome man, if I do say so myself!!

These two are two peas in a pod!

Grandpa Glen just gave Armin this hat, it is actually from the University of Alabama.  My dad always wanted to get Armin one since he was born.  Dad finally made it back to Alabama, the only place he could buy this hat with an 'A' on it!  Armin loves it! 

I thought Calum was going to cause the majority of my grey hair, but I think more may come from this curious little guy!

 After we were all done we went in the house and had an ice cream float, we invited "Nama" over to share in a yummy orange float too!  And after more debating, Jared decided he better feed the calves a few bales since more rain was in the forecast.  At 10:00pm Jared phoned my cellphone and woke me up from a dead sleep after dozing off while laying with Calum, to see if I could help him outside.  He needed to go through the gate to move the bales he dropped over the fence for the calves, but he wasn't going to be able to go through without the calves getting out!  They had a taste of fresh green grass, and there was an abundance of it just outside of the gate!  So Jared opened the gate and shooed the calves away while I drove the tractor through, and as soon as I was through Jared closed the gate!  Once Jared had the bales moved a good distance away from the fence and the strings cut the calves were happy and I headed back to the house where I got ready for bed and was again fast asleep before too long.  Only I was rudely awoken by the sound of the tractor just outside our window, he decided with the rain that was forecasted he better move the few bales we have left out of the super soggy bale yard and onto some grass!  It was a long night for him and he was tired this morning!

It never seems to end, and as much as he loves the cows I know there are many days where he feels like it is totally not worth it!  Three years ago when Jared bought his road bicycle he had every intention of going for rides at least once a week and sometimes even riding it to and from work.  But here it sits in our basement on his trainer, where he has taken time to ride it once inside for exercise!  The time he took off from work last summer was totally devoted to baling, we did take a weekend to go to Kalispell, which was fun but not near long enough!  This year we were booked to go to Radium with Dave and Char and Jason and Lalainia, but it is during the time when John Deere starts to get busy for harvest and Jared really felt that he should be home to look after the cows while Dave is gone so he wouldn't have to ask Buck to check in on them!  Maybe one day it will get better, but as of this moment it really isn't worth the added stress to our lives, I miss the fun and carefree Jared, the one who could just drop what he was doing when there was no breath of wind and go out to the lake!  As much as he loves each and every cow and as much as he loves being out in nature with them, I see how it is wearing him out and it worries me!