Had a leisurely day today. Been kind of recovering from lack of sleep yesterday!
Well, I promised you all a funny story for several days now, so here goes...
About two or three months ago, Aaron was at work over at the Schwebach's Farm. Nathan was at work. Jordan and I were the only ones home (go figure). I got up and around and happened to look out our back window. I saw out of the corner of my eye our main milk cow Ebony grazing in our back yard. I hollered to Jordan, "Get up NOW! We have loose cows!!!" This is never a good situation because they always manage to destroy our fruit trees located just outside the pens. We will never have fruit on our trees since they always manage to get out once my trees start looking good!
I was still in my pajamas when this started. By the way, I threw my back out the day prior to all this. I slipped on the first pair of shoes that I could find (which just happened to be flip-flops) I ran out the back door and tried herding her back towards the pens. As I look over, sure enough, the gate is standing wide open. Now mind you, at this time, we had two large milk cows, a heifer, two steers, one extremely LARGE bull, a huge billy goat, two milk goats, three baby goat girls and one baby buck all running amuck in our yard. About this time, Jordan stumbles out of the house and is trying to help me round the animals up. It's about this time that I realize this was the morning I had to take our cow in to the vets office at 8:30. So for all intents and purposes, we should have gotten up, milked everyone, fed and watered everyone, hooked up the trailer, loaded the cow up and be ready to leave by 8:00. It is now 6:45. It took Jordan and I till 7:30 to round everyone up (except the bull). Remember I told you I was wearing flip-flops? As I'm trying to drag the cows back to the pens, they are half bucking wrenching my hand trying to get away while dragging my feet through every single thorn bush in the state of New Mexico! my back was getting jostled with every lurch from the animals. We still hadn't milked or anything yet.
The bull was a different matter all together. He is not a "tame" bull and he did NOT want to go back in the pen. Every time we tried to get him by the gate, Jordan would open it up and the cows would push their way out. They would go running away from us. We ended up with one large cow and the heifer standing in the chicken coop just hanging out. The goats would slip out every chance they got. I finally got really sick and tired of this bull not going in. I got so mad at him, I actually dared him to come after me! When this all started, I was kind of scared of him. But the longer he took to get back in the pen, the madder I got. I finally lost all my nervousness (or my marbles according to Jordan) and I just picked up a shovel and invited him to come after me. He was pawing the ground and shaking his head trying to show me he was the boss, but he definitely had another thing coming! I took the shovel in my hand and when he started tossing his head around challenging me, I let him have it! I whacked him right between the eyes with the shovel and he kind of shook his head in a daze. If he could've talked he probably was thinking...I can't believe she just did that! Jordan was really worried for my safety, but to be honest, he should have been worried about the bull's safety! I was pretty ticked off by this time.
I called the vet and let them know we had a bull on the loose and that I couldn't bring the cow in yet. They rescheduled me for 10:30. It was a good thing they did because I don't think anyone would've wanted to mess with me that morning.
The bull finally walked over to an empty feeder and stuck his head in. Jordan waited till he walked completely in the feeder and he slammed the front of the feeder closed. I was terrified at this point because we still had to latch the gate closed on it and if he decided to go bezerk, I was afraid he might come crashing through and plow right over Jordan. Jordan was quick as lightning and he latched it shut. The bull didn't do a thing. He was busy munching on some loose alfalfa on the ground inside the feeder. At this point, we went and got some chains. We attached them around the frame of the feeder and hooked it to our tractor. I slowly hauled the feeder (bull and all) all the way into the pens. The bull wasn't sure what was going on, but thankfully he didn't decide to explode! After I pulled the feeder inside the field, Jordan let me drive the tractor out and shut the gate. We walked back into the pen (shovel still in hand) and we opened the gate to let him out. The silly thing just STOOD there! He finally came out of the feeder five minutes later. What a fiasco!
I was so proud of my Jordan for thinking on his feet! At first, he panicked saying, "Call the Schwebachs, call the Heckendorns! Call them all and get them over here to help us!" I told him to calm down and that we couldn't call any of them since they had farms of their own and they were in the middle of their morning chores as well! He settled down and came up with the solution himself. He became the man of the farm that day!
By the way, we did make it to the vet's by 10:28!
That's enough of my wacky stories for tonight! I pray for all my friends and loved one tonight. God bless and sleep well!
A real scary looking bull if you ask me. Love you, dad
ReplyDeleteNot so scary looking after he ticked me off!!!
ReplyDelete