And On the Farm they had a Dog..................

I've decided to go through my blogs and pick a few favorites and re post them.  Here goes....

Have you ever had one of those moments when you do something stupid and then you look around to see if anyone was watching?  Well, this is one of my stupid moments. 

When my boys were little, we got a dog for them.  Being the wonderful mother that I am, I wanted to name him something the little guys could easily say.  My boys favorite book at the time was of animals and the sounds they make.  The sound for the dog was arf.  So that became the name of the dog, Arf.   I thought it was very clever, and a good name, if I do say so myself.  We have had many dogs here on the ranch, and with dogs, comes issue.  One issue this dog had was that he would chase cars, and bark at anyone walking by (come to think of it, we have that issue with our current dogs).  Anyways, our farm is located 4 miles from town, and our road has a lot of traffic, in the form of cars, walkers, and bikers.  On this one particular summer day, the boys and I were outside soaking up the sun, when Arf starting barking.  I yelled at him to quit, and looked up to see what he was barking at.  It was a lady on her bicycle, out for a nice ride in the countryside.   Before I knew it, Arf was headed down the driveway after her.  Now, I was getting pretty tired of his chasing habit, and barking at everybody going by, so I was going to teach him a lesson!  I headed down the driveway after the dog.  So here is the scene;  One bicycler peddling along, one dog running towards the biker, barking,  and one lady (me, myself, and I) also running down the driveway yelling Arf, Arf, Arf, all the way.  I'm not sure who was scared the most, the dog, who took off in a different direction, or the fast peddling bicycler being chased by a dog and a barking lady.   But I felt pretty good, because the dog stopped chasing the bicycler, I did not know this person, so life was good.  My first mistake was telling the family what I did (yep, I do seem to have a big mouth).  It then became the favorite story of my brother-in-law.  He, in turn, would repeat this story when ever he had a chance. (I'm sure most of the town had heard about.)  So this brings me to the "Rest of the Story".  As I said in my "about me", we grew potatoes in the past.  Every spring, we hired people to help us with the sorting and shipping, plus every available family member helped when they could.  So one day, my wonderful brother-in-law was helping out, and decided to share the "Arf Story" with the crew.  As he finished, and everyone was hysterically laughing, one of the crew, looked up and said, "that was me!"  I just about died..........

So the moral of the story is........think before you name your dog, and if you do something stupid, don't tell others about it!!  (yep, like I am doing now)

No, you don't look fat...but could you stand on this and hold it down....

With my mom living with us now,  I am not out helping my Farmer as much as usual, so I find that I have less to blog about.  But, all it takes is just helping my Farmer for one day, and boom, I have something to blog about.  I find it pretty funny, cuz if I get my camera out or I smile at something he did, he just looks at me and says "you're gonna blog about that aren't you".   Yep!  
So here goes......If you were following me last fall, we put in a new pivot and we have a lot of stuff (like one hundred years of accumulated items that someone might have needed some day)  that needs moved in order for the pivot to make the complete circle around.  Now that the snow is gone and things are thawed out, it is time to start that process.  (And to our advantage, the price of scrap metal is up!)  So as we are loading things up onto the trailer to ship it off to the scrap yard, one item is a little heavy, making the forklift a little light on the back end so the steering wheels are not always touching the ground, which makes it a little difficult for my Farmer to maneuver where he wants to go.  So, he hollers at me to stand on the back of the forklift to hold it down.  Now my first reaction is Sure, I can do that.  But than as I start to stand on it, I think  I sure hope this doesn't work!  But it did.  And that really boosts a girls ego, let me tell ya.  You know I find it kind of funny, that when I ask my Farmer if an outfit I am wearing looks OK, he absolutely will not answer me, afraid of getting accused of calling me fat.  BUT, he doesn't even think twice about asking me to sit or stand on something to hold it down.   Now it might be just me, but that right there is saying something about my weight.  But I can live with it.  I know that I am losing weight being on the 90 day health challenge and one of these days my Farmer will need my weight and I will not weigh enough so I will have to put rocks in my pockets.  HA!  But I love helping my Farmer anyway I can (usually), and if it's being the dead weight  anchor or the steadying factor, that's what I'll do.  After all, that's Livin' the life, the Farm life that is................

Don't worry, we're here for ya.............

Cows amaze me.  They are such funny, sometimes stupid, yet fascinating creatures.  And calving season seems to bring all of these different characteristics out in them.  Yesterday, we had a heifer that we were watching, because we knew she was very close to calving.  (if you are wondering how we knew, read how to tell when a cow is ready to calve in Ready, set, calve)  We were giving her 1 hour.  If she did not have it by then, we would bring her in to the corral to help.  So we went about doing other things, like assisting another cow and calf already in the corral and feeding the yearling heifers, but still keeping an eye on the heifer.  Well, I kept my eye on the heifer.  I carry with me a small set of binoculars so I can spy on the cows from far away.  (I tend to worry a little more then my Farmer does)  So, my Farmer is doing the chores, and I am trying not to constantly watch her, when all of a sudden, there rose such a clatter, I raised up my glasses to see what was the matter.  (sorry, kind of had fun with that)  And what do I see, but all of the cows running towards the heifer.    I started freaking out, yelling, somethings wrong, she's in trouble, we need to go check!!  My Farmer is saying, it's fine, don't panic.  Well, I convinced him to go check on her.  And, of course, he was right.  Nothing was wrong.  The heifer had had her calf.  But evidently when she seen the object move that had just came out of her, she let out one heck of a beller and it alerted all of the other cows to come check things out.  And they did.  All 90 some head of them!  And I'm sure when the older cows seen what was going on, they were like, "What is your problem!"  "I've delivered ton's of times."  "It's no big deal."  But what amazes me, is that they heard the heifer beller, knew that it had a sound of urgency and went to assist.  What also amazes me is us humans.  We left the heifer and calf alone so they could bond, (she was still very unsure of the calf).  An hour later we drove by with my in-laws and stopped to see how the animals were doing.  We sat there and watched as the new little calf slowly got up on all four hooves, a little wobbly, but he was standing.  Now, we have all seen this a thousand times.  But we all got so excited and cheered when he finally stood, it was really funny.  Crazy huh?  Four adults, clapping and cheering, yelling "yea, he's up!"  But I thought to myself, it doesn't matter how often you see God's wonders at work, it's important to always be amazed.