Exciting Conclusions

This article of writing is so long overdue that I have to go through what I last wrote so that I don't repeat myself...

Oh dear. I've just updated myself on what my last update was. That was some time ago. If you're still on the edge of your seat with some unresolved issues, allow me to put your mind at ease... prepare yourself for the exciting conclusions to the projects that were underway in the last update which you probably forget.

First of all, the fencing.

THE FENCING GOT DONE!!! (Except one teeny bit).

I could scarce believe it myself, especially since it was November when we finally got most of our stuff packed up from the site. As we were finishing up, we went through an uncomfortable couple of weeks where I thought the rest would have to be done in the spring and we actually just kept going out there and picking away at it. At one point, I had to heave some newly-strung wire out of a snowdrift to staple it up. We had to dress in layers, because as soon as we started pitching posts or stapling, we would sweat, but as soon as we stopped, we'd be shivering again. Not ideal fencing weather, but when you want to put cattle somewhere in the spring and it's already the fall, there is no more time for ideal weather.

We got the leased land and the creek fenced around, and Dad even let me straighten the one fence along the leased land. There were a couple reasons he let me do this. First and foremost was definitely because because it's the leased land and he can avoid association with it. It also runs parallel to the road, so we can't just drive by and be painfully reminded of how crooked it is, like we could with a perpendicular fence. Another reason was that Mom and I didn't have anything to do while he used the payloader to smooth a trail for the fence. Yet another reason was that it was growing dark and we had fallen behind the arbitrary schedule of “oh yeah, I think we'll get this stretch done today.” Dad said that to himself every day, I think, and I suspect his projections were not ever accurate. Hence the November fencing.

Anyway, I'm grateful for the experience all the same. I comfort myself with the fact that, from the ground, not many people will notice it's not perfectly straight. Also, it was pretty dark when I was trying to straighten it. Also, I happen to know for a stone-cold fact that I can't drive a straight line, so it's pretty ludicrous to expect me to direct a straight fence over some big hills in the semi-dark.

Now you must allow me a tangent to demonstrate my lack of straight-line skills, because this is going to be my only segue into this crappy story. That's a pun. You can't appreciate it now, because I haven't told the story yet, but in a minute you'll say “Man-ure funny.”

HA!

So, we had a couple of manure piles laying around this fall, and we pulled the manure spreader out and got to work. I was in the tractor with the spreader and Dad was using the payloader to load it. He would normally just use the other John Deere, but since he's like a kid with a new toy with his new-to-him payloader, we agreed that this would be a great opportunity for him to spend some quality time with his new purchase. Anyway, a lot of the manure we spread around the horse pens and stuff, which goes on pretty thick and requires lots of turning, so you can't really tell so easily how straight the lines are, and you can't go straight for long anyway. But then we got out to the bigger paddocks around the yard, and I pretty much just had to start the spreader up and drive a line until I ran out of poo. By the time we got to these bigger areas, the sun was starting to go down, so I could blame darkness again... just kidding, I can't for most of it. I had plenty of daylight to practice in. I just straight-up can't go straight. Anyway, in the daylight, it wasn't so bad, and I didn't bring that much dishonour to the family, especially since it was not by the road. By the time the sun was going down, though, I was getting into the dishonourable stuff. Right by the road. There's about a ten-acre piece I was spreading in, and it was pretty dark when we were working there on account of it being night-time by then. Another instance of Dad's “Oh yeah, we'll be able to get this done today” assessments. That guy really puts the [first three letters of assessments] in assessments sometimes (sorry; trying to keep this PG because my parental guiders read this first). I'm not dissing Dad here, I'm just pointing out that he often thinks we'll be able to get something done... butt... it will actually take until after dark. See what I did there? Anyway, not going to lie, I was getting kind of lost as I was driving. It was snowing a little as well as poop-dusty, and the slightest snowfall or dustiness looks like a blizzard when the tractor floodlights are on, so it was legitimately hard to see. Also, when it gets hard to see like that, my brain will fill in the gaps with made-up stuff. I don't know why it does this, but it certainly likes to complicate things. I kept thinking I was driving across a line of manure that was already spread, or that maybe I had driven so crooked that I had come full circle and was heading back to the manure pile. I don't know what went on, really, but I knew that my lines would be painfully erratic. “Good thing it's dark,” I thought. “Good thing Dad can't see these awful lines.” I was dreading the next day, when he would surely look out into the paddock as we drove by. When he would surely narrow his eyes. When he would surely ask me why I drove so crooked. The next day, I was ecstatic to discover that it snowed. It snowed just enough to cover the offensively crooked lines of manure. Not even Google Earth will be able to call me out on it now.

That's the end of my tangent, so... fencing. Yep. Anyway. The fence, crooked or not, is all up (except one teeny bit). We even got both ends of the creek fenced through once it got cold enough to freeze over a bit. In my opinion, it was still not frozen enough to go across, but oddly enough, according to the opinion of the man that literally cannot swim to save his life, it was sufficient, and he drove the quad across it to string the wires. Even he was not fully confident in this, though. I know this because he actually got off the quad and tested the thickness of the deep part of the creek by poking one of the T-posts through. That's right: he just had to poke it a bit. I could tell he was still a bit nervous by how fast he drove across it, too. Because if you think you might die by doing something, better do it faster. Gravity won't see that coming, right?

Dad being nervous really is a mark of how thin the ice was. Now it's time for another segue into some ice-related examples of how Dad isn't usually nervous on ice. For this first one, we have to go all the way back to... 1995? I'm not sure what the date stamp is on the home video that we have, but my older brother is pretty little in it. Dad and Brother were driving a tractor on the big 'lake' out back and I think he got a little too close to the spring that feeds the lake. Obviously I don't know the details surrounding it, as I would not have been too cognitive way back then, and wasn't there anyway, but I suspect Dad wasn't even concerned about falling through until he actually started falling through. I don't even know if he panicked then, because he probably knew the water wasn't that deep. I am shocked that Brother doesn't seem to have any lingering trauma from such an event, but lucky for this family, I absorbed a whole lot of it just by seeing the video and imagining the rest in a blown-out-of-proportion way, so the experience didn't go wasted.

Now that you have some insight into my ice-nervousness, let's fast-forward to present day, then minus a couple of months because this update is so late. Dad and I were fixing some fence that was down in a slough this fall. We had procrastinated on it too long, and a few cold days had frozen the fallen wire into the shallow alkali slough. I was thinking, “Welp, better luck next time. The cows probs won't go here anyway.” However, it was an electric wire, and we had to do something, or it would sap all the electricity out of the rest of the fence. Dad started walking across the ice, and I had no choice but to follow, since I would be his only chance of survival if he fell through. We tried a few things to free the wire, but ended up having to use the chainsaw to cut along the wire and pull it up. It's not like the water would be that deep anyway, but if a person slipped under in a horizontal fashion, it would be easy enough to drown, I'm sure. Especially face-down. So that is what I kept imagining. As we sawed through the three inches of weak, slushy ice, I pictured it like a scene in a bad movie. It probably took us half an hour to dig up the wires, and the thin sheet of ice had been slowly sinking away all the time, until a couple inches of water sat on top. I was certain that at any moment it would buckle and we'd fall through. We'd be lucky to stay standing. We'd be lucky to get out alive.

It seems we were lucky, because it was fine and we're both very much alive. Dad rolls his eyes at my fears, but I know we could have died in there.

Fast forward again to even closer to the present day. Just a few days ago, in fact. We chop a hole in a dugout over the winter so that the bulls can water there. We had the truck parked by this, and Dad was sending the dog around to gather the bulls and bring them for grain and a drink. Since it's been colder, the bulls have been coming across the ice, as it's a shorter route to us than around the big slough and dugout. The bulls seem sure that the ice is thick enough.

Dad is positive that the ice is thick enough. I'm pretty at peace with the idea that the ice is thick enough. But when the dog brought eight of the bulls across at once and things started giving great, shuddering cracks, I wasn't so at peace any more. Eight bulls that average eighteen hundred pounds makes over fourteen thousand pounds of beef walking in step in a concentrated area. It was just like in the movies when ice is cracking and big fissures open up to swallow people and trucks and bulls and dogs into watery depths. By that, I mean a few cracks came whizzing up the ice around the truck. I was nervously backing away, trying to convince Dad, via my fearful face, to drive the truck off quickly. No dice. He wasn't concerned. “Wow, does that ever shift the ice,” he said. I was concerned enough for both of us, I think. I had to be, because he wasn't at all.

Now back to the fencing in the creeks that I started this tangent with. Quick recap: nothing bad happened, mostly. In one end of the creek, it was pretty boggy, so the quad was on the brink of getting stuck. We couldn't walk in it, as we'd just sink like crazy, but we managed to make a few trips across with the quad (by 'we' I mean just Dad) and string the four wires. That wasn't the side Dad was worried about though. The risk there was just getting the quad stuck. On the other end of the creek, the water is deeper and wider. There, I think he was actually worried the quad would fall through and be lost in the water. Like I said, he just braced himself, and buzzed across it faster. I didn't love that day of fencing on the water. It was filled with anxiety. It took us pretty much all day to fence the creeks, but we thought we'd do an assessment on the final slough that needed to be fenced. In this case, Dad and I were both guilty of bad assessments. We were both thinking we'd be able to fence across it still, even though the sun was pretty much gone. We badly misjudged how big the slough is, and how overgrown with willows it is. We went in, guns blazing, ready to hammer in some T-posts and chainsaw some willows. I think Dad chopped about four little sticks down, then shut the saw off. “Just. A. Minute. How far do these willows go?” he panted. Cutting willows with a chainsaw is not very rewarding work. They look thin and weak, but they just sort of bounce and jar off the saw blade, so they're really hard to get through, and they always pull the chain off the saw. Also, one willow tree has approximately a bazillion little branches you have to cut. We put down all the tools, and pushed and pried our way across the slough, checking out where the fence line would have to go. What we had thought would be a few dozen yards of ice with a few willows was actually about a hundred yards of ice. Solid willows.

We're going to get a mower or mulcher in. So yeah, that's the (one teeny bit) of fencing left.

Now we're on to the exciting conclusion of the community pasture round-up! There was not much left to be concluded after the first go-round. We just went back a couple times to help the manager scour the plains for some strays. As I had mentioned in my last post, the cows that are there are often bad. The cows that are left after the first round-up attempt are really bad. Like, really bad. We kind of fanned out over the hills again, but this time I stayed with Dad and the dog. There was fresh snow on the ground, and we'd picked up some tracks, so we were following them through the hills. A few tracks turned into a few more, and merged into more until there was a decent number of cattle on the trail we were on. After forty-five minutes of riding, we found them in a little dip between bushes. That stealth approach was as close as we would get to them. They took off over the hills and we attempted to keep tabs on their tracks, hoping they'd find their way to a gate or something. One cow-calf pair was with that group, but not part of that herd, so she kept splitting off and hiding in the bushes. We had a kind of line formed in the surrounding hills, but she still cut sharply back and headed through the riders and in the wrong direction. Two of us tried to close the gap, but weren't willing to break our necks on the slippery slopes, so she got through, and she and her calf split up. I swung wide, like way wide and was attempting to head the calf off. Dad swung wide after the cow, but when she saw him, she made a beeline for his horse and just charged him off. He called it quits after that, but I thought if I could get the calf headed off, we could use him to get the cow in. We were running at an angle towards the fence, but I stayed wide so I didn't spook him through. He met the fence and ran along it, and I was waiting up a ways, ready with my rope, just in case the calf decided to run into my loop, because that's the only way I can catch stuff. He had a fence on his left, me in front, and a whole pasture to go everywhere else, but as soon as he looked in my eyes (or maybe my horse's eyes), his head was up and he was coming. Just like his mother had only a few minutes ago, this calf came charging up the hill at me. I abandoned any notion of roping him, even though it was a temptingly opportune moment to try to get him to run right into the loop. My horse has had calves, and even yearlings, dart underneath him, but I didn't want to involve a rope in that equation. This horse is also not used to being chased, so he doesn't really know how to run away. I assisted him in picking a direction, so the calf just skimmed us as he shot by. He charged into the next bush along the fence, and I heard the wire squeak as he presumably crawled through. I turned back the way I'd come from, thinking that maybe that cow-calf pair were looking like they might suffer from lead poisoning anyway.

The rest of the stray-round-up was about as scattered, but at least things sort of flowed into the right direction, eventually into a gate that led into the alley that would run all the way down to the corral. Most of the time, we were just kind of following the tracks, watching for any that went off the trail, but we couldn't see the cows for much of it. Except this one. Black. Sonofagun. Neighbour and I were trailing a few head (at least, we thought it was a few head), and one of them apparently got tired and stopped in a bush. We were relieved that we had seen her. At first. Then it was an absolute fight to get her out of each and every bush along the way. Some of them were really thick willow bushes that we could hardly see through, let alone ride in. I would hold the horses somewhere on a vantage point, so I could see and yell out where she was if I saw the willows moving, and Neighbour had to be the gentleman and walk in there. It's only right he went; he has way longer legs for running from these kinds of cows in those kinds of bushes. Even if this cow was in a thin little bush, she would circle back around the trees and play ring-around-the-rosy for a while. Proper bushwhacked. Anyway, we did eventually get her, so our efforts were not pointless. We got about thirty head in and called it a day. After the ruckus we made in that pasture, it was unlikely we'd find any more cows wandering.

I think that's all I needed to say for exciting conclusions... I mean, the herd is weaned and everything is in their winter pastures, the machines are cleaned and feng shui-ed into various buildings, and the haybuster has been running for a while now. Just your typical winter ranching stuff.

The reason I've had time to write this update all in one sitting (!!!!!) is because I am home alone! I also have time to drink way too much tea and to imagine worst-case scenarios a lot. Those two might be connected somehow... It has been a busy couple of days.

Anyway, I have a small story to tell, mostly because I know my family is going to read this and they will be interested to know of any little thing that happened that was out of the ordinary. Well, this was out of the ordinary.

I had just gotten in from doing a few small evening chores. The horses are all around home here, so I feed them morning and night. I spent a little longer there because I was petting my mare, who is supposedly eight months pregnant. Up until recently, she wasn't really looking any more pregnant than one of the geldings that's in there, so I've been doubtful. I allowed myself to admire her growing gut today, though. I tried to feel for the stirrings of a foal, but their cecum is kind of back there and if you recall any of my descriptions about a cow's rumen, then you can perhaps appreciate that a cecum is a horse's version of a big, gurgling, rumen. So I was perhaps just stroking the stirrings of her digestion. Anyway. After feeding horses and checking that the water bowls were still working, I just had to lock the ancient dog up in the old chicken coop. It's been so cold these last couple of days, we wanted to do that poor old fella a favour. He's not used to this routine, so if I don't get out there before his old-man bedtime of 4:30 pm or so, I have to go into the barn to find him. He's stone deaf, so I don't try to call him any more, but I didn't realize how deeply he would sleep. Often, when I come across his sleeping form, I think, “This is it. This is the time that I laugh at him and he's actually dead.” He's fourteen. It wouldn't even be a surprise at this point, I just don't want it to be me that finds him. Anyway, this time I wasn't concerned about that, because he was snoring very peacefully. Normally he wakes up when you nudge him, but I was full on shaking him and he would not wake up. I resorted to lifting him a little, but it was dark in there; I couldn't see which end of the black blob was his head, and I didn't want to get snapped at if the old man startled awake. Eventually, he did wake up with a disconcerted grunt, then followed me to the coop. So chores were done; everything had feed and water and a place to sleep.

Since I had made myself waffles for my lunch earlier in the day, I decided to eat something a little healthier for supper. I had it all planned out. Homemade summer sausage, a bit of Miracle Whip (“A sandwich just isn't a sandwich without the tangy zip of Miracle Whip!”), a lot of German mustard, a slice of cheese, and a slice of tomato. Mm mmm. Delightful! And keto! Which definitely makes up for both waffles I ate that afternoon, right? Anyway, I was pretty pumped, because I kind of like food a lot, and I rummaged out a tomato from that mysterious bottom drawer of the fridge that can either hold your wildest dreams or your darkest nightmares. On this occasion, it held both, because I extracted from the midst of some fuzzy, red and black lumps, an unblemished tomato!

Now, I'm just going to up and say it: I talk to myself. I'm not going to make excuses and say it's because I've been alone for a few days now, because in fact, I do it all the time, I just usually have to stop my lips from moving when there are people around. I don't need a psychiatrist. We're fine.

Anyway, I was mumbling away, chipper as I was, when out of nowhere I hear,

“Excuse me? Hello?” I think I had better not dwell on how much he saw me mumbling to myself. I think I'm better off not knowing how clearly he saw my deer-in-the-headlights just-pooped-myself kind of expression through the kitchen window. I had a moment of indecision. When no one else is home and the phone rings around here, I shove something into my mouth so that I can say, “My mouth was full; I couldn't answer it.” This was clearly a situation where that wouldn't work, and yet, the tomato was right there...

No, I didn't do that.

But I did make towards the door, stop when I was out of window-range, and do a detoxifying little hand-wave-jig-dance sort of thing. I would have screamed out loud, but he definitely would have heard me. He probably already thought I was possessed, anyway. Whatever. I answered the door.

“Hi there,” I said, “Dogs! Get back!” I also said, but what I really meant was, “Please bite this person if they come in.” “Hi there,” the guy said. He was around fifty. Slight. Short. I could take him. He seemed soft-spoken, though, so I didn't actually feel threatened. “My car is stuck in the ditch a couple miles away; do you think you could help pull me out?”

I think I asked him if he wanted me to bring a truck. I think that I stumbled in that question enough that he thought maybe I was a buffoon, but really, I wanted to know if a truck would suffice, or if he needed a tractor. In any case, he looked doubtfully at me in all my feminine prowess and asked, “Are there guys around?”

“Nope. Just me. And you already know that the last two yards you passed are unoccupied.”

I didn't say that. Instead I told him I'd go grab a truck and a chain, so that's what I did.

I also took a dog with me. I took the one that sometimes becomes transfixed with his own reflection, because it's a little chilling when he just freezes and stares at something. The reality is, neither of these canines deals death blows, unless you count the ones of the flatulent variety. Anyway, it was pretty uneventful. The guy had been texting and driving (don't text and drive, kids!), but had been fortunate enough to just sort of slide into a pasture approach right by our other yard. It was such a small car, it got its front wheels just over the edge of the approach into some slightly deeper snow and was stuck. Apparently, he'd waited an hour there before some lady was driving by and stopped for him, then they'd driven to our house. As I drove away, he was just crawling along and waiting, it seemed, for me to pass him. He was on his phone again.

Well, this has turned into a sufficiently long update! Since my parents have been away from my presence for a few days now, they will probably be dying to hear my voice even in written format. I had better send this off directly!

Oh wait, there's a P.S. This one is for a friend who is a loyal reader of my posts. In fact, this person has brought up, a few times, my disastrous experience with a toilet facility in Rome. That is not the point, though. The point is, I beat this person in Fooseball. Like, badly. I knocked this person's socks off. I just wanted to let that be known, as this person will flat out lie and say that I was defeated. This person owns a Jeep and cannot be trusted. That's the back story, but here is the personalized message intended for said person:

Bow to me.

That is all.

Bye.