Time to gather...

Time to call all the cattle home and batten down the buildings...
Fresh straw is piled and loads of hay brought in...
The news mentioned "El Nino" this morning and even they sounded worried...

I've been missing two of my cattle for a couple of weeks. I got lucky last evening and spotted one on a ridge a couple miles away. I hurried down with a bucket of grain and the trusty mule and found her in a neighbors pasture. She saw me...the bucket of grain and was quick to follow me all the way home. As long as I stopped to let her catch her breath and shake a little more grain in the back of the mule. As I was coming in the home gate, she saw her buddies she's been missing for these last weeks and started bawling her greeting. Then she forgot about the grain and ran ahead of me heading down the lane to the gate that leads her to her own back pasture. So I went to bed...worrying about the last lost cow with her calf at her side.

I said a little prayer to my buddy upstairs to please make this last cow easy to find. Went to bed and worried about it most the night.

As I was leaving for work driving out my gate...I see a calf standing on the road west of my place. I could see a number of black cattle in the ditch and some calves crossing on and off the highway. I went to chase them back in.

As I approached, I can see the calf standing in the middle of the road is my lost calf with the yellow tag and looking at me along with several other big cattle was my last lost cow. Hallelujah! I hurried around back to my house and jumped on the mule. Grain in the bucket and out I went. She was only a short distance in a near pasture away and this would be a piece of cake.... if she remembered how nice grain tastes.

While all the other cattle started bolting from the looks and sound of the mule heading toward them..she just stood and blinked. I raised the bucket and shook a little in the back of the mule.
Yup.. She remembered and she was on a dead run...calf in tow. I took it slow into my yard and down the run to the other cattle. She did the same beller at her buddies and forgot the grain, just happy to be home!

Its happening fast and I can feel it in my bones...

How Jack-0-Lanterns began...

losing spots...

So very tiny and fragile and what could be a better place for an orphan, but a place that serves fresh goats milk...


Changes and growing up, her first few weeks were very pampered....she even went to work with me. She was 1 day old when the unfortunate event happened....and we don't speak of it.
She has decided long ago that the dogs were harmless and she actually likes getting in on the action on occasion. The dogs on the other hand are very gentle with her, which really surprises me. She can't weigh 25lbs and yet Atticus is closing in on 200 pretty quickly. He's the one who takes more abuse from the little girl, as she likes hopping on his back and chasing him around...Tess isn't quite sure if its all that cool, but is very calm with her.
Now to see how long she stays around...as I have no intent that she will be a family pet, but if she's a smart girl she can sure come home anytime the weather is raging or hunting season is upon us. Nature will call someday and off she'll go, but in the meantime, she's always standing by at milking time and waiting for her nice fresh bottle of goats milk. She follows me every night doing chores and I take her out in the field for walkabouts....just so she knows how to crawl under fences and watch out for traffic. I've noticed every evening now a nice bunch of deer coming closer and closer to my house and smelling and listening. For now, she thinks she might be a dog, but soon I imagine she'll decide for herself.