Strait from Snow to Flood!

Well, I ended up working half a day on Sunday moving snow to get properties ready for the new week at work.  Then I woke up to a thunderstorm Monday morning.  We received over an inch of rain melting all of the snow overnight and bingo....FLOOD.

Our house and barns are up on the hill so we don't have to worry about that but the pasture and the fences are down in the bottom.  The fence actually crosses the creek twice.  To give you an idea the creek is usually about 8-10 feet across and about 1.5 feet deep.  Yesterday it peaked at about six or seven feet.  What makes it worse is that once it is deeper than three feet it goes over the banks.  I have only seen it flooded worse than this the day of our wedding.  The water crested at about ten feet that day and completely covered the bottom from the ends of the fields on the other side of the pasture to the bottom of the hill by the barn.

The water crested a foot above the white insulator on the tree.

So today I stayed home from work to do damage control.  The debris washing downstream took out the fence on both sides of the pasture.  We had to wait for the water to come down to three feet before we could reset posts, clean off the wire, and restring it.  Till we did that I had no electric anywhere and the pigs and cows find that out pretty quick.

While waiting for the water to come down enough to fix the fence I went to the auction barn to see if they had any good feeder calves or heifers to add to the herd.  They did!!!  The prices were a lot higher than they were a year ago but I did find one heifer, one steer, and one bull. 

 The pigs wasted no time in introducing themselves.  We unloaded everyone into the shed to let them calm down and get to know everyone.  The one on the left is White Tail.  The bottom half of her tail is perfectly white.  The center one is Thunder.  I believe he is a Charolais.  The one on the right doesn't have a name yet.  He is full Angus.

 Some more pigs coming in to say hello!

Thunder will be our bull for at least this year and next.  I have always wanted a Charolais and once I saw him I wanted to have him.  I originally went to the sale just to get a couple of feeder steers but quickly changed my mind.  I have one bull already but will pinch him to make him a steer as he is related to a couple of his pasture mates.  Thunder will also bring in the color and larger beef frame to the herd.  I can't wait to see his calves!!

The only bonus to buying at the auction, since we do not have a scale on the farm yet, is knowing the exact weight of one or more of the cows.  This allows me to gauge my eye and the weight of the others in the herd.  At first I thought Thunder and my July calves would be close to the same size.  I was wrong.  Thunder weighs 555lbs.  When he stands next to stormy he is definitely smaller.  I am guessing Stormy and his half sister Frosty are somewhere between 700-750lbs.  That means they are gaining about three pounds per day.  That is phenomenal!!! 

Wanted to leave you with a peaceful pic.  I took a walk Monday morning after the rain stopped to relax as I have not done that very much this winter.  I sat down on a log at the top of the hill and just listened to the wind blowing in the trees.  I was very nice!!  Unfortunately it only lasted about a minute before I got a phone call from work.  Oh well, there will be more days coming with the return of spring!!

Thanks and have a great day!

Kenny