I have a good friend, David, who moved to Montana a couple of years back with his wife. He is the oldest brother of Steven, my helper with the pigs. He and I have discussed several times me sending a heifer out for him to start a herd with. This year he started buying cattle to start a herd. His brothers both decided to head out over thanksgiving to see him and take him a horse. So I decided to send one of my two heifers this year to join his herd and for me to start an extension of my herd in a different state.
She will be making the trip in a week. Yesterday she got all her shots and vaccines and paperwork for traveling. Just like when a person decides to travel to other parts of the world and must get immunizations and such so must animals when traveling from state to state or country to country. I am both happy and sad to see her go. I need to grow my herd size here but I also want to expand and help my buddy grow as well. This also gives me an opportunity to try something new and spread out the risk of farming a little as we will be doing this on shares. I will get a portion of the money she generates and I will purchase any of the heifers that she has to continue to increase my number of momma cows. They will sell any bulls from their herd as well as any she has. I wish her a safe journey and lots of fun on the ranges in Montana. We will definitely have to go see her out there next year!
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| Pearl : Angus x Charolais. Grand daughter of 50 and daughter of Precious. |
My daughters birthday is on Monday. After seeing my brother Martin, her uncle, line dancing at my sister's wedding, she decided she wanted to have a party this weekend for her birthday and have Martin come teach her and her friends how to line dance. So we set up the computer and speakers in the garage and he came down to teach everyone some line dances. I used to know them and do them all back when I was in 4-H and college but I haven't done any for many many years! It was fun watching though!
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| Line dancing in the garage. |
I do not know if I mentioned before but my parents are finally getting the chance to remodel the house and fix it up right for the first time in their lives. I am happy to help when ever I can and I haven't been able to do much due to the really busy year. However, I took a few days off of work to get some priority things fixed before the snow flies!
They have not had a kitchen on the house since June or July so they have been cooking on the grill or the wood fire all summer outside in the covered patio. They also have been heating the house with the wood burner that I grew up with. That was great when we were all younger but now it is to be more for pleasure and backup than a main heating source. When we tore the kitchen and porches off for construction we disconnected all the gas and external water lines from the house. My parents headed to Columbus for the weekend to go to The Ohio State Buckeyes game and stayed overnight there and then went shopping for house supplies on Sunday. So Martin and I found the cut waterline and tied into it with a new plastic line and got it run up and into the old basement on the house for future plumbing work to get the water back on to the cows. We also reworked the piping that was messed up at the oil well and re-plumbed all the gas back into the house.
When I was about 5 years old the first oil wells were drilled on the farms. We converted everything over to natural gas at that time. As a kid I helped dad install all the gas and water lines in the house and learned very young how it all works. I have a decent amount of experience dealing with the various parts and stuff so I took the opportunity to pass some of that knowledge on to my younger brother. In the pic below he is wondering why I am taking pictures of everything. I learned a while ago that you don't always remember where you buried things and a quick pic is an easy way of not forgetting! We had a lot of fun and I look forward to working with him some more in the future. Depending on how the new deep oil wells turn out in the area this may happen sooner than later!
My neighbor and I are exchanging an older feed bin of his for a bunch of the baling I did for him this year. I am having rodent problems in the barn and I need a place to store the supplemental feed for the pigs that the birds, rats, mice, racoons, and anything else that wants to snack on it can't get into it through. So I prepared a pad for some concrete to put it on. The neighbor is going to be pouring concrete in his barn tomorrow so he will be pouring this at the same time. Will be interesting with the rain moving in as the pad is right under the drip line of the barn. I am headed out to form it up after I finish my blog today.
I wanted to post of pictures of the blue stone steps that I was finally able to finish at work.
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| Natural Bluestone steps on toprock |
They curved in a gradual arc all the way down to the pool deck.
A view from the pool deck looking up.
The steps leading up to the top patio were much bigger pieces. The top one was 7' x4' and took 5 guys to get into place. They look awesome though! Some day I want to do something like this at my house. Will need to build a new house first!
Well, I got a lot of stuff to get done today so I better get to it. Have a great day everyone!!
Kenny
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