It's another girl

So the little calf that Peanut Butter just gave birth to is a girl, it's been confirmed.

This little calf is another offspring of Dexter the bull.  All Dexter had given us were girls.  From what we understand with the Dexter breed, the younger bulls usually breed boys and older bulls breed girls.  So that's probably why Dexter had only bred girls for us.

She's definitely a girl.

Being shy hiding behind the pallets or playing peek-a-boo?

Our little herd of 6 cattle

The late bloomer

We went over to our old property to work on some stuff and to check on the cows the other day.  Hubby asked, "why are there 6 cows instead of 5?"  After taking a better look, there was a new calf and it was trying to nurse from his/her momma, Peanut Butter.  All along we were expecting her to give birth to a calf like a few months ago but when that didn't happen we thought Peanut Butter loss her baby or something.  Needless to say we were very very surprised when we saw the calf the other day but we are so happy and excited to see this little calf.  I don't know what it is about little calves they're just so cute and you get the same excitement every time you see it no matter how many times you've already seen it (at least for us it is the case).  We are guessing the calf was probably born the same day when we went out to the property.

We haven't figured out if it's a boy or a girl yet.  So no name for this calf as yet.

Meet the newest edition of our Dexter herd.

No name for this little calf yet

Isn't she cute?

Harvey

This post is about a month late.  I'm sure everyone by now has already heard about Hurricane Harvey (among other major named hurricanes and tropical storms this year) and the destruction it has caused, particularly in Texas.  Harvey is no friend to Texas.  It has caused so much damages and devastation for so many people.  For most people in my area, as always, we suffered a lot of flood damages.  I personally know of quite a few people who just barely got over the last flood we had in our area and finally put their homes back together, and wham it got hit again 15 months after the last flood in May of last year.  I know of quite a few houses in our area who got water all the way up to their second floors.  We had A LOT of water dumped on us in just a matter of a few days.  Even more than last year...A LOT more...It was so insane!

Fortunately, after we got flooded last May we decided not to rebuild on our old property.  Luckily we weren't living there when Harvey came because this time the water went up way higher than last time.  We only got 3-4 feet of water inside our house last May.  But this time it went all the way up to the roof.  And before Harvey moved into our area we moved all of our cows to a friend's property where it was high and dry so our herd of cattle was safe.  Thank goodness!

If you look closely you can see the water line
That's how high the water went up this time.
This picture was taken 2-3 days after Harvey
left our area and before the water receded.

Looks like the water actually lifted the whole house up.
The house definitely got shifted.

This is where our shed used to sit

But after the flood we found it in our barn.  This big ole' shed
floated into our barn.

Looking at our shed (now sitting in our barn) from a different angle

Inside our old house.  Ceiling and insulation is ruined

Horse stall didn't survive the flood

Play set and picnic table in our front yard,
but floated into our front pasture

There was a water tank attached to the water pump that was
sitting on top of this shelf/stand before the flood.  But it
floated away.  We later found it in one of our pastures.

Our neighbors down the street had to rip out their homes and
throw away all of their belongings, once again.  So sad.

There are areas where the county was not able to go to and pick
up all the debris and trash from the flooding.

So they set up a temporary dump site for people to take their flood
debris and trash to 

Look at the amount of trash and debris people dumped.  Big
piles after big piles of them! 

A day we will never forget

Exactly one year ago, our house was flooded and we were rescued by boat.  Ever since then our lives have not been the same, and we have been displaced.  We still think about this experience and are still counting our blessings.

Today is the anniversary of our little "tragedy".  And coincidentally we are pouring concrete for the foundation of the new house that we're building at our new place.

Below are some pictures of the progress we're making with the building of our new home.

They finished putting in all the plumbing earlier this week.

Water well guys were out there yesterday to drill the well.

Concrete trucks after concrete trucks coming to pour concrete this morning.

Concrete boom is so cool to watch.

Concrete guy doing their thing.

Now smoothing out the concrete and making it look all nice and smooth.

We know how to work, and we know how to play

We had some pretty nice weather last weekend.  So we went out to our property to do some work.  Let me tell you, our kids are not always the most behaved.  Life is not always rainbow and unicorns. The kids sometimes whine and fight.  They don't always enjoy doing chores.  But...but yesterday, we all went out to the property and worked.  They actually did a good job and it's one of those little moments where your world seemed perfect!  (well, at least for that short moment anyway :))

And on the side note, we have finally named our little calf... scroll down and find out what we named her.

It was a beautiful day to be outside enjoying the nice weather and cow-watching.

Riding the four-wheeler around and picking up sticks.

Mowing the lawn.

Weed whacking

A friend of ours suggested naming our baby girl Rainbow because she's a blessing after the flood.  We can't think of a better fitting name for her.  And we shall name her Rainbow!  Rainbow is such a cute little calf.

Baby time

We JUST went to check on the cows...and as we were hoping, there was a calf running around right next to Blackpearl!  By now, we can kind of tell when the cows are very close to giving birth...not only is their "back side" kind of swollen, Blackpearl's udder was getting full, the milk was coming in already.  So we have been going to check on her everyday for the past few days and today I guess little baby girl decided she was ready to meet the world!  And yes, it's a girl!  We actually wanted a little heifer so this is perfect!  She's a little cutie.  I'm glad she doesn't look like her dad, Dexter!

So this time around, Blackpearl is wayyyyy over-protective of her calf.  We think it has something to do with the fact that she loss her baby about the same time last year.  Her baby was just a few weeks old when it died during the flood.  So this time around maybe she's worried that she would lose her baby again so she is being extra protective.  We shook the bucket full of cattle cubes and usually she would be the first one to run to us.  But today was different, she wasn't there for her treat and at that point we kind of knew she probably had her baby.  

It appears to us that she was probably just born this morning.

Look at how cute she is!  We have yet to name her.

I promise, just one more picture...just can't get enough of that cuteness!

Anniversary

I can't believe it's been almost a year since we got flooded and displaced.  At the end of last May, our home and small farm were flooded and we have been without a home and living in temporary places since then.  As mentioned in my previous posts, after thinking about it we could not bring ourselves to go back to live on our old property due to the emotional trauma that we had experienced during the flood.  We still love that property A LOT and still wish we could move back but we just couldn't do it.  With that said, we finally purchased another piece of land in the same general area.  And this time it's high and dry!  It's a beautiful piece of property and we will gradually start our farm back up again.

This is our new property, it's still full of trees, tall grass and brushes, and vegetation.

We started clearing the land yesterday.  And no, we are not doing all the clearing ourselves.  Our small tractor would probably take forever to do the job so we hired it out.

This track hoe is a beast!  It's actually quite fun to watch it work.  It pulls all these big trees from out of the ground like it's nothing.

The land clearing guys came early yesterday and started working on clearing the land.  They were making great progress.

Future home site

Future site for the pond.  The reason of having a pond is two-fold.  1. Naturally there are some low spots on this property where water pools up when it rains.  So by digging a pond we would have a place for the water to run off to naturally.  And 2. We are planning on stocking the pond with fish, which then will provide us with some fun family fishing and some fish to eat.  I see some good ole' Fish Fry in the near future!

Shoo fly

Warm season is here, so are the flies.  Flies like cows a lot!  They won't leave the cows alone.  So the other day we went out to the property to spray them for flies.  Black Pearl was being a pain in the butt, as always.  She is always so skittish and suspicious of us so we put her through the chute so we could keep her contained and have her sprayed.

Black Pearl getting sprayed for flies.

We also learned that it's important to keep the flies away from the cattle.  Whatever it takes, whether you use the spray, or oral medicine etc, you try to keep the cattle flies free because between the flies sucking the cattle's blood and them constantly having to wag their tails around to shoo the flies away your cattle could actually have a hard time gaining weight or they might even lose weight.

Getting sprayed for flies is not her favorite thing to do.  But it's a necessary evil.

Reunited

So after being "in jail" for the past two weeks these two were finally reunited!  It was time for him to get weaned off.  He is 7 months old after all so it was time.

Jelly "udder-ly" missed his mom.  The second we put him back in the pasture
he went for her udder.  But of course he didn't get anything.

After two weeks her udder is all dried up and there was nothing there for Jelly to drink.
It was a weaning success!

Sayonara

Loaded Dexter up in the trailer.
Sayonara!  Adios!  Zai jian!  Chao!  Bye-bye!  Hope you'll have fun with
your next new adventure, Dexter!

We fixed up some more fencing.  Have you heard of a tool called Hog's
ringer with spring before?  This tool is the greatest invention ever!
I asked hubby how he knew about it.  He said he's just always known
about it as if everyone should know what this thing is.  Well, seriously why
 would a city girl know what a hog's ringer with spring is?!  But this tool is
so awesome and it makes it so much easier to tie the tension wire down to
the chain link fence!

This is how we work!

Jelly is getting big, he's about 6 or 7 months old now.  We really need to wean him off and take him in to get castrated.  We were going to do the castrating ourselves, but we found a vet in the area would actually do it for a very good price.  So we're just going to take Jelly in to get castrated so we don't have to deal with it.  We're also going to wean him off.  So we separated him from Peanut Butter yesterday.  In the next 2 weeks or so we are probably going to hear a lot of back and forth mooing between these two.

Jelly is getting big!  And look at those little horns growing out.

Jelly is saying good-bye to his mama before the weaning process begins.  

                                    

                                                           Let the mooing begin!