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!

oh chute!

So the other day I was saying Dexter's latest thing is getting out of the pasture, right?  A few days ago he escaped and wandered off.  After we located him and with the help from one Constable, and five neighbors later he was back in our pasture.  I really don't understand why all of our animal escape stories are so dramatic!

You remember I was just saying the other day that we want to get rid of Dexter?  I wasn't kidding!  We already put him on Craigslist and someone is supposed to come buy him tomorrow.  We are so tired of dealing with him already!

Yesterday when I went to check on him he escaped again!
And he was staring at me like he's just so innocent!

                               

                                  This is me attempting to put Dexter back in the pasture.  I can't even pretend like I know what I was doing because I didn't.  But hey, it only took me 20 minutes, walking through an area full of tall brushes and trees before he was back in the pasture.  Not bad.

So after talking to people who know what they're doing, the reason why Dexter has been escaping is most likely because we have too small of a herd.  Apparently two girlfriends ain't enough for Dexter.  If the two cows are really pregnant like we think they are, then Dexter is definitely not getting any action at all.  Since he's not getting any action, he escapes because he's not "entertained".  Right now we don't want to get more cows (eventually we would like to but just not right now), and since Dexter is such an escape artist, we really don't have the time to deal with him.  So he has to go!

We finally finished our cattle chute project.  It was relatively easy.  And I think it looks pretty darn good.

Hubby designed and built it himself.  I'm so proud of him.  Though he
did most of the work I did help him a little bit.

From a different angle.

It's one good-looking, well-designed cattle chute, I think.

Big bully

Sorry I really haven't been very diligent lately in updating my blog.  So this post will be a post where we catch up with all the latest farm news.

As of late, Dexter, our bull, has been liking to escape out of whichever pasture we put him in.  I really don't understand why he does that.  I know pasture is always greener on the other side, but EVERY SINGLE DAY?  Come on!  We have made it into a habit to drive by our property everyday to check on him.  And everyday undoubtedly he was in a different pasture than where we left him the day before.  We have been trying to fix up all the fencing, but he always finds a spot to escape somehow.  We are tired of dealing with him, so we are trying to get rid of him.  Anyone interested in buying our registered Dexter bull?

See Dexter?  And you see the other cows on the other side
of the fence?  Yeah, that's where Dexter is supposed to be--
the other side of the fence!

I don't know if you can see this picture very well.  It's not just
a lame picture of dead grass.  If you look closely you can see
some metal looking clips, they're called wire tighteners.  Up
until the time hubby discovered wire tighteners we had been
using fence stretcher to tighten all the barbed wires.  But now
hubby swears up and down these wire tighteners are way better
and easier to use than the fence stretcher.

Fence stays also help keep the barbed wire tight so Dexter couldn't
escape where the fence stays are in place.

Before we get rid of Dexter we are hoping he already got these cows pregnant.
Does it look like she's pregnant?  I've been told she definitely looks pregnant.
What do y'all think?

Different angle...does Blackpearl look pregnant?

We think Peanut Butter might be pregnant too.

I don't know if you noticed, this area used to be our pig pen.
Hubby took the fencing out the other day so we can put
in a cattle chute.

Working on our cattle chute.  Making pretty good progress.
We chose to use wood instead of steel for building our cattle chute
because steel is a lot more expensive.  You're looking at into the
thousands of dollars using steel.  We're using wood and it will
only cost us a few hundred by the time we're done with this project.
We figured we only have dexter cows they're not as big as the
regular-sized cows, so we're taking our chances and hoping it will be fine.

Working hard or hardly working?

The new and improved

The new and improved I'm referring to here is our Christmas tree.  You remember the "Christmas tree" that we had last year?  It really wasn't a tree.  And we still don't have a tree this year.  But I got a little more creative this year.  What do y'all think?

I stacked up all the presents this year to make it
look kind of like a Christmas tree.  I think it looks
pretty good.  I'm so proud of myself!

Christmas was nice and quiet for us and it's perfect!  Not too many presents but just enough.  Christmas is such a wonderful time of the year.