In the hayfield

Today, Thursday, was the day the cattle could be let into the hayfield. It has been a week since I started them on the bloat blocker licking blocks. Today I only found 1/5 of two blocks left, and the other two blocks are completely gone. Wow. I need to buy more blocks.

I waited till the cattle were nearing the end of their late morning siesta. I bought a half dozen of loafs of French bread. A few cattle ate some pieces; other wanted to pull the full loafs out of my 5 gallon pail and shake them around; others had no interest in the bread but wanted to be part of the action.

Twenty-four of the twenty-eight cattle crowded all around me. Most are getting big so it felt at times I was in a sea of cattle, especially as many would mill around. While most of the cattle were content to look-but-not-touch, a few pushed right against me.

I had a pair of pliers (as I had to fix a gopher trap I bent when 'dispatching' a gopher today) and a few unopened goat's beard seed pods at the bottom of my pail. Dan's all brown steer/heifer (someday I need to check what sex it is) stuck its head into the pail to try to reach the items at the bottom of the pail. No, it did not get its head stuck in the pail, but it was not for its lack of trying.

Once the bread was dispersed, with half of it ending up on the ground, I walked over to the hayfield/south pasture gate. The herd followed me. Once I opened the gate four immediately stepped through and started to munch on the tall grass. The ones behind pushed until all were through the gate except for two cattle; one of mine and one of Dan's. They stood and looked from along the fence a short distance from the gate. I wasn't sure if they were kind of slow, or if they were waiting to see if the others got in trouble for being in the hayfield. After a few minutes, when I moved into the hayfield to gather open goat's beard seeds the final two joined the herd.

As usual with a new place the cattle were torn between eating and exploring. The herd wanted to stay together but some wanted to eat more than explore, and others, visa-versa. After a bit the herd split into two equal numbers seemingly based on the desire to eat or explore. One of my heifers walked over to me and licked my hand before going back to eating. I guess she wanted to thank me for letting them into the hayfield.

From the road the field doesn't look like it has any goat's beard weeds. Walking in the field I found how wrong that was. Lots of open goat's beard seeds scattered throughout the field in amongst the tall grass. As it is late in their growing season the weeds didn't have the oomph to grow taller than the surrounding grass.

I tried to gather the seeds before the cattle walked by and knocked them to the ground. I hadn't planned on gathering seeds and didn't have a bag. I had to use my 5 gallon pail. I ended up with enough seeds to almost fill a plastic grocery sack.

Shortly after I let the cattle into the hayfield, I had to get over a feeling of "Oh no! Cattle are in the hayfield!". In the past I never had Dan's or my cattle in the hayfield as each year the hayfield never re-started its growth after the hay cutting before we sold the cattle at auction.

With cattle in the hayfield I had remove my pocket gopher traps. Cattle like to scratch on the marking sticks and end up knocking them over. That already happened to one of the sticks before I could gather them all. For over a week I had been setting a trap and the pocket gopher filling it with dirt. I guess the gopher "won" this round as I had to pull the trap before he slipped up and got caught.

I see plenty of mounds of dirt in the north and middle pastures, so the pocket gopher traps will be put to use.

Early this evening I heard whooping and hollering down by the river. I went to check and found five early-20s men floating in the river on inner tubes. A good thing to do as it is very hot here. Our high temperature today was 86 F. The guys were all in a good mood. One said to the others, "I feel so high from smoking that weed."

I watched until they floated out of site down the main/middle channel. I was nice; I made a comment about it being a good day to float the river. I refrained from standing on a high river bank overlooking them and asking, "Can you squeal like a pig?", as was said in the movie, "Deliverence".

This evening I finally finished weeding my garden. "Finally" is the word. I now have to weed my strawberry patch and water the garden, fruit trees, and bushes. With no rain, low humidity (in the teens), sun, and hot temperatures in the mid to upper 80s, the ground is dry. I can start to hear some grass crackle when I step on it.