Multi-task day

I did a little of everything today.

First I weeded more of my strawberry patch.

In the photo you can see I had weeded earlier this month the rhubarb and a few of the strawberry plants .

More strawberry plants can be found under that tall grass. With so much grass the weeding is slow going.

I actually found and ate one strawberry from a plant that had been weeded around before, and a number of those strawberry plants have blossoms.

While weeding I kept an eye on the cattle. They come into the corral between 9 and 10 am and take their siesta break until noon to 1 pm. I wanted to let them into the hayfield and wanted to time it when their siesta was over. I want them to see me open the gate so they know it is okay to go through it. This is kind of working. When I open the gate, and they are nearby, they come right over without me herding them. Whether they are making the connection of me giving them permission to go into a new field is unknown.

All but one heifer immediately went into the hayfield. One had lagged in the corral and she watched the others go into the hayfield. She stood there and watched them as if she couldn't believe her eyes at what was happening. I called her and she came to and through the gate to join the others.

Then it was here and there to check it all out. Cattle would rush here and there to join other cattle in case those cattle had found some "primo" grass to eat.

With a larger and more open area the herd didn't stick as tight together as they normally do as it was easy to see where the others were.


I let the cattle into the hayfield through the north pasture gate. I then closed it as I want them to access water and the river via the middle pasture. This will give the north pasture a rest. All but four cattle knew the middle pasture gate was open once they wanted something to drink. The other four wanted to drink from the water through and came to the fence along the barn.

Later a number of cattle would come to the corral fence. I think they wanted into the corral to take their siesta. I guess I did a really good job imprinting the barn and corral on them.

Later in the afternoon I noticed the two girls from the house south of the ranch were along the fence with a number of my cattle. They have a fruit tree and I saw they tossed the cattle some fruit.

Each of the past several days I have fed my cattle apples that have fallen from my trees. Here are a couple photos of my apple trees loaded with apples. The photos don't really capture the effect of all the apples on the trees.

I painted a second coat of red on the fascia on the garage and the well pump shed. Tammy has been asking me all the time how much I have painted since she left. "Umm... not much."

So I think I have finished painting the fascia on the house, garage and well pump shed. I still had paint left in the can so I decided to finish the can by painting the barn. I ended up painting two walls of the barn's addition. I had to do a little scraping of old paint off the bottom two boards of each wall.

Tammy picked out a pretty red, don't you think? Even though the white trim has not been repainted the red already makes it stand out.

I have found that I didn't buy enough red paint. I had measured the areas to paint and calculated how many gallons I would need. But I found that I went through over two gallons just on the fascia when I only used a little over a gallon of primer on the fascia. Then this is all I was able to paint on the barn with 2/3 of a gallon. I only have two gallons of paint left for the rest of the barn and that is not enough paint. I don't get the newspaper so you'll have to let me know when Home Depot has a sale on their paint again.

Lastly I sprayed weeds. I sprayed two tanks of herbicide today. Yesterday I sprayed a tank over the yard, fruit tree and garden area and part of the NE pasture. I went over the rest of the NE pasture and the part of the north pasture I had sprayed a week or so ago. In addition to catching the weeds I had missed the first time I found quite a few new weeds had sprouted up. Still, I am making progress as it took me three tanks of herbicide to cover what took me 10 tanks the previous time.

Five minutes after I finished spraying it began to rain. We can always use more moisture so I won't complain about the potential of the rain washing the last tank of herbicide from the plants. It could be worse, I could have hay still in my field.

The two neighbors' hay is still out there. The big field is mostly baled with large rounds and small squares. The other guy is having more baler problems. He told me that a bearing broke on his baler last Sunday and that is why he didn't get the hay baled before that day's rain. He was out baling this afternoon but after getting almost a third of the field baled it appeared as if he had more baler problems. On the plus side for these guys is that tonight's rain appears to be light.