Cattle behaving

The cattle have behaved since their jailbreak.  On Friday I was sore from the dental work to prepare for my crown so I didn't get to fixing the jailbreak area until Saturday.

I didn't want the cattle see me do the work as they are very curious as to what I do and often come when I am working or else after I am done to check out my work.

The cattle came towards the river side of the pasture before I got all my tools and material staged along my fence to go over and fix the fence along the river on Wyatt's property.

So I had to wait until they got bored and drifted off.

Momma stared wistfully at the taller grass on the other side of the fence.  Baby is next to her.

I had a few cattle who wanted to sniff or lick my clothes.

The three cattle in back are my cattle.  60 and 70 are the flighty steers.  Notice they have their ears back until they relaxed a little bit.

I got the fence fixed and improved in a few spots.  I never had cattle cross at the deep part of the river's bend, but there is always a first time for everything related to cattle.

Garden failure

This happened before I went to North Dakota.  I don't want you to think I tried to plant a garden this late in the year!

I planned on having a garden this year.  I hadn't had a garden for several years now and the grass grew in the old garden spot.  After I used Bob and Jan's rototiller to dig their garden I came down to dig my garden.

For the past month I had laid plastic and tarps over the spot where I was going to have a garden.

When it came time to remove them to dig the garden I found the black plastic killed the grass while the blue tarps did not.  Unfortunately I had more blue tarps than black plastic.

I mowed the grass then started to rototill.  The grass roots were dense and the ground was harder than I expected.  After a number of passes to break up the ground I looked down and saw lots and lots of grass roots.

 Healthy looking grass roots.

Very healthy looking grass roots.  Too healthy looking.  I lost my strawberry garden because I couldn't keep the grass roots out.   So I threw in the towel and quit roto-tilling.  I will have to find a way this Summer to kill the grass and its roots.  Then next year I will have a garden.

Once I quit roto-tilling the garden Daisy came and played in the freshly dug dirt.  Follow this link to her blog to see her in action.

http://tallpinescat.blogspot.com/2013/06/in-garden.html

Pasture tree

A photo of a tree in the north pasture the other evening.

Not the most fun of days

First, I had a dental visit.  Wednesday's lunch resulted in a tooth problem.  I thought a large filling had broken or chipped off near the gum line on a molar.  The toughest food item I ate was broccoli.  The $86 dental visit discovered a small piece of the tooth had broken off up there.  Apparently fillings don't flex and over time due to stresses of eating, and expansion and contraction from hot and cool items, large fillings can cause fractures and breakage on a tooth.

The fix: a crown.   After removal of the large filling and building up the tooth to support the crown.

Toss in a dental exam and cleaning, etc. since this is a new dentist.  (I haven't been to a dentist since 2003?  2004? 2005? and my previous dentist may have retired as I can't find him.

Cost: over $1500. 

Yah. 


Then my bicycle needs a new freewheel.  I bought what I thought was the correct item but when I got home I discovered that I had forgotten I changed a wheel last year when the rim broke and the new wheel does not have the same type of freewheel.  And I don't have a tool to remove this type of freewheel.

After the crown-prep dental visit tomorrow, I will have to visit the bicycle shop again.


Then in the evening... my neighbor Wyatt came over.  A bunch of cattle were on his property down by the river.

*sigh* 

So I had to herd 15 head of cattle back home through the trees and tall grass.  Six of the herd were still in my pasture so I couldn't leave the gate open.

The cattle were pretty calm.  I brought some grain in a bucket but that didn't interest them too much.  They milled around me but wouldn't follow me.  I start to try to herd them but then a deer ran off and the cattle got excited by my herding and the deer and ran back to the river.

I was able to herd them through the trees over halfway to the pasture before they came out of the trees to the grass.

The grass was tall but the cattle headed on their own towards the pasture.

Then they stopped.  I had to herd them until they got close enough for them to see the six cattle still in the pasture.

Then I herded them along the fence to the gate.  The gate is a small four to six width.  In the past I had trouble getting cattle to actually go through this gate.   The only trouble I had this time was that the six cattle wanted to come out while I tried to herd the 15 cattle through the gate.  The cattle started to get agitated and then three of them made a break away from the gate.

Wyatt was helping me herd by driving his truck in the background.  He cut off the three cattle and turned them around while I got the rest of the cattle through the gate and way from the gate inside the pasture.  Then I went back and herded the three cattle through the gate.

The cattle once they were back in the pasture.  They were calm and followed me across the pasture until I left it and returned home.
 

.

While I was hot and sweaty from herding the cattle - and itchy from walking through the tall grass that is beginning to release their seeds and pollen - I had to figure out how the cattle got out of the pasture.

The answer: the cattle went from the island across the river to Wyatt's property.  The simple fence I had maintained on his property had eroded in a few spots from the high water this Spring and fallen down.  Even though the cattle have plenty of tall green grass in the pasture, the spot where the fence fell was enough for the bored cattle to get an itch to go on a trip.  Before it got dark I laid a bunch of dead tree branches at the spot until I can do a better job tomorrow of fixing the fence.

On the island

The river is slowly going down.  Once again, the cattle discovered the island.  They have lots of tall green grass in the pasture, but you know... "The grass is greener..."

Return to MT

Sunday Tammy and I drove back to Montana.  It had rained overnight, and between the sound of the rain (especially hitting the downspout), the train whistles in the valley, the birds chattering, and her restless legs, Tammy didn't sleep much during the night.  I drove the entire distance so she was able to sleep with her snuggie and favorite pillow several times during the drive.

It wasn't raining in the morning when we left but as you can see we were headed for rain.

The rain wasn't heavy and it ended by the time we got to Montana.  I had tightened the screw for the windshield wipers on Tammy's minivan and this tightening held all the way home so we didn't have any wiper problems this trip.


Lots of man-camp buildings along the road.

Man-camp type of buildings are even located next to rundown buildings along the highway.

Target Logistics are big builder and operator of man-camps.

Lots of oil wells along the highway.

Oil drilling.

One of many trucks.

I took the new highway bypass around Williston.  Tammy's GPS Garmin insisted I turn around as it had no clue the highway existed.  It thought I was driving across a field.

In addition to the many mancamps, there were lots of places whose purpose was to park trucks when not running, even if it was the middle of nowhere.

Montana.   This photo was taken 10 minutes after I cleaned the windows during our one gas stop.  Naturally a big fat bug committed suicide right in my field of vision.  I had to stop and clean it off because it was too distracting.

Bug splat

I saw bicyclists only in Montana.  I counted 10 bicyclists heading east, one bicyclist heading west, and two fully loaded bicycles parked against a bar in a small small town in Montana.

Scattered shower

An old church on the Fort Belnap reservation.

Bear Paw Mountains

Rocky Mountains...

With no problems, and less traffic on the road, we made good time and did the trip in 10 1/2 hours, an hour less than when we drove to North Dakota.

Once we reached the ranch I saw four cattle in the hayfield.  After parking at the house I went out to herd the cattle back into the pasture.

The four cattle were: Momma, Baby, one of my heifers, and #19 yellow tag.  I saw a broken top fence wire and figured that was how the cattle got into the hayfield.  Momma, then the other cattle easily followed me back to the pasture through the gate.

I shut the gate and then the other cattle came from the second pasture to join us.  Once they got bored Momma and others wandered off to the fence.  Not where I saw the broken wire.  A few minutes later I saw Momma on the hayfield side of the fence with a half dozen or more cattle on the pasture side of the fence.

What?! 

I found the fence had a gap.  The second wire was broken and the third wire was not fastened to a post and was drooping.  Momma did the limbo and walked through the fence.

Momma was now wise to me, and the other cattle wanted to join Momma, so I had to get Tammy to help me by handling the gate while I herded Momma.   Momma was now in an excited mood and ran around.  She eventually ran through the gate to join the other cattle and they then all ran off kicking their back legs up as they ran.

I went to work on fixing the fence and by the time I was done the cattle returned to see what I was doing.  My repair job has kept the cattle in the pasture.  It's not like the cattle don't have grass to eat, but you know... "The grass is greener on the other side of the fence."

A 1:05 video of the cattle after the fence was fixed.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_ziZyM_IMo


I also found that the rain gutter on the tool shed came down while I was away.  I took the rest of it down until I can re-shingle the roof and put up a proper rain gutter where I - and my uncles - don't hit their head on the gutter when they enter the tool shed.

Last of tree trimming

On my last day at my brother's house in North Dakota he and I trimmed more tree branches.   These branches were crowding and shading the pine trees.  More importantly they went mostly straight out.  In the past when there was an early or late snow branches like this would break.

Before and after photos...

The first large branch I cut came to rest against my ladder after it was cut.

Cutting another large branch at the far end of the reach of my pole saw.

Trimming trees

Thursday morning it rained hard.  The weather was nice by afternoon and I did some more trimming of trees and the hedge.

The trees are getting taller.  The red arrow shows the branch I cut.  The strong wind didn't make it any easier.

Then I stepped off the ladder and climbed up in the tree to cut another branch.   The tree swayed in the wind.

Some of the branches I trimmed.