With the coming onset of cold weather we are doing our annual pen moving today. Things are a little different this year than they were last year. We now have a cow, a colt, and another horse. The calf has to have a pen of her own because she is still to small to be in with the horses without getting hurt. Libby, Banner, and Cowboy can all eat hay grazer (a very stem filled kind of feed) but it will give Rusty colic. So we need to have a pen for them away from Rusty. Cowboy can still be fertile 90 days after he is gelded and it has only been two weeks since we have gelded him, so putting him with Libby is a big gamble. And we have to do all this with a pen that isn't finished and 9 horse panels. Sounds like a fun day! These type of days are the kind that bring families closer together. The first step was to gather up all the panels from one end of the property and take them to the other side. That was all well and good until you find out that we now have a mare and a colt that have no place to go. While Mamma and the other kids were getting panels, Kacy was finishing the pen that I mentioned above. It is made out of old telephone cable, so we all call it the cable pen. Then Shea brought Libby and Banner down and we prayed that Banner is big enough not to go through the fence. When he was first born he would just walk right through it. He was big enough. Step two: We moved Cowboy in with Libby and Banner and watched them really close all day (that was approximately how long it took us to get all the pens moved and the barnyard ready for cold weather). All well there so we moved to step three: unloading panels. We had them all on the ladder rack on daddy's truck. Garrett and Gabe would push them down to Mamma and Kacy. They would then take the panel over to Zach, Janessa, and Shea who would set them up and tie them together (when you live on a farm with a tight budget, you take as many free things as possible. That is the way with our panels, and they don't all fit together...so we have to tie them). Now that all the panels are set and all the animals are in there pens we work on the next most important thing, water. The faucet down there will freeze in the mornings so we set up a bucket system. We moved Jenny's old calf shed out of her little pen (that won't hold her anymore) and used it as a water bucket shed by the faucet. The buckets we use in the morning to fill up water troughs will be refilled during the evening chores.
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| Moving the panels down to the barnyard. |
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| Gabe's having fun. |
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| I think they are getting along just fine. |
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| When Zach built the calf shed he put legs on it so it would be level, here he is digging holes for them. |
After we were all done with all the morning work, Shea was playing with his shadow. Below are some pictures of characters he is impersonating. See if you can tell who they are or some of them, leave a comment so that we can see what you guess.
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After lunch we went out to sort out our trash trailer so we could take it to the dump tomorrow. A while ago dad had thrown away a board covered with clay, when we pulled it up we found out that on the Pogue farm we raise very artistic mice. They had carved a almost perfect heart on the clay. This is something you don't see every day.
To finish off a wonderful day, God painted another breathtaking sun set for us to enjoy. I am so thankful that we live here and get to have days like these. I would never trade a life in the country for any other life.
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