Got Lots Done Today and Had Another Bull Calf

Tuesday I went around the pasture and sprayed round up to kill the weeds along the electric fence. I sprayed a bigger space on the outsides, so the cows wouldn't have a reason to try and reach through the fence. Dad replaced the old garage side screen door with a house door. I also walked around and sprayed a path where the fence line will be for the new pasture. Today, Thursday, was a very busy day. This morning I went up to the farm and opened up all the barn doors to let the air circulate. I fed the cows some hay and fed Margie her scoop of grain. I watered my sunflowers again, and now there are few more starting to pop out of the dirt. I came down to the pasture at the house and loaded up the steel roofing sheets into the side by side. I brought them up to the farm and put them on a skid with other roofing steel. I came home and brought the wagon with the wood pieces I picked up from the pasture over to the burn pile. Later I stacked a bunch of wood that dad had cut and dumped up by the lean-to.

After I got that all stacked, I went up to the farm and began to roll up the electric fence that I had put up awhile ago to help stop the cows from wanting to go under the fence. After that got rolled up, I took down the fence panels and stacked them against the square bale feeder. I used 3 of the panels to make a smaller corral are for the cows to go for when we clean out the barn. I got the 784 and forked up the other fence panels and brought them out of the barnyard and set them along the edge of the tractor barn, so they were out of the way for the moment. I then picked the square bale feeder up with the 784 and moved it into the new corral for the cows. I put away the tractor and then I used the electric fencing I had rolled up to put up a new one along the edge of the corral. I put 4 strands up this time because when the cows come out here, they will go crazy seeing green grass on the other side and might want to get out. Next I worked on picking out the rocks from the dirt. I picked the ones that you could see exposed in the dirt and I used a pitch fork to dig them up and put them in the back of the side by side. Dad took the trailer and got a couple yards of mulch from the sawmill over in Clarksville for the flower beds. Mr. Keith had started planting corn in the field across from our house today, so when he got low on seed in the seed boxes, he gave me a call and I went to help him. We put 32 bags of corn seed into the planter with each box getting 2 bags. He plants with a no-till 16 row corn planter and he also has a no-till bean planter too.

After we got all the seed loaded up, I came back up to the farm and continued picking rocks. Dad worked at home cutting some branches off trees and weed whipping. Mel and Paige picked up most of the branches and put them in a little trailer. After I got the rocks done, I cleared a path in the barnyard for when we clean out the big pen. I emptied the water from the sap wagon and also aired the tire up on it again. I moved that out of the way, and then I used the loader to move the brush hog. I gave dad a call and he came up to the farm to help me move the cows out to there new corral. I put the 2 calves in the other small pen, so they wouldn't get trampled with the other cows. When we got the cows closed outside, they went nuts over the grass along the fence that they could reach. I had put 2 bales of hay in the feeder for them, but they had no interest in them. I went out with a bucket of field corn and dumped it in the feeder so they would calm down and stop running around. Dad took apart the fence and then he began to clean out the poop from the big pen. He brought all the poop over to where I picked rocks from and made a huge pile which we hope to compost a little. Dad took out a ton of poop literally; probably a few tons. I used a pitch fork to scoop away stuff from the walls and areas he could not get. On one of the last scoops he took, he accidentally hit the beam that supported the floor above.

He had pushed it off the concrete slab it was on, so after he got the poop taken out of there, he tried to use a chain which he looped around the beam to try and pick it up, but it had too much weight up top still. We got a bottle jack and dad found a big long piece of wood to use. He put the bottle jack on top of the piece of the wood and jacked up the beams that had rested on the support beam. I helped move the beam into the right spot and then he lowered it down and just like that we got it fixed.

Once we got the pen all cleaned out, we reconnected the fence and I threw down a bunch of straw and bedded the pen. I let the cows into the barn again and I put the calves back into the big pen too. I closed off where they were and put back up the hot wire that ran across the bottom. We came home and dad used the loader tractor to lift up one of our old implements so he could put rocks under the wheels to elevate it for when we put mulch down. We had dinner and then I went back up to the farm to do my chores. I noticed that Shel-Shel was keeping her tail away from her rear end, so I broke a bale of straw and threw most of it in the pen and spreaded it out. I fed the cows their hay and then I left the barn. I watched from outside where she would lay down and then get up trying to find a spot to calve. Within an hour of me coming to the farm, she had a bull calf at 8:11 PM. This was her first ever calf, so she did pretty good and no issues. Dad was at the farm as well and watched and after she had the calf, I helped clear its nose of gunk and then later after it started to walk with dads help, he iodined the naval. We stayed up there until we were sure it was milking, which I helped it do. I closed up some of the barn doors for the night and then came home. I put 10 pieces of wood on the fire today as well.