Cows Love Corn, part 2

You may remember that cows love corn.

They'll bust a barbed wire fence or accidentally knock you aside with their twelve hundred pounds of beefy brawn, simply to spend a little time at the corn smorgasbord. On the other hand, cows can be quite civil if they think it will get them a hand-fed ear of fresh-shucked corn.Mannerly cows are happy to gently partake of whatever is put on their plate. If you're feeding cows this way, it is a good idea to let go of the corn, lest they think your arm is also being served, and politely sample a small portion.

This is Tippy, one of our milk cows.



Wipe your mouth, Tippy, you're dragging some corn silks.

Tippy saw one of the "Got Milk?" ads. You know, the ones showing a celebrity with a milk moustache? She wants to be in a cow magazine....."Got Corn?"

Life Ain't Always Beautiful

Most of you know how lovely and idyllic farm life can be. Horses , stunning sunrises, kids out working under the big Nebraska sun.

But farm life ain’t always beautiful. Just ask this chicken.

Look at that glare. She's mad as a.... well...mad as a wet hen.

Talk about messing up your life!


Average rainfall here for the first three weeks of August is just under 2.5 inches. This month we're already been doused with nearly nine----enough to turn our livestock pens, usually baked to cement under the hot summer sun, into thick soup.

Without the mental capacity to calculate odds and probabilities in such a situation, the poor chicken blundered right in over her head. Ooh, oh! Things don't look so good here.

What's only knee deep to a cow is neck deep to a chicken, and has her pinned in a very bad spot.

Sometimes, the only hope is to wait for a savior.

Au Revoir

Jane Austen quotes fly around our kitchen table frequently, and moreso when certain friends visit.

Lydia scribed this short line from Austen on the kitchen chalkboard at the end of her visit this summer.

Au revoir, GeorgiaGirl. We will miss you.

Let us not say "farewell," but as the French would have it, "au revoir".

Until we meet again.

Good Dreams

I dreamed that the Texas Rangers beat the Orioles --- thirty to three!!! This is baseball I'm talking about, folks. No major league baseball team has scored thirty runs in a game since 1897---the 19th Century!

From the Fort-Worth Star Telegram : Third-base coach Don Wakamatsu waved so many runners home that he joked between games that he "may need some ice" for his left shoulder, but Wakamatsu also spent the last few innings giving the stop sign to every runner he could as Texas tried not to run up the score.

They scored thirty runs as they "tried not to run up the score"!!!??? These are the Texas Rangers, who have dwellt at the very bottom of the American League all summer!

Then I dreamed that the daughter with the horribly messy room came and told me it was all cleaned up.

I'm having a good night. Don't wake me up.

Give Thanks to the Lord, for He is Good

for His mercy endureth forever.

Cows Love Corn, part 1

Remember Little Boy Blue, blowing the whistle when cows were in the corn? His mama wasn't joking when she told him to wake up and deal with the issue. Cows in the corn are bad pizza.

Just look at this mess.

The trouble starts here. The grass is always greener, you know.

Then Bossy gets a good whiff of that summer corn smell, and reason flies out the window. Barbed wire is meaningless to a cow intoxicated with corn dreams.

"Hmmm, now let me see.....am I in the mooooooood for the alfalfa sprouts this morning, or the corn salad?"

FarmGirl Brigade to the rescue.

Being a Cowgirl in Command, Erica speaks a firm word of direction to Bossy,

....but the cow's not listening. So Audrey has to go get her.

Now get back where you belong!

Unfortunately, this is the third time these cows have violated their meal plan in the last two days. So we're going to have to take measures more drastic than barbed wire to deal with their gluttonous corn lust. Sorry girls.....time for shock therapy.

Erica comes back on the four-wheeler with the necessary supplies for building an electric fence.....

a reel of wire,























some fence posts, and a hefty hammer.

























By the time we're finished, as Erica checks our work,

the cows have perfected their innocent act. Who, us? Want corn? Fuggidaboudit, it's way too hot. If the weather's not too hot to prevent a jailbreak, at least the fence is.

Lovely Ladies

Would the lovely ladies who have sewing parties...........

and formal, funny, scrumptious tea parties where they laugh and exchange all the news........

































and dance the Netherfield Ball in my living room.......




please not grow up and live far, far away. Please? I'd be most grateful.

Colors at the Grocery Store

GeorgiaGirl worked in a bridal shop last summer. As she stitched bridesmaid dresses and flowergirl frocks, all the colors of the rainbow ran through her hands.



The bridal store closed down while she was away at school, so this summer she painted that rainbow on grocery store shelves.











Her season at the food store has also passed. With a little spending money socked away for next year, she's back where she'd rather be - behind a sewing machine.

Welcome home.

Beauty

I love days when I can just stay home and take care of business in my house.

Is it any wonder? Everywhere I look around me, I see beautiful things.

Each time I pass through my living room, the purple phlox wave at me. They are native Nebraskans, easy going, with no complaints about the scorching summer sun or rock hard frozen ground in winter.

My view from the kitchen window

is just as joyful this time of year.

And who could help warming to the coffepot and beans that bid me to pause, put my feet up, take time to enjoy and be thankful?

The invitation is always there, even if I don't accept it often enough.

Anyone who knows my family very well might have the tiniest suspicion that there's another side to this story....

but I choose to focus elsewhere.

August Birthday, Round Two

2007

Happy birthday, FarmGirl. 2003

Misty Morning

Coming through the Rye

My title is borrowed from one of Frederic Remington's most ambitious sculptures. Here is my own man coming through the rye, and an image of Remington's original work.

Our day with horses in the rye field was quite a bit more serene than the one Remington depicted in 1902.

You may remember our friend Kevin. He wanted his rye stubble plowed, so he called every teamster he knows. Word of mouth spread the news of a plowing day, until twenty horses and mules, a half dozen plows, and fifty or sixty spectators were assembled Sunday afternoon.

One guy even brought his Shetland pony team. The weight of his plow was hardly enough to pierce the sod, so he mostly slid along the surface, gathering rye grass in the plow bottom. I don't think this would have worked for Laura Ingalls Wilder's pa.....he must have had bigger horses and a heavier plow.

Watching a day of plowing like this gives you a lot of respect for farmers who made their livings this way in yesteryears. The plow John was on cuts one sixteen-inch swath at a time.

This is a pretty big field to be plowing sixteen inches at a pop.

Fortunately, Kevin has lots of friends and Charlie has a bigger plow. This one is a two-bottom, so it cuts twice as fast as John's.

And it takes twice as many horses to pull it. Kevin and Charlie combined horse power to hook up their three-bottom, just before the rain struck. This big gun needs eight horses to lug it through the turf. They had time to do just a couple of rounds before a torrential thunderstorm arose and ended the party.
In frontier sodbusting days, if you farmed more ground, you needed more horsepower and bigger equipment. Some things never change.