Driving Miss Daisy

Driving Miss Daisy likely conjures up images of the 1989 Academy Award winning movie.

We drive our share of "ladies" around here, too. However, we don't provide a nattily-dressed chauffeur in bowtie and livery cap. Sweatshirts and jeans are the uniform of choice. The hat Jessica Tandy was wearing as she relaxed in the back seat of her limo would not last long on a 4-wheeler. The pink suit would be rather unforgiving, too, following the business end of a cow on a dusty road.

And the driving is a whole different animal ... so to speak.

Cattle drive 
Noun

1. The process of transporting a herd of bovine animals (such as bulls, cows or steers) by compelling them to walk across a significant distance of countryside under the escort of drovers on horseback and often over a period of days.
2. A trail or route used for the movement of herds of cattle.

Well, driving our cattle may not fit every part of the Wikipedia definition. But we do "compel" them to walk from one location to another. Thankfully, our cattle drives don't last days and don't involve a significant distance. And, instead of cowboys on horseback, we opt for what Randy calls our Japanese horses - our 4-wheelers.
We have spent a couple of recent afternoons moving cattle off milo and sudan stalks and into pastures or corrals. It's almost calving time on The County Line, and it's easier to have said bovines in a more contained area.

The first challenge is urging the cattle to cross the line where the electric fence has been. During their time munching on stalks, they've gotten used to the boundaries and they know that the electric fence can provide a little bit of a shock if they touch it.

A little bait hay eventually entices them to cross the old barrier. One of my jobs was tossing the hay up into the air in an effort to get the cattle moving toward me and the fence we'd let down.

Mission accomplished!

Then it's a matter of getting them to move in the right direction.

Sometimes, they want to stop for a bite to eat from the wheat fields.

But some "hey, hey, heying" and a push from behind with the 4-wheelers usually gets them moving again.

Once on the road, we try to keep them from mingling with our neighbor's cattle or having an excursion into a shelter belt.

There are always some that lag behind. (Believe me, I get it. I'm not ever going to be the first one to cross a finish line either!)

Others are more like "Eat my dust!"

Well, I'd rather not. Thanks anyway.

We moved the final group last Thursday. It was a beautiful day. I was worried when they went through a gate before getting to the pasture.

But while I blocked the road, the guys urged them on, and they ended up playing follow-the-leader into the pasture south of our house. Well done, ladies!

After we finished our drive time, we had to separate some cows and heifers that had mingled together earlier this fall.

 

The heifers actually did get a little real "drive time" with a chauffeured trip to the corral right by our house. Since heifers - first-time mamas - require more frequent checks in the "maternity ward," it's handier to have them right by the house.

The heifers are scheduled to start calving the last week of January.

Most of the cattle have access to water generated at the corrals. However, we still have to haul water to one location.

Feeding hay and silage are also part of the winter cattle chores. The feeder calves are always glad to see me arrive in the feed truck.

Hopefully, I'll be sharing cute baby photos soon.

Morning Drive Time: Country Style

The big-town radio stations talk about morning drive time. They'll play a mix of music to get commuters from suburbia to their downtown office jobs. It's where the stations sell their best advertising space, since it's when the drivers are held captive by bumper-to-bumper traffic. Or so I've been told.

I don't know about that kind of morning drive time. Even when I was commuting back and forth from our farm to Hutchinson to work every day, the traffic was never bumper to bumper.

But our current kind of "drive time" has less to do with traffic and more to do with "driving" cattle. And it involves a 4-wheeler. There are potholes, to be sure. But they are more likely old buffalo wallows than asphalt broken down by winter de-icing.

Randy says we use "Japanese horses" for our drive time. In other words, we don't have horses. But a neighbor used the real thing on a Saturday morning cattle drive a couple of weeks ago.

We got a front-row seat from our porch.

One little calf was lagging behind. He got roped and then got a chauffeured ride in the trailer.

All our cows and calves are transported by trailer, since there's too much distance between the corrals and our summer pastures.

Our morning drive time isn't without headaches though. Big-city commutes may be marred by accidents, timing and weather. Our country version is at the mercy of the weather, too. Rain slowed our annual drive from our cattle's wintertime accommodations to their summer vacation spots.

Thankfully, Monday was the final day for this annual exodus, which we usually try to accomplish by May 1. We missed the rains on Sunday night, which allowed the road to the Big Pasture to dry out enough from the 1.70 inches of rain we got last week. We had to have the vehicles in four-wheel drive and gun them a bit to get through one low-lying place.

But we've since had an additional 3.40 inches of rain. If we hadn't gotten the final group moved on Monday, there would be no hope of doing it the rest of this week. The corn we planted where it was too wet to plant wheat last fall is definitely getting its "feet" wet. We'll see how much replanting we need to do.

Wednesday, May 8, 2019, a corn field after 5.20" of rain

 

Corn is planted on both sides of the road ... under the "lake"

Because we couldn't move the pairs to the Big Pasture because of wet roads, we moved the bulls to their pasture last week. They had been romancing the heifers, but some of them now needed to turn their attention to the cows that would end up at the Big Pasture

After a little sorting, a couple of them made the ladies' acquaintance late last week, so they were also part of our Monday round-up.  

Randy points the way to the ladies: "Go east, young men!"

Back to the morning drive time: Monday was a beautiful day for our final cattle round-up. Randy and I were on 4-wheelers to get the cattle from the pasture south of our house into the lot where we could sort and load them. 

Driving cattle is a little like working with junior high girls. It's easier to get them to do what you want them to do if they are among friends. It's kind of like a trip to the girls' bathroom at a junior high dance. It's best accomplished en masse.

We herded them up toward the corrals.

It took a bit of encouraging to get them to go through the big mud puddle, but they eventually made it into the corrals where we sort. Separating mamas and babies is always part of the process. We haul the babies separately so they don't get stepped on in the trailers.

There are usually a few pairs in each group that we need to sort off as well. They may be older cows and their calves, since Randy plans to sell them at the end of the summer. Or they may be going to a different location because Randy wants an optimal number on each pasture.

Randy makes a handy-dandy written list that I can hold in my hand for that process. That always works better than me trying to remember numbers. Happy helpers make the process go more smoothly.

I may be happy, but the mamas aren't. We have our share of protesters, loudly lamenting their withdrawal from their offspring. I can relate. I remember that first day of kindergarten when the big yellow bus swallowed up my precious cargo. And I knew they were coming back!

The calves seemed to suffer less separation anxiety. Of course, they likely weren't hungry at the time.

 But they eventually got to reunite and took off to explore their summer time vacation home.

This group arrived at the Big Pasture, which has been in Randy's family for more than 100 years.

THE NINNESCAH

In the big cities, road construction may slow the morning commute. Thankfully, a little road construction in the last month or so helped our commute immensely.

Last fall, we did our form of mud-wrestling as we brought pairs home from the Ninnescah. After 14-plus inches of rain, our normal route was not passable, so we ended up driving an extra 12 miles each trip. We also wiped out a corner post because of muddy conditions.

 

Thankfully, the county repaired the road. And the guys repaired the entrance to the pasture. They added a new corner post and made the entrance much wider, which should help avoid problems in the future, even if we have to turn in from a different direction.

Randy came up with a farmer solution to hold the new gate open. It only took him a little while to find a sturdy stick with a helpful "y."

The cattle making the move to the Ninnescah arrived in late April, thanks to the repaired road.

PALMER PASTURE

The ladies who'll become mamas for the first time next January arrived at the Palmer Pasture last week.

Even though it was a cloudy, overcast day, I always think the setting with the old cottonwoods is picturesque.

Now, unless we get phone calls about escapees (fingers crossed that doesn't happen), everyone is in place and ready to spend the summer. When do I get a vacation?

Who Needs the Lottery?

I don't play the lottery. So why am I taking a photo of a PowerBall ticket?

It was a gift from someone who said I had to be the luckiest person he knew. I really am fortunate. But I am not going to attribute my good fortune last week to "luck." Instead, I've been thanking God for His protection.

I had a 4-wheeler accident last Monday (January 14) while we were moving cattle. I probably should have been hurt badly. Instead, I'm just a little bruised and battered.

I wasn't going to tell anyone about it. I hate mistakes.This first-born perfectionist especially hates my  mistakes. So I was going to cover it up. I told Randy to tell the other two people who witnessed the accident that they were to keep their mouths shut.

As far as I know, they did. But one of them is the purchaser of the lottery ticket. He stopped Randy on the road the next day and said it was for me ... for the aforementioned luck.

The lottery ticket was not a winner. In fact, it didn't have even one matching number. But that was OK. I didn't think my "deliverance" from major harm had anything to do with "luck" anyway.

It took me two days to confess the accident to anyone in my family. I took a backwards vault off the Peace Creek bridge with the 4-wheeler. It's not easy to get the 4-wheeler into reverse. My inexperience with the reverse button and the bridge location collided. However, all that rain and mud we've been frustrated by likely helped cushion my fall. I vaguely remember pushing the 4-wheeler away from me as I fell, and it didn't land on top of me. That helped, too.

I had some bruises - inside and out - and I wasn't too comfortable for a few days. But even the bruises are fading now.

Farming is a dangerous job. Sometimes it's dangerous because we make stupid mistakes. Sometimes animals don't react the way we anticipate. We are around big machinery and moving parts and chemicals, and accidents happen. We're sometimes tired and impatient - two things that can lead to mistakes.

I could have just showed the photos of moving the cattle. Believe me: I considered it. We moved two groups that day and things went well until the end. We had one "escapee," and I was trying to go help retrieve that one left behind when the accident happened.

I've been privately thanking God for His protection for a week. If I'm not willing to say that and to show all sides of farming, then I'm not being an honest representative for agriculture or for my faith.

In the adult Sunday School class I facilitate, the chapter theme last week was "Revealing Authenticity." Hmmm ... I have to admit it was another nudge to be honest. One of the quotes from the book, "#struggles: Following Jesus in a Selfie-Centered World," was from Mother Teresa. Really? Who can argue with Mother Teresa?

Honesty and transparency make you vulnerable. Be honest and transparent anyway.

In this world of Instagram filters and pithy "tweets," it's become our "norm" to edit our images and our words. We crop our photos to show our best features. We only post photos of ourselves and our families when everyone looks their best. We write, then edit, then edit some more until we have what we hope will translate into the maximum number of "likes."

Author of the book Craig Groeschel says: "The more filtered our lives become - the more we show others only the "me" we want them to see - the more difficulty we have being authentic. ... If we can't be real, are we really living?"

So here you have me: Unfiltered and authentic. I am not the perfect farm wife. I'm far from it. But you know that saying about getting back on your horse after getting bucked off? I'll be back on the 4-wheeler again. (But I will probably do everything in my power to keep from having to use the reverse. Just saying. And just being real. For sure, I won't use it if I'm on a bridge.)

Here are the photos and the story of what happened before the accident, It really was a pretty day: 

There's at least one in every crowd. It's the guy (or gal) who doesn't join the rest. You know the type: It's the one who is insistent about not following the carefully-prescribed plan of action. While others follow a straight line toward a common destination, that obstinate non-rule follower will willfully mess up the carefully-detailed plan of action.

 

This cow who didn't walk down the cattle trail is kind of like that toddler who looks over at his/her mother while doing the very thing that she'd just said not to do. It's like the kindergarten student who can't seem to remain in single file on the way to the lunch room. Honestly, these cows were well-behaved.

Once we got them moving in the same direction with the 4-wheelers, they went willingly.

Cattle - like humans - are creatures of habit. It took awhile for them to realize that the electric fence was no longer there. Even the enticement of a big round bale of tasty hay didn't have them crossing the line where the fence had been.

They finally crossed the "demilitarized" zone.

And with a little urging, they were across the road.

We ran them into the corrals until the roads froze enough to move them. Thankfully, that happened on Saturday. It was before the heifers started calving. While the "due date" is January 28, we had our first baby calves by January 23 last year.

Since there's another cold snap with potential flurries or a "wintry mix" coming, it will probably happen soon. Randy is already making trips to "the girls" to see if we have any early arrivals for the Class of 2019. Alert: Cute calf pictures soon to come!