2011 - Day Seventy One; Saturday...

Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful. I stayed IN BED (not necessarily sleeping) until after 7 o'clock this morning. By 8 o'clock, I was making egg loaf and reading the paper (not necessarily at the same time), and by 9 o'clock, I had taken a fresh bale of hay out to the cattle and hooked the shredder up to the tractor and was shredding grass up by the road. That was pretty much finished by 11 o'clock, and Jody and I headed into Georgetown to hit the Dairy Queen. After that, I stopped at Wal-Mart to put gas in the truck ($75 gave me three quarters of a tank) and I filled up one of the cans with diesel for the tractor. Then we headed off to Home Depot where we got some decomposed granite (a couple bags) and a plum tree and two grape vines. We will plant those things tomorrow with the help of Miguel.

This is a picture of some of the cattle, and you can see Mr. Speckles is paying special attention to Orchid (who is obviously back in season). All you can see of Orchid is her brown butt, but believe me, Speckles is being very romantic (he is thinking there is some 'fonorky-toodling' in his future), and Orchid is really not seeming to be that interested in any of it right now. We shall see...

Once we got home from Georgetown I headed back out to the tractor and headed for the far back grazing pasture. I shredded the entire pasture so the sun can get to the ground and let some of the new grass get going. Interestingly, while I was out there, all the cattle decided to take a siesta (Orchid was trying, but Speckles would really not leave her alone), so I shredded around them until they finally moved and I got finished. It took about 2 or 3 hours to shred the pasture, and I figure that pasture is somewhere between 7 and 10 acres. BUT, it is done now, so that will be marked off the to-do list. There are a couple mesquites back there that I am going to have to poison later this spring once they bud out. I DO NOT want to get any mesquite started back there. I prefer to remain mesquite free.

We got six eggs out of the chickens today, so it was obviously a good day to be a chicken out here today. The owl is still up in the nest as well, and she is not nearly as skittish about us wandering back and forth as she used to be. I have not checked on the doves nest lately, but I will do that tomorrow. I took the pool cover off last weekend, and it has been CRAZY windy ever since then, and the pool filter has been working overtime. No big deal, but I am now back to skimming the pool on a daily basis.

One good thing about the wind is that the turbines are going crazy too, generating lots of electricity to send back to the grid. Perfect!

Lots of chores on tap for tomorrow.

Deeds, Actions, Changes, HORNY CATTLE, Kindnesses, Whirled Peas, FUN!