We have an appreciation for anticipation

Since we are on spring forward time, pretty much every day is a beautiful day from here on out. No new babies Monday, Toni had to do a quick check since she had a call. Anna had a running start meeting after school, so I met her there and Toni, Ben, Kaine and Jaxsen did chores. Old Mill delivered a couple pallets of feed. Ben injured his knee during semen testing, then instead of resting it he helped build fence, unloading all of the Old Mill feed didn’t help his knee.  His knee was pretty sore Monday night. Dad loaned him his knee braces, so Ben has been switching back and forth between the two. Ben and Toni like to self-diagnose themselves, and not go to the Dr, so he had decided he pulled his MCL. I was not aware that either one of them had gone to medical school.

We got some much needed rain Tuesday morning. But it made it pretty dark on my drive to work, so I could not see if anyone had foaled. No one had. No new foals.  This week we are working on Fabby, which is short for Fabulous. And yes she is a fabulous filly. She has super long thick hair so she loves to be scratched all over. She is also a touch lazy, so really hasn’t been much of a challenge to halter break so far. Just pet on her and love her and she will follow. Toni and the boys put in another post in the fence line, then the boys went up to help Anna finish up the barn chores.

Still no new foals on Wednesday. Kayla came out to do a few brand inspections. Keven came out and picked up his bull and two heifers he bought. Josslinn came and picked up her yearling horse. Lots of visitors on Wednesday. The boys brought down some more poles and wire and hauled it out to the fence line after chores. Then they head up to help Anna. Oh yea, and Kade pushed on the little window too hard in Kaine’s pick up, broke it, cut his hand. Kaine asked him if he was OK, Kade said yea, and Kaine said we need to stop and get band aids. So when they got to us Kade was all bandaged up. Toni and I hooked up the wire on the end and got the poles moved over to put up on Thursday. Mom made us rolls and banana bread.  We are all pretty fatigued with the fence building. The no climb horse fence rolls are heavy and a pain in the butt to move around and deal with.  However, we keep telling ourselves that once this fence is up it is going to be great.

Still no foals on Thursday, maybe they are all waiting to foal on Friday, Reece’s birthday. We are still working on the fence, trying to get it done by this weekend and get the horses off of the alfalfa field. Really what we are doing is laying out wire, hooking it on one end so that this weekend we can stretch it tight. That doesn’t sound hard, but it is very time consuming. The rolls are only 100 feet long so we have to connect the rolls, each square.  The boys went up to help Anna with the show cattle chores after we got done.

Friday I took the BMW to Othello to get the studs taken off, dad went and picked me up. We ran to NW Farm Supply and got 3 more rolls of fence, some clips to connect the rolls together and dad got Sammy a toy, Sammy is mom’s dog. I took dad home and dad and I unloaded the wire. Then I went and checked the cows and horses. Commercial Tire called and said it was done, so Toni took me in to pick it up, it was lunch time, so we went to the Brunswick and I bought her lunch for taking me in. I went to get the polled cow in once I got her out of the circle she would run around the irrigation pond. So finally I called Toni and said you have to come and help me, we are going in circles. So Toni came and we got her in. Then Toni went back to work. I doctored the cow and turned her out with the show steers.  Of course one of the yearling steers started trying to nurse the cow that hasn’t calved yet, so I had to move her.  Put a halter on Jax’s steer. Then we went down to continue working on the fence. We have Marlo to help us on Fridays. Marlo brought cinnamon rolls and lemon blueberry muffins. They were very good.  Marlo also got to lead Fabby around and get her used to strangers.

                Saturday was a busy day. The biggest news was that Ro gave us our first Leroy foal of the year with a super strong sorrel filly with a big blaze.  Ben, Kaine and Kade went and pulled out the cross fences in the corn field so they could start farming. The Tonis and dad went and worked on the mesh fence at mom and dads, Jaxsen and I put halters on some steers. Anna went down to Kennewick for the 509 Show Circuit Ambassador conference put on by RDO. At 11:30 Mom, the boys and I went to Connell for the Feb-May birthday party and lunch. Everyone else continued building fence in the weird spring weather. Anna got home and went out to help them build fence. Then we got home to help and went out to build fence. They had made tons of progress and had most of it up. The boys grabbed clips and started attaching the fence to the posts.  And we got done with getting all the wire up and stretched. We got most of the brace posts in, and got the horses off of the alfalfa field on Saturday. Tall John and his girlfriend Maddie stopped by Saturday night. So the boys went up to do the cattle chores, Anna hit herself in the eye with pliers, and we had Tall John and Maddie to help.  Then we drove around and showed Maddie the foals. We kept quizzing her on which one she liked the best. John said we weren’t being very fair. There are no good answers to questions like- which bay do you think is the prettiest? Which horse is the prettiest one? Which colt do you like the best? Out of this field, I ride one of these horses and mine is the prettiest, which one is it? Haha. Fun questions to ask someone. 

                Sunday Toni did law work in the morning. Ben and the kids went out and finished pulling cross fences out of the corn field. I went down and got the fence around circle 5 hot, so we can turn Gunner out in the desert next weekend. The alfalfa field got harrowed on Sunday as well, it looks really good. After Ben and the kids got the fence pulled out they caught all of the steers and heifers. After lunch Anna washed all of hers and Kaine, Kade and Camas helped Ben with the stuff and then they weighed their steers. Then we went down and finished putting some poles up on the fence. We ran out of battery on Toni’s dewalts after 3 poles, but that only left 3 to get the fence done. The men brought the 3 remaining ones down and notched them so we can pop them up on Monday hopefully. We put Cleo out with Gunner, Revel with Stetson, Blackie with Jackpot and the Dagnon Buckskin mare with Double.  We turned Fabby back out and got Sam in and pulled hair to color test her, then got Spunky in for some much needed work. Spunky is a pet and likes the pet life. It isn’t going to be easy to get her to accept that she is a horse and has to be a horse.  As an example, Toni leading her across the driveway to the halter breaking pen it is really unclear who was in charge and who was being led. Was it Toni? Or was Spunky leading?

A good quote “we have an appreciation for anticipation.” Meaning we are really anticipating these foals that are not being born! Charlie and Mud have been in the heavy pen now for over a month. Clearly they aren’t understanding the meaning of the word heavy. The mares take their time, but it is all worth it when we finally get these little beauties.