What did you pay for gas last week?

I took a friend to the VA hospital in St Louis last week. This is the price we paid per gallon on the out skirts of the city- $2.28!

Thanksgiving Week, 2014

***WARNING***

If you don't like eating meat, and/or don't appreciate what it takes to put meat on the table to feed your family, do not proceed any further. 

Photos #1, 2, 4, and 5 are considered too graphic by the Obama administration for the typical low information voter to handle, and might cause: confusion, doubt, excitement, lightheaded-ness, hunger pains, nausea, or vomiting - depending on your pioneer core values of self reliance.

My wife prefers to eat vegan most of the time, but she is also a very practical farm wife. She approves of the following pictures that depict the manly art of hunting and butchering.

***You Have Been Warned***

My son-in-law Danny got an 11 point buck the first day home from college.

My daughter K3 and grandson Wiley admiring the huge buck. Danny will be back at Christmas break to add a few more to the freezer.

If you think that's gross, don't hang around the baby delivery room. Bit of a mess, but then you end up with something like these young "bucks", both 3 months old, only a week apart in age.

Now back to some gross pics...

No, this is not the buck - way too small. I asked K7 and Danny to butcher a young ram so we could donate the meat to folks at Church.

Danny has done this a few hundred times, so he was helping K7 get more practice before he heads off to medical school in a few years. The dogs waited patiently for scraps.

Home made yorkshire pudding as a side dish to our Thanksgiving Day feast.

K3 preparing Aunt Patty's cranberry soda drink. Sorry, but I enjoyed our feast so much that I totally forgot to take any more photos. Hope you had a great day with an incredible meal!

The day after Thanksgiving, our boys turned my office into Game Central.

Moved in a table and created a War Room to play some simulation, strategy, conqueror the world, war game. Yes, that is a cast on K2's right arm - broke it again! Same one he broke back in March. Darn!

It lasted a few days, and was a good, healthy, and fun way to bond as brothers. We have so much for which to be Thankful.

Early snow and the un-welcome guest

We got home from Church on Nov 16, and it started to snow. Opened the corral so the nursing mommas could bring their babies into the shelter of the loafing shed.

We were ready with wood outside the door...

...and a warm fire inside.

The un-welcome guest showed up the following day - my neighbor's 2,000 pound black angus bull. He could smell our momma cows in heat, so he invited himself over. Thank goodness I heard him and my smaller Dexter bull bellowing at each other across two paddocks. My bull only weighs about 1,200 pounds, but he's got sharp horns which might have evened the odds if they battled. 

It took three attempts, but my neighbor and K2 finally got him moving off our farm. I was driving my truck and honking the horn behind him, but he would run to the stream bed on the right and circle back around us. Our dog Daisy came down to help. 

I stayed in the road between our farms to keep an eye on him while my neighbor drove home to get his 4-wheeler in order to herd this guy far away from our shared boundary. We found out that he pushed under their water gap fence in the stream, crossed the road, and pushed under my water gap fence to get on my farm. It would have wrecked my breeding plan if he had gotten to any of my Dexter girls.

I have been waiting for Christmas Day to move my bull in with the nursing momma cows, so we will have a batch of calves born the end of next Sep or early Oct. With this year's calves, plus the girls I already have due in the Spring, and another batch due in the Fall, we'll have several cows for sell in 2015 and 2016. 

Playing on the farm

November 12th was sunny and starting to warm up. I went looking for my farm hands, so we could get some work done. This is where I found them, swords in hand...

What the heck, I could spare a few minutes. All work and no play makes for a dull boy. I'm just glad they are using dull blades.

It was action packed, with hard hitting attack and quick defense.

It was acrobatic.

It was exciting.

But it was one-sided, and usually ended the same way...

With K8 leaving himself open to K7's swift, mortal blow.

I had to wait for K7 to win three rounds before we finally headed off to work. I'm sure there will be a re-match.

Working Farm

On Saturday, 8 Nov, we hosted 35 people on the Wanch for Emergency Response Disaster Team training. Our instructors came down from Columbia and the class started Friday night. We had four teams from south central Missouri. This group is training with a chainsaw and the group on the right, in background, near road, were moving piles of brush with a skid loader. Great experience. 

Three days later, the temperature dropped into the 30's, but I had to get hay moved onto the farm from a neighbor's.

These bales weigh about 1,200 pounds, so a tractor is a "must have" tool. Stored most of them in backyard.

"One more bale left to go."

Pre-staged a bale in each paddock, so if it gets too cold to start the tractor, we just open a gate and move the cattle. K7 was my helper opening gates and cutting the wrapping off the bales.