Seeing SJKs thread has made me think all week about posting to it, when I saw it was mostly about wool I decided to blog about it. My dad had a few favorite sayings when we were growing up, one being "there is always something", another being, "turn out the lights when you leave the room, or I will make you pay the electric bill", and finally the best of all, "just wait until you have to go to the army, then you will see what really bad food is" (this one often said on the rare occasion he cooked us breakfast). I managed to miss the army, much to dad's disappointment they never did have WW3 and reinstate the draft, but I see the wisdom in the other two comments now that I am older.
The past week to 10 days it has just been one thing after another, putting me off my usual good humor. I don't even know where to start, so I will start with today and go backward.
Since my farrowing house roof is bad, and I cannot see investing in a new roof or farrowing house, I have been farrowing a few sows (5) in the barn, in a group just bedded with straw, no crates. While feeding them this evening I noticed the last one's water had broken, and then to my surprise as she stood there eating, out popped a piglet and hit the ground with an unceremonial thud. I honestly have never seen a sow do this, and I have had sows for 16 years. The sow took no notice at all and kept eating. "Well you old b...h" I offered as words of encouragement. After tromping the pig 3 or 4 times, she then decided to see if she could climb out of the enclosure she was in, sending me scurrying off in search of a cattle panel to pen her with. After a brief scuffle with actions PETA would cringe at and words my grandmother would have spanked me for, she lay down and had the rest of the pigs. Meanwhile, about 40 other piglets had found a hole just big enough to exit the barn into the outside world, and were racing around headed up the drive for the road....they were a joy to get back in.
We have been cold and wet. The grass won't grow, neither will the corn if you can get it planted. On my birthday, May 7, I caused a wreck between two pickups while trying to move cattle down the road. It is a little more complicated than that, but that is the basic fact. The cattle were on the road because the neighbor won't fix his fence, so my insurance company is trying to get out of paying for the damage because they say it was the neighbors fault, which I agree with, but in the meantime we have two wrecked pickups that need to be dealt with. This is by the way the same neighbor who has filed a $35000 lawsuit against me because I built half of the fence at no charge to him, I mentioned this months ago. He isn't going to get a Christmas card from me this year, however I may send him a "go to hell you Commie ba...rd" card later this week.
The next day, I decided I needed to move all the cattle off the farm in question, because of the fence situation. I wanted to work them all first(there are 140 there) and when I got to my working pens with the first load, the cows in the pasture there were just coming through the watergap. I raced back for my 4 wheeler(quad to you guys) and got them in, put on my hip waders but the river was too swift for me to work, so I opened a gate and let them into a different pasture, except the bull would not go because he was now in love with the new cows in the corral. No amount of gunning the motor or swearing could convince him to follow the cows into the new pasture, so I left him alone figuring he would stay next to the pen. I hauled another load, then as my well cover collapsed breaking my pump coupling, I went to my west farm to get a load of water for the cattle I was penning to work, on the return trip said bull was walking through my alfalfa field about a half mile from where he should have been, by the time I unhooked from the water and got back to him he was alongside the pasture with my replacement heifers that I do not want bred right now, trying to get over the fence. It was about dark, so I called my dad to help me, before he could get there the bull had gone through the open gate into a little pasture we use to have our horses in. He is a wise old cuss(the bull not dad), and hid in every single thorn thicket he could, making me crawl in and goose him out. It had rained a couple inches, everything was mud, just for good measure he then went into my dads wheat field where the two of us had to chase him out on foot, we looked like bigfoot with all the mud on our boots. Not yet finished, he fought us all the way down the road until dad gave up and opened the gate into a different field, with 2 other bulls. Of course, immediately they started fighting, there was nothing I could do. Eventually, after all 3 were bloody, they quit, and I went home to bed, very angry.
The next day, I went back to hauling cattle, only to have one wheel fall off my 24 foot stock trailer because a bearing went out. Since I was in a bad mood to begin with, without thinking I turned the cattle I was trying to haul loose, after all the trouble to catch them I should have hauled 5 at a time on 3 wheels as it was only a 3/4 mile haul. I was taking the fall calves to a farm I rent with good pens and water, however that night lightning hit the brand new pump motor and when I went to feed the next morning I didn't have water. So, I spent the morning jacking with the well, rather than hauling more cattle.
To finish this up(and I could go on much longer), interspersed into May, or what I am beginning to refer to as "hell month" have been several hard 2+ inch rains that have crusted my corn so that I probably have to replant 60 acres, gas nearly at $4, and a planter clutch put in new last year with only 300 acres on it going out leading me to dribble $150 a sack seed corn 3 miles down the road while coming home from my west farm. We also had to buy a new washing machine and cookstove, our TV arial blew over in a storm and our satellite dish quit(we learned in about one evening that Mrs. KF and I contrary to what we have been saying do not want to live without TV after all).
Now, having griped to all of you, I am quite thankful for my minor problems, given the earthquake in China, the cyclone in Burma, and the 23 killed in our neighboring states by tornadoes. I will take another two or three weeks like the last two gladly, to avoid real catastrophe. As my grandmother and many other wise people have said, "count your blessings", and I am trying to do just that.