Week Three of Farm Life!

 This week we start in South Dakota with "The Adventures of Barb". That could very well be a blog title in itself as she always seems to be up to some kind of adventure. The workshop table done, she set her sights on a different kind of adventure altogether. Cattle branding! That's right, it is that time of year again. I am super bummed that I missed it but that did not mean Barb had to!

She's had a variety of jobs at the branding over the year; bucket girl, where she followed Rancher John around collecting castrated nuggets, brand girl, where she was responsible for heating and delivering the branding iron to unsuspecting calves and this year, injection girl, where she vaccinated each of the calves while they were held down my someone else. She has had years of injection experience from her horse days, so this came second nature to her. So much so that she was able to hold a Bloody Mary in one hand and inject with the other!

She also had her garage sale. It only netted a few hundred dollars, but the real bonus was just getting rid of so much of the junk we had laying around. She had priced the items super low, then started just giving stuff away. Anything that was left over went to the thrift store and dump. 

Meanwhile. 22 hours to the east our grandson Dylan got his driver's license! I cannot believe that we have a grandchild old enough to be driving. 

Back in North Dakota, we were still busy with the spring planting duties. I was pretty much running trucks of fertilizer between the field, farm and elevator with fencing and root pulling intermixed. How many people do you suppose have driven a truck that has over 1,000,000 miles on it? I am guessing not many!

 As I mentioned in an earlier post, they had taken out a couple of tree rows and while the excavator did a pretty good job, after Chris had seeded it pulled up a bunch of roots that needed to be cut off with a sawzall. Not a really hard job, but daunting in the fact that there were so many and it was cold and windy. 

Bob S and I continued to pull fence and fence posts.

I also tackled some stumps from trees I had cut down several years ago. Even though these were old stumps, they were still stubborn and had new growth sprouting up around them. In the end the payloader won and the stumps are no longer part of the landscape in that field. 

Ty and I (mostly Ty) welded up some rebar trail camera holders for me. I am looking forward to using these when I get home and seeing what this year's deer herd looks like!

I was able to make it to my first basketball game this week! Both Gavin and Chase play for their schools, I think Gavin is 12 and Chase is 10. They play on the same team some games, others they play on different teams. Let me tell you, these two are basketball fanatics and it shows in their play. Of the 44 points in one game I think Gavin had over 30 and Chase had 6. I am not a huge basketball fan, but it was fun to watch them play. 

Oh, and I finally saw a moose! It was from a distance and I only had my cell phone, but it was definitely a moose!

Before I knew it, my three and a half weeks was up and it was time for me to go home. We were not done with planting, but we were well over 75% done. That just leaves Chris, Dylan, Farmer Bob and Ty to finish up the last 4-5 days of seeding. Scratch that, Farmer Bob had to go to a conference in Orlando, so it just left the other three. 

I spent my last day there fueling up the tractor, getting more fertilizer, doing laundry and cleaning the camper. Lord help me should I bring home a dirty camper! It is somewhat surreal spending that much time with another group of people, you really become part of their family. At least that is the way they make me feel when I am up there. It is like a second home to me. Bob, DeAnne, Chris, Holly, Dylan, Sydnie, Ty and Stephanie are like family and there is a little bit of sadness whenever I leave. Outweighing all of that is the excitement I feel to get home and seeing Barbie however. That evening Farmer Bob, DeAnne and I went out for supper at Iron Ore in Riverdale. The food was fantastic! Since the restaurant was 45 minutes on my way home, I drove separately and just carried on when we were done. 

The beautiful thing about having a pickup camper is that you can just drive until you are tired and then just pull over. Which is exactly what I did. I got 3 hours behind me before I was too tired to continue. I just pulled over into a farm field approach, climbed in back and slept for a few hours before getting up at 3am and continuing on. I made it home at 6am on Mother's Day where we spent a not so quiet day splitting wood until about 4pm. 

It is so good to be home, but it is going to be short-lived as we have another adventure planned in just 10 days!