Sometimes Farm Work makes me Feel Strong. . . Sometimes.

Sometimes working on the farm makes me feel strong but mostly it makes me feel weak. 

I feel strong when. . .

• I carry 50 lb bags of calf milk replacer, calf feed, corn seed, etc
• I open and close stubborn gates.
• That's about it.

I feel weak when. . .

The jacks we use are similar to this one

• I try to turn a jack holding up a feed wagon or other piece of machinery and get NOWHERE.  I'll try pushing.  I'll try pulling.  It does not seem to matter what I do because the crank is not going to budge.  In the end, FarmerBoy or FarmerDad take over and in the amount of time it took me to get exhausted, they have lowered the jack and are ready to go. 
• I help with a water turn (for those few of you who do not know, we use flood irrigation to water fields in this area).  I am not quite sure why FarmerBoy brings me along because help is a very liberal term for what I do.  I can only do one-sixth of what he can.  Every now and then, I will think that I am doing good as I shovel away to open or close an outlet (from the ditch to the field) only to look down the field and see that FarmerBoy has opened all the rest and is on his way back.
• I try to close the driver-side door on the red truck from inside the cab.  The door is off-kilter and it requires a special technique and strength to get it closed.  From time to time I think that I finally have it mastered.  I will start the silent victory in my head, only to hit a bump in the road and have the door pop/fly open.  I spend the rest of the drive with my right hand on the wheel, my left hand holding the door closed, and hope that there is no need for me to shift into a different gear.  FarmerBoy or FarmerDad are usually nice enough to close it for me though.
• I try to open the passenger-side door on the red truck from inside the cab.  The inside handle has come off the door so the only way to exit from this side is to reach outside the window and use the outside handle.  For some reason the only way this works for me is if I turn around to face the back of the cab, lean out the window, use both thumbs to depress the handle, while my right foot is pushing on the door from the inside.  Oh, and what I mean by this works for me is it works for me one out of every three times I try.

Epiphany and Cattle Round Up

Hello there.  It's me, Marissa. . . you know, the one that occasionally posts things to this blog.  I have this bad habit of writing entries and never posting them.  I keep telling myself that when I get caught up-to-date on them, then I can post them all and just work on keeping things current.  Well, I had this epiphany.  Except for the year before I went on a mission, I have always played catch-up in my journal and, as this is basically a journal, why would it be any different?  Self, I thought, you don't want to disappoint your two followers.  It is time to make a change!  That's a lie.  It went more like this:  Self, if you spend all your time catching up on the past you might forget the moments that you are experiencing right now.  It was after that thought I concluded I needed to go about this blog stuff in a new way.  The new plan is to pick up where I am now in life and between posts of my awesome experiences (living at home, working on the farm & ranch - I know the excitement may be too much to read any single posting at once, but I cannot apologize for the incredibleness that surrounds me) I'll throw in some blasts from the past.

As far as the current happenings. . . today we worked to round up cattle from the pasture so we can move them out to the desert for the summer tomorrow.  When I say 'worked to round up' I mean FarmerBoy fed them in a fenced up area and then closed the gates. There were only 4 cows and, maybe, 20 calves that did not join the herd so FarmerBoy, FarmerDad, HiredHandR, and I jumped in the truck and headed to the east to encourage them.  Once we got them moving to the west, FarmerBoy and I walked behind them to keep them focused on our their goal.  FarmerDad and HiredHandR used the truck to cut off any independent thinking bovine in the group and send them back our way - although that really only happened right at the end.

When there was no longer a question that we were going to pen this group up too, one cow, that we were surprised stuck with the rest that long, decided that she and her baby were done being followers.  We tried to stop her but in the end I let her and her calf past me.  I don't like to get in the way of mothers on a mission (esp when there is a crazed look in their eyes).  The way I see it, if human mothers can get surges of adrenaline that enable them to throw cars off their children then I do not want to get in the way of 1000+ pound animal that has decided her newborn is endangered.  Hopefully, we will catch her when she comes to get water in the morning.

All in all, it went quite well and did not take us long (sans the time FarmerBoy put into feeding the herd and closing the gates).  Here's to hoping tomorrow goes even better!