I realized my blogging/photography life has someone of a conundrum. When there isn’t a lot going on, I have post after post of feeding cows, the cute babies, and nothing terribly eye catching or exciting. But then we are busy as ever, I have HUNDREDS of photos to edit, tons of stories to tell and no time to sit down and tell them… So I am sitting down at the computer ready to tell you a story, pump out some photos and carving out some time for my blogging life.
This winter/spring has been different for us. Very different. First of all, we didn’t have winter… We had a flurry every so often but we never had the cold-for-days, snowed-in, stranded-for-days winter that we usually (ok, maybe not all that dramatic, but still… no winter). But it was also different for all of the cows calving at home. So many more to feed, keep an eye on, and tag. So many more cuties around!
We are experiencing a new “difference” lately. We are hauling down hay and feeding in Locomotive. With the lack of feed and the lack of rain, there just isn’t enough feed for what we need. The nutrition of our cows is super important so we trek down south with hay and get ’em what we need.
For a while we were taking down just a couple of bales at a time. But that was getting long and slow… So we figured we would load the semi and flat bed up and take a few loads out. It wasn’t all too irregular of an occurence- people haul hay all the time. Nothing to tell the blogging world about, right? That’s true, until it was time to unload.
You see, we don’t have a tractor down in Locomotive. Unloading hay minus a tractor means that we get to be creative. It didn’t occur to me that we were missing a KEY part of this job. Its not like they can dump themselves and we can’t really push them all off. So… What’s a rancher to do? How about fish them off?
The Rancher apparently knew EXACTLY what he was doing not bringing a tractor down. I never doubt that he knows what he is doing, but to me there were no clear solutions He always says I lack faith in him… I just tell him that I just wait to be dazzled by his brilliance! So he brought a big ol’ hook and rope to pull all the bales off. In reality it was pretty simple. The Ranch Boss was in the truck, pulling the bales off. The Rancher would do the fishing, hooking and catching the bale, and I was the go between running the hook from the bales on the ground to The Rancher. When we had so many pulled down that we couldn’t any more, we just pulled the semi up and went at it again. So easy! So much so that we did it again and I brought my camera to show you.
We get to be a little creative in this life. The Rancher lives for twine, duct tape, and his save-your-life drawer of nuts and bolts. Life tries to throw a kink in your plan, but we my guys around, we always have some new brilliant way to make it. Like fishing for bales!
