Donnie and I also chatted about our future lake project, the one we are just dreaming about. He explained some of the mechanics too me, we went to look at a recent dam he built, and played around on some mapping software for awhile (ims.missouri.edu if I recall correctly). I’ve sent Daniel Yagar, the NRCS specialist in Kirksville, several e-mails over the weekend about the lake. It will prove interesting to see his replies. Dan has special software that will accurately forecast the yards of dirt needing to be moved, and that is the bulk of the building cost.
Found myself back home about 1:30pm. Evia, the kids, and our guest had spent the late morning on our older pond testing their luck. They managed to catch one bass, but no sunfish – those were destined for our newer pond. Still, catching one, even if released back into the old pond, made the effort worthwhile for them.
I took Katya’s daughter, Nastya (yeah, same name as our 18 year old) on a short tractor ride. We moved a few fallen trees. She enjoyed it, and I manage to get another job checked off the list.
Evia and I, and of course the kids, went out in the late afternoon and took photos of the 3 boys (Larry, Curly, and Moe) and Tulia – the girl we have for sale. I came in and worked on the “For Sale” part of this website. It had been 3 months since we posted photos, and all the boys are reaching a critical age – soon we will either have to sell them or cut them and add them to our meat program. We noticed Rose (one of the 4 original sisters we purchased) was missing. After dinner Evia went looking and noticed Noscha, our first calf, was getting a bit too much attention from Duncan. At 8:30pm we found ourselves outside doing the separation we have been talking about all week and hadn’t accomplished. An hour later it was done, although Rose is in the “wrong” field, kind of. At least she ended up in an adjoining field we hadn’t intended. That said, after we sorted the boys from the girls, we talked about how to keep them really separated, both physically and visually… at least to the best of our ability. Cows can be headstrong when it comes to sex, that is how Noscha came into our world. Her mom pushed through two barb wire fences and walked a half mile to find a herd of Donnie’s with bulls in it. She did that THREE TIMES until we just gave up and left her there for a couple of months. Once pregnant, she stayed put on our farm and hasn’t wondered since. Apparently that is common for heifers (virgin female cows) – when they are ready, THEY ARE READY! Add to that any bull worth anything wouldn’t let a single barb wire fence stop him from satisfying a pushy heifer. Anyhow, we think we can use our southern most field with the new pond for the boys, and our northern most field for the girls. Both were planned as hay fields, but such is life. We just need to move both halves tomorrow. Actually its not anticipated to be too bad a chore, but means we will postpone working on the bees yet again.
Running out of days… we are kind of planning on going back to the city on Wednesday.