Sweet Old Jenny Lou

This donkey just makes my day. If you've followed my blog, you've already seen her in Antiques and a Donkey. But I just wanted to share some pictures of sweet, beautiful, old Jenny Lou. She's around 22 years old and she is pretty much the boss of the farm.

Hanging Out on the Dock

I mentioned, in my Catfish blog, that we had recently dug a new pond. Actually, it was two existing ponds and we had the dam between them removed and deepened both ponds, making one very large one that we refer to as our "lake". We also had a dock built and stocked the pond with catfish and bass. I've tried and tried to get those little darlings to come up and eat fish food like the catfish in the old pond do. I can see the fish swimming around but they just won't come up and eat. Hopefully, when they're bigger, they'll be interested in the worm on my hook!
(These pictures include our dogs, mine being the one actually in the water. We don't take them with us to feed the fish, for obvious reasons.)

The Scenic Views

Day before yesterday, when I was checking cows (and finding several new baby calves!) I also snapped a few photos of the scenic views on our farm. The creek that runs through our farm is called Harts Creek. That's why we call our business Harts Creek Cattle Company. Way back in 1990, my dad, who we inherited the farm from, wanted to make a better way to cross the creek with his tractor and farm equipment. One day he was at a county equipment auction and he bought a bridge, yep, a real bridge. He hired some professional people to install it, over Harts Creek, on his land. We are the only people around us who have our own bridge. It's been there for 25 years.  We drive across it. The cattle walk across it. We've let people come have family photos taken on it, engagement photos taken on it, etc.... In fact, our youngest daughter used to say she wanted to get married on it.....we'll see!

Visitor at the Yard Fence

Well, I had today's blog all planned.....I was going to write about the new baby calves we had yesterday when I checked cows, and throw in some scenic pictures I took of the creek. But I'll just tuck those away for later today or tomorrow. Because this morning, right outside our bedroom window, there was this beautiful creature!
To give the back-story, night before last, I drove up to our barn, close to midnight, to make sure the heat lamps were on for the baby pigs. I saw a buck (probably this one) near our yard that night. Then, early this morning, it was barely daylight, my puppy needed to go outside for a potty break. When I walked out of our bedroom and into the backyard, a deer ran off. Again, probably this one. So when the alarm went off this morning, before letting the dogs out, I looked out the window just to see if, by chance, the buck was back. And he was!! I took these pictures from inside the house. Some from our bedroom window and some from our bathroom window.
Now yes, my husband and I do like to hunt. If you looked at my Fall Decorating post, you probably noticed some game mounts in our house. We use the meat from what we kill or we donate it to Hunters Feeding the Hungry.  But this morning, I was only shooting photos with my camera :)

Fall Decorating!

I LOVE FALL! Cooler weather, the beautiful leaves, the beginning of the holiday seasons! I am really not a summer person. I love gardening and yard work, but you can do that in the fall! I really love winter and snow.....but I'll take fall over summer any day.
So I've done some decorating inside and out. These are the pictures of what I've done inside, all courtesy of http://www.hobbylobby.com/!
Th top shelf of our entertainment center-

The top of the china cabinet-

The mantle-

The dining room table-

Compost

This year I attempted composting for the very first time. Amazingly enough, I have two big trash cans full of rich black dirt!! First, my husband drilled holes in two large, black, plastic trash cans. Next, I started keeping a large baggie in my freezer to throw things like coffee grounds, egg shells, and fruit & veggie scraps in. When the baggie would get full, I'd throw the contents into the two barrels, put some newspaper or paper from our shredder in there, wet it a little, and shut the lid. Sometimes I'd add grass clippings or leaves also. Occasionally I'd wet it a bit and stir it with a shovel.
From what I've read, the trick is to have a "live" compost pile. That means you have some critters, like earth worms, in there helping to break everything down. And apparently it works! Cause my little worms that somehow found their way into my compost barrels have done the trick! (The last pic was me attempting to get a close up of the worms. If you don't like worms, don't look!)

Favorite Grocery Store

Getting ready to go buy some groceries today at Brookshire's. Love this little grocery store! And with my Thank You Card, I can load coupons directly to my card from their website. I can also save on groceries and gas with my points! I am always looking for ways to save money and easy ways to coupon!
http://www.brookshires.com

Container Gardens

A few days ago I mentioned my container gardens. They're in repurposed old galvanized water troughs from the farm. I have zucchini squash in this one-

I have leeks, kale, brussel sprouts, and a few weeds in this one-

And in this one, along with a few more weeds (I need to work on that) I have chives, spinach and radishes-

Catfish

Another thing on the farm that I feed is our catfish. This particular pond has been on the farm as long as I can remember. And it's never gone dry. It's spring fed. About three years ago we hired a man with a dozer to clean the pond out and make it a little deeper. Once it filled up, we stocked it with some catfish. At first we threw out floating fish food for them. But then we had an issue with raccoons getting into our feed (before we had a new feed room built, which is awesome.....and another story for another day). And after a while we just kind of forgot about the catfish. Of course, they had minnows, insects, algae, etc.... to eat so they didn't starve.
We had a lot of flooding in our area last spring and all the ponds overflowed. After the water went back down to a normal level, we put some small fish in a new pond that we recently had dug and we bought more fish food. So about two months ago, I decided to take some of the floating fish food with me when I checked cows. I stopped at the older, spring-fed pond and threw a little out. OH MY GOODNESS! The catfish immediately started coming to the top to eat the food. I could not believe the size of those fish!! So now I feed them every other day. This picture doesn't do justice to the number of fish who come up to eat. I think I have myself a fishing hole sweet spot.

Productive Day!

Well yesterday was quite a productive day, if I do say so myself! The prior morning there had been an issue with the heat lamps on the baby pot-belly pigs. Fortunately, it wasn't a cold morning here. But yesterday it was quite chilly.  I was glad to see that the pigs were warm and cozy under their heat lamps. After feeding the pigs, I had several errands to run in town. I like to accomplish as much as possible in one trip. I do not like going to town day after day. I like getting it all done in one day (and only one day of putting on makeup haha). I went to the feed store and bought loose minerals for the cows. We have a liquid protein feeder and the loose minerals and salt block compliment the protein. After that, I headed to the Farm Service Agency to register our wheat that my husband planted when he was home. Then on to Tractor Supply Company (one of my favorite stores) for pot-belly pig feed. They don't always have it at our local feed store. Then the day was filled with watering my fall garden, more checking and feeding pigs, putting out the loose minerals, checking cows, feeding goats, feeding the donkey.......followed by a nice glass of wine on the back porch in the late evening. All in all, it was a great day.
http://www.tractorsupply.com/

Pecans!

Our pastures are full of big old pecan trees and this year they are loaded! Won't be long till I'll be taking a bucket with me every time I check cows so that I can pick up pecans! (I'll have to work fast to beat the squirrels!)

Love our Cattle!

I absolutely love checking the cows everyday. Driving through the pastures in the Ranger and counting the cows, watching the calves, enjoying the peacefulness of it all. There's nothing like it.

Fall Garden!

My fall garden (container garden) is off and running! Or maybe I should say, "up and growing!"
I planted spinach, radishes, chives, leeks, brussel sprouts, zucchini squash, and kale (all from seed). I've repurposed some old galvanized water troughs from the farm.....a total of three.....and they work great for small gardening. Here's my first harvest of kale!

Cutest Piggies Everrrrrr

I could just sit at the pig pen all day and watch these little cuties play. They're three weeks old today!

And here's another one that I posted to my YouTube channel

A New Baby!

One of our new Angus cows just had this precious little baby that I found hiding in the pasture today!

Our First Bronze Trophy!

This beauty, Annabelle's Ace CB, won us our first bronze trophy! She was entered in the TLBAA Horn Showcase in Lawton, OK and won her class for tip to tip measurement!

http://www.hartscreekcattlecompany.com