Special Friends

A special set of friends came to spend the weekend with us.  We’d planned to take them to the Rodeo and hopped that they would get the total Glory Farm experience, barring our usual catastrophes.  It was a windy day, so that started things off very normally, then we added a bit of tractor driving.My Loving Spouse shared his hat collection so all the men were turned out for the Rodeo with appropriate head ware.  We then filled them up with quality Fair food for diner and it was into the Rodeo, to watch people get bucked off horses and bulls, etc.  while, my Sweet Friend kept saying things like, “Do you really think this (bull riding etc) is a good idea?”.  Yes, God love her, it was her first trip to the Rodeo.

Morning brought their first farm fresh breakfast, showing them what eggs really do taste like.  We also laid out ‘the plan’ for the day.  I did explain the ‘the plan’ can change, sometimes without warning, but that is usually because some animal has gotten out, but we’d remain hopeful that it would not happen.

Before we’d finished cleaning up the breakfast dishes, the guys were outside and happily working at fulfilling My Loving Spouse’s dream of a pig sty.  My Loving Spouse has been wanting us to raise pigs for quite a while now, and call me crazy, but I have put my foot/boot down and insisted that we do it a bit differently for a change and build the pen before we buy the animal.With the pig sty building well underway, My Sweet Friend and I went back to the fair for a more complete look around, at all the stuff for sale, every single animal, the displays and to take one more look at someone’s blue ribbon winning pumpkin.We had a wonderful time together and returned home to start diner and admire the pig sty that had been built…except…when passing Our Friend the Farmer’s alfalfa field, we noticed two calves happily out munching in the field.  This is a big problem, because fresh green alfalfa will cause animals to bloat. As Our Friend the Farmer is Cattleman of the Year, he was off for the day riding in the parade and sitting in the President’s box for the Saturday Rodeo.  Funnily enough this left the Cattleman of the Year’s city gal neighbor to do a bit of calf wrangling on his behalf.I got on the bike and rode to the rescue, anxious to chase the calves back over the fence and return them to their mothers.  Their mothers and all of their girlfriends quickly came to fence as they saw me approach their little ones.The first calf zipped right through the fence to return to its Mama 203, which made me laugh as this nut did not fall far from the tree, as 203 was herself a problem cow last year.  However, 214 was a scaredy calf, running up and down the fence line with me behind him trying to get him to go through each hole large enough for a small calf, while the herd looked on as if to say, “Hey, You!  Human!  Leave that calf alone!”  I could have really used a cattle dog, but luckily the next best thing showed up call Our Sweet Friend the Pig Sty Builder Calf Whisperer…he found a big hole in the fence and started “mooing” (seriously).  214 really like this and slowly moved toward the sound encouraged on by me and before you knew it, we had that darn calf back on the right side of the pasture.  The Mama Cows were admonished to keep a better eye on the youngsters and we were headed home to create a very late diner…as usual.

A glorious rainbow appeared to finish off our day….

Even with a late night diner, followed up with an ice cream/blizzard run to Dairy Queen, we still made it to church on time.  Worshiping together in our sweet church was a gift…. as is their friendship and….we are blessed.