Rollin', rollin', rollin'....

 Keep those bales a-rollin'

Theme musica here.

More grasses for you to look at.  We don't bale these types.

 Prairie cordgrass or sloughgrass is common in low wet soils, 4-6' tall.

 Foxtail barley, a weedy native that is nasty to animals.  
The awns can stick into livestock and produce sores in their throats, eyes, noses.  Grows on low wet soils.

Garden flowers for you too!

 Black-eyed Susan or Rudbeckia

 

 Purple Conflower

OnlyDaughter sent me this pic of the sidewalk art she creates in her driveway and sidewalks along with her little girls.  She writes, "Purple Conflowers make me think of you!"  (Melts my heart.)

These summer days have been filled with cutting, raking, and baling hay, and at the moment, we are just a day or so from being all done with haying.  We've made a good, productive go of it, and we're thankful for every blade of grass that was rolled into each bale.  The cows and sheep will thank us when winter rolls around.  (Do you notice a rolling theme here?)

I've been pouring the water on the flower gardens and the veggie patch, and I'm trying to keep the lawn reasonably green, but it's the season when things start turning brown-ish in these parts.  We were lucky to have an inch and a half of rain last week when some thunderstorms rolled through.  The bad part about it is that the lightning touched off a prairie fire north of us.  The men took off in the rangefire truck and went to snuff it out.  In a couple hours they had it contained and it didn't amount to much, thankfully.  Most of the ranchers in our area have firefighting sprayers and when someone's place is on fire, everyone goes.  We have so much tall clover in the country that is dry as can be, and it has become a big fire danger here.  Everyone's watching the sky and the horizon when thunderstorms pop up this time of year.

We worked the sheep today and sorted the wether lambs off to take them to the sale barn.  They looked so good and the markets are very favorable right now too so we're hoping for good prices on our lambs.  We kept the ewe lambs back on their mothers and will sell them later at a special ewe lamb sale in September.

The yearling steers are closer to home in the North Pastures eating grass and getting fat.  Soon they'll be gathered and brought home to take to the sale too.  The mother cows and their calves are happily grazing in summer pasture and the bulls are still in for another cycle.

Tomorrow this Gram is going along with the Mommies and their children to the Water Park to play in the pools.  The Littles are very excited about that.  It should be a fun time for all of us.  Peach, Toodles, Bee, and Rootie Toot are going but Little Boy Blue must stay behind with Daddy.  We think he'll play out too soon and ruin the fun for the big kids.

I hope your summer is rollin' along  -- not too quickly, not too slowly.

Love is to the heart what the summer is to the farmer’s year — it brings to harvest all the loveliest flowers of the soul. ~Author Unknown