Work and play...

THE WORK...

 

Gathering cows from the far North pastures takes time.

The pastures, as you can see, are terrible.  There has been less rain up there.

We probably should have brought the heifers home sooner.

We've been working cows, boosting vaccinations on all the calves, sorting into bunches,

and weaning some of the calves.  We've had several days of this.  It's fun to go through all the cows and calves and see how they are doing, but it's a lot of hours of work too. 

 Cowpokes like me feel it in the shoulders and hands.

We also worked the bred heifers to see which ones we will add in to the herd and which ones we will sell in November.

154 head averaged 949 pounds.

(a tally we need)

We DID get some rain!  

About an inch, which is wonderful for us.

No water running into stock ponds, but moisture nonetheless.

THE PLAY....

 When I'm helping trail cows, I am always looking for interesting things along the way.  I find feathers and plants, rocks and bones.

On this particular day, I found a pile of bones.  An old cow died.

This was her skull.
Evidently she had a lump jaw.  

I thought it was cool how the lump turned into a kind of calcium coral reef.

Ugly and beautiful.

Below is more of my playing...

...fiddling with watercolor paints.

I've been having fun with some video tutorials.
They are very inspirational!

 The sketchbook on the left is my nature journal.
When I homeschool our kids, we all had nature journals to keep.  I've kept one on and off since retiring from my teaching job, and I've decided to start up again.

I tried to plunk a little watercolor in on my sketches.  It works ok.

I like it, but the paper is not so great (for watercolor) since it's just sketch paper.
I might look for a watercolor journal next time.

 Do you know the movie:  

It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown?
I grew up watching it when I was a girl, and our kids grew up watching it too.
Now it's time for the grandies to love it.

Well, my pumpkin watercolor above is a tribute to that Charlie Brown story 

and a tribute to my pumpkin patch

which is very sincere.
My grandkids had fun picking their very own pumpkins -- for decorating
and for carving jack-o-lanterns.

Sunflowers and a chickadee.

The chickadee is in my nature notebook too.

They've stopped by to feed and water in my backyard.

I do hope that some of them will decide to stay with us through the winter.

I've pulled up all the tomatoes now and have the green ones setting beneath newspaper in the garage with great hopes that they will ripen as the days pass.  The kids helped me pick all the pumpkins and those, too, are stored in the garage.  I'm leaving the potatoes and carrots underground and will pull them up as we need them.  They store best in the earth....until it freezes.

We did have our first freeze last week.

It's turning.

Fall is here!

Guess what?
I'm getting 33 eggs per day from the hens!
It's an EGGstravaganza!
Omelet anyone?

Are you taking a little time to play this fall?

Please tell me about it.